LowlyPropCapt
PBR For Life, and Beyond!
- Joined
- Jul 14, 2005
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Before the advent of science, what could not be readily understood or explained was primarily attributed to a higher being or god. What humans did not understand, they sought and found meaning through the concept of religion and a god.
Along came science debunking much of what religion put forth, through empirical evidence.
Religion basically provides a guideline for those who wish to live their lives within a span of subscribed values and virtues. Each religion sets forth ways to live your life in a particular way so as to make it to heaven or the equivalent.
Religion, penal law and morality all essentially provide similar deterents to a potentially destructive lifestyle.
Humans by nature are animals and have many selfish animal instincts. These psychologically animal-like instincts do not translate well to a human society.
Laws, religion and morality force us to reject or contain our feelings and temptations. Whether it be to murder, harm, steal, covet, etc. - society needed to come up with plausible lines of defense against destructive human desires.
If one "puts the fear of god" in a child, this child will believe that nothing he does goes unnoticed. Hopefully, it will help refrain this child from doing something harmful to himself or others. This works well when they believe that they will be destined for a place called hell in lieu of a paradise. And this will be for ever and ever. So make your time on earth productive and morally right, otherwise you will have a terrible afterlife. Every religion preaches this or something similar.
Laws can be circumvented, morals can be faked, but if their is a god who sees all and keeps a ledger of who did what, it tells us that we must live a life of piety if god will judge us one day.
Great post. I am not sure if you and I would agree on theology, but I for one appreciate your well thought out response.
To amplify what you said, I think what a lot of folks who take the Bible literally lack is a sense of context... That is to say that they lack a sense of the audience for him the various accounts were written and the era in which they were put down.
Much of the first five books of the Bible (the Pentatuech) are based on oral traditions going back thousands of years... Back to the first urban societies of Mesopotamia. To take these accounts and ascribe them to modern life with no interpretation or sense of context is just as foolish as telling a "God Believer" that there is no chance whatsoever that God exists. Neither science or religion have a monopoly on the answers, and science and religion are not necessarlily mutually exclusive.