Sunday, March 18, 2018

Jordan Peterson - The Problem With Atheism


Interesting.   

The argument that I have heard is that people who don't know the difference between right and wrong aren't lacking religion, but empathy.  Although correct, there are always going to be some who do lack empathy.  This also assumes that your society values empathy, which I suspect was deficient in the Nazis, the Roman Empire and the Soviet Union.  Therefore, I see no guarantee that a society would value anything beyond individual or national self interest.  Many would, but some would not.  You can make a convoluted argument for morality, but some would find these arguments too deep and discard them.

Of course, the atrocities committed under slavery in this country, and others, showed a complete lack of empathy, and religion was often used as the justification.  Sam Harris claims that good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things, but if you want a good person to do bad things then you need religion.

I am not taking sides here.  I just think that the ideas are interesting.

The World Is Better Than Ever. Why Are We Miserable?

Monday, March 5, 2018

Youtube censorship

Re: Learned a new word

Larry,

Seems to me that there is a continuum, from a very oppressive society that tries to regiment all behavior, to an anarchist or nihilistic one where people lack any sense of purpose.

In my view, society should regulate and encourage behavior that is respectful to the rights of others.   By this, I mean we should teach children about civil liberties and respecting freedom.

As a logical extension of this, I also believe in courtesy.  

Since we do not share the same religious beliefs, I assume that we would disagree on what is moral and what is not.  I draw the line at respecting the rights of others.

​One of the many reasons I do not believe in anarchy is that there has to be some standard way of defining, for example, what is property ownership and what rights are.​

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On Mon, Mar 5, 2018 at 9:36 AM, utahtrout  wrote:

Anomie



From this article describing social anomie...