Young Successful Entrepreneur

I recently read a post by Brad Fults where he writes about Religion and Compassion in the Modern World. This topic truly fascinates me and I decided to give my two cents. [Disclaimer: I respect everyones own opinions and I don't feel that my ideas or beliefs are any more correct than yours. I guess you can say that I am a true skeptic]

Brad writes responses to some quotes taken by Karen Armstrong’s speech. Since I am a true skeptic, I will try to show that Brad’s responses (as well as Karen’s ideas) are only opinions and not matters of fact. My opinions are of course only true to me (seeing how I am a skeptic), and I am not right or wrong on any of them:

Compassion is crucial and necessary

Brad writes that compassion is “crucial and necessary.” Why is compassion crucial and necessary for? If you mean that compassion is crucial and necessary for life, then that means that there cannot be life without compassion. This is flawed because there can be life without compassion. There can be a man who is truly not compassionate and that is able to live out his entire life happily. If you mean that compassion is crucial and necessary for happiness, then this again is flawed because there are people who are absolutely not compassionate and that are still happy. You can argue by asking, “name one person who is not compassionate and is truly happy.” I don’t know anyone myself, but then this would lead us to argue about the definition of “compassion” and “happiness.” We can argue this on a later post or if Brad decides to bring it up.

People want to be religious (said by Karen)

I feel that Brad argues this point well. I would like to add a couple of things. I feel that people are religious for two reasons: 1) They grew up with religion, it has been indoctrinated in them, and they know nothing but religion. These people can’t help to be religious because they know nothing else. 2) People are scared of uncertainty and want to know answers. People are afraid of death and the thought of leaving this world completely scares us. Therefore, people create the idea of God and the afterlife to explain how things work, why things happen, and to feel the security of still living on forever after we die.

If the prevailing available choice is to rest one’s morals upon mythical and fundamentally subjective beliefs, it is positively foolish to expect the outcome to be at all rational or cohesive.

Brad is saying that the beliefs or religious people are subjective (please correct me if I’m wrong in my interpretation Brad). I feel that he is wrong (then again, if I’m a true skeptic, I can’t believe that anyone is “wrong”) because religious people do not believe that their beliefs and ideals are subjective. They take their beliefs as absolute truths. According to a religious person, God exists as a matter of fact. I think the difficulty is trying to show that religious peoples beliefs are actually not absolute truths; they are actually beliefs (Brad, this may be what you were trying to say).

If you grew up in a religious house, then you were taught that God is real and that you must pay the utmost respect to him. Why do you believe that God absolutely exists? If you answer “the Bible says so,” then I will ask you, “how do you know that the people who wrote the Bible were telling the truth?” Since we’re on that topic, how do we know anything for certain?” I will tackle the problem of knowledge and absolute certainty on a later post. The point here is that religious people have a faith, and not absolute knowledge. Now we must argue the definition of “faith.” Is it knowledge or is it belief? Can we know that God exists a priori (without experience) or must we know him a posteriori (need experience). Think about this: if no one ever told you that God existed, would you still believe that he exists? What you’ll say is that civilizations across the world all developed an idea of a God independently on their own. My answer is that it is human nature to be curious and to want answers. Humans created God to answer their questions.

There need be no mystery in human affairs

What do you mean by this Brad? If you mean that everything in the world can be explained scientifically, then I belief you are wrong (again, I am not allowed to say “wrong” since I am a skeptic). Lets use the example of gravity. How do we know that gravity works? We know because we have all head a pen up in the air, and when we let it go, it falls to the floor. This has worked time and time again in the past so we believe that it will work again in the future. And this is where the flaw lies: just because it has worked in the past, it does not mean that it will work in the future. Think about it like this: There is a pitch-black, infinite place with a brick wall in the middle (kind of like the great wall of china). We are on one side of the wall with a flashlight. What we see using the flashlight is like the present that we are in. What we have traversed (all the parts of the brick wall that we have seen) is like the past. We have walked for many many miles and we have seen no openings to the brick wall. However, this does not mean that 10 steps ahead we will not find an opening. All we know is what we have traversed, and we cannot be sure of the future.

So then you can ask me, “Well, if you’re not sure that gravity will work tomorrow, why don’t you jump off a cliff tomorrow since it’s 50/50 chance that gravity will still be there.” I of course will not jump off a cliff because I know that I will fall. But I just proved that I cannot Know that I will fall. Maybe my “know” is similar to what religious people use as “faith.”

A movement away from arbitrary subjective wish-based morality and toward a true manifestation of the golden rule: humanism

What do you mean by humanism is the “golden rule.” Are you saying that “humanism” is the absolute right way to live your life? What are you basing this belief off of? I think that you have done a terrific job on refuting Karen’s opinions but that this sentence cannot be justified. There is a lot of different kinds of Humanism so I will let Brad argue why Humanism is the “right” way to live and I will respond.

The beauty of truly integrated humanism is that the solution to this question just comes naturally.

Again, you cannot say this. What do you mean that it comes “naturally”? Do you mean that people naturally are humanists and that it is unnatural to be religious? Why then have civilizations all over the world created their own forms of religion on their own? You cannot say that humanism is “natural” because it is not part of our instincts to be a humanist. Our instincts are too eat, sleep, survive, and reproduce. This is what comes naturally to us, not humanism.

These are only my humble opinions. I await your responses.