Beyond Belief 6

Crucial distinction was the core objective of the first speaker. She challenged a quote by Steve Weinberg coming right out of the gate in reference to “religion being on her last leg…” she openly challenges his credibility, or at least for that statement. Her monotone speech instills much logic that point to a medium that should be met. Later on, she speaks of religious-based ethics, or if solely derived from therein as being comparable to a four year-old or toddler logic, “be good and I’ll give you the cookie.” I agree. She presents moral behavior as an interest of human beings, thus making it a natural occurrence, although she states that it is not a “sense”. I actually wasn’t aware that northern slavery was more brutal than southern slavery.

Loyal Rue sort of takes off where Richard Dawkins left off in the previous video. He examines morals and their grass roots among human beings. His testimony was a great argument against the religious myth in regard to the origin of human morality. He starts off with a basic example human communication and a co-op system of regulating individual and commutative behavior as our naturalistic starting point giving a simple modern day example of his own home as an example. Rue states that “everybody knows the limits”.
He gives an interesting graph that pin points some of that, but that also includes a breakdown of how the presumed crucifixion relates to human behavior and angst. He provides that going through a tough time, set backs, losses, and continuing on is the “crucifixion and resurrection”.   His octagonal graph depicts religion as a human experience in various areas or strategies which deal with the ritualistic, commutative, and empirical in general. He states that early Christianity struggled to pick up and didn’t quite do so until it found it’s niche in human behavior, more or less to excite it.

The last speaker speaks of an all-knowing god that she was raised to know and fear. An all-knowing and seeing god that she even attempted to hide from. Loss of faith soon ensued after losing her mother in an accidental drowning, and later her father to a melanoma. She found it inconceivable that a higher being was overlooking injustices such the one she encountered as a girl. The rest of the video goes blurry after that. No audio and barely a scrambled picture.

-Jeremy Watkins (M.G.)