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Some thinking on drawing a line between moral decisions and religious decisions. For me, the lines people draw are very fuzzy because our culture in the west has been so dominated by religion for so long. It is difficult to sort religious values from cultural ones. So how about reproductive rights. Anyone here against choice for non-religious reasons? Seems to me that one would also be against all form of state sponsored killing--war and corporal punishment--not just shifting the point of when we become a human to the point where we are just a few cells. Thoughts? Interestingly, the religious are generally in favor of accepting state sponsored killing--perhaps it is a footnote on the back of the tablet of the ten commandments.

DavidDuhon 7 Feb 3
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In my view, moral decisions have nothing to do with religious decisions. Moral decisions are concerned with how individual people relate to other people. Religious decisions are concerned with how egomaniacs who are in positions of power are able to subjugate other people for their own purposes through the (fictional!) threat of Hell.

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Actual (as opposed to imagined) morality is an organic work product of society. Social interactions result in an emergent consensus about (1) what kind of society most of us want and (2) what is helpful or harmful toward the goal of having that kind of society.

Religion is one of the actors in that negotiated consensus -- usually a major one. Which is fine, but religion has a strong tendency to appropriate societal morality, claim to have invented it (or be cozy with its claimed Inventor, anyway) and to be its protector, and even to have improved on it. Then they want to be its arbiter and enforcer as well -- with the enabling cooperation of the state, or in a de facto manner at least.

Since morality is an emergent property of human interaction, it is not always totally logical or consistent. I would not exclusively blame religion for fixating on, say, the sanctity of certain kinds of life in certain contexts and not others. Secularists manage to do that without necessarily appealing to religion.

As an aside, not all theists believe that life begins at conception. Indeed, it's been pointed out that this doctrine is "younger than the MacDonald's Happy Meal" as it did not exist in anything like its present codified form before about the late 1970s or early 1980s. Back in the 60s, evangelicals had nothing like today's robotic consensus around this notion. It used to be debated in Christianity Today, a magazine that was founded by no less than Billy Graham. People today don't often realize this. The doctrine was invented to push a Dominionist / theocratic agenda and to politicize conservative Christians, who previously considered activism to be beneath their lofty, "spiritual" agenda in the world.

Even today, much of Christianity is willing to leave the choice to carry a child to term or not with women themselves. Evangelicals are only, depending on how you define it or whose numbers you believe, somewhere between 17 and 33% of cultural Christianity. It has outsize political influence precisely because they've weaponized issues like abortion, but most Christians don't really give a fig one way or the other, and many who do, understand that it isn't for them to impose it outside their group.

Alas, in the US, that numeric minority now has a lot of political power, and hopes to impose it outside the group, so it becomes an issue for us all.

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My work involves a wide variery of people, different religions, gender orientations, perpetrators and victims. I gave long given up on the concepts of right or wrong, good or bad. I use the criteria of works vs doesn't work in the context of the person, the family and the community. I've seen many things that clearly work despite other people judging it immoral or wrong and vice versa. I frquently ask people; does that work, did that work, how could we change it so that it works. People think better when you remove the moral value from decisions or get them to ket go of the idea that they are "right".

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For me it’s difficult to draw the line between morality and religion because religion isn’t just one thing, and our sense of morality can come from more than one source. I find it easier to draw between emotion and reason.

And even that becomes complicated because we have biology-based emotions as well as culturally influenced emotions, and we are capable of both sound reasoning and shabby reasoning.

Nonetheless, when we use emotion, religious or otherwise, we are its slave. And if we are capable of sound reasoning, based on reliable information, we are free to choose our actions in response to the unique circumstances of a given situation.

Under this thinking, there would be no way to make a general rule about abortion or punishment or defense, because every instance is irreducibly unique, and there is no repository of right and wrong outside human judgement.

Killing has consequences, both emotional and practical. They are difficult, if not impossible, to assess and weigh.

skado Level 9 Feb 3, 2020
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Religious Moral decisions tend to be based on how much the decision serves the well being of the particular religion.
Humanitarian Moral decisions tend to be based on how much the decision serves the well being of the people as people.
Secular Moral decisions tend to be based on how much the decision serves the pragmatic well being of the particular society with no regard for religiosity.
Economic Moral decisions tend to be based on how much the decision serves the well being of the plutocracy.

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This addresses some interesting topics, I think, but if you don't mind me saying so it could do with a little more work. I had to read it three times before I managed to fully get what it was about. And am not sure even now. Please don't post in haste.

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Which ‘religious’ are you referring to. Seems a bit of a sweeping statement. Unlikely to find that sentiment among Buddhists, Quakers and the Amish!

My exact thoughts.

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