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Goodbye Jesus

The Depth Of The Brainwashing


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I find that my childhood Christian socialization is so strong that I have blind spots in thinking about certain things. For example I struggle to explain my own morality in atheist terms. Do any of you have areas where the indoctrination was so strong you still have trouble?

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I probably do, but it's hard to know what they are, because those who don't know, don't know that they don't know.

 

I am interested in trying to find out, though.

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I don't think it is just you -- I think it is inherently difficult to talk about morality in atheistic terms, and much easier to talk about it in religious terms. Those people get to say that certain acts are "RIGHT" or "WRONG" in some absolute, inherent, or categorical terms -- atheists cannot do this. Morals-talk and God-talk are very closely related. When atheists talk about morality, they generally have to say: "People do what pleases them, and people like this." The challenge for atheists is to learn to be satisfied with this answer as a grounding for a legitimate ethics.

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Something I just recently realized is that I had never questioned the part of the Flood story where god had kill everybody on earth because they were so wicked (except Noah and his family).  I never questioned that everybody had been totally evil and depraved and deserved death.  Just recently, now that I am able to step back and see the forest for the trees, I realized how is it possible for everybody to be so darn wicked?  Little kids?  Come on!  Really old, ill people?  Come on!  And as an adult in 2014, I find myself so busy between work and family and typing replies to posts on this site that I am too damn busy to devote myself to some good, old-fashioned daily, constant wickedness.  Seriously!  Most adults I know are really busy people and don't have a lot of energy left to expand on pure evil.  I have to imagine back in bible times without conveniences like grocery stores and washing machines, that people really were incredibly busy with their time, and didn't have loads of free time to devote to their evil pursuits.

 

I realize now that I had always taken that "everybody but Noah's family was so depraved as to deserve death" at face value and had never even blinked at it.

 

Doh!

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Also, it should be added "It's okay for people to do what pleases them, as long as they don't harm anyone else."

 

No.  Nothing needs to be added.  Your comment proves my point that even atheists are troubled and dissatisfied by atheistic morality.  They cannot be satisfied with the conclusion that there is nothing good or bad in themselves or in any objective sense.  No abstract assessment can be made about what's "okay."  God does not need to be added.  YOU think it's okay, because it pleases you.  Morality is human opinion, that's all.  We cannot say what is "okay" -- we only know what people like.

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I think the key, though, is why people like it. Our species has evolved around teamwork. Helping people and generally being nice feels good, because it's adaptive. It's not in our nature because it's "good" - it feels good, and positive, because it's in our nature. There's absolutely no need whatsoever for supernatural explainations of these feelings. Contrast this with other forms of life. Some of them do things that our species cannot wrap our heads - or, more to the point, hearts - around. Like nazca boobies. They always lay two eggs, and if both of them hatch, the biggest chick invariably kills the smaller one. The parents will literally sit there and watch the fight go down, right on top of their own feet, totally impassive. The most important part of that clip, though, is the human commentary. We find that sort of thing viscerally unnerving. If we encounter a baby, our instinct is to care for it, not kill and eat it (like cats usually do to kittens that aren't theirs). The point is, that reading this paragraph, you've probably already got some strong feelings about cats and nazca boobies, or even start leaning toward moral judgements: "nazca boobies are horrible parents" or "cats are awful." Ultimately, though, there isn't a universal "good" or "evil" - what feelings we have about these things are interactions between our instincts and our cultures, with a very wide spectrum of behaviors that can emerge from this interaction.

 

And that's okay. It doesn't mean it's not real. In fact, morality as we know it comes from very concrete environmental and social circumstances.

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it feels good, and positive, because it's in our nature

 

I agree with this -- Dr. Larry Arnhart makes the same point in the book Darwinian Natural Right: The Biological Ethics of Human Nature.  My mother would say -- "Feelings ARE facts."  By this, she would say that opinions are real at least insofar as they are truly existing opinions -- they must be given due consideration.  To go further, this is especially true when feelings flow out of something as concrete as our DNA, given to us as our inheritance from our ancestors who survived and reproduced because they were the cooperators, negotiators, and the compromisers.

 
I would have to say though, that it pleases me (and us) to, in some circumstances, do things that are harmful to other people.  For example, it pleases me that former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky is being confined in jail even though this likely makes him miserable.  I am of a same mind as the community that locks him up even though this is "harming" him.  Is it okay for us to do this to him even though it harms him?  Why?  We like it.  The might of the community makes right:
 

Might Makes Right

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I find that my childhood Christian socialization is so strong that I have blind spots in thinking about certain things. For example I struggle to explain my own morality in atheist terms. Do any of you have areas where the indoctrination was so strong you still have trouble?

 

As I've said elsewhere, the whole concept of "morality" to me seems increasingly questionable.

 

Morality is down to "good" and "bad"; that seems to me to be practically synonymous to an issue of "what is sin?".  "Sin", however, is meaningless unless seen in the context of doctrine.  As an atheist, you have no doctrines by which to judge sin (strangely,perhaps, as a theist, neither do I).  Therefore, you cannot answer "what is sin?" and you then have some issue over determining an objective basis for "good" and "bad".

 

You can choose to define "good" and "bad" in your own terms - but that is only deciding the ambit of "sin" for yourself rather than letting doctrines be imposed on you, and finding a coherent principle that will explain the whole framework may prove challenging.

 

Bottom line, to my mind, morality is a product of religious doctrine (albeit that root may become hidden behind social conditioning).

 

Personally, I prefer to reject the concept of "morality" as such.  There is only benefit and harm.  My actions cause, in varying degrees, benefit and harm.  I can choose to act in the manner that causes greatest benefit and least harm - albeit acknowledging that causing harm may be necessary, unavoidable or even desirable in some circumstances.  And I can accept that my actions have such consequences and face those consequences with the view that I am responsible for them.

 

Is that a morality?  Maybe, on some view.  But I don't find it helpful to think in those terms, and therefore do not.

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