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Originally Posted by willravel
As an alpha male (yes, I recognize that I am, in most situations, an or the alpha male. It's not ego, it's simply reality), I feel an inate responsibility to help others and make sure that my community and even society as a whole runs more smoothly. It's part of why I, ironically, habe a bit of a christ complex. The idea is that when a member of the pack needs help, it is ultimately the responsibility of the pack to help them. I've studied wolves, and a prime example is when a member of a pack is injured. Instead of leaving the wolf to die, which only happens when it's clear that the animal is mortally wounded and even that is rare, they assist the wolf, licking clean wounds and slowing the pace of the entire pack so that the single wounded member can keep up. The old adage of a team being only as strong as it's weakest link is proven. The pack functions better as a whole, and in maintaining that cohesive social structure and the efficiency of the pack, one improves the survivability of the pack.
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We're not wolves. Our social interactions are booty-loads more complex than the social interactions of wolves. How do you know in a particular instance that helping an individual helps the pack?
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Ethics predate faith. That in and of itself is proof, but I'll do you one better. I'm an atheist and I'm ethical. I see it as perfectly logical to practice the golden rule and to protect the pack.
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Unfounded assertions are not truth. On what basis can you claim that ethics, in any meaningful sense, predate faith? Nature isn't ethical.
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Theism is intellectual laziness. The unwillingness to recognize that faith is an intelectual cop out is the fundamnetal flaw of theism. 2000 years ago a carpenter's son walked on water and turned water into wine instantly simply doesn't work, whether it supports a system of values or not. The real problem is that religion has spread so far. If Christianity were a small cult in the US, or if Islam were a small cult in the Middle East, no one would care because it wouldn't really hurt anyone. Also, people can be intellectually lazy in one way and not in another. Descartes, Leibniz, and Newton were all religious, and all brilliant. The thing is, they were brilliant not because of but in spite of religion.
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How is faith an intellectual cop out? You underestimate the amount of thought that can go into religious belief.
As far as descartes, leibniz and newton go, i think that if you asked them, they might have said that they were brilliant because of god, not despite their god. Regardless, their ability to reason was, i would assume, much greater than that of you or i. Whether you think them lazy or not, they're still absolute proof that theism doesn't necessarily hinder progress. How do you think dawkins feels that the work of any one of these three theists is more relevant now than he might ever be?
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As I recall, Descartes was working at the same time as another great figure in science: Galileo. Galileo was, of course, condemned by the Catholic Church. Did you know that because of that condemnation, Descartes abandoned his plans to release "Treatise on the World", a book about matter and mathematics because he was afraid that the church would burn all his books as they did Galileo. The church prevented one of the earliest works of what would eventually become atomism, which was revolutionary. Here you have provided me with proof that the church stands in the way of progress.
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Is it intellectually lazy to repeatedly confuse the sins of a church with the character of all theists?