Darwin, the Destroyer

[Jimmy_Jam]

"Religion has historically proven as destructive as any product of science,..."
No clearer indication of a government school education is necessary.


First World War (1914–18): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 million
Russian Civil War (1917–22): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 million
Soviet Union, Stalin’s regime (1924–53): . . . . . . . . . 20 million
Second World War (1937–45): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 million
Chinese Civil War (1945–49): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 million
People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong’s
regime (1949–75): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 million
Tibet (1950 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600,000
Congo Free State (1886–1908): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 million
Mexico (1910–20): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 million
China (1917–28): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 800,000
China, Nationalist era (1928–37): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 million
Korean War (1950–53): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8 million
North Korea (1948 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 million
Rwanda and Burundi (1959–95): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.35 million
Second Indochina War (1960–75): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 million
Ethiopia (1962–92): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000
Nigeria (1966–70): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 million
Bangladesh (1971): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.25 million
Cambodia, Khmer Rouge (1975–78): . . . . . . . . . . . 1.65 million
Mozambique (1975–92): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 million
Afghanistan (1979–2001): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.8 million
Iran–Iraq War (1980–88): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 million
Sudan (1983 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.9 million
Kinshasa, Congo (1998 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.8 million
Philippines Insurgency (1899–1902): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220,000
Brazil (1900 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500,000
Amazonia (1900–1912): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250,000
Portuguese colonies (1900–1925): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325,000
French colonies (1900–1940): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200,000
Japanese War (1904–5): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130,000
German East Africa (1905–7): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175,000
Libya (1911–31): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125,000
Balkan Wars (1912–13): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140,000
Greco–Turkish War (1919–22): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250,000
Spanish Civil War (1936–39): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365,000
Franco Regime (1939–75): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100,000
Abyssinian Conquest (1935–41): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000
Finnish War (1939–40): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150,000
Greek Civil War (1943–49): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158,000
Yugoslavia, Tito’s regime (1944–80): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200,000
First Indochina War (1945–54): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000
Colombia (1946–58): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200,000
India (1947): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500,000
Romania (1948–89): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150,000
Burma/Myanmar (1948 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130,000
Algeria (1954–62): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537,000
Sudan (1955–72): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500,000
Guatemala (1960–96): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200,000
Indonesia (1965–66): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000
Uganda, Idi Amin’s regime (1972–79): . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300,000
Vietnam, postwar Communist regime
(1975 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430,000
Angola (1975–2002): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550,000
East Timor, conquest by Indonesia (1975–99): . . . . . 200,000
Lebanon (1975–90): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150,000
Cambodian Civil War (1978–91): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225,000
Iraq, Saddam Hussein (1979–2003): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300,000
Uganda (1979–86): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300,000
Kurdistan (1980s, 1990s): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300,000
Liberia (1989–97): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150,000
Iraq (1990– ): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350,000
Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–95): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175,000
Somalia (1991 et seq.): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000


So....which religion was responsible for poison gas, barbed wire, high explosives, experiments in eugenics, the formula for Zyklon B, heavy artillery,
pseudo-scientific justifications for mass murder, cluster bombs,
attack submarines, napalm, inter continental ballistic missiles,
military space platforms, and nuclear weapons?


Dunce.

I am appalled. I expect better from you.

I think I get the point you're trying to make, but are you suggesting that religion was not involved in any of the examples on your list? I beg to differ. I don't know where you got, or for all I know copied and pasted, your examples from, but I assure you some of them included religious motivations. What you have provided is essentially a long list of bloody conflicts that conveniently excludes those involving Judeo-Christian concerns. Why don't you include both World Wars, the 30 Years War, The Inquisition, The French Wars of Religion, Reconquista, The Muslim Conquests and subsequent Crusades?

While we're at it we may as well include the entire Dark Ages and the targeting of Jews for their presumed deicide of Jesus. And this didn't stop with the Protestant Reformation, lest we forget it was Martin Luther who wrote On Jews and Their Lies. It's very convenient to point the finger at the Nazis, but where did they get their hatred of the Jew from? Could it be from 1000+ years of Christian hatred of them in Europe. Nah. Couldn't be.

I enjoy our debates, Political Chic, but please. I do expect better than that from you.

Please, go right ahead and provide the number attributable to religion.


The source:
David Berlinski, "The Devil's Delusion."

You might like it.


I feel no obligation to your expectations.

I might read it. I'm not going to dedicate the time necessary to find a number to the 30 Years War. Sorry. Your list appears very ready-made by somebody who conveniently leaves out anything that would implicate Judeo-Christian religion as a destructive force. If you actually took the time to research each conflict and find numbers, then bully for you, but I doubt it.

 

[Jimmy_Jam]

BTW, PC, I have my issues with atheists, believe me, especially the hard-headed ones whose obstinacy goes sometimes beyond the worst fundamentalist Christians. I have no doubt that "The Devil's Delusion" makes some salient points. I also don't doubt that it's secondary or even equal intent is to proselytize, so I will give it my usual grain of salt. But I will check it out.

 

[PoliticalChic]

BTW, PC, I have my issues with atheists, believe me, especially the hard-headed ones whose obstinacy goes sometimes beyond the worst fundamentalist Christians. I have no doubt that "The Devil's Delusion" makes some salient points. I also don't doubt that it's secondary or even equal intent is to proselytize, so I will give it my usual grain of salt. But I will check it out.

David Berlinski (born 1942) is an American educator and author. Berlinski is a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, the hub of the intelligent design movement. A critic of the theory of evolution, Berlinski is an agnostic and refuses to theorize about the origins of life.[1] He has written on philosophy, mathematics and a variety of fictional works.

Berlinski was a research assistant in molecular biology at Columbia University,[3] and was a research fellow at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria and the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHES) in France. He has taught philosophy, mathematics, and English at Stanford, Rutgers, the City University of New York, the University of Washington, the University of Puget Sound, San Jose State University, the University of Santa Clara, the University of San Francisco, San Francisco State University, and taught mathematics at the Université de Paris
David Berlinski - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Some of his debates are on youtube.

 

[Jimmy_Jam]

Please, go right ahead and provide the number attributable to religion.

I will only defend the few examples I brought up. That's not the point. You provide a list that is supposed to prove the evil of, I guess, atheism, when it is little more than a list of political conflicts. It is suspect because of it's exclusion of conflicts that contradict it's agenda. Now, it is timely in that it only lists conflicts from the 20th Century, a period of time that I think we can all agree is not marked by Christian inspired slaughter. That goes back a lot further, and which is near impossible to document as effectively as what you have provided.

30 Years War - 8 million (Norman Davies Europe, p. 568)
French Wars of Religion - 3 million (No direct source, just a median of the range of estimates)
Crusades - 2 million (again, a median of estimates)

Keep in mind also that these were, in terms of percentage of world population, a bigger number when compared to 20th Century examples. That was the best I could do on short notice.

 

[AVG-JOE]

If I lacked an understanding of human nature, as you do, I'd agree.

Reasoning with another, while it sounds efficacious, lacks any force behind it. We humans have the unlimited ability to rationalize our wants, and desires.



Religion places the force of a Just God behind morality, and the promise of punishment if one behaves poorly.



Take slavery as an example. For the slaver….rational arguments can be made re: profit, easier life, due to slavery. No moral arguments can be made for same.
You say ‘it makes me uncomfortable to see another man suffer’ but it doesn’t make the slave trader uncomfortable.

Murder? War? The same.

Right down to the mundane....say, cheating on tests. The cheater simply says 'well, everyone does it.....'


Reason suggests. God makes demands…because God can punish.

This is simply proof that there is no God, or if there is, He impotent. Otherwise a god or a religion would have dominated the planet by force.

Morality is a personal judgement call enforced by the beholder. Slavers aren't less moral... just different from those who would disagree. This is where Civil Law and the morality ascribed to us by our fellow man comes in to play, ass-u-me-ing there are enough teeth behind the Civil Code to actually enforce it.





When has God EVER punished anyone? (Outside of the story book examples, of course. )



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"Slavers aren't less moral."
Absurd.

"Otherwise a god or a religion would have dominated the planet by force."
The God I worship allows men free will, and actions based on same.

One man's morality is another man's inconvenient truth. The whole point is that morality, like beauty, is subjective and remains in the eye of the beholder.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Please, go right ahead and provide the number attributable to religion.

I will only defend the few examples I brought up. That's not the point. You provide a list that is supposed to prove the evil of, I guess, atheism, when it is little more than a list of political conflicts. It is suspect because of it's exclusion of conflicts that contradict it's agenda. Now, it is timely in that it only lists conflicts from the 20th Century, a period of time that I think we can all agree is not marked by Christian inspired slaughter. That goes back a lot further, and which is near impossible to document as effectively as what you have provided.

30 Years War - 8 million (Norman Davies Europe, p. 568)
French Wars of Religion - 3 million (No direct source, just a median of the range of estimates)
Crusades - 2 million (again, a median of estimates)

Keep in mind also that these were, in terms of percentage of world population, a bigger number when compared to 20th Century examples. That was the best I could do on short notice.

The first item on Berlinski's list tops the total above.


Even in the 19th century, as religious conviction waned, the warnings were there. Ivan Karamazov, in “The Brothers Karamazov,” exclaimed ‘if God does not exist, then everything is permitted.’
Berllinski, chapter two.

 

[Jimmy_Jam]

BTW, PC, I have my issues with atheists, believe me, especially the hard-headed ones whose obstinacy goes sometimes beyond the worst fundamentalist Christians. I have no doubt that "The Devil's Delusion" makes some salient points. I also don't doubt that it's secondary or even equal intent is to proselytize, so I will give it my usual grain of salt. But I will check it out.

David Berlinski (born 1942) is an American educator and author. Berlinski is a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, the hub of the intelligent design movement. A critic of the theory of evolution, Berlinski is an agnostic and refuses to theorize about the origins of life.[1] He has written on philosophy, mathematics and a variety of fictional works.

Berlinski was a research assistant in molecular biology at Columbia University,[3] and was a research fellow at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria and the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHES) in France. He has taught philosophy, mathematics, and English at Stanford, Rutgers, the City University of New York, the University of Washington, the University of Puget Sound, San Jose State University, the University of Santa Clara, the University of San Francisco, San Francisco State University, and taught mathematics at the Université de Paris
David Berlinski - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Some of his debates are on youtube.

Interesting how you source a portion of the wikipedia article on him and conveniently omit criticism against him. He may be an agnostic. I really don't care. He advocates for the Discovery Institute. I have significant issues with them, not the least of which that they are a theistic organization disguised as a secular one. If he is listing a couple dozen political conflicts of the 20th Century as a supporting premise of the evils of atheism, that's up to him, but it reeks fairly heavily of an agenda. The 20th Century doesn't really have much going on in it in terms of religious-based conflicts. However, wouldn't you consider a single century a pretty tiny perspective in the range of human history?

 

[ilia25]

It is a 'bad thing,' Joe.

There is no morality to science.

No, but you don't need gods to come up with morals either: Treat other people the way you want to be treated by them. That all there is to morals.

If I lacked an understanding of human nature, as you do, I'd agree.

Reasoning with another, while it sounds efficacious, lacks any force behind it. We humans have the unlimited ability to rationalize our wants, and desires.



Religion places the force of a Just God behind morality, and the promise of punishment if one behaves poorly.

And how that worked out? The rise of Christianity had not stopped immoral behavior -- worse, many people used religion as an excuse for their crimes.

It all comes back to the reasoning -- and if a person does not get the morals based on common sense, religion would not help him either.

You say ‘it makes me uncomfortable to see another man suffer’ but it doesn’t make the slave trader uncomfortable.

And the notion of God and heavens does? A bad person would ignore God given morals just as well.

Reason suggests. God makes demands…because God can punish.

People can punish too! That why reasoning works for most people -- they know that behaving bad will make them suffer in this world.

 

[Jimmy_Jam]

Please, go right ahead and provide the number attributable to religion.

I will only defend the few examples I brought up. That's not the point. You provide a list that is supposed to prove the evil of, I guess, atheism, when it is little more than a list of political conflicts. It is suspect because of it's exclusion of conflicts that contradict it's agenda. Now, it is timely in that it only lists conflicts from the 20th Century, a period of time that I think we can all agree is not marked by Christian inspired slaughter. That goes back a lot further, and which is near impossible to document as effectively as what you have provided.

30 Years War - 8 million (Norman Davies Europe, p. 568)
French Wars of Religion - 3 million (No direct source, just a median of the range of estimates)
Crusades - 2 million (again, a median of estimates)

Keep in mind also that these were, in terms of percentage of world population, a bigger number when compared to 20th Century examples. That was the best I could do on short notice.

The first item on Berlinski's list tops the total above.


Even in the 19th century, as religious conviction waned, the warnings were there. Ivan Karamazov, in “The Brothers Karamazov,” exclaimed ‘if God does not exist, then everything is permitted.’
Berllinski, chapter two.

I'm not interested in a battle of numbers with you. I don't know that you understand my point. The premise of the list you provided is to point out the evils of atheism. Fine. I really don't care. I'm not defending atheism. But what the list represents is a list of political conflicts on the 20th Century, and what I am saying is that it is an extremely weak premise. For an agnostic, it would appear that Berlinski is a strong defender of Christianity. That's fine for him. It doesn't change the fact that he chooses to focus on such a small fragment of human history.

Coercive power is destructive. Religious coercive power has been replaced by secular political power. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

 

[ilia25]

One man's morality is another man's inconvenient truth. The whole point is that morality, like beauty, is subjective and remains in the eye of the beholder.

That is not entirely true. People often differ on details, but fundamentally all people share the understanding of what is right and what is wrong. Most people who behave badly understand that they are breaking the rules (those who don't are mentally ill).

 

[PoliticalChic]

No, but you don't need gods to come up with morals either: Treat other people the way you want to be treated by them. That all there is to morals.

If I lacked an understanding of human nature, as you do, I'd agree.

Reasoning with another, while it sounds efficacious, lacks any force behind it. We humans have the unlimited ability to rationalize our wants, and desires.



Religion places the force of a Just God behind morality, and the promise of punishment if one behaves poorly.

And how that worked out? The rise of Christianity had not stopped immoral behavior -- worse, many people used religion as an excuse for their crimes.

It all comes back to the reasoning -- and if a person does not get the morals based on common sense, religion would not help him either.

You say ‘it makes me uncomfortable to see another man suffer’ but it doesn’t make the slave trader uncomfortable.

And the notion of God and heavens does? A bad person would ignore God given morals just as well.

Reason suggests. God makes demands…because God can punish.

People can punish too! That why reasoning works for most people -- they know that behaving bad will make them suffer in this world.

"The rise of Christianity...."???
It is the rise of the Enlightenment and commensurate decline of religion over roughly the last three centuries that explains much of the wars and mayhem of the last centuries.

"Reason" is not related to morality.


As far as people punishing....i.e., the legal system....credit for that belongs to religion.


From David Mamet, "The Secret Knowledge":
1. This is the great contribution of our Judeo-Christian foundation to Western civilization. The principles of justice are laid down in the Torah and the Gospels, and implemented through human actions memorialized in judicial codes.

a. The written laws and rules are codifications of the unwritten ones worked out over millennia as the result of human interactions and experience.


2. The Bible is the wisdom of the West. It is from the precepts of the Bible that the legal systems of the West have been developed- systems, worked out over millennia, for dealing with inequality, with injustice, with greed, reducible t that which Christians call the Golden Rule, and the Jews had propounded as “That which is hateful to you, don not do to your neighbor.” It is these rules and laws which form a framework which allows the individual foreknowledge of that which is permitted and that which is forbidden.

 

[ilia25]

Please, go right ahead and provide the number attributable to religion.

I will only defend the few examples I brought up. That's not the point. You provide a list that is supposed to prove the evil of, I guess, atheism, when it is little more than a list of political conflicts. It is suspect because of it's exclusion of conflicts that contradict it's agenda. Now, it is timely in that it only lists conflicts from the 20th Century, a period of time that I think we can all agree is not marked by Christian inspired slaughter. That goes back a lot further, and which is near impossible to document as effectively as what you have provided.

30 Years War - 8 million (Norman Davies Europe, p. 568)
French Wars of Religion - 3 million (No direct source, just a median of the range of estimates)
Crusades - 2 million (again, a median of estimates)

Keep in mind also that these were, in terms of percentage of world population, a bigger number when compared to 20th Century examples. That was the best I could do on short notice.

The first item on Berlinski's list tops the total above.


Even in the 19th century, as religious conviction waned, the warnings were there. Ivan Karamazov, in “The Brothers Karamazov,” exclaimed ‘if God does not exist, then everything is permitted.’

No, not everything is permitted! People are going to punish you, and that threat deters crimes and immoral behavior better than any religion.

 

[PoliticalChic]

I will only defend the few examples I brought up. That's not the point. You provide a list that is supposed to prove the evil of, I guess, atheism, when it is little more than a list of political conflicts. It is suspect because of it's exclusion of conflicts that contradict it's agenda. Now, it is timely in that it only lists conflicts from the 20th Century, a period of time that I think we can all agree is not marked by Christian inspired slaughter. That goes back a lot further, and which is near impossible to document as effectively as what you have provided.

30 Years War - 8 million (Norman Davies Europe, p. 568)
French Wars of Religion - 3 million (No direct source, just a median of the range of estimates)
Crusades - 2 million (again, a median of estimates)

Keep in mind also that these were, in terms of percentage of world population, a bigger number when compared to 20th Century examples. That was the best I could do on short notice.

The first item on Berlinski's list tops the total above.


Even in the 19th century, as religious conviction waned, the warnings were there. Ivan Karamazov, in “The Brothers Karamazov,” exclaimed ‘if God does not exist, then everything is permitted.’

No, not everything is permitted! People are going to punish you, and that threat deters crimes and immoral behavior better than any religion.

Law is based on religion. See post above yours.

 

[Jimmy_Jam]

You did not get it all, go back and look it up, PC. The genocide of the American aborigines was motivated in part by Christianity, 80 or 90 million to start with, for instance. An easy million during the Crusades. Another million during the Armenian genocide.

You left out Stalin went to seminary and that Hitler and Mussolini were Catholics (that last part always drives CaliforniaGirl wild), FDR who was Dutch Reformed, or Churchill who was Anglican.

Once again, quit mistaking your sentimentality as sentiment: it is not. You cannot excuse religion by focusing only on the error's of the clergy. The is about man's inhumanity to man, in which science, religion, and atheism all played their parts.

I must allude to this earlier post by Jake. It is an astute observation. You spend so much effort and energy trying to convince us that a great cultural shift, and this is not unique in the scope of human history, amounts to more than a shift in coercive power from one party to the next.

Christians are very good at dodging culpability for cruelty against Jews because they can conveniently point their fingers at Hitler. What was Hitler doing but perpetuating a hatred of Jews that had been in existence in Europe, and used by Christianity, for centuries? That Hitler may have had vague plans to eliminate religion is incidental. Now that we have an Israeli state, and Christians have interpreted that as fulfilled prophecy, it has amounted to a massive cultural shift amongst Christians as well. Where Christianity used to hate and persecute Jews, Hitler provides a wonderful opportunity to shift the blame to secular shoulders, and now they love Jews, love Israel, etc., and have presumably changed their ways.

I also don't quite get this focus on numbers you are obsessed with, as if the world population were even remotely the same during the period of Christian coercive power and modern political coercive power.

 

[ilia25]

If I lacked an understanding of human nature, as you do, I'd agree.

Reasoning with another, while it sounds efficacious, lacks any force behind it. We humans have the unlimited ability to rationalize our wants, and desires.



Religion places the force of a Just God behind morality, and the promise of punishment if one behaves poorly.

And how that worked out? The rise of Christianity had not stopped immoral behavior -- worse, many people used religion as an excuse for their crimes.

It all comes back to the reasoning -- and if a person does not get the morals based on common sense, religion would not help him either.



And the notion of God and heavens does? A bad person would ignore God given morals just as well.

Reason suggests. God makes demands…because God can punish.

People can punish too! That why reasoning works for most people -- they know that behaving bad will make them suffer in this world.

"The rise of Christianity...."???
It is the rise of the Enlightenment and commensurate decline of religion over roughly the last three centuries that explains much of the wars and mayhem of the last centuries.

And what explains the wars and mayhem before the Enlightenment? More people died in the last century because of better technology -- not because a decline in morals. If anything, people behaved much better recently than in the dark ages.

"Reason" is not related to morality.

Morality is deducted by reasoning.

As far as people punishing....i.e., the legal system....credit for that belongs to religion.

Not true, the credit belong to the people.

1. This is the great contribution of our Judeo-Christian foundation to Western civilization. The principles of justice are laid down in the Torah and the Gospels, and implemented through human actions memorialized in judicial codes.

That is a false statement. Rome had developed pretty advanced judicial codes long before the rise of Christianity.

a. The written laws and rules are codifications of the unwritten ones worked out over millennia as the result of human interactions and experience.

Only because they make sense -- "Don't do upon others..."

2. The Bible is the wisdom of the West. It is from the precepts of the Bible that the legal systems of the West have been developed- systems, worked out over millennia

That is simply not true. You don't need to believe in God or read the Bible to understand the Golden Rule. They put it into Bible (if they did) because it was around long before the Bible was written.

 

[ilia25]

Law is based on religion. See post above yours.

No, it is not. It is based on common sense, and the Bible simply writes down the rules that was known long before.

You think people did not know that stealing is bad before the Bible was written?

 

[Jimmy_Jam]

"Reason" is not related to morality.

PC, I am really surprised at you. This has got to be one of the most ridiculous things I have read. You can't really believe that, can you? Philosophy has dealt with ethics, moral considerations, since antiquity, primarily using reason and logic, but sometimes including the metaphysical. You're not really denying that, are you?

 

[AVG-JOE]

One man's morality is another man's inconvenient truth. The whole point is that morality, like beauty, is subjective and remains in the eye of the beholder.

That is not entirely true. People often differ on details, but fundamentally all people share the understanding of what is right and what is wrong. Most people who behave badly understand that they are breaking the rules (those who don't are mentally ill).

The point I make is that morality is subjective. Even murder is a moral act if rationalized accordingly. Do you reckon that homosexual lovers might find their feelings for each other moral, while being taken aback by those who disagree?

Morality is culturally and personally subjective. Shame The Devil and tell the truth now... how many of you have rationalized something declared 'immoral' in one of the dusty, ancient story books by telling yourself that God understands, or the times are different now than when the story was written?

All one needs to enforce moral authority is enforcement capabilities... 'morality' is whatever he who has the biggest stick says it is, and Earth has yet to produce a god who isn't impotent to say otherwise.

 

[AVG-JOE]

The first item on Berlinski's list tops the total above.


Even in the 19th century, as religious conviction waned, the warnings were there. Ivan Karamazov, in “The Brothers Karamazov,” exclaimed ‘if God does not exist, then everything is permitted.’

No, not everything is permitted! People are going to punish you, and that threat deters crimes and immoral behavior better than any religion.

Law is based on religion. See post above yours.

Have you considered why? Do you reckon it might have anything to do with the fact of human organization revolving around religion for centuries before Civil Law came along and set the stage for non-violent plurality among the religious?

Religion was a vital step in our evolution.... doesn't mean it's the answer.

 

[there4eyeM]

The absolute freedom that humans have is unfortunately misunderstood.

We are only free in relation to being one with all.