Principle of Free Thinking

Principle of Free Thinking
We think for ourselves as individuals. There is no area of thought that we are unwilling to explore, challenge, question or doubt. We feel free to inquire and then to agree or disagree with any given claim. We are unwilling to follow a doctrine or adopt a set of beliefs or values that does not convince us personally. We take responsibility for our decisions and beliefs. Through unrestricted spirit of free inquiry, new knowledge and new ways of looking at ourselves and the world can be acquired. Without it, we are left in ignorance and are unable to improve our condition.

Man as an Animal
Humanity as a society, cling to the idea that each of us is unique and beautiful in our own way. We believe that each of us has infinite value and that every human life is sacred. From the time we are born, to the time we die, we are force fed this twisted philosophy. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are not unique and beautiful creatures of god. We are not the lords of all creation. Human life is not sacred, there is no infinite value to life, there is only life. All we are is an evolved member of the primate family. We are the same decaying organic matter as everything else in the world. We are merely just another species of mammals that coexist, in a symbiotic relationship, with the Earth. Man is nothing more than an animal.

The Meaning of Life
Man has long sought after the answer to a question which has somehow alluded him for centuries. This question is the meaning of life. Man has sought this answer, through the ages in the form of god and or gods, but has never received an answer from these mysterious deities. Too often christian dogma leads man to believe that each of us has a distinct meaning or purpose that will be laid out to us in all due time by god. This is only a brazen fabrication to keep from answering a question that they feel they cannot answer. In truth, there is no particular fixed meaning to life, there is only life itself. It is up to each of us to determine the coarse of our own lives. Furthermore, it is each persons responsibility to attach their own unique meaning to life. It should be finally said that the sole reason we are here, given life, is because our parents reproduced, whether by accident or by design.

What is the Meaning of Life
The meaning of life is to survive, reproduce, and die. It cannot be stressed enough that this is the absolute most basic purpose for humans. This is a hard to debate point, because humans are animals. The most basic drives for all animals are survival and reproduction. It is only logical that the most basic purpose for humans is also to survive, reproduce, and die.
By far, this is not our only purpose or goal. As modern humans in this culture and in most technologically advanced societies, there is a lot that goes into the raising, and thereby ensuring the survival, of offspring. For the most part, to provide a good life for your children, a job is required. To get a job you enjoy, an education is required. This means that to ensure a good life for you and your future family, you have to begin preparing, even if that is not your expressed goal at the time, from the time you are old enough to drop out of high school. To choose to stay in school and pursue an education is choosing to prepare for, sometime many, many years from now, a future family and children.
This is the ultimate purpose to life, to survive, reproduce, and ensure the survival of your offspring.

Reality
What is real? How do you define real? If what you define as real is what you can see, hear, taste, touch and smell, then reality is defined by electrical impulses interpreted by your brain. If this is true then anything you can imagine is also real. Reality is then defined as the minds perception of sensory input and imagination. What we perceive exists. What we do not perceive, does not exist to us, it is not real. An individual thing only comes into existence in one of two ways. The first way is what we experience, through our senses, ourselves. The other way is what concepts or things that are passed on to us through different media, which we then perceive. Reality is then defined in two different states, partial reality and actual reality. If you can perceive or imagine anything, in your mind, then it is real, but only partially real; it only exists for you as a mental reality. If you bring it out for other people then it becomes a reality for them as well. Through either a concentrated effort through
many people or by oneself that mental reality can become a physical reality. A physical reality is anything you can perceive through sensory experience. An example of how a partial reality can become a physical reality is space travel. Once, space travel was just science fiction and now space travel is a reality. It must be said in light of all this that anything is possible.

Responsibilities
As individual people who are aware of our own nature and our relationship to the world at large, we have an inevitable obligation or responsibility. First, we have an obligation to the world of which we are a part of to participate as efficiently as we possibly can in its endeavor for greater levels of development, higher life forms. Second, we have an obligation to our race as its vehicle of progress. Nature has refined and honed the qualities that are embodied in our race so we are better equipped to fulfill the particular role assigned to us. Even though nature has developed other competing forms of life, including other races of man, we have a special obligation to our own race: to ensure its survival, to protect its unique characteristics and to improve its quality. Third, we have an obligation to those members of our race who are the most conscious of their own obligations and the most active in meeting them. Thus, there is a brotherhood between us and those who are also working to meet the same cause.
Finally, we have a responsibility to ourselves to be the best and strongest individuals that we can be.

Argument for Personal Freedom
The principle being that all are free to do as they please, so long as they are not interfering with the business of other people.

• Each of us is intimately familiar with our own individual wants and needs, each of us is uniquely placed to pursue those wants and needs effectively.
• We know the desires and needs of other people only imperfectly, and we are not well situated to pursue them.
• It is reasonable to believe that if we set out to be "Our brothers keeper" we would often bungle the job and end up doing more harm than good.
• The policy of "looking out for others" is an offensive intrusion into other peoples privacy; it is essentially a policy of minding other peoples business.
• In a rush to save others from themselves, people forget one basic idea; maybe that person is willing to except any risks involved, even death.
• Making people the object of ones charity is degrading to them, it robes them of their individual dignity and self respect. The offer of charity is, in effect, a message that they are not competent to care for themselves.
• People have the right to do things that harm themselves.
• No one has the right to force their opinions on other people.

Argument Against Religion, #1

We humans like all other things, must rely upon ourselves, upon one another and upon nature. There is no evidence that we receive support or guidance from any immortal power whom we might imagine we commune.
As history has progressed, the role of gods has decreased as understanding has replaced supernatural explanations for natural events. If there is no god, then one would think it likely that in our stage of evolution, the hypothetical god would only be responsible for those things which we do not currently understand. In other words, the remaining god or gods in our modern society will only be necessary for the possibly supernatural parts of existence.
If there is a god, how did it come into existence? If god always existed as some people claim, then why can't the reverse be true. Why can't the universe have always existed instead of god.
There are thousands of differing religious belief structures which are more or less mutually exclusive and for the uncritical mind equally believable. Some of these belief structures do not involve deities. The major point being which one and why one, if any? Isn't it likely that all of them have it wrong.
Much of the work of religion seems to be based on guesswork or pure fantasy. The age of the Earth, the age of man, history as it happened over thousands of years seem to differ from religion to religion, these also differ radically from the findings of Biologists, Geologists and Archeologists.
Too often in the past religion has been used as on excuse for the great evils of human beings. Kings have promised the subjects that they rule by divine right or that they themselves are descended from gods, or are gods themselves. Toture, genocide, invasions, mass rape and war have all been justified under this divine authorization. This brings to light that religion is used by a selective elite as a tool for power.
Religious bibles have hundreds of inconsistencies, falsehoods and contradictions. Bibles are written in a confusing manner, which makes them hazy and hard to clearly distinguish.
There has never been any trustworthy, firsthand account of humans interacting with god or gods. All accounts so far, have been made by people who were sleepy, happened when they were asleep, or in some unclear state of mind, was experienced when the person was on drugs, in need of self convincing or an all out hoax.

Argument Against Religion, #2

• Religious Power
• Every religion has a promise of eternal paradise and or heaven.
• Every religion condems those who sin without attonment or those who do not follow their particular faith to hell.
• There are many different religions, with many different faiths.
• If every religion says that the followers of all other religions are going to hell, then one way or another, by one standard or the next, we are all going to hell.
• If we are all going to hell, then there can be no eternal paradise or heaven.
• If there can be no heaven then every religion is lying to us, or is wrong.
• If all religions lie, or are wrong about heaven then hell cannot exist either.

Morality

Morality: (from the Latin moralitaser "manner, character, proper behavior") has three principal meanings.

In its first descriptive usage, morality means a code of conduct held to be authoritative in matters of right and wrong, whether by society, philosophy, religion, or individual conscience.

In its second, normative and universal sense, morality refers to an ideal code of conduct, one which would be espoused in preference to alternatives by all rational people, under specified conditions. To deny 'morality' in this sense is a position known as moral skepticism.

In its third usage, 'morality' is synonymous with ethics, the systematic philosophical study of the moral domain.

Ethics seeks to address questions such as how a moral outcome can be achieved in a specific situation (applied ethics), how moral values should be determined (normative ethics), what morals people actually abide by (descriptive ethics), what is the fundamental nature of ethics or morality itself, including whether it has any objective justification (meta-ethics), and how moral capacity or moral agency develops and what its nature is (moral psychology). In applied ethics, for example, the prohibition against taking human life is controversial with respect to capital punishment, abortion and wars of invasion. In normative ethics, a typical question might be whether a lie told for the sake of protecting someone from harm is justified. In meta-ethics, a key issue is the meaning of the terms "right" or "wrong". Moral realism would hold that there are true moral statements which report objective moral facts, whereas moral anti-realism would hold that morality is derived from any one of the norms prevalent in society (cultural relativism); the edicts of a god (divine command theory); is merely an expression of the speakers' sentiments (emotivism); an implied imperative (prescriptivism); falsely presupposes that there are objective moral facts (error theory). Some thinkers hold that there is no correct definition of right behavior, that morality can only be judged with respect to particular situations, within the standards of particular belief systems and socio-historical contexts. This position, known as moral relativism, often cites empirical evidence from anthropology as evidence to support its claims. The opposite view, that there are universal, eternal moral truths is known as moral absolutism. Moral absolutists might concede that forces of social conformity significantly shape moral decisions, but deny that cultural norms and customs define morally right behavior.

Religion as a source of moral authority:

Religious belief systems usually include the idea of divine will and divine judgment and usually correspond to a moral code of conduct.

Anthropological perspectives:

Tribal and territorial moralities:
Celia Green has made a distinction between tribal and territorial morality. She characterizes the latter as predominantly negative and proscriptive: it defines a person’s territory, including his or her property and dependants, which is not to be damaged or interfered with. Apart from these proscriptions, territorial morality is permissive, allowing the individual whatever behaviour does not interfere with the territory of another. By contrast, tribal morality is prescriptive, imposing the norms of the collective on the individual. These norms will be arbitrary, culturally dependent and ‘flexible’, whereas territorial morality aims at rules which are universal and absolute, such as Kant’s ‘categorical imperative’. Green relates the development of territorial morality to the rise of the concept of private property, and the ascendancy of contract

In-group and out-group:
Some observers hold that individuals have distinct sets of moral rules that they apply to different groups of people. There is the "ingroup," which includes the individual and those they believe to be of the same culture or race, and there is the "outgroup," whose members are not entitled to be treated according to the same rules. Some biologists, anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists believe this ingroup/outgroup difference is an evolutionary mechanism, one which evolved due to its enhanced survival aspects. Gary R. Johnson and V.S. Falger have argued that nationalism and patriotism are forms of this ingroup/outgroup boundary.

Comparing cultures:
Fons Trompenaars, author of Did the Pedestrian Die?, tested members of different cultures with various moral dilemmas. One of these was whether the driver of a car would have his friend, a passenger riding in the car, lie in order to protect the driver from the consequences of driving too fast and hitting a pedestrian. Trompenaars found that different cultures had quite different expectations (from none to almost certain).

Evolutionary perspectives:

Further information:
#Altruism_in_ethology_and_evolutionary_biology

Evolutionary biologists start from the assumption that morality is a product of evolutionary forces.[citation needed] On this view, moral codes are ultimately founded on emotional instincts and intuitions that were selected for in the past because they aided survival and reproduction (inclusive fitness). The strength of the maternal bond is one example. Another is the Westermarck effect, seen as underpinning taboos against incest, which decreases the likelihood of inbreeding depression.

The phenomenon of 'reciprocity' in nature is seen by evolutionary biologists as one way to begin to understand human morality. Its function is typically to ensure a reliable supply of essential resources, especially for animals living in a habitat where food quantity or quality fluctuates unpredictably. For example, on any given night for vampire bats, some individuals fail to feed on prey while others consume a surplus of blood. Bats that have successfully fed then regurgitate part of their blood meal to save a conspecific from starvation. Since these animals live in close-knit groups over many years, an individual can count on other group members to return the favor on nights when it goes hungry (Wilkinson, 1984)

It has been convincingly demonstrated that chimpanzees show empathy for each other in a wide variety of contexts. They also possess the ability to engage in deception, and a level of social 'politics' prototypical of our own tendencies for gossip, and reputation management.

Christopher Boehm (1982) has hypothesized that the incremental development of moral complexity throughout hominid evolution was due to the increasing need to avoid disputes and injuries in moving to open savanna and developing stone weapons. Other theories are that increasing complexity was simply a correlate of increasing group size and brain size, and in particular the development of theory of mind abilities. Richard Dawkins in the God Delusion suggested that our morality is a result of our biological evolutionary history and that the Moral Zeitgeist helps describe how morality evolves from biological and cultural origins and evolves with time within a culture.

Neuroscientific and psychiatric perspectives:

Mirror-neurons:
Research on mirror neurons, since their discovery in 1996, suggests that they may have a strong role to play in empathy. Social neuroscientist Jean Decety thinks that the ability to recognize and vicariously experience what another creature is undergoing was a key step forward in the evolution of social behavior, and ultimately, morality. The inability to feel empathy is one of the defining characteristic of psychopathy, and this would appear to lend support to Decety's view.

Psychological perspectives:
Further information:
#Education_and_development_of_morality

Morality as maladaptive and universal:
Phil Roberts, Jr. has offered a perspective in which morality, and specifically the capacity for guilt, is viewed as a maladaptive byproduct of the evolution of rationality:

Guilt is a maladaptive manifestation of our need to justify our existence, in this case by conforming to a shared subconscious theory of rationality in which 'being rational' is simply a matter of 'being objective', as exemplified in the moral maxim, 'Love (intrinsically value) your neighbor as you love (intrinsically value) yourself'. Although none of us can actually measure up to this standard, we nonetheless come to experience feelings of worthlessness (guilt) along with a corresponding reduction in the will to survive (depression) when we deviate from the standard to an unreasonable degree. In other words, a capacity for guilt (having a conscience) is a part of the price we humans have had to pay for having become a little too objective (too rational) for our own good.

Morality in judicial systems:
In most systems, the lack of morality of the individual can also be a sufficient cause for punishment, or can be an element for the grading of the punishment.

Especially in the systems where modesty (i.e., with reference to sexual crimes) is legally protected or otherwise regulated, the definition of morality as a legal element and in order to determine the cases of infringement, is usually left to the vision and appreciation of the single judge and hardly ever precisely specified. In such cases, it is common to verify an application of the prevalent common morality of the interested community, that consequently becomes enforced by the law for further reference.

The government of South Africa is attempting to create a Moral Regeneration movement. Part of this is a proposed Bill of Morals, which will bring a biblical-based "moral code" into the realm of law. This move by a nominally secular democracy has attracted relatively little criticism.

Morality and politics:
If morality is the answer to the question 'how ought we to live' at the individual level, politics can be seen as addressing the same question at the social level. It is therefore unsurprising that evidence has been found of a relationship between attitudes in morality and politics. Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham have studied the differences between liberals and conservatives,in this regard. According to their model, political conservatives make their moral choices using five moral variables (harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup loyalty, authority/respect, purity/sanctity), whereas liberals use only two (harm/care and fairness/reciprocity). Haidt also hypothesizes that the origin of this division in the United States can be traced to geohistorical factors, with conservatism strongest in closely knit, ethnically homogenous communities, in contrast to port-cities, where the cultural mix is greater, thus requiring more liberalism.

Group morality develops from shared concepts and beliefs and is often codified to regulate behavior within a culture or community. Various defined actions come to be called moral or immoral. Individuals who choose moral action are popularly held to possess "moral fiber", whereas those who indulge in immoral behavior may be labeled as socially degenerate. The continued existence of a group may depend on widespread conformity to codes of morality; an inability to adjust moral codes in response to new challenges is sometimes credited with the demise of a community (a positive example would be the function of Cistercian reform in reviving monasticism; a negative example would be the role of the Dowager Empress in the subjugation of China to European interests). Within nationalist movements, there has been some tendency to feel that a nation will not survive or prosper without acknowledging one common morality, regardless of in what it consists. Political Morality is also relevant to the behaviour internationally of national governments, and to the support they receive from their host population. Noam Chomsky states that

... if we adopt the principle of universality: if an action is right (or wrong) for others, it is right (or wrong) for us. Those who do not rise to the minimal moral level of applying to themselves the standards they apply to others -- more stringent ones, in fact -- plainly cannot be taken seriously when they speak of appropriateness of response; or of right and wrong, good and evil.
In fact, one of the, maybe the most, elementary of moral principles is that of universality, that is, If something's right for me, it's right for you; if it's wrong for you, it's wrong for me. Any moral code that is even worth looking at has that at its core somehow. But that principle is overwhelmingly disregarded all the time. If you want to run through examples we can easily do it. Take, say, George W. Bush, since he happens to be president. If you apply the standards that we applied to Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, he'd be hanged. Is it an even conceivable possibility? It's not even discussable. Because we don't apply to ourselves the principles we apply to others. There's a lot of talk about 'terror' and how awful it is. Whose terror? Our terror against them? I mean, is that considered reprehensible? No, it's considered highly moral; it's considered self-defense. Now, their terror against us, that's awful, and terrible. But, to try to rise to the level of becoming a minimal moral agent, and just entering into the domain of moral discourse is very difficult. Because that means accepting the principle of universality. And you can experiment for yourself and see how often that's accepted, either in personal or political life. Very rarely.

Moral codes:
Codified morality is generally distinguished from custom, another way for a community to define appropriate activity, by the former's derivation from natural or universal principles. In certain religious communities, the Divine is said to provide these principles through revelation, sometimes in great detail. Such codes may be called laws, as in the Law of Moses, or community morality may be defined through commentary on the texts of revelation, as in Islamic law. Such codes are distinguished from legal or judicial right, including civil rights, which are based on the accumulated traditions, decrees and legislation of a political authority, though these latter often invoke the authority of the moral law.

Morality can also be seen as the collection of beliefs as to what constitutes a good life. Since throughout most of human history, religions have provided both visions and regulations for an ideal life, morality is often confused with religious precepts. In secular communities, lifestyle choices, which represent an individual's conception of the good life, are often discussed in terms of "morality". Individuals sometimes feel that making an appropriate lifestyle choice invokes a true morality, and that accepted codes of conduct within their chosen community are fundamentally moral, even when such codes deviate from more general social principles.

Moral codes are often complex definitions of right and wrong that are based upon well-defined value systems. Although some people might think that a moral code is simple, rarely is there anything simple about one's values, ethics, etc. or, for that matter, the judgment of those of others. The difficulty lies in the fact that morals are often part of a religion and more often than not about culture codes. Sometimes, moral codes give way to legal codes, which couple penalties or corrective actions with particular practices. Note that while many legal codes are merely built on a foundation of religious and/or cultural moral codes, ofttimes they are one and the same.

Examples of moral codes include the Golden Rule; the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism; the ancient Egyptian code of Ma'at ;the ten commandments of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; the yamas and niyama of the Hindu scriptures; the ten Indian commandments; and the principle of the Dessek.

Another related concept is the moral core which is assumed to be innate in each individual, to those who accept that differences between individuals are more important than posited Creators or their rules. This, in some religious systems (e.g. Taoism and Gnosticism), is assumed to be the basis of all aesthetics and thus moral choice. Moral codes as such are therefore seen as coercive — part of human politics.

Moral psychology:

Religiosity and morality:
In the scientific literature, the degree of religiosity is generally found to be associated with higher ethical attitudes. Although a recent study by Gregory S. Paul published in the Journal of Religion and Society argues for a positive correlation between the degree of public religiosity in a society and certain measures of dysfunction, an analysis published later in the same journal contends that a number of methodological problems undermine any findings or conclusions to be taken from the research. In a response to the study by Paul, Gary F. Jensen builds on and refines Paul's study. His conclusion, after carrying out elaborate multivariate statistical studies, is that there is a correlation (and perhaps a causal relationship) of higher homicide rates, not with Christianity, but with dualism in Christianity, that is to say with the proportion of the population who believe the devil and hell exist. Excerpt: "A multiple regression analysis reveals a complex relationship with some dimensions of religiosity encouraging homicide and other dimensions discouraging it." Meanwhile, other studies seem to show positive links in the relationship between religiosity and moral behavior — for example, surveys suggesting a positive connection between faith and altruism. Modern research in criminology also acknowledges an inverse relationship between religion and crime, with many studies establishing this beneficial connection (though some claim it is a modest one). Indeed, a meta-analysis of 60 studies on religion and crime concluded, “religious behaviors and beliefs exert a moderate deterrent effect on individuals’ criminal behavior”.

References:
1. ^ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definition/
2. ^ http://www.philosophyblog.com.au/ethics-vs-morality-the-distinction-between-ethics-and-morals/
3. ^ http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/ethics.htm
4. ^ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-relativism/
5. ^ Green, Celia (2004). Letters from Exile: Observations on a Culture in Decline. Oxford: Oxford Forum. Chapters I-XX.
6. ^ O’Connell, Sanjida (July 1995). "Empathy in chimpanzees: Evidence for theory of mind?". primates 36 (3): 397-410. 0032-8332. Retrieved on 2007-11-08. 
7. ^ [1] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0674356616
8. ^ Giacomo Rizzolatti et al. (1996). Premotor cortex and the recognition of motor actions, Cognitive Brain Research 3 131-141
9. ^ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/27/AR2007052701056_pf.html
10. ^ de Wied M, Goudena PP, Matthys W (2005). "Empathy in boys with disruptive behavior disorders". Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines 46 (8): 867-80. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2004.00389.x. PMID 16033635. 
11. ^ Fernandez YM, Marshall WL (2003). "Victim empathy, social self-esteem, and psychopathy in rapists". Sexual abuse : a journal of research and treatment 15 (1): 11-26. doi:10.1023/A:1020611606754. PMID 12616926. 
12. ^ Haidt, Johan and Graham, Jesse (2006). When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize Social Justice Research.
13. ^ [2] http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2007/haidt
14. ^ [3] http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=1445
15. ^ [[4]] Terror and Just Response, ZNet, 02 July 2002, Noam Chomsky
16. ^ [[5]] Arts and Opinion Vol. 6, No. 6, 2007 Gabriel Matthew Schivone interviews Noam Chomsky
17. ^ As is expressed in the review of literature on this topic by: Conroy, S.J. and Emerson, T.L.N. (2004). "Business Ethics and Religion: Religiosity as a Predictor of Ethical Awareness Among Students". Journal of Business Ethics 50: 383--396.  DOI:10.1023/B:BUSI.0000025040.41263.09
18. ^ Paul, Gregory S. (2005). "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look". Journal of Religion and Society 7. 
19. ^ Gerson Moreno-Riaño; Mark Caleb Smith, Thomas Mach (2006). "Religiosity, Secularism, and Social Health". Journal of Religion and Society 8. 
20. ^ Gary F. Jensen (2006) Department of Sociology, Vanderbilt University Religious Cosmologies and Homicide Rates among Nations: A Closer Look http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2006/2006-7.html http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/pdf/2006-7.pdf Journal of Religion and Society, Volume 8, ISSN 1522-5658 http://purl.org/JRS
21. ^ KERLEY, KENT R., MATTHEWS, TODD L. & BLANCHARD, TROY C. (2005) Religiosity, Religious Participation, and Negative Prison Behaviors. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44 (4), 443-457. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5906.2005.00296.x
22. ^ SAROGLOU, VASSILIS, PICHON, ISABELLE, TROMPETTE, LAURENCE, VERSCHUEREN, MARIJKE & DERNELLE, REBECCA (2005) Prosocial Behavior and Religion: New Evidence Based on Projective Measures and Peer Ratings. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44 (3), 323-348. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5906.2005.00289.x
23. ^ Regnerus, Mark D. & Burdette, Amy (2006) RELIGIOUS CHANGE AND ADOLESCENT FAMILY DYNAMICS. The Sociological Quarterly 47 (1), 175-194. doi:10.1111/j.1533-8525.2006.00042.x
24. ^ eg a survey by Robert Putnam showing that membership of religious groups was positively correlated with membership of voluntary organisations
25. ^ As is stated in: Doris C. Chu (2007). Religiosity and Desistance From Drug Use. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 2007; 34; 661 originally published online Mar 7, 2007; DOI: 10.1177/0093854806293485
26. ^ For example:
* Albrecht, S. I., Chadwick, B. A., & Alcorn, D. S. (1977). Religiosity and deviance:Application of an attitude-behavior contingent consistency model. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 16, 263-274.
* Burkett, S.,& White, M. (1974). Hellfire and delinquency:Another look. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion,13,455-462.
* Chard-Wierschem, D. (1998). In pursuit of the “true” relationship: A longitudinal study of the effects of religiosity on delinquency and substance abuse. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Dissertation.
* Cochran, J. K.,& Akers, R. L. (1989). Beyond hellfire:An explanation of the variable effects of religiosity on adolescent marijuana and alcohol use. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 26, 198-225.
* Evans, T. D.,Cullen, F. T.,Burton, V. S.,Jr.,Dunaway, R. G.,Payne, G. L.,& Kethineni, S. R. (1996). Religion, social bonds, and delinquency. Deviant Behavior, 17, 43-70.
* Grasmick, H. G., Bursik, R. J., & Cochran, J. K. (1991). “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”: Religiosity and taxpayer’s inclinations to cheat. The Sociological Quarterly, 32, 251-266.
* Higgins, P. C., & Albrecht, G. L. (1977). Hellfire and delinquency revisited. Social Forces, 55, 952-958.
* Johnson, B. R.,Larson, D. B.,DeLi,S.,& Jang, S. J. (2000). Escaping from the crime of inner cities:Church attendance and religious salience among disadvantaged youth. Justice Quarterly, 17, 377-391.
* Johnson, R. E., Marcos, A. C., & Bahr, S. J. (1987). The role of peers in the complex etiology of adolescent drug use. Criminology, 25, 323-340.
* Powell, K. (1997). Correlates of violent and nonviolent behavior among vulnerable inner-city youths. Family and Community Health, 20, 38-47.
27. ^ Baier, C. J.,& Wright, B. R. (2001). “If you love me, keep my commandments”:A meta-analysis of the effect of religion on crime. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency,38,3-21.

allaboutphilosophy.org/Morality
atheism.about.com

The Flawed Logic of "The One True Path"

The Flawed Logic of "The One True Path"
or
Why My Religion is Right and Yours is Wrong

If you are a human being who lives on Earth, you have probably been exposed to other human beings who are not your exact clones.
If this sounds like you, then you have probably also been told once or twice that what you believe is wrong and (coincidentally) the person who told you this just so happens to have the correct set of beliefs that you should promptly integrate into your life.
The first time I heard this, I was excited at this easy replacement for years of personal discipline, study and introspection. Imagine my shock and amazement when I found that that the reasons they offered as to why they were right didn't quite stand up to the feeble light of early dawn.
To save you from suffering the same disappointment that I endured, I have listed some of these reasons that failed to provide me the "easy out" and forced me to do actual real work in finding my own personal spirituality.

1) My Religion is Right, so Yours Must be Wrong!

Let's all start and agree with the premise that Divinity is Big. Quite probably beyond our ability to grasp its vastness. Bigger than the Earth, even!
Okay. Now look out your window and describe what you see. Did you just describe every feature of our planet, or just a small part that you have seen and are familiar with?
If you can't describe all of our little planet, how can you expect to describe all of Divinity?
Just as I can look outside and say "The Earth is a muddy swamp like my backyard is after the rain" you might say "The Earth is a dry hot arid place" because you've had a year of drought.
A Religion is basically like looking out your window and describing Divinity as you see it. It is impossible for you to describe it in its entirety as you haven't seen it in its entirety.
As a result each religion is expressing the portion of Divinity that the people who created it could see.
Just because you see one thing doesn't mean that somebody else can't see a different aspect of Divinity and be just as correct as you are. Just like I see mud outside my window and you see a cracked river bed. We're both right. It's just that we're looking at something so big that we each see a different part of it.
Just because you don't see the same thing I do doesn't mean that I'm wrong. We can both be right if we're seeing different things.

2) My Religion is Old, so it must be Right!

Due to the fact that people have believed something for a Real Long Time™ it must be correct. This is quickly shot down with this:
From my quick search on Google, the oldest formal religion appears to be Hinduism. So if you're not a Hindu, you've already buzzed out.
The oldest informal religion was probably cavemen worshipping the sun and cowering from the angry storm gods. So, if you're not a Hindu and don't worship the sun and fear the storm gods, you've just buzzed out twice.
But even If you do happen to be a Hindu and worship the sun and fear the storm gods, it still doesn't mean you are right. Sorry. When it comes right down to it, this answer is really no more valid than any other when it comes to establishing a logical basis for your belief system.

3) My Religion is New, so it must be Right!

To the best of my knowledge, the newest religion is the one that I just made up worshipping The Great God Lardicus and the Gentle Goddess Dietima.
If you're not worshipping one or both of them, buzz yourself out on this one, too.

4) My Religion is New, but it is based on Ancient Knowledge, so it must be Right!

I have to admit that is my favorite one, as it gives you the best of both worlds. This is a common one with many of the New Age religions. Many of the "New Old" religions are only about 50 years old, but claim ancestry going back hundreds or thousands of years.
Ancient wisdom combined with modern insight - what could be better?
Unfortunately, if being Old doesn't make it Right, and being New doesn't make it right, being Old and New doesn't make it right either.

5) Lots of Other People Believe It Too, so it must be Right!

If everybody decided to go and jump off a bridge, would you do it too?
I'm sorry. My mother made me write that.
But I must grudgingly admit that she has a valid point. Lots of people were pretty darn sure the Earth was flat, yet even that power of belief was unable to squish our planet into a nice one-horizon pancake planet.

6) Hardly Anybody Knows About It, so it must be Right!

Many "secret societies" have a veil of this kind of thinking around them.
While it may be possible that they possess knowledge (or think that they do) that others don't have, it does not automatically give their beliefs any more credibility than any of the other reasons we've covered so far.

7) This Holy Book Says it is True, so it must be Right!

Welcome to the land of Circular Reasoning!
Here's how it usually works: "My Religion is Right!" "Why?" "Because my Holy Book says it is!" "Well, why should I believe your Holy Book is Right?" "Because my Religion says it is!"
You can not logically say "Here's my first premise, here's my second premise. My first premise is true because my second premise says it is. My second premise is true because my first premise says it is. Therefore, both premises are true and support each other!"
Unfortunately, this doesn't work when exposed to any form of logic or rationality. In order to provide "proof" there must be validation from outside of the condition being tested.

8) Divinity Said It Was True, so it must be Right!

This is almost identical to the last technique, but instead of a Holy Book saying it, some form of Divinity said it.
But who did they say it to? Was it someone you know is trustworthy? Are they alive?
Did you hear it? So it's at best second-hand knowledge (you personally know the person who Divinity spoke to), or most likely third-hand (usually more like 100-handed) knowledge.
Have you ever played the game of "Telephone"? People line up, and a message is whispered to the first person in the line, who whispers it to the second person, who whispers it to the third, and so on until the last person gets the message. They then say the message that they got and everybody laughs at how the simple message got completely mangled to the point of being unrecognizable.
Now, add to this process the following and shake, not stir: What century was it written in? What language was it in? How many translations has it gone through since then? How likely is it that there were words and phrases that did not translate literally, and the translator had to make an approximation across the languages? How many cultural differences go unstated that are not accounted for in translations? How many political or other agendas were able to influence the translations to sound more like the positions that they advocated?
As you can see, there are many issues that can take what could have been straight from Divinity and changed, confused or corrupted it on its way to the version you see today.
And we still haven't addressed the issues as to whether the person who originally said they heard it wrote it down correctly. Have you ever tried to write down what happened in a dream after you woke up? Have you ever had difficulty expressing a significant personal experience using nothing but words?
And then there is the most basic question of if they actually did receive a message from Divinity or not. Could they have just made it up? Were they trying to impress someone, become famous, influence people? Under the influence of a mind-altering substance? Suffered from a mental illness?
Do you know people who you trust who have told you important things that turned out not to be true?
Unless you personally experienced it, you have no unquestionable basis to believe it. And all of the other rules here also apply to why you should believe what someone else says is true.

9) Someone I trust told me it is True, so it must be Right!

Why do they believe it is True? Is their reason covered by one or more of the above explanations? If so, there is no rational reason to accept it as True based on those reasons.

10) Science agrees with me, so it must be Right!

Science is not always right. Periodically a new discovery is made that invalidates entire bodies of knowledge and creates new ones. Many scientific "facts" are discovered to be incorrect as new information is learned.
While this foundation provides the best rational platform for a system of beliefs, it does not "prove" it is right. There could always be a new scientific revelation that could end up proving it is wrong after all.
Additionally, there are lots of things that science admits that it still doesn't understand. Every so often, someone comes along and discovers a new aspect of how things work, and it can cause an explosion in new knowledge that builds upon this new foundation.
Nothing is absolute in science, despite the wishes of the scientists.
If you are a logic-based person, this is probably the only rationally valid reason to prefer one belief system over another. But remember that it is not absolute, and will not be a valid rationale for an emotionally-based person.

11) It Just Feels True for Me, so it must be Right!

If you are an emotionally-based person, this is probably the only valid reason to prefer one belief system over another. In your gut or your heart, it just feels right.
But remember that you based your beliefs based on your PERSONAL feelings. If another person chooses a different belief system based on THEIR OWN PERSONAL feelings, you can not logically discount their choice but assert that your own is Real when you both selected your beliefs based on the exact same criteria.
Therefore, religious choices chosen in this way can only be a PERSONAL choice for you and you alone, because only you can experience the emotional foundation of your beliefs.

In Conclusion...

I hope this helped to illustrate that there is no magic reason that anyone's belief system is right or wrong. It is, at best, a personal decision as to what criteria you use to find your spiritual path through life.
Most importantly, there is no way that you can make a logical case that your belief system is "more right" than anybody else's.
Therefore, please treat everyone with respect and courtesy when discussing your beliefs or theirs. If you try to find the core principles that guide most religions, you will find that they all share many similarities, and there is room in the world for all of them.

What is the Role of Philosophy?

What is the Role of Philosophy?

Does philosophy have any real, substantial role that bears the ink that has been spilled on its behalf through so many years? Is philosophy something substantial, or is it merely a way for us to find a way to sleep at night? Or does philosophy hold something more important and lasting that bears discovering and repeating? Answers to the questions have been articulated on both sides – those like Richard Rorty arguing the former position, other like Alasdair MacIntyre arguing the latter. I believe that philosophy does have something lasting an important inherent in it, and that something is the ability to begin in us a process of transformation.
Those who would say that philosophy really has no value in really answering any questions (either because those questions are in themselves not the right questions, or because they do not believe there is anything substantive enough “out there” to use to formulate answers) seem to have completely underestimated the power of thought, and have completely decided to ignore the experiences of those who have been transformed by philosophical thought.
The common misconception is to think of philosophy as the profession of oddly dressed men who sit in ivory towers of thought and spew propositions too complex and esoteric for the untrained masses to understand. However, that sort of pretense could not be further from the truth. Philosophy should be a thing that is present in the vast majority of human lives. Philosophy does not reside in locked and guarded vaults that can only be accessed by the intellectually superior. Philosophy should live on the streets and in the “public square” where life and discourse actually happens. If we can see how philosophy exists in these places, and people become aware that something philosophical is happening, then a real power exists for those people to engage in a transformed, reflective life.
Each time we hear George W. Bush and his rhetoric to justify America’s foreign policies, we are subject to philosophy. Every news broadcast and talk radio argument puts us in full view of philosophical discourse. We are, in fact, surrounded by philosophy. The attentive ear will be able to hear that philosophy, and with some aid, will be able to think critically enough about it to begin to make decisions about those things and formulate our own thoughts and opinions based on our reflection, not the uncritical acceptance of another’s thoughts.
This is the real, important kind of philosophy. Vague logical problems and complex language games, though they have an important place, are not necessarily the philosophy that has the greatest ability to transform lives. The most important philosophy and the philosophy that has the real power to change human lives is the philosophy that happens in the public square of everyday discourse. This kind of philosophy has the special power to transform great numbers of people, since its arena is the public arena. Like Socrates’ and his ever-present questioning, philosophical thought does not happen in some locked and guarded vault, but in the places where life happens. And if philosophy happens where life happens, it will ultimately be that lives are changed and people will be pushed closer to the truthfulness of life because of philosophy’s thoughts and its ability to change and inform thought. If we can write philosophy this way, and think of philosophy in this way, its results will be much greater than sitting in stove-heated rooms building “castles in the sky” (as Locke said about Descartes). People may look as strangely at these “everyday” philosophers as they do the oddly dressed intellectuals, but that seems to be an indications that philosophy is doing something right. If philosophy has the ability to questions people’s assumptions, or to force them to think in a way that they had not previously held to be plausible, then it has done something important valuable, and something that cannot be discounted. After all, this should be the end goal of all philosophers – that people at large, not just the denizens of the intellectual world are changed and prompted to deeper thought and reflection by means of what they produce. Again, this is the real power of philosophy, and the power to which philosophers most definitely need to cling to – the power to change everyday, individual lives. Without influence in the public square, individuals will continue to uncritically accept the dogmas handed down to them by those who control the outlets of thought. And as long as philosophers remain in the brick walls of their intellectual settings, that power seems to be corralled. Until philosophy can talk to people who are not trained in its methods rather than talking far above their heads in nearly incomprehensible language, that power will continue to be corralled and philosophy will actually be as powerless and vacuous as some claim that it already is.

Nothing

Charles S. Peirce wrote in "Logic of Events".......
We start, then, with nothing, pure zero. But this is not the nothing of negation. For not means other than, and other is merely a synonym of the ordinal numeral second. As such it implies a first; while the present pure zero is prior to every first. The nothing of negation is the nothing of death, which comes second to, or after, everything. But this pure zero is the nothing of not having been born. There is no individual thing, no compulsion, outward nor inward, no law. It is the germinal nothing, in which the whole universe is involved or foreshadowed. As such, it is absolutely undefined and unlimited possibility -- boundless possibility. There is no compulsion and no law. It is boundless freedom.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Now, let us expand upon this ..................
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Nothing is an awe-inspiring yet essentially undigested concept, highly esteemed by writers of an existentialist tendency, but by most others regarded with anxiety, nausea, or panic. Nobody seems to know how to deal with it (he would, of course), and plain persons generally are reported to have little difficulty in saying, seeing, hearing, and doing nothing. Philosophers, however, have never felt easy on the matter. Ever since Parmenides laid it down that it is impossible to speak of what is not, broke his own rule in the act of stating it, and deduced himself into a world where all that ever happened was nothing, the impression has persisted that the narrow path between sense and nonsense on this subject is a difficult one to tread and that altogether the less said of it the better.

This escape, however, is not so easy as it looks. Plato, in pursuing it, reversed the Parmenidean dictum by insisting, in effect, that anything a philosopher can find to talk about must somehow be there to be discussed, and so let loose upon the world that unseemly rabble of centaurs and unicorns, carnivorous cows, republican monarchs and wife-burdened bachelors, which has plagued ontology from that day to this. Nothing (of which they are all aliases) can apparently get rid of these absurdities, but for fairly obvious reasons has not been invited to do so. Logic has attempted the task, but with sadly limited success. Of some, though not all, nonentities, even a logician knows that they do not exist, since their properties defy the law of contradiction; the remainder, however, are not so readily dismissed. Whatever Lord Russell may have said of it, the harmless if unnecessary unicorn cannot be driven out of logic as it can out of zoology, unless by desperate measures which exclude all manner of reputable entities as well. Such remedies have been attempted, and their effects are worse than the disease. Russell himself, in eliminating the present King of France, inadvertently deposed the present Queen of England. Quine, the sorcerer's apprentice, has contrived to liquidate both Pegasus and President Truman in the same fell swoop. The old logicians, who allowed all entities subsistence while conceding existence, as wanted, to an accredited selection of them, at least brought a certain tolerable inefficiency to their task. Of the new it can only be said that solitudinem faciunt et pacem appellant--they make a desert and call it peace. Whole realms of being have been abolished without warning, at the mere non quantifying of a variable. The poetry of Earth has been parsed out of existence--and what has become of its prose? There is little need for an answer. Writers to whom nothing is sacred, and who accordingly stop thereat, have no occasion for surprise on finding, at the end of their operations, that nothing is all they have left.

The logicians, of course, will have nothing of all this. Nothing, they say, is not a thing, nor is it the name of anything, being merely a short way of saying of anything that it is not something else. "Nothing" means "not-anything"; appearances to the contrary are due merely to the error of supposing that a grammatical subject must necessarily be a name. Asked, however, to prove that nothing is not the name of anything, they fall back on the claim that nothing is the name of anything (since according to them there are no names anyway). Those who can make nothing of such an argument are welcome to the attempt. When logic falls out with itself, honest men come into their own, and it will take more than this to persuade them that there are not better cures for this particular headache than the old and now discredited method of cutting off the patient's head.

The friends of nothing may be divided into two distinct though not exclusive classes: the know-nothings, who claim a phenomenological acquaintance with nothing in particular, and the fear-nothings, who, believing, with Macbeth, that "nothing is but what is not," are thereby launched into dialectical encounter with nullity in general. For the first, nothing, so far from being a mere grammatical illusion, is a genuine, even positive, feature of experience. We are all familiar with, and have a vocabulary for, holes and gaps, lacks and losses, absences, silences, impalpabilities, insipidities, and the like. Voids and vacancies of one sort or another are sought after, dealt in and advertised in the newspapers. And what are these, it is asked, but perceived fragments of nothingness, experiential blanks, which command, nonetheless, their share of attention and therefore deserve recognition? Sartre, for one, has given currency to such arguments, and so, in effect, have the upholders of "negative facts"--an improvident sect, whose refrigerators are full of nonexistent butter and cheese, absentee elephants and so on, which they claim to detect therein. If existence indeed precedes essence, there is certainly reason of a sort for maintaining that nonexistence is also anterior to, and not a mere product of, the essentially parasitic activity of negation; that the nothing precedes the not. But, verbal refutations apart, the short answer to this view, as given, for instance, by Bergson, is that these are but petty and partial nothings, themselves parasitic on what already exists. Absence is a mere privation, and a privation of something at that. A hole is always a hole in something: take away the thing, and the hole goes too; more precisely, it is replaced by a bigger if not better hole, itself relative to its surroundings, and so tributary to something else. Nothing, in short, is given only in relation to what is, and even the idea of nothing requires a thinker to sustain it. If we want to encounter it an sich, we have to try harder that that.

Better things, or rather nothings, are promised on the alternative theory, whereby it is argued, so to speak, not that holes are in things, but that things are in holes or, more generally, that everything (and everybody) is in a hole. To be anything (or anybody) is to be bounded, hemmed in, defined, and separated by a circumambient fram of vacuity, and what is true of the individual is equally true of the collective. The universe at large is fringed with nothingness, from which indeed (how else?) it must have been created, if created it was; and its beginning and end, like that of all change within it, must similarly be viewed as a passage from one nothing to another, with an interlude of being in between. Such thoughts, or others like them, have haunted the speculations of nullophile metaphysicians from Pythagoras to Pascal and from Hegel and his followers to Heidegger, Tillich and Sartre. Being and non being, as they see it, are complementary notions, dialectically entwined, and of equal status and importance; although Heidegger alone has extended their symmetry to the point of equipping Das Nichts with a correlative (if nugatory) activity of noth-ing, or nihilating, whereby it produces Angst in its votaries and untimely hilarity in those, such as Carnap and Ayer, who have difficulty in parsing "nothing" as a present participle of the verb "to noth."

Nothing, whether it noths or not, and whether or not the being of anything entails it, clearly does not entail that anything should be. Like Spinoza's substance, it is causa sui; nothing (except more of the same) can come of it; ex nihilo, nihil fit. That conceded, it remains a question to some why anything, rather than nothing, should exist. This is either the deepest conundrum in metaphysics or the most childish, and though many must have felt the force of it at one time or another, it is equally common to conclude, on reflection, that it is no question at all. The hypothesis of theism may be said to take it seriously and to offer a provisional answer. The alternative is to argue that the dilemma is self-resolved in the mere possibility of stating it. If nothing whatsoever existed, there would be no problem and no answer, and the anxieties even of existential philosophers would be permanently laid to rest. Since they are not, there is evidently nothing to worry about. But that itself should be enough to keep an existentialist happy. Unless the solution be, as some have suspected, that it is not nothing that has been worrying them, but they who have been worrying it.