Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter



I believe religion is "the opiate of the masses" and one should strive to experience heaven here on Earth as there is no other. I also believe in moral absolutes which are beyond reasonable debate and find these to be self evident. How are these things mutually exclusive?


They’re mutually exclusive because there is no such thing as a “moral absolutes which are beyond reasonable debate” and “self evident”. Values cannot be reached from facts or to put it another way what should be cannot be ascertained from what is.

The rational materialist (or material rationalist?) must irrationally believe that unlike everything else in that system their mind is able to transcend its Darwinian programming in order to arrive at some semblance of moral absolute for the good of all. That belief is called faith.

Everyone ultimately ends up exercising faith in one way or another. The idea that one system or making sense of this (religion) is morally superior to another (rationalistic humanism) is as subjective as the faith it takes to look at the processes of evolution andbelive that it’s products could magically transcend them.

Two faiths; one must simply decide which one is most capable of supporting a contented life... and of being scaled up to do so over long periods of time.