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"C J Campbell" wrote in message
...

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...

But regardless, none of this is even required to show that you don't
require
religion to justify happiness. A simple global desire to be happy is
sufficient (if you have no such desire to be happy, you may have a hard
time
comprehending this, but it sure would explain some other things). That's
why large groups of humans get together and agree to try to be happy
together, rather than killing and stealing from each other all the time.


I think a good argument can be made that one reason people kill and steal
stems from the desire to be happy. In this respect happiness (or the
desire
for happiness) could be a negative trait.

It makes no difference why they do it. Unless it is self defense it is
criminal. That has nothing to do with religion.



Personally, I do not consider happiness to be undesirable.

Excellent. Good for you.


I think the role of religion should be to increase happiness.

You can think what you want. In some cases religions were started to make
the founders happy. The followers' happiness is many times overlooked.


Religion need not come into the issue at any time. Lack of a religious
basis does not necessarily require a biological basis (even though in
this
case, there certainly is a biological imperative to try to be happy).

To the contrary, I believe there must be a biological basis for religious
conviction.

How can this be?

But you must understand, too, that I regard religious conviction
(at least in part) as the desire to make sense and order out of things
where
there appears to be none. Thus, I think that recognition of a desire for
happiness (or any other desires or appetites, for that matter) constitutes
a
religion,

You are now making up a new meaning for the word. You choose to force
people to fit into your world view and that does not always work out.

albeit perhaps a very rudimentary one. That my personal religion
may be more elaborate than yours is another matter. It matters little to
me
what people worship, whether it be happiness, the dollar, or aliens from
Betelgeuse -- whatever you worship constitutes a religion. Whether it is a
true religion, that is, whether your particular god or gods actually exist
and can communicate with you, is irrelevant at that level.

I have yet to see any god of any religion communicate with any follower.
Again, you are using a very loose and ill defined meaning of religion.

Nevertheless, I hypothesize that virtually all laws stem from some
religious feeling as I
have defined it.


I am of course very cognizant that this definition is not universally
accepted,

Right. Look up worship and religion in a decent dictionary. You may then
have a clue about why it is not universally accepted...

except, perhaps by universalists. However, I think it is the only
definition that works in this context. Constraining the definition
religious
belief to organized religions, particularly Christianity, seems too
exclusive and narrow and prone to severe problems of ethnocentricity.

Generally religion is reserved for diety worship or recognition. To call
pursuit of wordly things a religion is carrying it too far.


I also recognize that my own organized religion and religious beliefs are
highly structured. Make no mistake, I firmly believe in it. But that does
not mean that I do not recognize that there are other religions. I do
think
that many people err when they say that they do not have religious beliefs
when it is very obvious that they are worshipping something.

Horse****