To think it’s unwise to lose the idea of God(s) in society?

[Digita]

To think it’s unwise to lose the idea of God(s) in society?

Whenever I hear people arguing why faith in any sort of higher being is 'stupid' or 'delusional' I wonder if they've thought through the wider implications of a godless society. It might not be all that it's cracked up to be... the idea of higher beings might be invented but invented for a reason too. Is there a need for a philosophical concept of something more for accountability, law and order?

“Society needs reasons for people to tell the truth even when it is to their disadvantage.” Why swear on a Bible? The Courts have kept swearing an oath on religious texts because there’s still a psychological, moral force behind it.

"Co-operation is a key component in human interaction and also, according to new research from the University of British Columbia, the spread of civilisation. Not because for any altruistic reason, though; instead it might be directly down to a fear of a vengeful god." Fear of punitive gods linked to rise of human civilisation’

‘A new study published in the journal, Nature, tests the theory that communities are fair and cooperate with outsiders because of the fear of divine retribution.’ ‘Moralistic gods, supernatural punishment and the expansion of human sociality’

That was a giant unreasonable leap. But I’ll bite and ask - how do you know that a god’s behind cancer?

Just looked up cancer causes and god isn’t listed. Some causes are self-inflicted, for example, smoking and poor diet.

Is it always helpful to blame god for all the things that go wrong?

And has a soft spot for capricious gods too.

*That was a giant unreasonable leap. But I’ll bite and ask - how do you know that a god’s behind cancer?

Just looked up cancer causes and god isn’t listed. Some causes are self-inflicted, for example, smoking and poor diet.

Is it always helpful to blame god for all the things that go wrong?*

Ah but God created cancer so it's all his fault, and he could cure it.

But he's made a choice to let this happen.

It's easy to blame humans, if there is a higher power humans can't be to blame.

If God can't change anything whats point in praying to them.

If God existed and I met them I'd put a gun to their head and pull the trigger as they are more a murderous bastard than any figure in history.

Amazing how Mr Fry gets so angry with a deity he doesn’t believe in! 😀

Yeah because what people have done in their name is harmless. If you can't see why he is angry you aren't paying attention.

Stephen Fry has a point about the Biblical version of God though (matters of whether he exists aside for a moment): in the book of Job he basically gives Satan the go-ahead to completely ruin and torment the poor guy to test his devotion. If that were an experiment in modern research, it absolutely would not pass ethics, mainly because it's monstrous.

@Againstmachine “If God existed and I met them I'd put a gun to their head and pull the trigger as they are more a murderous bastard than any figure in history.”

But what if it turned out that God had a license to kill?
And you almost certainly wouldn’t.

There’s a lot we don’t know. Hence philosophical discussion and exploration.

Being mortal means humans die; death is sadly an inevitability.

Doctors sometimes talk about how medicine is also about helping patients die well too. www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f2656

“Despite the media commotion, a surprisingly high proportion of middle-aged and older adults viewed cancer as 'the best way to die' and rated cancer death as better than heart disease.” Is cancer a good way to die? A population-based survey among middle-aged and older adults in the United Kingdom

Some people think a slower death gives them time to put affairs in order and resolve goodbyes. Still awful though. But the nature of death is awful, so it’s also about facing adversity with fortitude and bravery.

And that’s probably why the idea of rebirth and Jesus with his resurrection after suffering brings some people comfort about the afterlife etc. It offers some people hope of something beyond death.

God and Devil possibly two sides of same coin.

Like in Manichaeism maybe?

I just bit the bullet and bought a kindle so those are going to be my first downloads.

the Greek gods I think are more appealing in their sheer humanness. They are capricious, but I think ultimately they must just be really, really bored. You’ve got all eternity to occupy, of course you’re going to make your own entertainment. It reminds me of a quite from Constantine: “Gods a kid with an ant farm lady, he’s not planning anything”

Unfortunately for Odysseus he was exceptional, so despite his best efforts he wasn’t going to escape their notice for long.

Cassandra is an interesting one, and her decisions make more or less sense depending on the origin story. In one, she accepted the gift of prophecy in exchange for being his consort, not on receiving it refused him. Perhaps her worship is an act of atonement? Perhaps in serving him she hopes for mercy? She’s a tragic figure, but retains her beauty. Conversely, Medusa was physically transformed as punishment for an act committed against her, and became monstrous.

The Abrahamic god always puts me in mind of a cruel slave driver, which I suppose is pertinent when you consider his origins.

“Society needs reasons for people to tell the truth even when it is to their disadvantage.” Why swear on a Bible? The Courts have kept swearing an oath on religious texts because there’s still a psychological, moral force behind it.

Surely the best incentive to tell the truth is precisely that recognition that Society needs it. Because if you rely on religion to be that incentive, you take the risk that the other person isn't religious, or that their religion takes a more flexible attitude to truth. The courts don't insist on swearing on oath, and evidence has just as much force if it is simply affirmed. So far as they are concerned, the most effective incentive is the fact that if you lie you can be prosecuted for perjury.

You make my point nicely!

What is your point exactly?

@whumpthereitis ”Cassandra is an interesting one, and her decisions make more or less sense depending on the origin story. In one, she accepted the gift of prophecy in exchange for being his consort, not on receiving it refused him. Perhaps her worship is an act of atonement? Perhaps in serving him she hopes for mercy? She’s a tragic figure, but retains her beauty.”

Both Apollo and Cassandra are an interesting duo.

Apollo’s a god of prophecy so likely knew she would reject his advances. Also find it interesting that she rejects him after she receives the gift of prophecy, which begs the question of what she saw would happen if she agreed to become his consort (sounds like rejecting him and being cursed may have been the lesser of two evils that she foresaw).

Apollo also avenges Cassandra’s murder, so he stands up for her in the end. Then apparently Cassandra ends up in Elysium fields (is that the spelling?) which was a favourable outcome for human afterlife.

G.K Chesterton once said that 'People who.don't.believe in God will believe in anything.'
These days everyone is able to choose their own beliefs or even invent them. They can decide for themselves what is moral or what is not, or even if there is such a thing as meaningful morality.

Take a good look at some of the things people believe in these days.Bizarre ludicrous things abound. People are afraid to challenge the strangest beliefs even when they are harmful to society as a whole.

It seems to me that religion and a broad acceptance of its tenets were a unifying force in society. And there is nothing to replace it.

There is a relatively new theory of the origins.of civilisations. Broadly it used to be thought that hunter gatherers settled down to farming and then built temples to their gods; a new school of thought says the temples and huge religious complexes came first and then people settled there to assist in the running and maintenance of these holy places and priests. And that is how civilisation began.

I have no idea which theory, if either, is correct. But what if religion is the foundation of civilisation? And now that religion has lost its grip on most of us, who will have the moral authority to restrain us?

Personally, I fear the future. Our society is rotten through and through; the media worships depravity, our leaders will not speak out against it.
An example is that idiot who stripped off on TV and played the piano with his penis. That was the moment I realised we're finished as a respected nation. When that man is classed as entertainment, or a satire on society, or an amusing comment on modern art we have lost the plot.

Religion was useful in that respect when humans were primitive and wild and had to be threatened with punishment by God in order to not kill each other. These days we have the police and legal systems in place, therefore the religion’s past its due date.

And now that religion has lost its grip on most of us, who will have the moral authority to restrain us?
We don't need to be restrained by a religious authority. It is perfectly possible to have humane secular laws which work well and maintain a stable society. You have been taken in by the fallacy that you need religion to have good morals.

Personally, I fear the future. Our society is rotten through and through; the media worships depravity, our leaders will not speak out against it.
An example is that idiot who stripped off on TV and played the piano with his penis. That was the moment I realised we're finished as a respected nation. When that man is classed as entertainment, or a satire on society, or an amusing comment on modern art we have lost the plot.

I beg to differ. When I look around me, what I see are decent people doing their best, going about their business. Some manage it better than others, but the people I know work hard, abide by the law, are kind to each other, support charities of all kinds and are worthwhile. We currently have a government that is rotten through and through, but with any luck the cycle of democracy will change that. Society is not doing too badly at all.

And if you think penis piano man was the moment the UK was finished as a respected nation, you haven't been paying attention - that respect was lost when our government stopped respecting international law and international treaties, proposed sending asylum seekers to another country without due process and broke its own laws. A penis on tv is hardly an earthshaking event, unless you're clutching your pearls too hard.

People have been moaning about the lack of 'morals' and the state of entertainment and kids these days for millenia.

And now that religion has lost its grip on most of us, who will have the moral authority to restrain us?

You do realise that those who invented religions and have always being in charge of imposing religions' supposed moral authority on the people in order to 'restrain' us were all morally (often extremely) fallible human beings, right? Quis custodet ipsos custodes and all that...

Someone I know posted this recently.

I know many very moral non religious people. I also know some highly immoral religious people - people that think they are better than most, and show that by their actions. For example, doing everything they could to stop someone from going to their long term, living together partner's funeral.

Religion doesn't stop people from being awful, and non-religion doesn't make bad people out of good.

An example is that idiot who stripped off on TV and played the piano with his penis. That was the moment I realised we're finished as a respected nation

I don't know who you are talking about, but I think if that's the measure of a nation being deserving of respect, it's not just the UK that will have that issue.

There is no good. There is no evil. There's no straightforward binary divide between the varying interpretations of these, and there's no human being who solely comprises either one or the other. They are human, moral constructs. And there is no absolute morality independent of history, geography, time or circumstance.

If a witness or a defendant is going to tell lies in the dock/witness stand then the lies won't be made worse because they are tinged with blasphemy.

As for gods in the plural, granted many pagans turned voluntarily to Christianity but it's undeniable that the Christian faith was the one persecuting pagans in the first place.

Whatever the answer may be to the complex social dilemma you raise, I suspect a monotheistic God isn't it.

It is 2023. Surely no need for sky fairies anymore.

Personally, I fear the future. Our society is rotten through and through; the media worships depravity, our leaders will not speak out against it.
An example is that idiot who stripped off on TV and played the piano with his penis. That was the moment I realised we're finished as a respected nation. When that man is classed as entertainment, or a satire on society, or an amusing comment on modern art we have lost the plot.

As opposed to organised religion, where the problem over many decades has been penises being brought out in private.

An example is that idiot who stripped off on TV and played the piano with his penis. That was the moment I realised we're finished as a respected nation

The whole coutnry isn't fucked because one guy played a piano with his penis.

I do find the psychological need so many people have to believe in a supreme being fascinating. It's relatively easy to understand how the idea of religion came into being in the first place, not least on the basis that people needed some way of making sense of the incomprehensible. Obviously we can't claim to know everything now, but I do think we have reached a point when there is simply no logic in believing in a god. Over thousands of years evidence of a deity's existence has never come to light, and science tells us enough about our origins for us to know that there is no reason for believing that both we and the world must have been created by a supreme being.

There isn't a need for a deity to make people tell the truth, refrain from crime, be kind to each other, because there are enough of us who can see that it is to our mutual advantage for all of that to happen - and enough who support the putting in place of a justice system to help to enforce that ethos against those who don't subscribe to those views.

And yet so many people clearly still feel the need to believe, and tell us passionately that their god indisputably exists and is the only god, even though in fact their gods differ so widely from each other. Up to a point it's all harmless, until of course you get people saying that women can't be educated because god says so, and declaring war in the name of their respective religions. That's when something that is objectively interesting and a psychological phenomenon becomes dangerous.

Anyone who needs the threat of eternal hell to be a good person isnt a good person