Religion v Ethics

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Wootah
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Religion v Ethics

Post #1

Post by Wootah »

It is said that religion is the opiate of the masses.

How does ethics avoid a similar attack?
Proverbs 18:17 The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.

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Re: Religion v Ethics

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Post by Divine Insight »

Wootah wrote: It is said that religion is the opiate of the masses.

How does ethics avoid a similar attack?
I don't see the connection?

Most people believe in a religion because they want to believe in an afterlife where they will not only continue to live after death, but will even be reunited with their deceased loved ones. In fact, a desire to believe that our loved ones will survive death plays a very huge role in the attraction of religion.

In what way does ethics offer anything that attractive? Ethics offers no rewards for being good other than perhaps a person's personal approval of their own behavior. That's certainly a good thing, but it's hardly as attractive as a promise of an afterlife. So I can't imagine it being called an opiate. Unless self-approval is viewed as the "high".
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Re: Religion v Ethics

Post #3

Post by Wootah »

[Replying to post 2 by Divine Insight]

I think you think opiate means a high but the saying is that religion puts people to sleep, keeps them content with their awful lives by suppressing the desire to rebel because you will be OK in heaven.

(If there is a high it is in heaven not now.)

Ethics seems to suffer the same problem of having the masses not react to their lot.

Both seem to be an opiate.
Proverbs 18:17 The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.

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Re: Religion v Ethics

Post #4

Post by Divine Insight »

Wootah wrote: [Replying to post 2 by Divine Insight]

I think you think opiate means a high but the saying is that religion puts people to sleep, keeps them content with their awful lives by suppressing the desire to rebel because you will be OK in heaven.

(If there is a high it is in heaven not now.)

Ethics seems to suffer the same problem of having the masses not react to their lot.

Both seem to be an opiate.
Again, I don't see the comparison. Religion as oppression would hardly be an opiate. Also, religious people would tend to do as they are told, rather than doing what they believe to be right. In fact, if they disagree with what the religion says is "right" they are chastised for disagreeing with "God".

Why should ethics be seen as oppression? Ethics means to do what you believe is right. It doesn't mean to do as you are told whether you agree with it or not. So you could be extremely rebellious against a society, or government, and still be fully ethical.

But not so with religion. If you rebel against the religion you are not seen as being "moral" even if you feel that your rebellion is "ethical". To the contrary, you will be "branded" as an immoral heretic.

So ethics is totally different from religion.

In ethics you decide what you believe to be ethical.

In religion you are told what is moral, and if you disagree you will be chastised for your disagreement.

I think when they talk about religion being an opiate they actually mean that it's like an addictive drug where a belief in an afterlife is the ultimate "high". It may also have the undesired effect of causing the person to follow the "moral values" of the religion even though they may be unethical values. So in this way religion is also destructive like an addictive drug. It causes the person to stop thinking for themselves.
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Re: Religion v Ethics

Post #5

Post by Wootah »

[Replying to post 4 by Divine Insight]

Have you heard the saying I am talking about?
Proverbs 18:17 The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.

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Re: Religion v Ethics

Post #6

Post by Divine Insight »

Wootah wrote: [Replying to post 4 by Divine Insight]

Have you heard the saying I am talking about?
I know how Karl Marx meant it. If you want to stick with that meaning then I still don't understand why you would think ethics would play a similar role?

I'm pretty sure that Karl Marx meant it in precisely the way I was using it. Religion promises grand illusions of fantasy. Does ethics promise any illusion of fantasy?
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Re: Religion v Ethics

Post #7

Post by benchwarmer »

[Replying to post 1 by Wootah]

Ethics are not tied to ancient stories. They are moral principles developed by the society we live in.

Religion, in addition to having its own set of moral principles, can include all manner of claims and rules that have nothing to do with morals.

Religion (usually) promises happiness in some sort of afterlife (or the next life) while ethics usually try to create harmony in society in this life.

Example:

Ethics: Don't steal your neighbor's stuff, because you wouldn't like your own stuff stolen.

Religion: Don't steal your neighbor's stuff, because you wouldn't like your own stuff stolen and you will <burn in hell>|<feel the wrath of a god>|<be reborn a lesser being>|<insert other religious dogma>

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Re: Religion v Ethics

Post #8

Post by JP Cusick »

Wootah wrote: It is said that religion is the opiate of the masses.

How does ethics avoid a similar attack?
When I read the book by Marx then he was praising religion, and at the time of that book then opium was viewed as a wonderful pain reliever and a soother of the soul.

Marx was giving a compliment to religion as an opiate to the people.

"Marx believed that religion had certain practical functions in society that were similar to the function of opium in a sick or injured person: it reduced people's immediate suffering and provided them with pleasant illusions, but it also reduced their energy and their willingness to confront the oppressive, heartless, and soulless reality that capitalism had forced them into."

The problem was Capitalism, and that Capitalism is still now the expanded problem for today, and Marx was correct that Capitalism was an evil system of greed and exploitation which feeds on the bulk of humanity.

Now today if ethics seeks to rise above the opiate of religion then the ethics needs to make a forceful stand against our evil Capitalist system and put a stop to it.

I myself would join with Atheist and with anyone who pushed for such a high ethical standard.
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Re: Religion v Ethics

Post #9

Post by McCulloch »

[Replying to post 1 by Wootah]


Opiates are pain reducers and sleep inducers. Religion is the lazy person's way to do ethics. Need to know whether X is ethical, look it up, see if the revelation from God has something to say. You don't have to do the real hard word involved with real ethics.
Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good.
First Epistle to the Church of the Thessalonians
The truth will make you free.
Gospel of John

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Re: Religion v Ethics

Post #10

Post by McCulloch »

JP Cusick wrote:When I read the book by Marx then he was praising religion, and at the time of that book then opium was viewed as a wonderful pain reliever and a soother of the soul.

Marx was giving a compliment to religion as an opiate to the people.
JP Cusick read a book by Marx praising religion in the same sense that Trump received a call from the leader of the Boy Scouts praising his speech at the Jamboree.
The real Karl Marx wrote:Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.
Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good.
First Epistle to the Church of the Thessalonians
The truth will make you free.
Gospel of John

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