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Originally Posted by Arakkis  Dude, seriously you are making this too easy. Large corporations (i.e. Phizer, Merck) produce medicines not out of a sense of moral responsibility, but for a profit. If people will die without the medicine, why not give it away and be a not for profit group? Why, because people will pay out their nose to stay alive, and do! Sure the big drug companies give some medicine away to Africa and other third world countries, but they are not just doing it to be nice guys, they get a huge tax write-off for that shit.
I think a lot of you proud atheists forget where you vehemently argue we came from. Man started out as an ape. When an ape wants something they will not hesitate to kill whatever is in their way to get it. Do you really think a strong internal moral code is what kept ancient man from tearing each other apart long enough to learn how to farm and develop architecture? No, it was fear. Fear of the unknown fed by shamans/medicine men to get early man to stop killing each other and evolve. Don't believe me? Read this article on the book The God Gene from Time magazine. It is a strong secular argument for the role of religion and spirituality in the ascendancy of man. I linked the second page since it has the TLDR part. Having a genetic capacity to have strong religious experiences allowed religion to shape society. This is why all of the earliest human civilizations all over the world were built around temples. So when you folks continually say religion has no place in society you forget that society is here BECAUSE of religion. |
Really interesting stuff and I've had a lot of the same thoughts about religions place over our time in history (no sarcasm). I think it definitely has been used as a tool to help form our current society. To say it hasn't had a massive effect on it would be ridiculous, and I would certainly grant that there have been some positive effects (though the amount of positive and negative effects of religion overall are largely up for debate I think).
But that is all irrelevant to the current debate. Even if we evolved to believe in god, it would have no relevance to the truth of his existence. It can be entirely possible for a delusion to be beneficial.
I mean I never got into philosophy but isn't that what Nietzsche meant when he said god is dead? We are to the point where we should be done with this crap. Yea (maybe) it was a great and useful tool but it is unnecessary because we are smart enough as a society now that we understand the advantages of those morals.
