How sharper than an atheist wit...

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So, religions have no purpose? Well, I am glad that this is recognized.

Where stands it written religions have no purpose?

I missed that.

While the primary motivation for a given religion may not be purpose, religious organizations clearly are purposed,

Outside the organization of course, you have to talk about the purpose of the Christian, the Buddhist, the Vociferous Evangelical Atheist. Which purposes are at least as purposeful as the goals of the Polar Bear Club.

But perhaps you are employing the aforementioned wit to say,

91 says "In my view the role of religion is to provide man with the salvation he needs." But Awesomely Glorious, clear of sight and enlightened of outlook, says "We don't ned no stinking salvation", ergo, says Awesomelyh Glorious, the purpose claimed by 91 ia a non-purpose and 91 as good as admits religion has no purpose.

If that is not your implication, sorry, your words can bear that interpretation.

If it is your implication, I will tell you as I have oft been admonished, talking over other's heads is perverse self-gratification.

I still do it myself, but I am working the program trying to quit.

The problem with justice is that it has at least two connotations. The first, which I refer to is a sense of fairness. It has recently been found that even young babies are aware of this and when one child gets better treatment than another, even at a very young age, resentment developments. This seems to be inborn and I think it occurs in dogs as well. That is the sense of injustice I see as related to compassion. There is another sense of justice relating to the conformity to rules, whether that be legal, religious or merely social. That can be damaging to compassion.
Probably we all have this inner voice but I strongly suspect it says different things to different people depending upon conditioning and strong emotions that can gain their power from several psychological sources and it does not always dictate civil behavior.

Salvation plays no part in my concept of social necessities. It is all part of that life after death delusion which merely appears to me to be psychotic nonsense.

Seeing the Right Thing does not mean doing the Right Thing.

Every intelligent person knows the difference between Right and Wrong. That does not guarantee that they will behave Rightly.

ruveyn

Under Jewish Law an Israelite who was indentured had to be let go at the end of seven years and be completely provisioned by his former master when sent forth.

For a Cana'anite being enslaved was for life, but there were rules prohibiting the mistreatment of slaves. Once a Jewish state was established in what used be the Land of Can'an there were no more Cana'anite slaves. Non-Jews were permitted in the Holy Land provided they followed the seven commandments given to Noah and his sons. They are as follows:"

Prohibition of Idolatry: You shall not have any idols before God.
Prohibition of Murder: You shall not murder. (Genesis 9:6)
Prohibition of Theft: You shall not steal.
Prohibition of Sexual immorality: You shall not commit any of a series of sexual prohibitions, namely adultery, certain types of incest, anal sex between men and bestiality.
Prohibition of Blasphemy: You shall not blaspheme God's name.
Dietary Law: Do not eat flesh taken from an animal while it is still alive. (Genesis 9:4, as interpreted in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 59a)
Requirement to have just Laws:

That latter requires that there be a means of enforcing the first six laws and a means of justly judging when any of the first six laws were breached. In short, a proper or righteous community was required to have cops and judges to keep order and peace.

Notice that a follower of the laws given to Noah need not worship God nor offer sacrifices to God. As long as there was no blasphemy or idolatry everything was cool.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Laws_of_Noah
ruveyn

"Every intelligent person knows the difference between Right and Wrong. "

Depends on your definitions of "intelligent", "knows", and "right"

Seems to imply you see right/wrong as absolute [whether external or hardwired]. There I agree.

But with my definitions of "intelligent" and "know" I THINK I would disagree.

We do not need God to know the difference between Right and Wrong. If there is a God and It gave us intelligences and wit then that is sufficient to know. If our intelligence and wit are a contingent outcome of evolution we still have the means of knowing.

It is strange that according to the Genesis account Man was cursed for desiring the knowledge of Good and Evil. So much for God being the one who teaches us. He cursed us for wanting to know.

ruveyn

Well I do hear this sort of thing from atheists a fair bit. However, like most things, it depends on how one looks at the question, perspective is everything. I used to be an atheist so from where I am sitting it seems like the specter of a simple death with no divine accountability is the less frightening option. Moral relativity prefers to exist with this lack of an objective standard.

Peter Hitchens touches on this quite well in the story relating to his own conversion (4:44 but I seriously recommend watching the whole thing):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io1sNfw9-TA[/youtube]

You are right in relation to if God exists then objective moral values do exist. One need not believe in God or moral values for them to exist in this case.

However, why should evolution guarantee an effective outcome in the finding of objective morality?

'But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?'

- Charles Darwin

As one form of monkey I object. We monkeys are not as dumb as you humans believe in your offensive arrogance. Be assured that any major social motivation has a strong evolutionary dynamic and needs no supernatural power to establish it. Social animals need to perform the way they do to survive. Evolution is quick to kill off negative characteristics. Humans have only been existent for a couple of million years. That's a geological instant.

I personally have no issue with the idea that we are evolved from monkeys. I personally think we interact with objective moral values in much the same way we do with mathematics. That is, we interact with something that exists out of necessity rather than causality and that morality exists in a way that is separate to us and we have no need to evolve anything more than a perception of it. I see no reason to believe that if morality has evolved through evolution, that this is any basis for regarding it as correct.

All indications are that everything every living thing is or does has evolutionary roots. No exceptions.

That actually is exactly what I meant. Good eye!

Honestly, I don't usually call the former "justice", but rather call the latter "justice". I wouldn't present the latter as you did, but the latter needs to be recognized as it is what is most commonly called "justice", such as in "the justice system". (don't quibble about whether the justice system is just, the example is just that: a way to frame the issue)

Well no, evolution only applies to living systems. The underlying concepts of mathematics clearly existed before people developed their own conceptual understanding of them.