What People Could Be

Communism fails for the reason, it is based on what people could be, not what they are. We are headed for the sixth extinction for the same reason. Humans are unwilling to place the community good over personal economic greed. Trump is the prime example.

For communism to work, altruism would need to be a common or near universal characteristic of the human species. It is not. Even many of those who claim to be altruistic do altruistic things for how it make them feel, not because they are altruistic by nature. The same characteristic would be necessary to stop carbon dioxide rise, climate warming and the impending climate change disaster that is looming on the horizon, along with the sixth extinction. It is less clear it extinction is the correct term; great population reduction, bottle neck, or similar may be a more correct term. Crop failure will cause starvation and populations conserving the remaining foods will cause even more starvation. Distrust, and evaluation of needs may cause much economic issues for the high living peoples. Those who produce foods will have to feed themselves first, and others will just come second or last. Oh well, in the end we all just die anyway.

Our purpose, if we have one, is to produce the next generation, and teach them how to live for the next year, until the next crop, be it animal or plant or plants to feed the animals. Cloth and shelter come next, but as these are more durable, are less urgent. But what do I know?

The point is that we must honestly, brutally know what people really are, even if we are trying to be more Liberal, Progressive, forward thinking and altruistic humans. We can never lose sight of what people really are, else we will parish first.      

And thinking makes it so

https://aaagnostica.org/2018/08/26/most-americans-believe-in-a-higher-power-but-not-always-in-the-god-of-the-bible/    got me thinking. What is "spiritual but not religious" really mean?  In conclusion it is a not owning the beliefs as the atheist is forced to do, but rather placing the ownership of our beliefs outside of us, but not in a defined god. The spiritual do not claim ownership of their own beliefs. If they do not own them, then they are not responsible. There is nothing else.

God allow a simple thinking to occur. Someone else is responsible for telling us how we should live, why to live, our morals from society, dictates our should do behavior. All these things are truly subjective, while religion makes the decisions to make these items seem objective.

Existential philosophy says that since we exist, we should make the most of it as a society. To do this we need to follow something like the golden rule, but some of us do not like to be patronized, therefore the silver rule, "do not do to others those things which we would not tolerate being done to us. We need to treat others as political equals, but not provide for them beyond survival. Since the earth is now overpopulated, survival is not necessary. Only the best should reproduce, and then only one child until we get to a reasonable population, as defined by a stable carbon dioxide level. That will take a century or more. 

Virtue Ethics, that is picking a bunch of virtues, and saying that virtue is the only good, and vice the only evil, is fine and good some of the time, but some define greed for money as a virtue, and that is not completely right. More money is good, but abusing the people to get it is not. Yet modren society thinks that being rich is a desirable. That is a limitation of Virtue ethnic and that philosophy.

The Philosophy of Caring, must also chose carefully. Family may be important, but some families have bad people within them. Should I care about those? Not so much, for society would be better off with out them.

It is not the event that bothers us, but our thinking about the event. This suggest that our thinking makes it so. So who owns the basic beliefs that we originally learned from others? Are these beliefs right and true? It is my opinion that those who claim to be spiritual but not religions have broken away from god thinking but have not yet taken ownership of their beliefs, but what do I know. And thinking makes it so.

Prayer

https://aaagnostica.org/2018/08/12/the-talking-cure-in-recovery/

Does this explain the benefit of prayer?

Ethics, morals and values have no intrinsic values. Those are always subjective and adaptive.  We do not have mind independence, as much of what we know was learned from others. Our mind is a reflection of the culture we grew up in, well, at least until we start to clean up out beliefs, and even then, it is a reflection of what we read and who we relate to. 

Universal Evaluation of Self.

1. You have a great need for other people to like and admire you.
2. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself.
3. You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage.
4. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them.
5. Your sexual adjustment has presented problems for you.
6. Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside.
7. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.
8. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations.
9. You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof.
10. You have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others.
11. At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved.
12. Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic.
13. Security is one of your major goals in life."

(from "The Evolution of Religion: How Religions Originate, Change, and Die" by Alex Shelby)

I will add:
We have difficulty handling the unknown, after we realize that we do not know:

In the beginning, it was cold, dark, and there was nothing. 
A small area warmed to slightly above absolute zero due to slight variation.
The Higgs field started to exist.
The reaction is spontaneity and exothermic, and does not stop once started.
The forces split, the lower quarks and quirks came into existence.
Many met with there counterpart and annihilated, producing heat.
It became very hot, forming plasma, and expansion started.
Later electrons, protons, neutrons, formed and grouped into atoms of hydrogen, helium and a little bit of lithium as cooling around the edge started.
Radiation started to leave at the speed of light.
It is unclear if this makes more space or expands into space, nothingness.

Speaking to the Religious

Once we realize that there are no gods, no supernatural, and there is no admissible evidence of a god, then all religions are just pitching woo. There are no objective or traditional ethics or morals, they are just handed down, as from mystics. But morals, ethics, and values are therefore subjective and have no foundation other than logic. Whats more, they are adaptive; that is they change with the situation, whether we realize the reasons or not. When we start looking at the reasoning, we realize that now. more than ever, religions are pitching woo.

Religions prime motivation is to grow the religion. Big families are/were the surest way; but now that we humans have overpopulated the globe, human life on the fringes has much less value. That makes abortion just fine, and birth control required. Morals are adaptive.

Fraud must be considered to be a serious crime. It was not in biblical/Sumerian time, hence all the old codes do not outlaw it, so like computer crimes, it is a relative newcomer to the crimes of the world. The government needs to catch up and prosecute these as much as theft.

Once we realize there are no gods, then religion becomes fraud; selling something they cannot deliver. There is no life after death, no miracles, no help to come through prayer, well only self deception, perhaps some value in self talk. Community is a separate item, some churches build community, and some split community. Oh well, there is little community in the fast changing urban environment, especially for the low social people. 

So to go from a well developed nihilist like myself, to a religious is not rational. To define a nihilist: a person who believes that life is meaningless and rejects all religious and moral principles, but rather adopts humanist, or existential ethics, morals, values while painting on a purpose or meaning to life, while recognizing there is no universal purpose or meaning... Even talking to the religious is difficult since they do not have a clue about what an atheist really thinks... and yet they want to gloss over the fact that there is no evidence for a god.   

give us a handout

I had to call it something.

• "He who interferes in what does not concern him finds what does not please him" from the Muslim culture, but there needs to be limits. If we are aiming at world government, then there must be uniformity... yet culture, ethic, morals, values are adaptive and subjective. There is nothing physically wrong with eating horse and dogs, or humans for that mater. Killing, on the other hand is wrong for it is violence against others and will be reciprocated.   
• Mind your own business. This must be one of the collateral of ethics. It is necessary in a diverse population, and yet it is not right either. We need to allow the idiots to be idiots, but if the idiots are doing harm to others, we should not permit it either. But what is harm? Teaching children to follow a wrong belief system; Creationism, for example, or believing in witch craft or herbal medicine, holistic treatments for serious diseases. How about human driven climate change deniers. An idiot is an idiot, and should we make efforts to correct them or just leave them to do as they please. 
• Mind the greater good. This must also be a collateral issue, especially in earth over population control, but the religions are pushing population growth. The greater good is to reduce population to some manageable level, and we may already go over the turning point in climate warming, a nuclear winter may fix the problem, or a major volcanic eruption, or an asteroid. Slow heat and crop failures may be the way we go, or the next extinction event goes. Complete of partial, it does not matter much. 
• A statement of belief will be necessary. There are no gods, no afterlife, no supernatural. Physics dictates the reality. On a conceptual level, all must be consistent with the physical facts that exist. If it is not consistent with the physical facts, it is likely not true. Reality rules. But people and the relationship between people is beyond my understanding.

and more again

give us a handout to revive us again. beats an ear worm.

from

So ethics are subjective; or opinion sort of. (and thinking makes it so)  After the first few bit of logic, I want to live in peace, prosper, reproduce... well I need to foster suitable conditions for that in myself and in others, demand reciprocity, and we arrive at some subjective plus logic premises. After that, well not so much is either logic or objective.

It is reasonable that every child should not be handicapped at birth by inbreeding, therefore it is logical to have a probation mating with relatives. If a child is to grow up in a home where both parents are present, than monogamous relationship is required in our culture. We are not evolved enough of culture for much else main stream: learned behavior of most of us requires to pass on our genes, and not provide for others gene lines.

Culture is survival adaptive often. Marriage, commitment to one's partner and offspring, does not allow for jealousy, which, to some extent is a trained in cultural characteristic. The Inuit get around this by one women marrying a family of boys often. One women, several related brothers. No one is sure who is the father. It took many males to provide for a family. The unwanted young and handicapped old were exposed to die or left in permanent camps, where such existed, to live as long as they were able, and when the next visitation to the permanent camp occurred...

Multiple wives were common in warring tribes, were many young men went away to fight and die. We, in Europe and North America are in an overpopulation situation. Is that the drive that is causing homosexuals to increase? I do not know.

So our ethics, morals, values are likely subjective and adaptive to our cultural and genetic survival, but we can also refine these by common adoption of a new standard, thereby create a new cultural norms.