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When a person inflicts pain out of cruelty, (mostly) they are to blame. When they inflict pain because of religion, (mostly) religion is to blame.
by WithinReason 5y ago
When a person inflicts pain out of cruelty, (mostly) they are to blame. When they inflict pain because of religion, (mostly) religion is to blame.
- danbruc 5y agoI have at least some sympathy for this argument, humans are not perfect rational beings, they can be influenced, deceived and manipulated. I am less sure about the idea of assigning blame in general, especially as I am pretty convinced that free will does not exist. But I will not go there, this just pull another huge controversy into the discussion and makes it more intractable. That aside, what exactly are we actually arguing about? Are we discussing religion as a justification? Are we discussing who is to blame? The special status of religion? It seems to me that the positions of the people in this thread might actually be quite close together, but that everyone is just arguing about a somewhat different point.
- WithinReason 5y ago> I am less sure about the idea of assigning blame in general, especially as I am pretty convinced that free will does not exist. Of course it doesn't, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't incentivize or disincentivize certain behaviours by assigning blame to the correct source of the behaviour. I case of religion it makes sense to assign blame to religion instead of treating people as cruel, since the way to remove the source of suffering is through removing religion itself, not the cruelty of the person (since the cruelty is likely not present).