Random Thoughts Thread

[AppleQueso]

Are you seriously trying to claim that "murder is wrong" is a uniquely Christian principle?

No, but then again, who is to say what is moral if we don't have something to base it on? At some point, we know someone decided murder was wrong, and practically everyone has agreed ever since. But in nature, murder happens at time for various reasons, so who isn't to argue that we should be allowed to murder if its our natural response in that scenario?

I'll try and sum this up as quick as I can because I have to leave soon. Forgive me if it's a little rough:

Humans are empathetic and social.

Every situation has a finite set of possible actions. Some of those actions are demonstrably more harmful overall than others. We decide what is and isn't "harmful" based on empathy and reason.

That right there is an objective standard of morality, and all of us use it every day whether we realize it or not. Nobody needed to declare this for us to understand it, it's something inherent to us that we do naturally.

Our understanding of what is and isn't harmful evolves and changes as we understand more about ourselves and about the world around us.

Yes, there are dillemmas where the best possible action is unclear, and yes, different people and different cultures will come to different conclusions about what is or isn't universally "moral." Different people and different cultures also have disagreements on what is or isn't "healthy," but that doesn't make health any less an objective standard. They can be wrong about these things.

I don't have the time and energy to pick this apart, but suffice to say the place of religion in American politics from the founding to today has historically been quite varied and, often, contextual (e.g. "God" gets invoked a lot more during the Cold War or in the years immediately after 9/11).

Is it actually invoked more during these periods? Or is it just recorded more because of the abundance of information and media that has been more readily available in the last 50-60 years as opposed to years prior?

Religion was a big focal point in both cases. One was a war in which we deliberately were trying to assert that we were different from the "godless communists," and another was a high profile terrorist attack from a religiously motivated extremist group.

The fact that "God" was invoked more with relation to those events makes sense.

[Forlorn Drifter]

Yes, but there are groups of animals who are empathetic and social,such as lions, apes and wolves, yet there is murder in their groups. Killing, or at the least fighting for position or mating rights is natural, so shouldn't I be able to attack a man who is with a woman I like, prove my dominance, and claim her as my own? What makes it immoral?

My argument is getting stupid at this point, and I think we should just agree to disagree on this whole thing.

[dsheinem]

I don't have the time and energy to pick this apart, but suffice to say the place of religion in American politics from the founding to today has historically been quite varied and, often, contextual (e.g. "God" gets invoked a lot more during the Cold War or in the years immediately after 9/11).

Is it actually invoked more during these periods? Or is it just recorded more because of the abundance of information and media that has been more readily available in the last 50-60 years as opposed to years prior?

I'd say both. For the Cold War stuff - well what AQ said was why we put "In God We Trust" on money and "Under God" in the pledge - they weren't there prior.

This is not the end-all be-all, but here's Google NGram info from 1995-2005, where the percentage of the term's use in printed books that Google has access to went up much faster post 9/11:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?c ... ty%3B%2Cc0

EDIT: The chart from 1990-2010 is more dramatic: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?c ... od%3B%2Cc0



Here is 1949-1989, where you can see it climbing leading up to being put on money (1954) before peaking in 1958 and then gaining popularity again quickly during the rise of the moral majority:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?c ... ty%3B%2Cc0

That's obviously inclusive of more than the US (but mostly the US). Political agendas, topics, and philosophies tend to follow popular trends, thus why I think I can safely argue for its increased invocation in that realm.

[Jmustang1968]

I don't have the time and energy to pick this apart, but suffice to say the place of religion in American politics from the founding to today has historically been quite varied and, often, contextual (e.g. "God" gets invoked a lot more during the Cold War or in the years immediately after 9/11).

Is it actually invoked more during these periods? Or is it just recorded more because of the abundance of information and media that has been more readily available in the last 50-60 years as opposed to years prior?

I'd say both. For the Cold War stuff - well what AQ said was why we put "In God We Trust" on money and "Under God" in the pledge - they weren't there prior.

This is not the end-all be-all, but here's Google NGram info from 1995-2005, where the percentage of the term's use in printed books that Google has access to went up much faster post 9/11:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?c ... ty%3B%2Cc0

Here is 1949-1989, where you can see it climbing leading up to being put on money (1954) before peaking in 1958 and then gaining popularity again quickly during the rise of the moral majority:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?c ... ty%3B%2Cc0

That's obviously inclusive of more than the US (but mostly the US). Political agendas, topics, and philosophies tend to follow popular trends, thus why I think I can safely argue for its increased invocation in that realm.

Is it more discussed because it has become more of a political issue instead of something just assumed or accepted as the norm? i.e. more pressure against Christianity and religion in years past so more mention? Just too many variables in there for a very broad or vague statistic to actually mean anything significant to me.

[dsheinem]

Is it more discussed because it has become more of a political issue instead of something just assumed or accepted as the norm? i.e. more pressure against Christianity and religion in years past so more mention? Just too many variables in there for a very broad or vague statistic to actually mean anything significant to me.

I think all one can do with something like this is note the recurring historical correlation between religious-tinged events and resulting religious discourse. I don't think it is a question of proving causation. I think it is hard to argue cause-effect, but doing so is unnecessary to make the point.

[o.pwuaioc]

Is it more discussed because it has become more of a political issue instead of something just assumed or accepted as the norm? i.e. more pressure against Christianity and religion in years past so more mention? Just too many variables in there for a very broad or vague statistic to actually mean anything significant to me.

Why would you think these are separate and mutually exclusive things?

[Jmustang1968]

Is it more discussed because it has become more of a political issue instead of something just assumed or accepted as the norm? i.e. more pressure against Christianity and religion in years past so more mention? Just too many variables in there for a very broad or vague statistic to actually mean anything significant to me.

Why would you think these are separate and mutually exclusive things?

I didnt suggest they were. It was more of me just saying Dave was throwing in useless arbitrary statistics.

[Jmustang1968]

Dave was using it as a counter point to what Forlorn said. But that just think the use of that statistic in the argument ignores too many things that dont necessarily back up his argument. The role of media and recorded use of such things is so much different in the eras he stated than years before it.

The cold war was from the late 40s to late 80s/early 90s. And then post 9/11. So he is basically leaving out a decade of the last 70 years. The points in history arent irrelevant, but to ignore all the other factors of why it is recorded being invoked is folly.

But we are going in circles and over explaining things.

[AppleQueso]

Yes, but there are groups of animals who are empathetic and social,such as lions, apes and wolves, yet there is murder in their groups. Killing, or at the least fighting for position or mating rights is natural, so shouldn't I be able to attack a man who is with a woman I like, prove my dominance, and claim her as my own? What makes it immoral?

My argument is getting stupid at this point, and I think we should just agree to disagree on this whole thing.

We aren't talking about lions, apes, or wolves. We're talking about humans.

We have far greater cognitive capabilities and are far more capable of abstract thought than any of those animals. We're fully capable of assessing on our own that yes, murder and rape are bad things to do.

[dsheinem]

The role of media and recorded use of such things is so much different in the eras he stated than years before it.

I didn't disagree with this - obviously increased media exacerbates the amount of mentions. The NGram was useful, I thought, because it recorded uses as a percentage of available material from those eras. I'd also bet pretty hard that you could track "God" in recorded speeches of political figures in those same eras and you'd see very similar spikes in percentages.

The cold war was from the late 40s to late 80s/early 90s. And then post 9/11. So he is basically leaving out a decade of the last 70 years. The points in history arent irrelevant, but to ignore all the other factors of why it is recorded being invoked is folly.

Thus why I only suggested we see correlation. The various increases in use of the term "God" in those charts correlates with stuff like McCarthyism, "God" in currency & the pledge, and 9/11. I wasn't leaving out decades to be tricky. Here's 1940-2008 which, I think emphasizes the idea even more.

It's not shocking that "God" gets invoked more at moments of national crises, but compare its percentage post-9/11 to that from the Vietnam War (during which its usage declined), and you can see that "God" is much more on people's minds right now...