Firefly politically incorrect? by Bugboy

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

Firefly politically incorrect?

POSTED BY: BUGBOY
UPDATED: Monday, January 5, 2004 08:06
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Monday, January 5, 2004 8:06 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Drakon:
All religion based moral systems have as their foundation, "These are the rules because God says so." This is an appeal to authority, and as such is not a logical argument. It is an argument ender...God says" is short hand for "I don't know how or why it works, it just does...Real world effects will feedback on the moral system and those systems that don't work, end up dying out...Darwin applied to memetics.

Drakon, if I may respectfully disagree with this common misconception. When the founder of my particular religion was asked how one is to know whether a “rule” comes from God, or whether it's source is mere human authority, his answer was that “you know a tree by the fruit it produces.” In other words, “Because some religious leader in a funny hat said it's God's rule” doesn't cut it. Using the sense of right and wrong that your Creator instilled you with does. It's no wonder the religious leaders (okay, religious dictators) of his day had him killed. By the way, that belief the individual's conscience is superior to any churchly authority is found in many Christian denominations. But usually not the ones you hear shouting on the television late at night.

Quote:
Originally posted by Drakon:
What real world effects does a general rule "Thou shalt not kill" have, does not matter why the persons are not killing.

Actually, the original Hebrew text reads “Thou shalt not murder.” Interestingly, it never defines murder, leaving that up to the individual to decide. Seems that the closer one gets to “God's rules” and the further one gets from “Human-made rules,” the more one must rely on the inborn, innate, God-given sense of right/wrong each one of use has. Perhaps that inborn, godlike ability to judge right/wrong is one of the things that makes us “created in the image of God.”

Quote:
Originally posted by Drakon:
You also have a problem in that certain cultural norms which really are unimportant to survival, (but may be important to identity, or culture of the individual) get glommed in with the rest of the moral structure. So we have some religions forbidding bacon, demanding burkas and the like.

The term for this kind of small-mindedness is “legalism.” It's an adherence to regulations instead of the principles upon which those regulations are based. Every religious organization eventually slides down into legalism. Unfortunately, so do governments. It takes the occasional revolution to get either of them back on track with their founding principles.

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