1. Which is why I firstly put "Not saying that those without a belief in anything can't make laws that work" - it's my cack-handed way of putting it out there that those with a faith in any sort of deity are not the only ones on the planet with some understanding of society and how to make it function. Because that's simply not the case. Look at secular countries such as France - their whole society hasn't fallen into anarchy just because they no longer adopt a "national faith" as it were. I think what is more to my point is that I don't actually know of any current societies that have NOT been influenced by a religious aspect when it comes to organising and regulating the people. Sure, you can get a bunch of atheists, stick them on a desert island and they'll most likely create a sensible society with laws, structure and stuff like that. But if you got those atheists from a country where the laws they've grown up with were steeped in religious texts, however long ago that may have been, then it would be fairly certain to say that they have been influenced by how that society worked. Unless they came from a society originally that had NO religious basis WHATSOEVER throughout all recorded history then one could argue that, however subtly, religion has affected their ability to create laws. Because if you've grown up with "one wife only", whether you agree with the religious source of it or not, to be dropped into a culture that says "no, have at least 10" it's going to grate on what you perceive to be acceptable and right (plus who in their right mind would want 10 nagging fishwives as opposed to just one?). And that's the significance of the religious impact on many of our laws today - even if no one believes in any god, one cannot deny that the original precepts of "do not kill, do not steal" etc come from some sort of belief - whether that be the Judeo-Christian god, a witchdoctor, Mohammed or the flying spaghetti monster.
Like Tsuyu said, other animals clearly have no religious thoughts, they operate on pure instinct. They exhibit signs of basic morality like not killing which, I think, suggests that these things are innate. It's part of our thinking as a species. If you look at human beings, we really couldn't have survived in Africa thousands of years ago if we did not choose to live in communities. We breed and grow very slowly and, absent tools, are not much of a challenge to your average predator. With these facts in mind, I suggest that these basic moral codes have been around as long as our species has. Hammurabi was the first to put these basic moral codes into the form of a societal law, in the already functional and growing ancient China. I won't deny that religion, or at least monotheistic religion, has provided an important role for framing early human civilizations. It encouraged the practice of the arts in their earliest forms and kept literacy alive during very dark parts of human history. Today, though, we have common education absent religious preachings. People are very much capable of making the right decisions without faith (as you have said). In other words, you could argue that any law or societal aspect is borrowing from religion, but I would argue that it doesn't particularly matter. Religion has done things right in human history and borrowing some of those aspects from those societies purely for the reason that they worked is a good thing. I wouldn't argue that, just because you borrow aspects from a religiously framed society, your society is innately religious as well.
I probably haven't been overly articulate here and there's bound to be a load of misunderstanding following this bout of typing diarrhoea, but to my thinking there would be no such thing as "secular reasoning" if there was not religious thinking to compare it against. The very notion of secular reasoning presupposes that there is something else to reason against and therefore unless someone knows of a society without any belief in anything other than themselves - even if it's a holy coconut - the idea that people could create laws utterly devoid of religious influence is a little...unlikely. Even if you consider yourself to not be at all religious or even to hate religion, the laws you have most likely grown up with and accept came from the Bible or something similar in nature. How can one then say "I could make laws without that influence" when they know nothing else to take roots from? However you spin it, "thou shalt not kill" has been a major law in many religious books for hundreds if not thousands of years before you were born - we can only really hypothesise how secular reasoning would create laws because the vast majority of us will not have been born into an utterly belief-barren society.
Well, law and reasoning are two different things entirely. Formal study of reasoning came about with the early greek philosophers and their rivals who taught and studied rhetoric. By secular reasoning I mean making a law "thou shalt not kill" because it's an obviously immoral thing to do and not because of the book of Exodus. In other words, thinking critically to find the best conclusion without looking to holy texts for a basis of the conclusion. I will agree that there is very little evidence for my case because religion has permeated politics for so long, but I will say that the further religion has been removed from politics, the more prosperous the society has become. Separation of Church and State is a real cornerstone that allowed the United States to be a functional country in its earliest days. I'm trying to picture a time that religious thought has persuaded a politician to make the right decision in recent history... but I'm drawing a blank. Maybe it's just my bias, but the only times I can picture religion coming into play in, at least, American politics is claiming a religious affiliation to win votes and making decisions concerning civil liberties (gay marriage, abortion, etc).
2. To me that seems like an ideal but not a reality insofar as at what point do you stop taking on the multitude of differing opinions in order to create some sort of structure and regulation to society? If it is by general consensus then someone somewhere is bound to be put out by laws created because their opinions, values and beliefs have not been considered as far as they are concerned. All that can be done currently is for the individual to make a personal decision regarding various issues and then vote accordingly next time around - if something really gets to a large enough group of people then there is more noticeable action such as protests, strikes and even coups. The issue of belief is such a tricky one because for those with a religious belief, it affects everything they do, say and think (on the whole). How they perceive certain things is affected by what they believe. This can also be said of those who passionately have NO belief in any sort of higher power/being/coconut. People vote according to their beliefs, whether they be theistic or otherwise. People stand up for change according to their beliefs. Belief (or lack thereof) is a powerful thing and should not be underestimated as a result. Could a rational, reasonable and liveable societal structure be created with every single member's conclusions regarding various issues being included without anything or anyone being left out in some measure? I really don't think so. Sometimes what you as a person want gets voted out in favour of the majority and I don't know how that would ever be able to change and still function correctly.
/can of worms. Please don't hurt me.
I agree that faith has a profound effect on voting. My main problem with it, though, is that I find it fundamentally wrong to base a vote that effects an entire country of diverse beliefs on one's own personal faith. I'm not saying that the outcome is always bad, and I guess maybe that's just an opinion of mine since there's no book that says the right and wrong way to vote. But, hey, we both come to the same conclusion. Majority rules. I just don't think that what people choose to have faith in should enter into decision making. Their faith is, by definition, their own. No law can make everyone happy and once it starts to pay attention to what will offend who it becomes innately biased. I would assert, therefore, that the best laws don't consider such things whatsoever. If someone is offended by the law, it's just an effect the law which is much better than being the cause of it. May seem like a minor distinction, but I think it's an important one.
Very interesting - but this again presupposes that early man was the way we believe him to be. What if we are wrong? What if early man did indeed have some sort of belief system in place which supersedes any notion of pack mentality that animals have? I don't know much of anything about the findings concerning early man but I'd wager we can only make deductions from the physical elements of what we know rather than have documented knowledge of what was going on in their heads at the time.
Like I said, I don't think man can survive at all without some sort of reason and innate morality. Because of this, I'd say that it's impossible for man to have survived at all without any sort of religious belief. To me it's a simple question of which one had to come first in order for all of us to be sitting where we are today.
And then comes the question that if the idea of a higher power or whatever is entirely man-made, where do the morals and laws come from which are so widespread among many differing religions, but somehow all hold some common themes for the most part? Two options immediately spring to mind: One, that there is indeed something out there who put these things into our consciousness or two, that all humans are inherently able to make these decisions for themselves without any design or influence. If the latter is true then why have all societies not been created using our inherent knowledge of good and evil but rather through the understanding of religious influence instead? I know the argument that people created religion as a means of explaining their own existence but why, if this is the case, tack on the knowledge of good and evil as part of the religion in question if it's already a part of humanity and therefore has no bearing on the behaviour of people?
/incoherent babbling
I don't think I'm surprising you or anyone when I say that I think that the morality is innate. Religious influence, in those early days of ancient Rome and beyond, was glue that tied together large communities of people. In those days, it was something that made people stay living together because of that shared belief and the need to remain in close proximity to their places of worship. I'm not sure why religion created the concepts of good and evil, but there does seem to be a strange obsession with absolutism in a lot of the things religion says and does. That absolutism can be blamed for a lot, but it can also be credited for helping to hold those early civilizations together. If part of believing in the particular religion of your people is believing that all other religions are false, for what reason would you ever want to live anywhere else?
It served an important role in those days, you'll find no argument there. That societal "glue" is no longer necessary today. We have clashing ideas between neighbors and we've found ways to live together despite them.
