The Glade 4.0

The word crutch in Talyas rant just bugs me.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

There was no ranting. This is just a rational discussion.

I define it as a crutch when it comes to mourning because it's something external to oneself that one leans on for support. A crutch isn't a bad thing. Crutches help a person walk while they recover from an injury.

My point was more that many people deal with grief without using such a crutch. They find the internal strength to deal with the issue and recover on their own merits, without external help. It may be harder, or take longer, or it might not. It is not better or worse. It simply is. LK's original post wonders how people do this without religion. My answer is that no external comfort is needed. Humans have within ourselves the fortitude and resilience that we need to deal with life's ups and downs, if we know where to look for it.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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^ That

Faith doesn't give you strength, it convinces you that you have it.

Excluding sociopaths with abnormal brains, I would say that it largely depends on a person's upbringing, social circle, and culture. In China, it is perfectly acceptable to throw plastic out of a train window after you're done eating your fast food that you bought 20 minutes earlier. These people are considered normal, not bad. Relocating "bad" people to new surroundings and culture can cure them. As an extreme example, if you took a Rwanda boy and adopted him into a home in Wellesley, Massachusetts, he could grow up to be a doctor instead of part of a vicious militia that raids villages and rapes women. He'd still have the same personality (being an introvert/extrovert, etc.), but he'd do different things with his life.

That is not the discussion, the discussion is why some people choose what they know is "bad".

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This isn't always true. Sometimes faith makes dealing with problems worse. Jesus cried out from the cross, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?" I think knowing his relationship with the Father made circumstances even more difficult. How much more for those of us who have faith but don't know God's plan for everything?

Edit: Also, regarding some things Riov said: At least for many Christians I know, including myself, good doesn't result from a fear of hell. It results from a right and loving relationship with God. A child doesn't do good because they're worried about getting pimp-slapped by mom or dad. They usually do it because they love their parents and want to imitate them.

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The Dude abides.

I'll accept your point on faith considering I have none and can't argue it.


This is very debatable, but I'm kind of waiting on Kate to get back before starting another tangent.

A person's behavior could be modeled as stochastic processes around a bell-curve, where the most probable actions are based on their genetics, upbringing, environment, previous actions, etc. People "choose" to do things based on interneuronal activities contained in their brain. Their brain is trained based on what I stated prior to this.

No, it's really not very debatable at all. Obviously, children also fear punishment, and in some unhealthy households thats the only incentive to do right, but the fact is that healthy parenting does involve the children loving the parents and wanting to emulate them. Anyone here who actually has kids can attest to that.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Gosh, you're right. I'm not really sure what I was thinking! I guess I must have seen spankings, groundings, time-outs and other disciplinary actions all in movies or TV shows. Hollywood is so crazy.

I'll wait to spawn some offspring before I comment on children again.

Did you miss the part where I clearly stated:

?

I guess you did. There it is again, since you seem to have been confused. No one is saying that loving parents is the only reason children behave; just that it's the primary reason. In households where fear of punishment is the only reason, children only behave when they think they're likely to be caught.

You don't need to wait until you have children to comment; you just need to read the entire post you're replying to.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You can't disregard disciplinary action because after a while the child's actions are going to become second nature whether they're afraid of punishment or not. When I was twelve years old, I said something in front of my mother that I shouldn't have and I got five across the face. Am I scared of her to this day? No, but that doesn't mean I'm going to see how far I can take it now. Children's morals can be a combination of lots of things, including parental love, discipline, respect, etc. You can't disregard any of them because everything we do contributes to everything we are.

In the future, if I'm responding to a post of yours, please don't accuse me of not reading it.

No one's talking about disregarding anything.



I jsut got done saying this twice



All right, fine. Next time, I'll just assume you: read what I said, then pretended I didn't say it in order to repeat it as your own point in order to make it appear I didn't acknowledge something since you've just finished doing that twice in a row.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'm not pretending you didn't say anything, I just disagreeing with you. My only actual issue was with the wording of Screeling's original point.

My original disagreement being, that behavior or morals many times have nothing to do with loving your parent or wanting to imitate them.

Whether or not God is real, this is pretty much why the concept exists.

Sorry I got pretty busy for the rest of the day. I've enjoyed reading the last couple pages though.
I'm about to go to bed, but wanted to comment on the morality issue. Someone touched on it already, but I guess the question is, if there are no eternal consequences, why avoid temptation when many times doing immoral things doesn't have any immediate consequences either. (If its not going to actually immediately hurt someone).
I can't really think of any good examples right now, but I know there are some.
The original point of this thread was to find out how atheists dealt with emotional crises, though, not the whole morality issue.
I've gotta admit that as a believer, the idea that all my loved ones are in heaven and I'll see them again does absolutely nothing to make me feel better....someone (Talya?) got it right when they said its too abstract of a concept for it to be comforting. About the only thing belief in an afterlife does for me is give me less fear of dying.
In a lot of ways, though, I've found the concept of heaven makes life harder. I mean, if we've got this lovely, perfect, eternity waiting for us, then why go through all the hard stuff here? It almost makes suffering more unbearable instead of better, if that makes any sense?

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

That has already been answered by at least 3 of us in this thread.

Like I stated before, it's very uncomfortable to do immoral things. There isn't a temptation, it's more like psychologically sticking your hand on a stove. Also I already have a high standard of living, so why do I need more?

Because it's wrong? If your sense of morality relies on a system of punishments on high, I'd say it's not a very strong sense of morality.

As my friends in the Unitarian church like to say "We can focus more on the here and now, since we're not worrying so much about the hereafter."

Morality does not have to be tied into religion. I don't do work with inner city youth or give to charity because God tells me to. Similarly, I don't not cheat on my wife, cheat on taxes, or anything else because God says its wrong, but because it's against my moral code.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Morality is just something we make up. There is no absolute right or wrong. We are ultimately just animals, and our "morality" affects our behavioral paradigm. It is not "wrong" when a new lion takes over a pride and kills all the other cubs, it's just how they behave.

Humans have some common taboos in our behavioral paradigm, and people who are too far outside this are viewed as "immoral." What we see as "evil" is no more than an anomoly in animal behavioral patterns. We put the mass murderer down because he's a threat to our social order, not because he's empirically evil.

Everything is explainable biologically. It irritates me when an atheist starts making claims about good and evil as if they were some kind of absolute. Leave that thinking to the religious and the idealists. (Which are basically the same thing.) Recognize good and evil dispassionately as the entirely subjective human value judgements. The only real truth is that we ALL make those judgements (and do so differently than everyone else alive), regardless of any religious belief. I still see the Church as a force for evil in the world, even though I recognize evil is just a personal opinion.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

How many times is "many times?" Many in absolute numbers can still be a very small percentage of the population. The vast majority of children still grow up with a parent who does, in fact, love them and try to show that, or if it isn't a parent, some other caregiver.

Moreover, discipline is a part of love, and children instincively realize that. A child that is never disciplined will have very poor behavior regardless of love, just like a child that only gets discipline is likely to have poor behavior. Children realize that parents discipline them in order to stop behavior tht is harmful to themself or to others (and behavior harmful to others is ultimately harmful to onesself when the consequences come back to you).

A child who recieves no discipline will eventually feel less loved because they will get the (most likely correct) impressiont hat their parent doesn't care.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Must be on ignore :p

I don't have anyone on ignore.

This is more along the lines of what I was going for...religion gives absolutes in what is right or wrong. Take away the religion and there are no basic rights or wrongs, just social mores and norms which vary GREATLY from culture to culture...to the point of causing wars over differences in perspective of what is "right" and "wrong."

And yeah, the pirate analogy was totally not helpful, sorry.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Religion is part of "social mores and norms", and also varies greatly from culture to culture.