On religious "morality principles"

In the essay The Tip of The Spear by George Gantz, it is claimed that (in short) religions are the basis of morality that science is devoid of - a quite religious viewpoint, in fact :

"Science does not always serve in an empathic capacity. Nuclear armament, with its potential for causing human extinction, is a clear example. Less clear is the role science may play in fostering particular ideologies such as determinism and materialism , metaphysical worldviews that arguably challenge the efficacy of human empathy and undermine the emotional and psychological foundation of other key human institutions - including religions – that promote empathy . Has science as an institution contributed to existential alienation, the rise of unfettered commercialism or declines in social capital and shared moral frameworks ? "

Indeed there are 2 problems with the religious "promotion of empathy".

One problem is that, many times it does not actually increase the care for empathy of its followers, but on the contrary only leads them to more vanity and arrogance : by making them believe that their religiosity makes them more empathetic than others, its only real effect may be to make them more misjudging against others (non-followers) which they paint in black, pretending that these others are less empathetic people just because they do not follow the same religion. And the worse is that this misjudgment, false impression of followers that they would be having more empathy than others, its not just a stupid prejudice based on any personal flaw of vanity and arrogance that these followers would have, but the sincere and seemingly verified observation created by the sort of diabolically sophisticated labyrinth of illusions that religions lose their followers in. That way in which religions systematically lead their followers into such a mad labyrinth of errors and misjudgments, that it fucks up any chance of possible common understanding with non-believers. So many religious people were so careful in their dedication to learn the "divine path" of how to practice, without understanding what they are doing, their skillful methods of painting in black their opponents, their systematic failure to understand (or care to stay blind to) that themselves are those who insult and provoke first while smashingly humiliating others by their "divine peace in their heart" used as a substitute of any real ("lowly mental" and rational !) effort of human understanding ; at sincerely illusioning themselves about what they interpret as the spiritual vices of the latter, by their way of provoking in them the legitimate anger in the face of that universal love so generously addressed to the pieces of evil shit that the religious idiots so honestly and sincerely mistake them for; and by those desperate states of "discussions" where no decent reason has any chance to be let a voice without being systematically smashed under tsunamis of misunderstandings and misjudgments.

The other problem is that, even if "empathy" as a principle was actually promoted (which I don't think religions actually succeed to do in average), this would still not help the world to go better the least bit, because any principle, no matter how right, remains vain as long as it remains an abstract and general formula disconnected from the skill of correct discernment of its practical application cases.

For example, consider the so-called "pro-life" movement. Such people usually think that the only thing that matters is to save the life of the fetus, because the "respect of his life" (i.e. not killing) is a general abstract principle that is trivial to grasp, and which they see as paramount. Because this choice of morality principle happens to be the most convenient way for them to give themselves the feeling that they are practicing the highest morality with no need to bother turning on any obscure mental ability with all the risks of thinking pain and shame of mistake that any more complex or subtle morality principle would lead to.
The fact is, doing so they usually fail to balance this by the consideration of the concrete particular case of the woman's life and what a trouble it may be for her to raise her future child properly. Every case is particular, isn't it ? And every particular case of a potential woman's troubles to raise her future child, leading her to a choice of abortion, is awfully, hopelessly complicated to explain to people who do not know the person but focus on the trivial general abstract principle of respect to all life because this level of triviality is all what they are able to understand.
The same goes for homosexual rights and parenthood : the religious people who focus on trivial abstract generalities as their only way to figure out other people's interests, will think that the highest value they can defend is to protect children from the oddness of having two parents of the same gender. Why ? Not because it is any real problem with any significant importance compared to the rest of possible life's problems, but just because this is one of the easiest things to enter into a fucking table of statistics of odd things that can happen to people that they do not know, and that, consequently, are "abstract and general moral values we ought to care for".
The same goes for the attitude towards suicide : all the people who assume that staying alive should be the only thing that matters just because this is what most easily enters a statistics table and that life should be good in principle, ignoring the details of what can make a life hellish. This is why people considering suicide usually cannot explain their decision before it is made, as other people would just lazily blame and mock the idea by focusing on irrelevant abstract generalities of how life should be okay, ignoring the complicated particular case of how it can happen to be otherwise.
For more on the selfishness of religious morality, see my philosophical site, especially moral philosophy and moral comparison of science and religion. See also more on the legitimate anger that religions provoke against themselves.

Spiritual Bullshit

I find it shocking that "Enlightenment is not for the Buddha alone", was accepted in the Third Prize category. This article promotes the "spiritualist" (Buddhist) conception of "Consciousness" defined as emptiness of thought, i.e. dumbness. These "spiritual" people are so completely dumb and ignorant that they are absolutely and willfully clueless about what true knowledge and understanding of life looks like, which is how their persist in their delusion according to which their dumbness, their hypocrisy, their happiness of being so stupid that they can't have a clue about their responsibilities and the reality of any wrong consequences of their actions on others, would be the very definition of "consciousness" that would best address the world's problems. Should it suffice to observe that despite their dominating position for millenia and their overwhelming number of followers in comparison to scientists, such spiritual people, with their "spiritual" methods, could never bring any useful discovery for the world's progress, and that all light of understanding and progress in the world ever made, only came from the very "rational" people, who followed the way of rational thinking that is exactly what these spiritual teachers oppose as what they call the "source of harmful negative emotions such as anger, hatred, worry, anxiety and fear, amongst others" (sic). For more comments, see diverse text of this Anti-spirituality site, such as What is spirituality - The Cult of the Violent Social Paralysis - The Copernician revolution vs the Spiritual Ego ; other sites

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