Striver
05-04-2005, 01:16 AM
When I became an atheist, about 5 years ago, I wasn't sure what do do about morals. My values prior to that stemmed from the concept of fear of some angry vengeful god that would strike you down if you messed up. When I figured out that it was all a lie, the question then became a matter of , "what do I do now?"
Since I didn't want to completely destroy myself, I decided to keep the morals that essentially existed for purposes of self-protection and then carefully examine them to see what was safe to throw away. It turns out to be a good idea not to kill or steal from people, for example, as doing so may result in imprisonment and a vastly overcomplicated life.
I threw away most of the sex ideas, which Christianity has a really FUCKED UP view of. They take a normal, natural, healthy thing and turn it into one of the worst guilt trips on the list.
I decided to continue being drug-free. Mainly because it seemed better from a safety perspective, and i didn't have a strong need to be 'hip'.
But this post isn't about attention-getting topics like sex and drugs and so on. I think that actually, a set of values can be helpful, with some conditions. It's not values that are bad, it's fundamentalism that's harmful.
Fundamentalists don't distinguish between the rules they set. A fundamentalist sees spitting on the sidewalk as being as bad as striking down a man in cold blood. If you've ever heard the "all men have sinned.." argument, that's an example of it in action. The Genesis account itself has this sort of warped logic in that it claims the reason for man's unhappiness is because our vast ancestors...stole some fruit from tree that didn't belong to them. So because Adam and Eve had a Huck Finn moment, we all have to die. Yeah, right.
On the other hand, a person with healthy values prioritizes those values. The ranking will be different for different people, but they'll be able to tell you whether watching tv or going to work is more important. Whether working out or fixing the car is more important. Theres the idea that tradeoffs are necessarily made in life full of shades of grey.
Fundamentalists don't give themselves any slack when they fail to meet their rules. A person who does something wrong has to apologize to "God" and agonize sufficiently to show remorse along with punishment, if not self-flagellation. A person with a healthy sense of values realizes that they won't always be able to live up to them not because of "sin", but because of real human factors like energy and emotionality. That values are what we will to live up to not because of obligation, but due to the desire to create some uniformity in an otherwise chaotic existence.
Values can actually help a person. If your value is to practice soccer every day, you'll become a good soccer player. If you value being nice to people, the result is that people will like you.
So the moral is (pun intended) that values, if applied correctly, can enhance the quality of ones life. If applied the way that they're done in religion, they're like having a millstone cast about one's neck when trying to ones way through the sea of life.
Since I didn't want to completely destroy myself, I decided to keep the morals that essentially existed for purposes of self-protection and then carefully examine them to see what was safe to throw away. It turns out to be a good idea not to kill or steal from people, for example, as doing so may result in imprisonment and a vastly overcomplicated life.
I threw away most of the sex ideas, which Christianity has a really FUCKED UP view of. They take a normal, natural, healthy thing and turn it into one of the worst guilt trips on the list.
I decided to continue being drug-free. Mainly because it seemed better from a safety perspective, and i didn't have a strong need to be 'hip'.
But this post isn't about attention-getting topics like sex and drugs and so on. I think that actually, a set of values can be helpful, with some conditions. It's not values that are bad, it's fundamentalism that's harmful.
Fundamentalists don't distinguish between the rules they set. A fundamentalist sees spitting on the sidewalk as being as bad as striking down a man in cold blood. If you've ever heard the "all men have sinned.." argument, that's an example of it in action. The Genesis account itself has this sort of warped logic in that it claims the reason for man's unhappiness is because our vast ancestors...stole some fruit from tree that didn't belong to them. So because Adam and Eve had a Huck Finn moment, we all have to die. Yeah, right.
On the other hand, a person with healthy values prioritizes those values. The ranking will be different for different people, but they'll be able to tell you whether watching tv or going to work is more important. Whether working out or fixing the car is more important. Theres the idea that tradeoffs are necessarily made in life full of shades of grey.
Fundamentalists don't give themselves any slack when they fail to meet their rules. A person who does something wrong has to apologize to "God" and agonize sufficiently to show remorse along with punishment, if not self-flagellation. A person with a healthy sense of values realizes that they won't always be able to live up to them not because of "sin", but because of real human factors like energy and emotionality. That values are what we will to live up to not because of obligation, but due to the desire to create some uniformity in an otherwise chaotic existence.
Values can actually help a person. If your value is to practice soccer every day, you'll become a good soccer player. If you value being nice to people, the result is that people will like you.
So the moral is (pun intended) that values, if applied correctly, can enhance the quality of ones life. If applied the way that they're done in religion, they're like having a millstone cast about one's neck when trying to ones way through the sea of life.