People who believe in a god and a devil fighting for their soul have a built in mega excuse to choose to do bad things. Relgion is the great enabler. If you believe people are born in sin or even neutral with a fight for their soul...they imagine their temptations to be from outside themselves and beyond their control.
OTOH if you believe yourself to be born in love and good, you have no excuse but your own choices. And that is all life is...one choice after another that YOU make. You have no excuse of a bad guy tempting you to do anything. Its all been you.And no one is going to reverse it or save you in the end OR damn you....but you....
Why would I believe that I was born in love and good? I was born with a set of predispositions conditioned by my genes and by my environment, some good and some bad. I may have even been born with with a predisposition for severe mental illness that makes it likely that I become a serial killer without normal human empathy. Ultimately all of my behavior may be determined by the impersonal mathematical laws of physics. There is no autonomous self that is capable of making decisions independent of those physical laws.
I don't see how a purely naturalistic view of the human person leads to any more personal responsibility than a religious view. You just replace god and the devil with genes and our environment. Original sin is replaced with all our unsavory evolutionary baggage.
Im just closer to your view than a 'devil made me so it' view. I think we always have choice and it is not just blindly driven by our predispositions. If i have a predispositon to cancer i can choose a healthier lifestyle and maybe dodge the bullet.
Subconsciously, you never have to take full responsibility for ANY of your actions. Good or Bad.
If you do good deeds the spirit get credit. So JC and Elohim are high fiving out there on Kolob, but it wasn't fully you who did the good thing, ohhhh no, because you were moved by holy ghost, which is where all things good come from.
But, if you do a bad deed JC is gonna be pissed, and Satan's gonna get credit and will be high fiving someone else... but who...., becasue he doesn't have a physical body to high five someone with so........ We'll just say he's figh fiving himself.
Total emotional manipulation. There is nothing you can take full credit for morally. And this is understood at an extremely young age. You have no moral CONTROL either way. Is it any wonder so many Mormons are on anti-depressants? They're emotionally numb...
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/23/2011 11:07AM by MDMAzing.
This is what Im getting at: the relegating of responsibility outside one's self. This kind of indoctrination keeps people from maturing in whatever they think of as spirituality. You pass the buck in BOTH any goodness or badness. Its a very unhealthy way to live.
Some people don't like the stigma of Atheist. And so..........They'd much prefer the stigma of schizofrenic???; that you have people talking to them in your head making them do things...
BUT, if you wear certain clothes, say certain things in the Temple, Pray in a pseudo-scripted way, associate with certain people, pay pay pay, fast, accept callings, fulfill callings, do church at least 8 hours a week, etc etc etc etc...
then voila-la. You'll only hear 3 voices. Your own voice, the voice of Holy Ghost, and very quietly the voice of Satan. Almost like there's only two voices in you head. Talk about BLISS!!
um, well...........I can deal with the stigma of atheist. A wee bit more sane for my purposes. ;)
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/23/2011 12:14PM by MDMAzing.