AJ,
The joke is not about the missionary whether or not he could be bypassed, but about the canibals who thought he could.

Anyhow, I wrote “it reminded me” (and possibly others). It obviously does not remind you since you have probably a different understanding of how ethical, rational and aesthetic aspects are knit together in religion which I like to see as the “elephant” in the anscient Indian story studied by the “six blind men“: a psychologist, an anthropologist, a sociologist, an evolutionist a philosopher, an ethicist, a historian (sorry, that makes seven). They all can agree that there indeed is a phenomenon called religion, but each one can see only some manifestations of it - some see mainly its ethical, some mainly its rational some its aesthetic features but have no idea what this “elephant” actually is, what is its purpose or why it is there at all.

That makes no difference to my rebuttal, George.

<<The joke is not about the missionary whether or not he could be bypassed, but about the canibals who thought he could.>>

But I’ll re-phrase what I said for your sake:

The joke is not analogous to my statement because people are not mistaken in their belief that religion is something that is unnecessary and can be by-passed.

The bottom line is that the joke assumes that religion is a necessary component to ethics, yet I have explained why it isn’t. The joke makes a false assumption regardless of how you want to frame it.

The joke may be a more appropriate analogy in other contexts (although I can’t imagine an area in which religion would be so indispensable that its function could never have been performed by a more secular mechanism such that the rest of the missionary's body would be analogous to it), but it’s not appropriate in this one.

Firstly, if I was to: "wonder whether we couldn't go direct to ethics without going via supernatural fables", this could be problematic for myself and potentially others.

When I was at a Christian high school, (with health studies) I decided to go on a vegetarian diet for three weeks and have stayed vegetarian ever since. This movement has provided myself with a peaceful lifestyle that I highly appreciate and realise that I may not have received if I was at a public high school.

Furthermore, "what is the moral basis of marriage?"... (or I would argue any social activity)...

"Whatever societies deem it to be. Marriage (or social activities in general) (are), after all, a social construct."

So societies now decide a social construct? Which ones? How? When and where? This is very complex in regards to those questions (any many others) in the context that there are at least two human based elements of society, in which both (at a reasonable level) need to respect or have an acceptance of an idea or ideas that have been created or put forward.

Firstly there is a view of society, like say people living a street or local town or suburb and then secondly, (societies) such as groups or organisations. These elements can be politically neutral, whilst others strong minded or very political.

It is unlikely, that any of these elements will be able to reach a social contract of some nature or accept the view of another. It is something that humans will have to live with and learn to adapt to. Finally, if one wants to lecture others about ethics, I could start a focus about Christian vegetarianism but I'm not going to though, as I simply do not accept such a move is appropriate.

What do you mean “now”, NathanJ.

<<So societies now decide a social construct?>>

Who else did you think was going to do it for us? The god(s) you don’t believe in?

Perhaps “determine” would have been a word that you would have found less upsetting?

<<Which ones?>>

All of them.

<<How?>>

That would depend on the social construct one is talking about. Some by the pen, some by the sword, some by an unconscious and/or directionless ever-shifting zeitgeist, some by a combination thereof.

<<When and where?>>

Everywhere, all the time.

This rest of your post makes no sense at all. However, it sounds to me like you are once again getting upset at my disdain for religion and think that it is somehow unwarranted or unhelpful, despite my previous efforts to explain to you in great detail exactly why my disdain is justified, and constructive even.

Finally, I would add that spruiking religion as a necessary factor for a lifestyle change that has brought you peace (I bet the slaves in the US between 1619-1864 would be relieved to hear about that at least) is a non sequitur as it does not sound to me as though one could attribute it to religion any more than one could attribute it to the fact that it was a school in the first place, and less so to the fact that the place was probably a private school, and had “health studies” (whatever they are).

I knew this article would bring out the deicides amongst us. Those of you who fit this description ought to pause and ask yourself why you hate the Bible so much and try to discount its effect. Or worse, defame it.

Of course it is a collection of books, and excludes other books that could have been included. So what? That doesn't invalidate its effect. Although the idea that somehow it was an invention of the Roman Empire, or the Church fathers, demonstrates how few scholars there are on this forum. The Jewish Bible predates Jesus by several hundred years in its last books, and much more in its earliest books.

Then there is the idea that it is the product of red neck desert dwellers. Israel was part of what is known as the "fertile crescent" and was a reasonably desireable place to live. And Jews were valued all over the Mediterannean as clerks and courtiers. Their concentration on understanding the written word and arguing about their Bible paid dividends.

While some of you sneer at their "sky fairy", the Jewish God is much more defensible than the Olympian deities who all apparently lived on Mt Olympus, and other pagan deities with similar attributes. Or the Eastern Mediterranean worship of kings and emperors, as well as ancestors, as being gods. Christianity exported monotheism to the pagan world, which provided a more scientific way of looking at existence than spending your whole life trying to avoid offending a tribe of arbitrary gods, or buying them off with sacrifices.

You might also consider that if it wasn't for the Christian bible, you wouldn't be able to sneer at parts of the bible for treating others, like women, slaves and homosexuals, as less than human. You wouldn't have the sense this was wrong, because human rights as we understand them are mostly a Christian invention.

Yuyutsu, Graham
"Good luck with trying to find any ethics in nature: so far, no trace or hint of goodness or evilness were ever discovered by natural science.

Not by natural science: by argumentation.

"We certainly need ethics, but why should we require them to be rational and/or natural? Shouldn't we just be satisfied when they do their job?"
We should be satisfied when they do their job, but they can't do their job when they're irrational.

The ethical problem is, at root, how to deal justly with the problem of scarcity, because if scarcity were not the problem, then A's use of resources could not possibly conflict with B's, even in theory, and there would be no possibility of inter-human conflict, and no possibility of any ethical issue.

Where theistic ethics do their job, it's because they have blundered - by way of fables of superbeings and flying donkies - onto a viable and *rational* ethic.

However the fundamental irrationality of the belief in God will always give rise to fundamental errors of ethics. What this means is that we need the *factual* and *logical* basis of ethics to be true, otherwise the ethics will miscarry. And sky-fairies, flying donkeys and such, are not true.

But despair not.

Argumentation presupposes a certain ethical axiom - i.e. you're not trying to use brute force to settle the question in issue, because if you were, argumentation would be redundant. Argumentation means recourse to rationality, and rationality rules out certain propositions and classes of propositions.

Therefore we are capable of a rational ethics. And I humbly submit that we can identify it if people either admit it, or must contradict themselves to deny it.

How about that?

AJ
“So you can skip the middleman and simply do what you think is right,”

Aye there’s the rub. Because if people simply do what they think is right, that, of itself, won’t mean it’s ethically right, will it?