All Religions Are False.

precisely the same as a god or gods. i'm not sure, but i'm guessing that's your point.
all we can ever know, is that nothing we can know, can exclude the possibility, of their existence.

anything more then that, and of course, we're making it up ourselves.
if not personally, then someone just as much a physical and imperfect person, at one time or another, individually or by committee.

i can't see any harm in people imagining a god or a unicorn exists,
but i can see harm in people imagining their existence depends more on their doing so,
then on, for instance, the air that they breathe.

now coyote exists. he's that scrawny dog lookin' guy over there, with the big shit eatin' grin on his face.
now some folks say he made human people to exist, some way or another, dependin' on who'se tellin it, as some kind of really big dumb joke.

 

I fundamentally disagree with your take on morality. I've discussed this with you on many occasions. Life has a single just and absolutely moral imperative and that is self interest. It is the gift of self devotion that motivates life. It is from self interest compared to self aspiration that the relative perception of all kindness or meanness or benefit or harm comes. The idea of moral restraint is just a battle with your own hierarchical claims . There is no question, no personal struggle to be good, or awareness of not causing harm that has any effect other than the effect of personally struggling. On the other hand there is no effort that a person spares by nature without struggle or confusion of conscience, for those things that are important to him, those things he calls his or his own, and all the protection from harm we can muster comes as natural outpouring toward those things we identify with as our own. No moral restraint required. What we call the need for moral restraint is simply moralizing, a license to complain or contend against one thing or another and feel blessed by our god of goodness in doing so. To feel morally superior and to cultivate shame. We get to tell each on this basis of, "I know what is best, personal recognizance and tell us what is wrong with this or that religion. The reason this perspective is not as precisely functional as we would like it to appear is because it is the same old shit of accusing humanity for the existence of personal discomfort. I don't mean this at all a personal attack but to illumine the kind of rackets we all pull on each other in the name of our gods or our codes of goodness.

A teacher of goodness has a single attribute that sets him on a road to that path and that is somewhere he made a deliberate choice to see others interest as not separate from or in conflict to his own. Who can commit a crime against you but that you call him criminal in your relations with him. All civility is precisely equal to your relationship to the person standing next to you no matter who they are or what they have done.

 

i don't see your conflict. the avoidance of causing needless suffering and harm IS self interest. it just happens to be a universally shared self interest, that for whatever reason, many people have been conditioned to deny.