Physophical Question of the Day:

[ickaimp]

Bizzare Job Opening of the Day:
'Human Intelligence Instructor **Secret Clearance Required**'

Y'know, I can't make these sort of titles up. ^^;;

Physophical question of the week day:

A while back, one the kids I watch was doing their spelling homework, making sentances with their spelling words. The sentance the kid came up with (and he was rather proud of this) was:

"We burned the church down to the ground."

I was kind of horrified by this, and steered the sentance to something else, also using the spelling words. But he couldn't understand why I was disturbed by this sentance and I couldn't figure why he wasn't. Until he said that he'd never been to one. To him, a church was just a building. ~_~

-Since his father is supposedly bringing them up Christian, that's for him to teach them about and one discussion I'm not getting into. I'm there to make sure homework gets done.

But I was talking to my Dad about this and he made a comment that has had me thinking. He thought that it was a pity that the kids weren't going to some sort of church, because religion tended to be one of the major things that shaped one's morals and sense of right and wrong.

I've been kind of pondering that ever since... Just how much does religion reflect on a person's sense of morals or is something that is more dependant on the person?

er, does that make sense? ._.

impfics: Murder on the Dancefloor (Kazuha/Heiji)

Comments

[sister-dear.livejournal.com]

I disagree on basal_surge’s last point. In my experience with religion the ‘don’ts’ tend to come with a valid reason. (I.e. if you sleep around, you’ll likely end up with an STD, or possibly pregnant when you’re not prepared to have a kid.) The ‘guilt and punishment’ part is people taking the religion too far, which isn’t necessarily a universal example of what the religion teaches. (Anybody ever heard the phrase ‘the greatest commandment is love’?)

Religions give rewards for moral behavior where society doesn’t. Society tends to give rewards for good actions, which isn’t always the same thing. So, yes, I think religions help. Children learn moral codes, they’re not born with them, and religions give them a reason to follow the morals they learn.

[basal-surge.livejournal.com]

Yep, but for me the reason given by religion for the moral codes tends to be 'because god says so' which after I got to the point of questioning the existence of god, ceased to have moral power. I also find that, particularly with abrahamic religions, there is very little positive reward for morality except rather straightlaced security and, transgression of morality boiled down to either punishment or denial of reward.

[sister-dear.livejournal.com]

Sometimes explanations aren’t offered with the commands, but there often is a valid reason if you look for it. Eating Kosher is one of the easier examples: it’s quite sanitary, it avoids diseases they wouldn’t have even known about at the time, and it’s just a plain healthy way to eat. As for rewards, they’re there, but people tend to focus on why the punishments are happening and push rewards to the background. To name a few names that I think most Abrahamic religions recognize: Job, David, Daniel, Abraham, and Solomon all received fairly large rewards for moral behavior. In more than one case, this was in spite of significant things they’d done that probably deserved punishment.

I’m not going to argue the merits of one religion over another, but I do think that the moral codes set down by religions are important for children to at least be aware of. They can decide if they agree to the particular practices of the various religions once they’re knowledgable enough to make choices like that.

[basal-surge.livejournal.com]

So if you can say that the kosher laws derived from Leviticus have valid reasons behind them, what's the valid reason in Leviticus for, say, Lev 20:27, which says stone to death any women with familiar spirits? Or for another one, how about Lev 12:1-5, to paraphrase 'Women are dirty and sinful after childbirth, so God prescribes rituals for their purification. If a boy is born, the mother is unclean for 7 days and must be purified for 33 days; but if a girl is born, the mother is unclean for 14 days and be purified for 66 days. This is because, in the eyes of God, girls are twice as dirty as boys.

These things are explicitly _immoral_ to me, but you are telling me that I should look to religions for moral training?

If you're going to hold up any religious moral codes as _moral_, and especially use examples from the old testament like the Kosher rules, you can't cherrypick and choose your bit of the moral code concerned. All or nothing, or edit out the bits of your religion as they become outmoded (But of course, one can't edit the word of god, thats the problem.)

Yes, there are very good rules in some sections of some religions, but leaving Leviticus in particular lying about for impressionable minds to form their moral behaviour from is just plain silly.

I argue that while some religions have less bad merit than others, having no religion makes far more sense to me.

[sister-dear.livejournal.com]

I wasn't trying to pick and choose, I was trying to avoid a long and windy explanation. (Which this is, but the issues you posed are hard to go into at any shorter length.)

‘Ceremonially unclean’ is not the equivalent of ‘sinful.’ Physical and spiritual wellbeing were thought of as all but the same thing, so they’re spoken of in very similar terms. Being ‘unclean,’ whether male or female, meant you were not allowed to touch spiritual objects or have sex. There were similar laws of ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’ that applied to men; touching a dead body was one of them. As for women; childbirth is not sanitary. Women in this culture also sequestered themselves when they were on their period (this is the ‘customary impurity’ mentioned in v.2), and went through ritual washing at the end of their period before they were ‘clean’ (read: sanitary) and rejoined their families. I wouldn’t want someone who’s been on her period without the benefit of pads or soap to be cooking my dinner. The longer amount of time for girls vs. boys is a throwback to Eve, one which was made unnecessary by the New Testament.

The law you’ve mentioned about spirits applied to both men and women. Being a medium, someone who called up spirits of the dead and/or demons, was something prevalent in other religions of that area. It was the equivalent of devil-worship, which was extraordinarily immoral in a nation that was supposed to worship one God alone. Anything even remotely resembling something common to outside cultures was met with extreme punishment. Would I have a problem with people actually carrying out some of these laws today? Of course: they don’t apply to my culture and the New Testament makes them spiritually unnecessary. No, you can’t edit the Bible, but in this case it edits itself. The New Testament specifically states that the specifics of some of the OT laws are no longer to be followed. So I wouldn’t throw Leviticus at a five year old without explanation any more than I’d let them figure out the finer points of Song of Solomon on their own. (Which I don’t think I’d throw at a five year old at all.)

Religions can be both mentally and morally challenging. Why not expose kids to it? Make them think, but be sure there's someone around (parents, preferably) to answer the questions they'll have.