There is a lot in this post of yours with which I agree, or at least feel in real sympathy with.
I think that in myposts to cosmicforce and Steven i've to some degree addressed your basic thought, that if you stipulate a God who lays down the rules, you have "absolute" right and wrong, and if you don't, you don't, and<<<Yet we know in our hearts that some things are just wrong, we can't escape it.>>>
I think that what God, or Allah, allows many Christians and Muslims to think is moral regarding -- for one easily illustrated example -- treatment of the women in their own families is demonstrative of the fact that what we know in our hearts is right or wrong changes drastically from culture to culture, however devoutly religious that culture.
Allah doesn't help the Muslim girls who are murdered with virtual impunity by their devout fathers or brothers because the girls have been raped, thus disgracing their families (oddly enough; you'd think the rapist was the disgraceful one, but no).
(I know that there are abuses in Christian countries, too, I hasten to mention, and that there are criminal atheists (though as we know, they are statistically underrepresented in the prison population.) (I'm aware that this is probably because the higher the educational level, the higher the percentage of atheists and the lower the likelihood of being imprisoned.)) "Honour-killings" are just one example of devotion to an external God-authority not being very useful as a deterrent to what you and I "just can't help" seeing as wrong.)
It really is hard for me to understand why anyone believes that the development of human conscience, which tells us what we "know in our hearts" is right and wrong, depends on the stipulation that the feeling you refer to above ("some things are just wrong") comes from a God-- instead of being an innate, evolved characteristic (or capacity) of humankind. |
