"Vic Smith" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:01:20 +0000, Larry wrote:

Herodotus wrote in
m:

there is some wonderful wisdom at times in that book as there
is in the Koran

I bought an Enlish translation of the Koran in a bookshop in the Souk in
Manama, Bahrain. It was translated by a moslem in India in the 1920's and
has been reprinted ever since. The Indian publisher uses terribly
primitive publishing equipment and it shows. The cover is made by hand!

I learned not to read it where any Bahrainis could see me in short order
to
keep the lectures to a minimum. Showing an interest, they can go on for
hours...(c; I find it terribly disturbing with so many gory instructions
about cutting off various body parts, outright genocide or at least
murders, and I can see why there is so much blood associated with Islam
like the stonings of half buried people in Iran (youtube has the videos).

No thanks. Mankind needs to shed itself of these killing fields caused by
religions. I find it quite comforting to know that when I die, I simply
don't exist any more and can be soon forgotten, like the billions before
me, recycled into more life by natural selection. I don't have to
"prepare" for death at all. I'm leaving that to someone else's
problems...
(c;

The problem in imagining a religionless history is considering how
much worse such a history would be.
Leaving aside religions' excesses - and there is every reason to
suppose those excesses would be greater without the constraints of
religion-imposed "morality"- what motivations toward "good" can you
point to that are not sourced in the tenets of a religion?
You can't.
There is no profit in bemoaning history. We are its final product.
History is best used to refine our movement forward.

--Vic


I disagree. You can only guess at what a religionless history would have
been like.

Morality via religion breeds behavior that is covered up by the officials
and participants of the religion. Look at Major and minor religions - bad
medicine (literally), priests abusing kids, "holy wars" throughout history.
Look at communism - arguably a state-sponsored religion, no good can be
found beyond the theory, which doesn't work in practice. Look at
capitalism - reasonably ok, as long as it is constrained by the "public
good" interest (however you define it), not socialism (which is really a
nanny state), but enlightened self-interest, where gov't nudges itself and
its citizens toward the public good based on facts not faith.

I would point to science, lead by intelligent, caring people who are
generally non-sectarian or can at least separate themselves from their faith
beliefs. Some have claimed that science (or math) is a religion, which I'll
allow, but it's based on hypothesis
(http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=hypothesis) vs. conjecture
(http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=conjecture) or faith
(http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/we...=&o3=&h= 0000)
(aka Intelligent Design).


--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com