I would argue that religions which have moral imperitives are evil. They inherently deny the indifvidual the authority to make their own morality judgements and impose morality judgements that the individual is not permitted to question(Lacking a committment to god's authority is usually an official failure condition) and doesn't understand(They may have an understanding of it of their own, and agree with it independantly, but they are doing it for religious reasons and are not permitted to question those reasons sufficiently to understand them.). Externally-imposed morality imposes responsibility which is fundamentally incompatible with personal responsibility which is required to maintain personal morality.
So, doing evil despite religion saying I shouldn't means I am not responsible, but the religion is? Is that what you're saying, because I totally don't understand why external responsibility is incompatibile with personal responsibility. A soldier is ordered to mortar a village, he does it - of course his higher-ups are responsible to give that order, but so is he, as he could refuse.
A morality that isn't challenged isn't justified...
Isin't... application of the morality it's challenge? What do you even mean by this catchphrase thrown in?
It isn't even enough to personally verify religous morality. One needs(In order to justify it) to generate their own morality independantly. It is the old arguing trick of going on the offensive. You can say "The president committed election fraud.". One reply is "There is no way that it is possible. They would have revised the security after those problems with the virus busters going wrong!". Another reply is "You keep crying about healthcare, but when you had your chance, nobody wanted it!". The latter is going to be far more effective because people will be too busy yelling about how wrong you are to remember their original issue. If ou start by verifying that you agree with the morality that you have been given, then you have already lost the chance to find out if there is a better one...
What?
explain (to less... intelligent people who don't get the concept of common good, and think that stealing is good, because it's good for that person)
I would say that it is not so much that less intelligent people don't understand that good for them is the limit of morality. I beileve that far more common is people compatmentalising morality "It is good that I make money. people's lives may or may not get ruined as a result, but that is an unrelated issue.". Another is mindlessness(Which is the default function of the human mind) "Wha? Hurting people? Naaa, we were just having some fun! I mean, sure, there was screaming and crying and bleeding and dying and stuff, but that is just how these things go, y'Know?". Then there is familiarity "Huh? Arbitrarily dictating life or death of entire populations without justification? Brutal regime that inhibits freedom too much for a mentally stable society? Stop being silly! That's just Hitler! Everyone know he is a good guy. Finally someone willing to stand up and stop those scheming jews from stealing our nation out from under us! It is about time we had someone honest and decent to end this ridiculous apathy and fix things for the better..."... It is not so much that people are not intelligent, but that they do not apply their intelligence to their objectives or justifications.
Eh, I just simplify it for the sake of not having to write few page essays on "why people do evil stuff".
Morality creates religion, as a way to explain and enforce it and probably some other stuff.
Shit's straight up definitionally impossible without it being done to follow God's will. Morality in that case, basically, is not what you do, but who you do it for.
Humanity? As a species, and a "greater" concept?
I have difficulty parsing this, but I believe that you are saying that you can do things for humanity in place of doing things for god. Which sort of seems to be missing the point of the original statement of religion defining good as being god, and thus what humanity believes is irrelevant. I would argue that humanity as a species is a terrible god. They are clearly insane. They think that they are bette than animals because thye can build cities and guns and art... Animals can build settlements and weapons and art. Humans are largely incapable of building complex weapons, sophiticated art, and large settlements. These things are built by humans, but only by relying upon unfathomable generations of human civilisation. Humans have a high talent for language and manipulation of sturdy objects. Baiscally, humans are gifted at making records. I very much doubt that you would see a single generation of humans come up with something as sophisticated as a rock combined with a stick outside of an extreme instance of inspiration. Humans are naturally inclined to think the most of themselves for no reason. It is basically the same as religion, it ends up being all about obediance and lacks justification.
It's evolution, babe. We are we. It's not that we are inherently better, it's that humanity, as a species, got through a long way to get where it is now. If it wasn't "us", it would be some other animal finally figuring a way to develop civilization. And we didin't have the talent for language and manipulation of sturdy objects always, it's what we evolved. That's what it's actually about. It's not the humans who are gods. It's, ultimately life. Existence. Pure, unadulterated chaos. The only, underlying principle of morality is to ensure existence. Then you add a bunch of stuff ontop it to ensure that most of it exists in relative fairness.
without God there'd be no reason to want anything else and morality would pointless, as everything would be become nothing upon death.
Also your kids.
You kids become pointless unless they also have kids, and those are only as valid as their kids, which are only valid because they have kids, which they might not, and the concept of all possibilities occuring if provided with sufficient time indicates that eventually there will be no kids. Also entropy/gravity-death of the universe, or armageddon... But really, justifying kids with more kids is dependant upon valuing kids, and provides no inherent value for kids itself. You may as well just say that kids are self-evidently reason-for-being and thus everyone is self-evidently meaningful because everyone was kids at some point... Unfortunately some people don't feel that humans, even children, are self-evidently meaningful. Otherwise, would people be asking why their own existence is meaningful?
To ensure existence, see above. Even if you consider youself non-meaningful and commit suicide, you ain't even beating evolution, you're just playing it's game. You were too weak to survive, so you killed yourself. You won't take up resources, you won't breed, so others will be stronger. Evolution.
For myself, I feel that the best available meaning of life is to seek out a good meaning of life. Which has various quite promising implications. I feel that the inherent meaning of life is to "be yourself" in an evolutionary sense. Which is abysmally bad for a whole host of reasons, not least of which is that there is nobody at the helm and that the whole system is composed of lotteries, but the imminent doom is perhaps the most off-putting. Perhaps the most plausible of the vaguely defensible options is to express the self that you can be proud of. This largely involves throwing away human impulse and adopting understanding and prediction, as otherwise you won't have a clear understanding of what you can be proud of and won't be in a position to control what you express.
Existence. Yours, others, future existence. Of course, someone can adopt a defeatist posture due to mentioned end of world - but... the only way to maybe figure a way out is to ensure existence, and if that doesn't work, then hey, you don't listen to songs because they will end one day, and as long as the song goes on, might at least listen to it and contribute.
As for what Christians religions belive was pre-Jesus - God's morality and laws which are also pretty much the same (although with more gay hate) since they're the same thing (for most part), and that all religions and people in general get the moral code from God because he kinda imprinted it in humans when he created them (although the recognition came only after the fruit of Eden thing) so the "voice of God" echoes through everyone and all religions because we deep down know what is true?
As for what was before Jews, then yeah, there was nothing, since, you know, world is apparently 6000 years old (or something around that) according to Bible, so there was always religious code of laws (in a way, although commandments came later, I suppose?).
If a god's morality is inherent, then everyone should know to obey that god without needing to be converted. Devosion to that specific religion should be as common as not murdering. The existence of wide-spread adoption of incompatible religions is good evidence that such is not the case, or that the god in question doesn't actually regard worship as being as important as murder.
Religion. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As for the 6000 years old thing? There is loads of evidence that such is not true. Enough that I would say that it goes beyond "the gods just like the idea of things being in progress when they started" and well into "the gods are deliberately lying to us". There are just too many details to it, they could have just had everything break down over that span of time and we would have just accepted it, but no, they needed to splat down whole evolutionary trees and weird extinction events... Now, if the gods in question say that lying is okay, then fine, religion of unreliable texts and shameless P.R. campaigns is willing to live up to its own standards. And why not? Everyone loves trickster gods! But a lot of these religions make quite a big deal about their texts not being written as a shameless divine P.R. piece and suggest that lying is bad...
Religion. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It is though. Archeological evidence and, you know, common sense indicate that the pack instincts and whatnot came a lot before first ritual burials and other stuff that could be considered religion.
Unless bacteria also belive in bacteria Jesus, or something.
I would say that bacteria jesus is unlikely. But bacteria commonality is quite likely. there really isn't that much special about humans. I suspect that the human internal monologue is the highlight, and I doubt that it is completely unique. On the other hand, internal monologue is not necessary. I am pretty sure that I didn't have an internal monologue until after I learned to read. I remember being asked to "read silently" and just had a complete "huh!?!?" moment. And we certainly formulate ideas without spelling them out, so that really isn't a thing. I could easily see bacteria having decision-making functions that focused on the self and decision-making functions that focused upon the group and that the latter could be equated to religion. I can see how people could question if such a thing is a mind, but to me it is just a whole great tower of different methods of determining outcomes, with rocks almost certrainly near the bottom with their "roll down until stable" operation and humans near the top with their "if problems arising from acquiring food is less than value of food + hunger+expecation of food in the future then acquire food" operation.
I was more reffering to the idea that it's not God who created people, but rather people who created God, to explain their internal monologues or something.
Also, I only get internal monologue if I think about internal monologue. Or imagine talking between two different people, although sometimes I do get voices in my head that say what a certain person would probably think. Or something. Dunno. Nobody actually knows if everyone perceives reality the same way. The old, "what colour is red" question.
Really, free will is a false concept. It is not as though it does or doesn't exist, but there is no point to it either way. There is no potential for variation. All decisions are a product of mind and circumstance. mind and circumstance are entirely derived from mind and circumstance all the way back to the start of mind, and the forces that led up to that are a product of immutable processes from origin or infinity. The outcome of random chance is inevitable, regardless of whether it is predictable. The ridiculous cience-fiction notion of a parallel world being created every time a person makes a decision is ludicrous. the closest that could happen is infinite worlds with slight variations that resulted is varying decisions, possibly even commencing at the point of variation. The outcome is the same, but the process is completely different. The important point of all this is that the human mind possesses zero potential for variation from its inevitable course. The rock rolls downhill with the same certainty that the hippy feels that a war for the purposes of increasing the support for the ruling political party is bad. People think themselves far too special. The only power we have is to be party to invoking a specific result, or we can be amongst the rocks who abandon that and go with their impulses. I like to think that people would be party to making a better world if they saw it as a possibility.
To be honest, the "alternate universes" isin't about your will, but
rather quantum mechanics and shit. It's not that you have free will, it's that that not all seems to be as simple as bunch of rocks.
It is though. Archeological evidence and, you know, common sense indicate that the pack instincts and whatnot came a lot before first ritual burials and other stuff that could be considered religion.
Unless bacteria also belive in bacteria Jesus, or something.
Man, when you bring common sense into parsing archeological evidence you dun screwed up. Common sense ain't -- stuff's a set of cultural norms highly informed by bias, common to that particular society only sorta' and actually common even among specific ones only occasionally. For all it works out often enough what likes to happen when you start applying assumptions ultimately based on your current environment and whatnot to incomplete reconstructions of previous environments is those assumptions end up wrong. If you're going to make analysis that isn't just a nice go at a just-so story (i.e. it might as well be fiction, to the extent it isn't outright) you kneecap "common sense" and bury it in the nearest mushroom patch.
Eh. I mean more in sense of "commonly accepted science", which, yes, isin't perfect, but until something disproves it, it's accepted as being right or at least bordering truth.
Indicate isn't prove, basically. What a thing looks like doesn't necessitate it is what that thing is. We make good attempts at a guess, and do our best to make things cohesive based on what information we have, and it's not like that isn't important to one extent or another... but we did that for dinosaurs, too, and they seem to be picking up the oddest profusion of feathers nowadays :V
IIRC, the idea that dinosaurs had feathers and were in between lizards and birds on evolutionary tree was actually earlier, but didin't gain a lot of attention due to being created just after Darwin published his book on evolution and whole world was butthurt about that God created everything, it didin't evolve, and then just kind of forgotten.
We have a lot of things, but the ability to say with justified confidence that religion and ritual were caused by morality or that morality was caused by religion and ritual innit one of 'em. That's the kind of thing you can build evidence for and make a good argument, but at the end of the day we have no means of observing when it happened and end up with the grounds to say which is right, or if either are.
Which, hell. Is fine. For all it's fun to talk about the actual answer doesn't really make a difference.
We could though. Experiment on completly isolated beings, just like the theories we are being experimented on by aliens, and that they are the historical gods. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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