Perhaps it would be worth discussing the quote regardless, no? I found the last half particularly intriguing. "The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy." I think it's at least somewhat true. At the same time, I think we're all "bad." There rarely totally good and totally bad people- we're all somewhere on the scale between, and most of us crave mercy as well.
And you are right too, it is worth thinking about. Just not around the religious, they tend to get angry if thing are invented by people and not by their deities.
This post was edited by JakobA the unAmerican. at July 8, 2017 3:24 PM MDT
well. I have bee tod so very loudly and consistently that morality cannot come from anywhere else than their god, that I kind of think of it as a religious doctrine.
Morality "is what we should do because of what we are."
I know a number of atheists whose values and principles of conduct put those of some so-called "religious" to shame.
A reasonable system of ethics can be formulated without any reference to a "god"---determining what we are does not require the existence of a god to explain the obvious to us.
This post was edited by tom jackson at July 10, 2017 3:32 PM MDT