[ossyrial]

He is sharing a quote from a religious book, it makes sense to cite it, no? If they quoted the Qur'an, a Buddhist Sutra, a piece by Kahlil Gibran, or a quote by Adam Smith, I would all expect a citation to be honest.

A few comments around we see a quote by Rick Roderick, and one by the Beatles. I don't see why this is fundamentally different and deserves critique.

[vouwfietsman]

Quoting a religious/ideologist book is inherently different to quoting an individual author or a non-religious/spiritual text, because the act of quoting itself is part of a tradition of (in this case evangelical) propagation of the religion/ideology.

We can pretend to see contemporary bible-quoting as a secular thing, but in these cases history matters.

For instance, in the above quote in the part "It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs." it is obvious that the quoted passage goes beyond a non-religious moral text and veers into religious moral judgement.

Furthermore, quoting a passage does not isolate you from the whole of the work, as you would probably take offense to me quoting WWII dictators even if the quote makes sense for the topic in isolation.

What I'm saying is all quite obvious and on the nose behavior by religious (or ideologist) people, who absolutely view quoting as a religious/ideologist act as described above.

[all2]

I'm confused at what you are trying to say. As far as I can tell, it appears you are saying something like "don't quote religious texts in a way that makes them look like they have any claim on moral authority". And it appears to me that you are saying "moral authority", in this case, is a-religious and should not be related to any particular religion.

Am I getting this right?

[vouwfietsman]

Well, fundamentally moral authority is a misguided idea, morals don't flow from an authority, morals are constructed and transformed over time by society. Taking your morals from an authority directly is itself immoral, as they don't have a foundation of human rights or empathy but rather are based on arbitrary ancient writing of arbitrary ancient writers.

I'm saying quoting religious texts without religious context (like you say, morals are not inherently religious) is not a secular act and can not be separated from the religion because of the history around quoting religious texts. Quoting religion in a moral discussion introduces religion into a discussion where religion is not necessary, and could even be harmful.

That's not to say you should never do it, but doing it is not the same as quoting any other text or other author. Again I'm not sure why this is controversial, regardless of the other comments quoting Hitler or Mao's red book in a moral discussion would very much be very weird if there is no reason to introduce any of his writing.

Somehow religion gets a pass, it shouldn't.

[all2]

> Taking your morals from an authority directly is itself immoral, as they don't have a foundation of human rights or empathy but rather are based on arbitrary ancient writing of arbitrary ancient writers.

Where do you think should morals come from? A more precise question would be "where does human morality arise from?" Or even more fundamental, "why is it wrong to do one thing and not another?".

Given what you've said about religion and moral authority, I am genuinely curious to know your answers to these questions.

[vouwfietsman]

As already mentioned, empathy.

You are referencing the age old argument of moral origins, you can simply google to find out many sides of the argument (example: https://www.quora.com/If-not-for-religion-where-do-morals-an...).

However, its quite simple to resolve. The gist of it is: if you need a deity holding judgement over you to distinguish right from wrong, you are probably a psychopath.

[bigstrat2003]

> as you would probably take offense to me quoting WWII dictators even if the quote makes sense for the topic in isolation.

Of course I wouldn't take offense to that. I will accept wisdom wherever it is to be found, even if it's from Hitler himself. I care about the merit of ideas, not the merits of their sources.