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mugsybutt said:
My point exactly. You're molded into thinking one way or another from the time you're born. Why do you think so many people in the Mideast believe Americans to be the spawn of the devil?

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Because lots of us are?

I don't think religion has to be the reason certain beliefs are taught. I think if religion had never existed, we still would've figured out right and wrong just fine...plus, we wouldn't have that nasty "whose religion is right/better?" junk to deal with all over the planet.

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mugsybutt said:
Cannibals. Need I say more?

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Cannibals are no worse than Hutus & Tutsis slaughtering each other. Plus, cannibals still exist. Whoa, even after religion was invented.

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Sephia said:
Yes, but they usually live in cultures where the accepted religious beliefs are not those of Christianity. The beliefs of their cultures differ, and so do their morals.

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And? I'm sure every day isn't a people eating fest. The rest of the time, they need to live as all people do, with the morals they believe are right. I'm saying those morals don't have to have anything to do with Christianity. My dogs show concern for each other's well-being when one dog has just had surgery or is afraid of thunder - they weren't raised on religion. Common sense would've worked out just fine, without invisible gods to believe in. Without men being considered omnipotent in the world.

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Sephia said:
Common sense works on the "treat people as you want to be treated" principle, and doesn't really apply to the spontaneous acts of goodness that curry no favor and earn no reward.

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It's six of one, and a half-dozen of the other, really. If you treat people as you'd like to be treated yourself, you're essentially investing in yourself--you're doing something for others, with the expectation of a return on that investment down the road. Charity works the same way, even without religious underpinnings--you donate your time and/or money to help those less fortunate because you know that you could one day become the victim of misfortune and end up needing help yourself.

The notion that religion is a requirement for "moral" behaviour is mistaken. There are species of animals--some primates and certain birds for example--that will groom one another as part of a "social contract". In other species, mothers will adopt the orphaned offspring of others, raising them as their own rather than letting the children starve. Some primate species take this to greater lengths, raising their young in a communal fashion. None of these animals has been exposed to religious teachings, yet their behaviour reflects social values that we would call "moral" if we were describing humans.

Organized religion is about social control, less concerned with having people do the "right" thing than having them do what the organizers want. They were the first law-makers, the first to try to impose social contracts on an unruly populace. They made the first organized effort to codify the notion of "morality"--that which they endorsed was "moral", that which did not serve society was "immoral". To be clear, these were (and are) artificial distinctions, artificial constructs devised to serve the organizers' purpose.

Beneath them, though, lies a more "natural" form of morality that they're very quick to dismiss--they would have you believe that their version of morality is all that separates human beings from the rest of the "baser" creatures. Never mind that there are purely practical, even selfish reasons to be "selfless" in our interactions with others, or that these kinds of social contracts might predate organized religion by thousands of years.

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