FBM wrote:Religion, like warfare, individual identity, oppression, generosity, hate, kindness, love, compassion, humo(aeiou)r, murder and such 'things' are patterns perceived in pheonomena. Abstractions fabricated from moment-to-moment experience. They have no independent existence apart from their constituent elements. They derive their qualities from them. This can be demonstrated efficiently by removing the constituents and observing that the abstraction can no longer exist. For example, remove humans and religion no longer exists. Etc.
The component elements of a religion are the phenomena that we label 'religious'. The label is used, not quite arbitrarily, but variously depending upon one's own indoctrination and subsequent prejudices. One doesn't identify his/her own beliefs as superstitious, but only conflicting beliefs that others have. And practically everyone believes in something that can't be demonstrated in a laboratory.
No, religion isn't to blame, because religion isn't a concrete entity. Neither are people nor an individual person to blame, because all of those are abstractions that draw their qualities from their constituent elements.
Atheism, to me, implies a fundamentally amoral universe. Not immoral, but amoral. No individual is ultimately accountable for his/her actions, because no act arises without pre-existing conditions and influences. But we must behave as if it were so, otherwise we would have no basis upon which to structure and organize societies.
Good/bad, right/wrong are issues of pragmatics and conventions, not absolutes. If you want to blame religion, which is a blanket term from the beginning, you may as well waste your breath blaming the god(s) that don't exist in the first place.
What's the solution? Minimize behavior that is harmful to quality of life (not always necessarily quantity), regardless of the label applied to it. Always look for underlying causes and conditions. Religion arises out of fear. Fear arises out of the false belief in one's eternal soul. Religion is just one of very many behaviors that reduce quality of life. Just about any thread in this forum contains references to behavior that is counter-productive to quality of life, whether any of our members engage in that behavior or not.
I'm not particularly a fan of Kant nor his Categorical Imperative, but it's in the ballpark, at least.
Greatly expressed, FBM, but I disagree. According to you, ideas cannot be blamed, because they have no independent existence from humans. That doesn't make the ideas less subject to blame. It simply makes those who use them as an excuse, responsible. But to exonerate the ideas from the cause of the problem, and simply holding the user or the actor as the only guilty part, is a minimal solution.
One example: an act of racism will have the person who committed it responsible of the wrongness of the act. But if you don't address the idea of racism in a more global frame, there can not be sensible hopes of eliminating those acts. Same thesis with gender injustice and homophobia. And with religion.
The fact that something has no real physical existence, doesn't mean that it has no repercussion in the real world. And if those repercussions cause suffering, they must be targeted and prevent that they influence others.
I also disagree about the amorality of atheism. My sense of justice, my pity and my empathy towards suffering didn't disappear at becoming an atheist. Call those feelings morality or any other way, and may they come from evolution or from social indoctrination, they are there, and that makes me a moral being.
Some memes are real viruses as religion is. And my atheist stance is, if I can't eradicate them, I'll try to prevent their propagation and contagion... But that is a personal decision...