Find it fascinating that when ever religion is brought up humans get irrational in responding. Even on a board sponsored by a band openly critical of religion those that speak against it are shunned like leapers.
Opinion - On Sympathy, Empathy, everybody has felt deep grief at the sight or the thought of a suffering individual or even another species. That does seem to be something in humanity, to feel empathy with suffering and as a Darwinian I can offer explanations for that but I won't do it now because there is not enough characters allowed to type. It is a travesty that it has somehow become widely accepted that if you throw out religion you throw out The Good Samaritan, the weeping at Shakespeare or at a Schubert Quartet. It has nothing to do with religion in the sense of the supernatural, of course you can redefine religion as covering all these emotional artistic aspects. In that case there is no contest but that is confusing and we need to define religion as a belief in something supernatural. You get your beliefs not from evidence but from faith, revelation, tradition, scripture and authority. All these are bad reasons to believe anything. Evidence is the only reason to believe something. We are all in life together and are all capable of the same kinds of good emotions/actions whether we are religious or not. We can't give religion credit for the good things in humanity they are a part of humanity along with the bad whether you are religious or not.
Jesus, I make more sense than this after two bong hits.
Put down the bong for week and reread rather than attack poster that had some great thoughts. Poster started it as saying "this is my opinion" and then shared thoughts. Posts like this add to the boards enjoyment. Yours not so much.
the OP made zero sense to me either, callen.
Not that I agree, I just have a short attention span so I scroll down to find the shortest posts to read. I read this one.
I don't know. I don't think PJF's post is all that whackadoo. The first paragraph alone is very tied to the theories of E. O. Wilson as presented in his Sociobiology: The New Synthesis- the whole "biological understanding of human nature" thing.
Read the O.P. first paragraph and then check out what Harvard U. Press says about Sociobiology:
Comments
Read the O.P. first paragraph and then check out what Harvard U. Press says about Sociobiology:
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674002357
Later I'll try to digest the more spiritual/religious implications of the O.P.