man-man Posted:

I don’t use the ‘more bad than good’ thing, it’s too easy for that to lead into a drawn out argument trying to enumerate every good/bad deed ever done in the name of religion. But I thought the main reason people came together into larger groups was for agricultural purposes; it allows a more stable lifestyle, but requires more people co-operating than you need for a successful hunt/gather operation.

In every recorded case were this happened, the leader drew on gods for his authority. As in, people might have gotten together for agricultural reasons, but the reasons they were told were religious ones. The structure of the society relied on gods to originally enforce its laws and give people reasons to stay together and listen to the leader.

Now, of course, that’s unnecessary, but when humans were first starting out, that’s was was used every time.

Shii Posted:

In summation, there’s no need to go to such extreme lengths to get “motives” correct when you’re sinful by default anyway according to Scriptures.

So your dilemma is moot.

You consider becoming agnostic extreme lengths? I agree with your reasoning in this point of my life, however, people are motavated by self interest. Sometimes enlightened self interest.

The argument become moot when I became agnostic.

Chawin Posted:

and that’s the great thing about philosophy, you can’t prove anything.

You can prove things based on bumumptions, but you can’t prove the bumumptions, they proved it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems