[MD] Debate on Science_ReligionToday

[Khaled Alkotob]

[Case]
> I have dropped out of whatever flow this thing had so let me just 
> chime in with a couple of observations.
> 
> About all I can get out of why we hate Dawkins is he has a nasty 
> attitude.
> Nothing about whether what he is saying makes sense. Since I don't 
> care about his snotty attitude and he makes senses to me, he is aces in

> my book.
> 
> One of the chief problems is all this religion talk is how to save 
> the baby when we dump the suds. One of the things that really got me 
> interested in studying the early history of the Christian church was
why anybody 
> bought this weirdness in the first place. Modern Christianity is a
mishmash 
> of Hebrew and Greek thought. How did they get tangled up in the first 
> place? 

[Khaled]
interesting perspective on history. So where does the 3rd Abrahamic faith
fall in all this (Islam), and how is Buddhism looked at?


>I  think Elaine Pagels spells it out in the Gnostic Gospels or it could 
> be in her book on Satan. But briefly it goes something like this: The 
> Greeks had developed a high flown metaphysics, First causes and all
that, but 
> in the end; like the MoQ they still could not define the Good or decide
if
> something was right or wrong or settle philosophical disputes among 
> people with the same philosophical position.
> 
> The Jews on the other hand had a highly developed system of ethics 
> and social conduct without much metaphysics. They just followed the law

> and the law was good. In Roman times morality had sunk to all time
lows, 
> with murder
> as a sporting event and the vomitorium as a party staple. Emperors 
> lusted
> after their sisters and invited the faithful to worship their 
> horses. 
> 
> Regular folks were attracted to the system of ethics and morality 
> that the Jews offered. The Jews being a stiff-necked people were not
all that
> interested in having the pagans join hands with them. One thing led 
> to another and voila you get Christianity as a bizarre mixture of 
> Jewish ethics and NeoPlatonism.
> 
> But it all seems to me to stem from the difficulty of attempting to
> rationalize ethics. Ethics is about what ought to be and that is a 
> tough thing to justify.

[Khaled]
While on a trip to Thailand I asked our tour guide if he had a belief in
Heaven and Hell. He pointed to his temple and said this is your hell.
That sent me reeling that I forgot to ask where heaven is.
The point is that you become you own moral compass. How do you set that?
well I am still looking.

So now it's your own conscious you have to answer to and some deity
somewhere. That is a state of mind that few of us will ever reach. Not in
terms of doing what is right, lots of people do that. But doing it
because YOU know it's right.

Khaled