Religion
Related: About this forumProfessor Jim Al-Khalili: Christianity hijacked human values
In his presentation, Al-Khalili said he believed in the Golden Rule: One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself. The ethical maxim is often attributed to Jesus Christ.
Echoing the thought of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, a member of the audience said it seemed like secular humanists had killed God but were still doing what he said by adhering to Christian morality and values.
Al-Khalili responded by saying the situation was actually reversed. Christianity had hijacked human values. "For me, that is what defines me as a human, that I have the capacity to love, to empathize, to sympathize, to be kind, he explained.
Yes, those were values that were taken up by the Abrahamic religions and rightly so, because [it was] back at a time when people needed to be told those are important human values. For me, I dont think I need to behave in a certain way because I want to seek the reward of God or because I fear the punishment of God. I do them because Im a human being.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/15/professor-jim-al-khalili-christianity-hijacked-human-values/
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)"What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others."
In Hinduism, it's at LEAST 400 years older than Christianity.
Egypt? 600 BCE: "Now this is the command: Do to the doer to cause that he do thus to you."
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)I find it baffling how so many are unable to grasp the concept that their religion is simply an updated version of an older belief system and not something new and unique.
edhopper
(33,575 posts)among many Christians that Christianity is the "true faith" because of all the "unique" things about Jesus and their religion.
No matter how "un-unique" they really are.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)Who would die for a cause they knew was a lie?
(Oh but please ignore the fact that other religions have martyrs, too!)
rug
(82,333 posts)That's debatable.
edhopper
(33,575 posts)can be a rational decision without the need for it to be God based.
Which seems true for many people.
And since no two religious people have the exact same morality, no matter where they think it came from, but are deciding what is true for them.
Logically all morality is human based.
"n'est-ce pas?"
rug
(82,333 posts)More likely it's the result of mores or a particular culture.
On the other hand, I don't think a morality based on a religious belief is a hijacking of cultural morality. Or that "all morality is human based." I think it simply adds another dimension to it.
Philosophers often have used reason to address morality. Satre' comes to mind.
And there are always those with a different morality than there culture.
And as an atheist i would say all morality is human based min some fashion even when it's adherents don't think it is, your mileage may vary.
rug
(82,333 posts)Sartre - Existentialism is a Humanism
edhopper
(33,575 posts)I am referring to using our intellect in general to discern what morals we should follow.
I am also not sure what you are trying to say with the Sartre quote. Giving life the meaning we deem it should have, rather than expecting it to have a meaning from on high seems exactly what I am talking about.
rug
(82,333 posts)For instance, when you say, "what morals we should follow", where does the "should" come in? A good is posited. Can that value, that good, be proven?
Sartre comes in because he acknowledges that values do not exist a priori, before a person makes them. He goes on at length about a good for one is a good for all but at that point he's in the realm of mores, or culturally imposed values. I think, at root, those are all social utilitarian values.
I understand the difference between humanist values, values derived from humanity as a whole, versus values derived from on high. But I don't think they necessarily contradict each other. Religions usually acknowledge a natural law as well as those stemming from their particular beliefs.
Either way, though, I don't think an individual can reason, i.e., justify rationally, a given action as having any particular value beyond what he or she individually gives it.
Jim__
(14,075 posts)Here's a brief excerpt from near the place you quoted in Existentialism is a Humanism:
...
The third objection, stated by saying, You take with one hand what you give with the other, means, at bottom, your values are not serious, since you choose them yourselves. To that I can only say that I am very sorry that it should be so; but if I have excluded God the Father, there must be somebody to invent values. We have to take things as they are. And moreover, to say that we invent values means neither more nor less than this; that there is no sense in life a priori. Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of, and the value of it is nothing else but the sense that you choose. Therefore, you can see that there is a possibility of creating a human community. I have been reproached for suggesting that existentialism is a form of humanism: people have said to me, But you have written in your Nausée that the humanists are wrong, you have even ridiculed a certain type of humanism, why do you now go back upon that? In reality, the word humanism has two very different meanings. One may understand by humanism a theory which upholds man as the end-in-itself and as the supreme value. Humanism in this sense appears, for instance, in Cocteaus story Round the World in 80 Hours, in which one of the characters declares, because he is flying over mountains in an airplane, Man is magnificent! This signifies that although I personally have not built aeroplanes, I have the benefit of those particular inventions and that I personally, being a man, can consider myself responsible for, and honoured by, achievements that are peculiar to some men. It is to assume that we can ascribe value to man according to the most distinguished deeds of certain men. That kind of humanism is absurd, for only the dog or the horse would be in a position to pronounce a general judgment upon man and declare that he is magnificent, which they have never been such fools as to do at least, not as far as I know. But neither is it admissible that a man should pronounce judgment upon Man. Existentialism dispenses with any judgment of this sort: an existentialist will never take man as the end, since man is still to be determined. And we have no right to believe that humanity is something to which we could set up a cult, after the manner of Auguste Comte. The cult of humanity ends in Comtian humanism, shut-in upon itself, and this must be said in Fascism. We do not want a humanism like that.
I can accept some of what he says, but not all of it. My essential disagreement is the claim that a person has a complete liberty of commitment. I believe that certain values are indeed incumbent upon us. Non-sociopathic humans do apparently have an inherent concern for their community, both in its survival and in maintaining a certain level of status within that community. I don't believe that sociopaths choose sociopathy, I believe they are either born with it, or have it imposed in their early environment. Within that inherent concern, we do have freedom to choose values; but that concern limits the set of values that we will choose from. IOW, I do believe that their is an essence that precedes our existence.
rug
(82,333 posts)The essence of an ethical system is that it is altruistic. Or, at least that one considers the other's concerns as legitimate as his or her own. That's where I think he ended up.
But he got there through some Randian portal.
And this, "Furthermore, I can pronounce a moral judgment. For I declare that freedom, in respect of concrete circumstances, can have no other end and aim but itself; and when once a man has seen that values depend upon himself, in that state of forsakenness he can will only one thing, and that is freedom as the foundation of all values."
Why? It's a self-referential statement picking but one of many equally valid - and unprovable - ends.
Jim__
(14,075 posts)He thinks that we must make the liberty of others our concern. But, in the concrete case, the case of the student, he cannot offer any advice. His conclusion, to make the liberty of others our concern, seems quite abstract. If the abstract breaks down when it comes to defining action, I'm not sure how his morality plays out in the concrete.
Jim__
(14,075 posts)He does say Christians are humanists who believe in God.