Comment by brobdingnagians

Just in the last few weeks, three states have passed new laws targeting the healthcare of transgender people and twenty five other state legislatures are considering them. It’s unfortunately not going away. [1] It’s not one of the issues you mentioned, but another similar crusade is abortion rights. It’s looking like the Supreme Court will have hearings potentially leading to the end of Roe v Wade, and a number of states have enacted laws limiting abortions, though some of them were struck down by previous Supreme Court rulings.

[1]: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/transgender-rights-in-the-...

I mean no offense by this, but this opinion seems to be colored by your direct experience. There's is still A LOT of intolerance to these things to be found in the world. You're just not being exposed to it, most likely.

Since the topic of this thread is about church membership, I would assume religion in this context refers to organized religion, rather than such an abstract definition, in which case someone can believe in the supernatural without being religious.

But in either case, I'm a little confused. Wouldn't this line of reasoning apply to laws as well? They aren't physical or (necessarily) scientific. And are you saying that any study of metaphysics is necessarily religious in nature? Perhaps we are using different definitions of religion.

If you are making an argument that notions of morality do not (or did not) arise from science, or that morality arose from religion, I think that would have weight to it. But that also doesn't imply that morality cannot continue to exist without religion. For example, it's plausible to me that a sense of shared community is something that can "maintain morality" in a society. We may have lost a sense of community in part due to the decline of churches, but I don't see why it would require them to exist.

Not sure whether you intended this or not, but your statement could be extended to imply that secular societies become destructive ones? Which would be quite a stretch - there are many secular stable countries and many unstable, highly religious ones as well.

... and what exactly are these two destructive regimes?

Religion isn't a genetically inherited.

The evidence doesn't support your claim. The least religious countries are among the most stable and most peaceful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Importance_of_religion_by_coun...

Their crime and imprisonment rates are far below those of the US. Even on an individual level, the presence of non-religious individuals is assocated with a series of positive societal effects: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227616923_Atheism_S...

Religion isn't necessary for public morality, and as America has shown, is often actively harmful. America is full of people who assume that they are good people BECAUSE they go to church rather than because of their acts. By and large, these are generally not good people. Instead, they're among the most judgmental and least helpful members of society.

To paraphrase Gandhi, "I like your Christ, not your Christians". The religious in modern society can't even be bothered to read the Cliff Notes of their own book, otherwise they'd be focused on helping the poor and remembering that rich people have trouble getting to heaven rather than going around promoting guns, no taxes, and slashing social safety nets.

> The US is becoming openly hostile to religion

I don't think the US is becoming openly hostile to religion.

It is becoming hostile to religion in the public sphere, a good thing if there ever was one.

Just like your sexual practices, keep your religion at home and please stop bothering other people with it.

How about church membership

Your line of reasoning is similar to "where does food come from? The grocery store, obviously!"

The underlying question is not how YOU got your moral compass but where do the people who taught you yours - and eventually society as a whole - get theirs.

If it's a set of principles that civil society generally agrees upon, then the rest are implementation details that will vary from situation to situation.

If it's a set of whims of the people in power and will vary regularly and constantly, then "damnation" comes from breaking today's rules.. maybe without even knowing what they are.

I think having a moral compass is important, because a lot of people will optimize for themselves in the short term, and screw up society in the long term. But I don't think this is obvious at all to people unless they're taught, or if they are really good at learning from their own mistakes.

I think others have pointed this out to you, but there is a high dependence on people learning this through good parenting, good teachers, and being around the right people, all while having security for things like food, shelter, etc.

Some of those things get wrapped up in the over-arching term called "privilege" but I think there is something to be said for the fact that you can't assume most people are securing these things. But you can assume that in the absence of this kind of security, many people (maybe even most) will lose their moral compass.

Your comment squares with that guy on the $5 bill and the penny.

“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.”

― Abraham Lincoln

This seems to be a very privileged position to have. That if you were taught strong ethics by parents and the right social network, then everyone can obviously/simply have the same?

1. This view also takes the idea that morality can be reached by reason on faith I am not saying I fully disagree, but even the concept of morality at its core is not rational.

2. It is possible to be religious and do good for the sake of good. Most religious people I know do. I would hope that even if I knew I was going to hell, I would still live the rest of my life on accordance with God's will as it is the right thing to do.

I don't feel very defensive about it, but it is definitely insulting to me because to be an insult is about their intent. As far as my dad knew, I was Catholic until 3 months ago (when in reality I've been off that for 20 years) and suddenly I don't have a moral compass. He'll attribute what I have to my upbringing despite him being in absentia for nearly all of it. Cue eye rolling.

“Objective” morality is a misnomer for religious morality, it's just subjective morality ascribed to some mythical authority figure (and, even if that figure actually exists, for most religions, given the diversity of different moral systems ascribed to the divine judge, those are clearly misascriptions, largely reflecting the personal subjective morality of the people doing the ascribing.)

I'm personally religious, but the myth of objectivity is a very, very dangerous thing; in masks the ways that man creates God in his own image.

As opposed to the actual battles engaged in by the various religious groups over morality.

To which I say: have at it. I'll get some popcorn. Too bad about all the bystanders. But I'm sure they'll be happy knowing that they died in the service of objective morality.

>Hitchens' knowledge of religion and philosophy borders on 0%

A rather bold claim, backed by little evidence and easily debunked by a metric ton of counter-evidence.

As example of counter-evidence, I offer:

    - The man spent a large fraction of his life studying religions of all ilks

    - He wrote a number of carefully researched books on the topic of religion.

    - From his quoting the bible, the coran, jewish sacred texts on the fly in the middle of debates with random religious folks (and usually tearing them a new one in the process), I feel confident he had at least skimmed most of those.

    - No one can accuse Hitchens of being dumb, I very much doubt he'd get into high visibility, in-depth public debate about a topic without having researched it thoroughly.

Given the above, I would say the claim that "his knowledge of religion borders on 0%" is - to remain unsarcastic, however hard that is - highly unlikely to be correct.