Since I seem to be the other person you're implicitly summoning here (or even if I'm not), I feel compelled to have a say here... so, PMFJI.

>Now you seem to be arguing that one cannot say humans are intrinsically anything. On that we can sort of agree- it was the point I tried to address. But btw, have you had kids close together? did you nurture them well? Did they ever pinch and hurt each other gratuitously when tired or bored? Was that your fault, then, if their behavior is a result of your upbringing?

First couple of times, no - the kids don't really understand all the consequences of their actions, not right away. But if they do things like that persistently, then I'd attribute that to parents, or other people who may have influenced them. I also count influence by omission as influence.

>>>I think you are having two discussions here, one with someone else :) But in any case certain religions have an awful lot to answer for.
>
>You keep saying that. In response, I'll keep saying that every bad deed attributed to religion was supported by the prevailing society- else it couldn't have occurred. You cannot tar religion without tarring the society framework it occupied as well. In which case it is not logical to assign morality to society and not to religion because it did bad things. Society's hands as just as bloody.

This cuts both ways. Keep in mind that in most of those cases, organized religion did weild a lot of power, and that it likewise dictated the society's morality. So yes, both sets of hands were just as bloody.

>>>But RichP's point in this thread was that morality is not the exclusive domain of religion. That one can be moral without being religous. Thats all. This position does not attack religion not does it exclude it.
>
>My point was that despite the naysayers, religion is more often associated with moral *behavior* than those who are unreligious. I gave examples of missionary activity without prosetylation. Name the agnostic/atheist equivalent. Peace Corps was quoted, but if you go to their site and look at benefits you see one sentence for "help the poor" followed by paragraph after paragraph covering the social, career and academic benefits received in the transaction. Not really the same. Every time somebody claims "religion has a lot to answer for" it seems perfectly valid to point this out as well.

More quotes: volunteer blood donors, doctors without frontiers, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, workers' solidarity funds.

Actually, I don't have any beef with religion per se. I do have with organized religion. If you ever find one which

- doesn't tell me how to live
- doesn't claim to have monopoly on truth
- doesn't claim to have monopoly on morality
- doesn't claim to have monopoly on spirituality
- doesn't tell me what to think about non-members
- doesn't tell me what to do with non-members
- doesn't claim to have a stake in my marriage
- doesn't require my kids to be members
- doesn't feel it's its duty to make an eulogy on me from their POV
- doesn't ever require any money (peer pressure as a retrieval method also counts)
- doesn't ever ask me to help it expand by canvassing/converting new members
- doesn't mind if their pontifice maxima's husband is an unbeliever
- doesn't have ranks and hierarchy
- doesn't try to be richer than their average member

...I'm not promising that I'd become a member, but I would really make an honest exception for them in any dispute of this sort.