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There is a lot to unpack in this article. >If you, like me, are unchurched and don’t draw your values from a religion, then where do you get them from? From wh

There is a lot to unpack in this article. >If you, like me, are unchurched and don’t draw your values from a religion, then where do you get them from? From what broad tradition do you acquire your sense of what is good, normal and worthwhile in life, and – if I can put it this way – your general vibe too? >When I’ve asked my non-religious friends, colleagues and students this question, they’re almost always stumped. Their impulse is to say one of three things: ‘from my experience’, ‘from friends and family’ or ‘from human nature’. I'm non-religious and I'd say none of these three things. I derive my value system from empathy and (from what I strive to be) logical consistency. > ‘What society-or-civilisation-sized thing can you point to as the source of your values? I’m talking about the kind of thing that, were you Christian, you’d just say: “Ah, the Bible,” or “Oh, my Church.’’’ None, but why should a society-or-civilisation-sized thing be any more valid as a source for your values than anything else? There is no intrinsic wisdom in society-and-civilisation-sized things (quite the opposite could be argued). Ultimately the author's conclusion is basically that you need a religion in order to have a value system, and that liberalism is a sort of quasi-religion that can offer that. In fact, it is entirely possible to have a coherent value system that is not based on a religion, quasi-religion or mass-movement of any kind.

thinkingemote 2y ago
There's a current growing body of understanding that what we think of as valuable is formed by religious thinking. I would argue that what we think of as "empathy" is itself culturally constructed. These ideas are real but they are formed and shaped by the culture. The basic idea is that human values and rights are not actually self evident. A kind of cultural Christianity where the values have formed the sub structure of our western lives, institutions and thinking, so much that we can get rid of the actual religion but the values and impact it has had remains. Richard Dawkins recognises this today and calls himself a cultural Christian. We need to look at history, other religions and cultures to see what other value systems there are, and to see what a value system really means. Anthropology really helps with this. One example would be to look at how people treat outsiders or foreigners. I imagine a modern atheist seeking to change the world would have to recognise what cultural constructivism means, recognise that value systems are constructed and negotiated, understand that the meaning and value of things are a process of narrative and probably end up creating something like Christianity as a result!
- The_Colonel 2y ago
  If empathy is a social construct, shouldn't, we see e. g. societies without empathy as we (e. g. cultural Christians) know it? Is there some example of that?
  - tazu 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - mrkeen 2y ago
      You should probably tie it back to the disputed point somehow - religiosity and values. If you see bad values - "extremely frequent killing, cannibalism, rape, incest, etc" - what's their religiosity? > Arguably, nowhere is this scholarly silence starker than in Sub-Saharan Africa (hence- forth SSA), often cited as the world’s most religious region. > The two most extensive data sources on the topic, however, are the Pew Research Center (2010) and Afrobarometer (2018), both of which assess the proportion of unaffiliated individuals across the region at around 3.2 per cent. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/00020397211052567 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/000203972110525...
      - tazu 2y ago
        [flagged]
  - harimau777 2y ago
    I don't think that it's necessarily a binary "empath" or "no empath" so much as differences in who a given culture says you should be empathetic towards, what you should be empathetic about, how empathetic you should be, what obligations empathy entails, etc. So you might see a society that says that certain races, cultures, or "sinners" do not deserve empathy or deserve less empathy. Another example are highly free market oriented political philosophies which argue that businesses should be governed by maximizing profit rather than empathy.
  - thinkingemote 2y ago
persnickety 2y ago
As a moral relativist, I'd go even farther: I derive my values from me. Or my own intuition. Since I believe values to follow are arbitrary, it doesn't matter that much where they are derived from. Religion? Sure. Bodily pleasure? All right. Following the vibes? No problem. Civilization-sized or not, meh. No explanation needed. It's only when I descend towards the practical life, and have to put on my hat of a good citizen, the choice and origin of values starts becoming relevant. There, I may say: I derive my values from my intuitions on co-operation. But are my intuitions drawn from liberalism, or did they merely end up similar to liberalism? Having been part of a somewhat liberal society since birth, I can't give an answer one way or the ohther.
mrkeen 2y ago
> If you, like me, are unchurched and don’t draw your values from a religion, then where do you get them from? There's an even easier rebuttal: how does the believer choose which texts to obey and which to discard? Even if he blindly pledges himself to one particular translation of one particular text, how does he decide whether to eat bacon, kill homosexuals, or stone disobedient children?
- theonething 2y ago
  The New Testament supersedes the Old. The examples you list are from the Old Testament. At least the first one about eating pork is. I don't recall any OT commandments about the other two.

thinkingemote 2y ago

There's a current growing body of understanding that what we think of as valuable is formed by religious thinking. I would argue that what we think of as "empathy" is itself culturally constructed. These ideas are real but they are formed and shaped by the culture. The basic idea is that human values and rights are not actually self evident. A kind of cultural Christianity where the values have formed the sub structure of our western lives, institutions and thinking, so much that we can get rid of the actual religion but the values and impact it has had remains. Richard Dawkins recognises this today and calls himself a cultural Christian. We need to look at history, other religions and cultures to see what other value systems there are, and to see what a value system really means. Anthropology really helps with this. One example would be to look at how people treat outsiders or foreigners. I imagine a modern atheist seeking to change the world would have to recognise what cultural constructivism means, recognise that value systems are constructed and negotiated, understand that the meaning and value of things are a process of narrative and probably end up creating something like Christianity as a result!

The_Colonel 2y ago
If empathy is a social construct, shouldn't, we see e. g. societies without empathy as we (e. g. cultural Christians) know it? Is there some example of that?
- tazu 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - mrkeen 2y ago
    You should probably tie it back to the disputed point somehow - religiosity and values. If you see bad values - "extremely frequent killing, cannibalism, rape, incest, etc" - what's their religiosity? > Arguably, nowhere is this scholarly silence starker than in Sub-Saharan Africa (hence- forth SSA), often cited as the world’s most religious region. > The two most extensive data sources on the topic, however, are the Pew Research Center (2010) and Afrobarometer (2018), both of which assess the proportion of unaffiliated individuals across the region at around 3.2 per cent. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/00020397211052567 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/000203972110525...
    - tazu 2y ago
      [flagged]
- harimau777 2y ago
  I don't think that it's necessarily a binary "empath" or "no empath" so much as differences in who a given culture says you should be empathetic towards, what you should be empathetic about, how empathetic you should be, what obligations empathy entails, etc. So you might see a society that says that certain races, cultures, or "sinners" do not deserve empathy or deserve less empathy. Another example are highly free market oriented political philosophies which argue that businesses should be governed by maximizing profit rather than empathy.
- thinkingemote 2y ago

persnickety 2y ago

As a moral relativist, I'd go even farther: I derive my values from me. Or my own intuition. Since I believe values to follow are arbitrary, it doesn't matter that much where they are derived from. Religion? Sure. Bodily pleasure? All right. Following the vibes? No problem. Civilization-sized or not, meh. No explanation needed. It's only when I descend towards the practical life, and have to put on my hat of a good citizen, the choice and origin of values starts becoming relevant. There, I may say: I derive my values from my intuitions on co-operation. But are my intuitions drawn from liberalism, or did they merely end up similar to liberalism? Having been part of a somewhat liberal society since birth, I can't give an answer one way or the ohther.

mrkeen 2y ago

> If you, like me, are unchurched and don’t draw your values from a religion, then where do you get them from? There's an even easier rebuttal: how does the believer choose which texts to obey and which to discard? Even if he blindly pledges himself to one particular translation of one particular text, how does he decide whether to eat bacon, kill homosexuals, or stone disobedient children?

theonething 2y ago
The New Testament supersedes the Old. The examples you list are from the Old Testament. At least the first one about eating pork is. I don't recall any OT commandments about the other two.