- Joined
- Sep 5, 2005
- Messages
- 26,657
- Reaction score
- 15,930
- Gender
- Undisclosed
- Political Leaning
- Undisclosed
That's fine, Tashah. As long as you don't try to shut me up, it's all good. I've stated that I would never do anything to hinder the rights of religious people. And as a matter of fact, I have enourmous respect for many of the world's religions. Yours, most particularly, has always fascinated me. It doesn't change what I've said at all, just shedding a little more light on my perspective. The fact that I think something is wrong and misguided doesn't prevent me from respecting it.
I think all you really need to do is fine tune WHICH aspect of religion you reject so as to not toss the baby with the bathwater.
Rather than reject all across the board, my approach is to look for commonalities, especially in regards to morality. I'm neither a moral absolutist (especially in regards to arbitrary morality) nor a moral relativist (believing that morality is so subjective it is little more than normative cultural behavior). Instead, I believe there are aspects of morality that are universal, and can be derived from a logical framework based upon that which is intrinsic to all of us. What I imagine is that if one could make some sort of ven diagram out of all the world's religions, you would be able to determine that which is truly moral by looking at the intersections. The more all the religions intersect, the more basic the morality that is being revealed.
Arbitrary beliefs can certainly lead to hateful actions, and there is much mumbo jumbo in religion that stresses arbitrary belief, especially in that aspect of religion that works on the level of socialization. Belief without reason is the scourge of mankind as far as I'm concerned, but I do think it is possible to approach religion in a reasonable manner. It just depends upon what you are looking for and how you limit your search.