"There Probably are no Duties"
EXACTLY! The only obligations one has are the obligations one DECIDES to have. Pretty obvious!
"read the condemnation of religious wars, religiously motivated terrorism, inquisitions, witch hunts, the suppression of science, sexism, homophobia, and so on"
INDEED!
"read the accusations, regularly repeated in popular atheist literature, that the Bible condones slavery, or genocide, or stoning cheeky children, or rape"
INDEED!
"those who believe in duties have to come up with compelling proof that they exist."
Yes, yes--surely yes!
"what duties you believe are determined largely by your family and cultural background. If you were raised in Iran you would believe you had a duty to execute homosexuals"
EXACTLY! And if you were raised in a superstitious home in America you would believe that Evolution was a Scientific conspiracy and that the earth is 6000 years old and was never a ball of gas but that Adam and Eve and the earth and Universe were all perfectly formed in the same week.! You would also believe that you were born a piece of shit because a fellow named "Adam" sinned! And you would believe that human sacrifice works. In other words you would believe what barbarians believed for thousands and thousands of years.
"if nothing is right or wrong then religious terrorism is not wrong, inquisitions are not wrong, crusades are not wrong, homophobia is not wrong."
That is just plain RETARDED! The premise that nothing is right or wrong assumes that people have no brains, no judgement, no values, no feelings, and no preferences--and that they cannot remark a difference between pain and pleasure, happiness and sadness, security and fear, or death and survival? How big an idiot does one have to be to posit that humans have not survived and flourished by having values and by implementing rules and laws to observe those values??
"Belief in duties is just a primitive Bronze Age superstition."
Well...yes and no: It certainly is that. But duties is a word we use to refer to obligations created by Governments or other authorities such as schools or families. In the last analysis, it is an obligation that the individual takes upon himself to do either voluntarily or under duress or threat. Therefore, it is based Reason and Rational Judgement. At the same time we must acknowledge that many people prefer superstition over Reason and that such superstitious people often take the authority of barbarians or Primitive Tribesmen--as those bronze age people dictated rules to the tribe in order to keep order and obedience and subservience to authority. Of course, this is done today with the same tribal prejudice--but with somewhat higher reasoning--at least in much of the civilized world. |
