I believe so, yes.

"Kohlberg's six stages can be more generally grouped into three levels of two stages each: pre-conventional, conventional and post-conventional.[7][8][9] Following Piaget's constructivist requirements for a stage model, as described in his theory of cognitive development, it is extremely rare to regress in stages—to lose the use of higher stage abilities.[14][15] Stages cannot be skipped; each provides a new and necessary perspective, more comprehensive and differentiated than its predecessors but integrated with them.[14][15]

Level 1 (Pre-Conventional)

1. Obedience and punishment orientation

(How can I avoid punishment?)

2. Self-interest orientation

(What's in it for me?)
(Paying for a benefit)

Level 2 (Conventional)

3. Interpersonal accord and conformity

(Social norms)
(The good boy/good girl attitude)

4. Authority and social-order maintaining orientation

(Law and order morality)

Level 3 (Post-Conventional)

5. Social contract orientation
6. Universal ethical principles

(Principled conscience)

The understanding gained in each stage is retained in later stages, but may be regarded by those in later stages as simplistic, lacking in sufficient attention to detail.
Pre-conventional"


Take from this what you want. I take it that, not all christians, but a good number of them have been socially and morally stunted.

This is interesting when you look at the political aspects of it, with the christian right only voting for the guy whose ideals are "righteous" or "not sinful/evil", while ignoring the political side which is categorically referred to as the 'bleeding hearts' for their belief that society should take care of those less fortunate.
Surely this isn't a flawless portrait I'm painting, but even on a simpler level, it's still interesting that the religious right is so focused on what is sinful rather than what is right.

This isn't to say that religion corrupts or that religion is bad, but that religion is SO EASILY misused both accidentally and intentionally. It is a flawed human system to represent the divine.

I feel like you've probably never read much about Kohlbergs work and therefore are GREATLY misunderstand and understimate what those stages mean.  Worth noting.... "Liberal" beliefs aren't superior in Kohlbergs work, like you seem to think.  (From the bleeding hearts sentence.)

Example...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_dilemma

Practically everybody in a western democracy is at the 5th or 6th levels of thinking. 

A vast majority of people to be at said level is pretty much a requirement to have a democracay.

Worth noting, that the Chinese for example have been MUCH less tied to religion an atheist like... and in fact, are more likely to be at a "lower level" on the pyramid.   You could make the same arguement for say... the Japanese.

These are countries whose philosphies and morals were largely based on secular ideas and ideals... vs western morality which is nearly unseperable from Christin morality in it's formation.

I dont know, I dont hink it was said in the bible why the humans were created. 

The religious fantasy of there being a heaven or hell after life makes as much sense as children's fairy tales: Santa Claus, Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.

Blanket statements like these are useless. There is a dimension of humanity that touches the divine in its complexity, yet you have accepted widely spread and cunningly devised fairy tales to believe the contrary.

The sword goes both ways my friend, time to get constructive for a change.

To be even more helpful, the OP isn't talking about this. He's talking about the concept of going to heaven by means of good works, and he considers/considered it bribery. If you want to stay on topic, that's what you should be addressing. Your rhetoric has been heard countless times and is not helpful.

HTH

I've long had a theory, one that makes sense whether or not there is any form of benevolent deity. I may or may not have already posted about this on this site, but it's worth talking about here.

For the sake of this post, I'll use the religious form (because the argument is really intended to be food for thought for religious people), but you can pretty much replace references to "god" with "creators of the religion".

Religion can be considered the set of rules that a parent sets down for their children. Early religion was primarily about discovery - look at the pagan religions, where each deity represented some aspect of the world, an aspect that was to be explored, but also protected from. This aspect can also be seen more strongly in the pre-Noah portion of the bible. One could even draw the "fruit of knowledge" as a parallel to the point at which a child reaches self-awareness.

The next stage of religions tended to be strict, with a lot of rules and conditions, many of which were somewhat arbitrary, but served to create a rigid structure that prevented people from acting up too badly, and punishing them if they did. This is what one does once a child has reached an age where they start to understand the basic concept of rules. "Don't play with fire". Judaism bears strong resemblance to this. Note that "Kosher", for instance, is rooted in the same idea - don't eat pig because it's "unclean" (meaning you'll get sick from eating it - pork was a major source of disease back then, before they had things like refrigeration and antibiotics).

As the child approaches their teenage years, you begin to relax a lot of the rules, turning them into more recommendations than anything else. For many teenagers, this is quite acceptable. This is the next stage of religions, and is best seen in Christianity. The teenager is capable of truly understanding concepts like right and wrong, and thus are more able to police their own behaviour. They're also better able to understand reasoning - so it's not "Don't play with fire", it's "If you play with fire, you risk being burned". And if the teenager is decently well-behaved, this is the last stage before the child becomes an adult. It's also why the bible suggests that there would be nobody after Jesus, until "his return".

But sometimes, the teenager ends up acting out, and becomes rather unruly. This is what happened in the Middle East, and this led to the formation of Islam. Islam has strict rules, not unlike Judaism, but is much heavier in the reward and punishment angle than Judaism was. It is an attempt to control the unruly teenager, until they've matured enough to overcome the problem. It's also why Islam says that Mohammed is the last prophet - because once the teenager has completed this stage, they're an adult, so there's no further need for modifications to the rules.

However, the end desire of the parent is for their child to be capable of reasoning for themselves, and for them to be ready to create their own rules based not on the parent, but on reason.

So if the Christian god really is "the father", then it seems reasonable to argue that that god's desire for humanity is for them to no longer need the god, just as a parent wants their child to eventually become self-reliant. This doesn't require that the child shouldn't still recognise the parent, but rationality should take priority over the rules set out by the parent (in this case, the rules laid out in the bible, etc). It is hoped that the rules and suggestions would influence the resulting rational thought (things like the golden rule).

And heaven and hell all plays right into this. Reward and punishment is a standard way to enforce rules. 2000 years ago, humanity as a whole wasn't "mature" enough to actually do things because they're the right thing to do, and so heaven and hell are there to provide further motivation.

I honestly think that, within about 100 years, christianity will become a personal religion and a social thing, and within 200 years, it will become nothing more than a belief in the christian god as creator, with the bible serving only as a bygone historical artifact that provides hints to the nature of the christian god. Why so relatively soon? Because I see the transition of the world community towards "maturity" - that is to say, secularism and rationality, even from religious sources. Even the vatican recognises, for instance evolution. It will take a little while for it to propagate through the holdouts, hence the 100 years.

Control over his creations. Rules, at their most basic, are nothing more than set controls. That's not to say that some rules aren't valid and perhaps universal truths; but all rules have a manipulative component to them. The real question here, is why give the gift of freewill? The idea and principle behind freewill is that it creates an autonomous individual that of which makes its own decisions independently. To impose rules against that freewill, with the steep penalties for not following those rules; to include the loaded decision to relinquish that freewill to the rules set by another person or deity makes it a manipulation due to the fact that both the action of giving freewill and subsequently the rules that directly oppose the principle of freewill a contradiction.

So one of the following could be assumed:

A)    A)  God is not all knowing.

B) God is manipulative.

I think you're purposely misinterpreting what I've said in order to frame your argument.

I disagree with "A vast majority of people to be at said level is pretty much a requirement to have a democracay." as we have currently one of the most dysfunctional governments we've ever had.

I can't answer everything here, but I'll just say that the fact that God knows what a person will do does not make that person's behavior pre-meditated by God. All it means is that God knows all. But the choice is still the person's, who doesn't know all.

God pre-meditatingly makes a creation knowing the basic foundations of its workings and works off of that foundation. What happens afterwards is up to the creation. Even if God knows, it was left entirely up to that individual.

When you add this to the complexity of choice and non-determinism, and then the infinite complexity of the saving grace offered by Christ, in the context of salvation what a person chooses (either to have faith in the saving act of Christ or not) is imho something impossible on which to state that God is manipulative, as it is at the crossroads of infinities. God is great enough to know it in the end which will be chosen, but it doesn't discredit the completely free choice of the person that did have faith or refused to have faith.