If religion becomes a thing of the past - what should it be replaced with? An ethics and value system? What would that be like?
Would a replacement be necessary? If religion were to someday vanish totally then I'd say at that point true free thinking and secular morality will flourish, but no replacement would really be necessary as those things already exist.
Let's just go with laws and the golden rule.
It doesn't need to be replaced with anything.
Churches always have to hijack morality and if you look past a surface scratch you will find everything from stealing church goers contributions to sexual molestation of kids. They are not the rulers of morality and morality which can be easily achieved without any church. In fact, without churches trying to corner morality as their own, we can be a more moral society without them. All you need to do is look around. You will not be pleased at what you see. Most of us can easily figure out is something is wrong or if you are about to do something wrong. what do you ask, a priest with a bunch of child molestation in his pocket. Remember, morality is not controlled by the church. The history of abuses is too long for this comment. So no. Do not look at religion for morality.
Computational morality - morality is just maths, and once we have intelligent machines applying it, those machines will become the new gods.
I would love to see humanism replace religion. Imagine a system where everyone worked for the good of human beings! That would be truly wonderful.
so you would like a star trek world? this would be nice, i don't see that happening though till humans almost totally destroy our selves.
I could not agree more with that
Have you ever taken a look at the Venus Project. You should check it out via Google. It is about re-engineering our lives, seculr humanism, and a huge change to our economy. It is very interesting and may be the way to our future .
Let's just not replace religion. Ethics and values already exist outside religion.
I just cringe at the idea of another set of groups that people join just to feel superior to each other.
I agree. I cringe as well. I'm already a decent being without some hyped set-up.
Good question... we're working now on some online classes to discuss ethics and humanism and would love more ideas
I've made a few posts about this already. Evidently before America got dumbed down, people used to be taught bout Logical Fallacies and how to identify them, but I myself never encountered them all through high school and college. Instead, I was introduced to them through a book of comic short stories, "The Many Loves of Doby Gillis" by Max Schulmen. The story was called "Love is A Fallacy" and you can just google that title to fine that one story, if yo shoudl wish to read it, but be warned it is pretty dated culturally, but stil very good.
So, anyway, I would think that getting all the atheist and agnostics on this site more familiar with Logical Fallacies would arm them to withstand arguments and persecution form believers. It would better enable critical thinking and proper evaluation of information as they lkearn and would just be of great benefit to members.
The biggest problem, as I see it, would be in finding someone who if familiar enough with the material these days, as it is very rarely taught anymore.
Here is a 17 minute video, that is pretty darn dry, but it is a good brief introduction to some of the more common Logicl Fallacies... there are many many more not covered.