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>> First of all, those of us who are clever, glib and educated have a different level of duty of care to the truth, the right and more, than those who are not. And, in particular, we have a duty to avoid the error of the rhetor, whereby we use clever tactics to manipulate the unwary into thinking the worse the better case, as Jefferson famously observed on.
As an example, Rousseau — a famous predecessor of some of your focus on the emotive as a pivot of operation and substitute for sound moral and social etc analysis rooted in first facts and first principles of right reason — bears some intellectual responsibility for the ease with which his remarks could be used to undermine legitimate authority and restraint, and lend support to the sort of radical, nihilist factions that eventually led a reign of terror in France. As Solomon pointed out 3,000 years ago, words are powerful for life and death and we who wield such weapons must do so with due prudence and restraint.
Let us pause to consider Burke’s strictures on the man, duly balancing for the aristocratic tendencies in that writer, and an observation in his letter to a member of the French National Assembly in 1791:
I had good opportunities of knowing [Rousseau's] proceedings [during his brief exile in the British Isles c 1766] almost from day to day and he left no doubt in my mind that he entertained no principle either to influence his heart or to guide his understanding, but vanity . . . .
A moral taste . . . infinitely abates the evils of vice. Rousseau, a writer of great force and vivacity, is totally destitute of taste in any sense of the word. Your masters [i.e., the leaders of the Revolution], who are his scholars, conceive that all refinement has an aristocratic character. The last age had exhausted all its powers in giving a grace and nobleness to our mutual appetites, and in raising them into a higher class and order than seemed justly to belong to them. Through Rousseau, your masters are resolved to destroy these aristocratic prejudices.Please, do not forget, men like Robespierre saw themselves as inspired by Rousseau, and as carrying forth that general will of the people that in the end even forces men to be free. Do not ever forget the motto of the Revolution, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity — themes that come from that same philosopher and do not ever forget how it ended in terror and tyranny as the ruthless rose to power amidst bloody chaos and then plunged all of Europe and far beyond into war.
Please, please, please, pause long enough to listen to the ghosts of history, lest you commit again the blunders that promote that which led to their unjust slaughter. (And, as a side comment, that is exactly what I see going on in the current Arab Spring uprisings and the irresponsible fostering of such. All of this, as the vultures gather, again.)
That leads me to now turn to what with all due respect I must highlight as your superficially appealing, emotively manipulative, ill-judged and irresponsible, even self-refuting (but tellingly triumphalistic and self-congratulatory), remarks just above:
I have taken myself out of the poisonous and lethal paradigm of judgment, censure, and condemnation, and its offspring of violence and destruction. I have shifted from being part of the problem to being part of the solution.How ironic, and fatally self-refuting, is the fact that these very words positively drip with the censure, condemnation, self-congratulation and judgementalism that they purport to expose and dismiss.
They also lack the basic responsibility that recognises that whether we are in a small community in a rural area, or a great city or a nation or the world, we have to deal with the hard fact of the bully grown up, not to mention the predatory wolf-pack grown up. In the school yard or the neighbourhood, the bully does no respect appeals to reason or respect, only sufficient force to bring him up short. Hopefully, he will then amend his ways. And, in the community, the city or nation or the world, we have to deal with aggressive criminals and ideologies or simply pirates of one sort or another.
That is why we have police forces who need to be at least as well armed and to be better trained and disciplined than those they have to deal with, it is why we need courts and laws, and it is a major part of why we need governments. It is why we need armed forces, and it is why we need peaceful elections and systems for no-confidence motions, impeachment and trial that can remove failed government within the period of elections. Yes, all of these can be abused (hence checks and balances in a world of the finite, fallible, fallen and morally struggling who are too often ill-willed), but without them, and without the check they provide, we would live in a bloody chaos.
So, there you sit at your keyboard, deriding and dismissing that which you depend on for your own enjoyment of the civil peace of justice. Think about what you are doing, please.
In short, I point out that your view as just cited, fails the Categorical Imperative test. While being oh so cleverly self-congratulatory on its MORAL superiority — yes, that is there too — it is patently unsustainable as a general principle for the community. Please, think again.
Next, you have pointed me to several places where you respond to my key case, regarding how it is undeniably wrong that someone were to abduct, torture, rape and kill an innocent child, that is, it OUGHT not to be done, as an example of the facts of morality and the linked point that we are morally governed creatures who cannot escape the issue of OUGHT.
Allow me to clip no 18 as one of the cases from above, and again mark up on points, to again — there was adequate answer above, but there seems to be a problem on your part in attending to corrective reply, hence (with all due respect) the tendency to repeat the same inaccurate or failed points over and over — illustrate the problem:
The whole idea of morality for religious people, Christian or otherwise,
a –> Starts by trying to poison the well, dismissing morality as a notion of “religious people,” who in all too commonly encountered attitudes, are seen as essentially irrational. In effect, you have dragged a red herring of despised religiosity across to a strawman religious figure, soaked in ad hominems which you intend to set alight, creating a poisonous choking and polarising cloud that confuses the issue and frustrates serious discussion. [I won't even bother to highlight that religion is a vast topic and that there are many, many religions that come from such diverse worldviews that one cannot seriously and honestly make such a broad-brush lumping together. I will only hint for now on the point that the undeniable reality of error reflective of how we are finite, fallible, morally struggling and too often ill-willed, brings to bear a duty of care to the truth and the right that can be ducked or can be failed; but this does not imply that all is chaos and confusion and truth does not stand out clearly enough if we are willing to seek it seriously. That undeniable reality of error is in fact the first undeniable and self evident truth that can help us clear up many confusions, as the next linked discussion on grounding worldviews will show.]
is that
[Citing KF, original post:] the only valid worldview in a world in which OUGHT is real, is one that has a foundational IS that adequately grounds ought.b –> You have simply rhetorically ducked and brushed away the matter of the quite serious discussion on the grounding of worldviews [and note how with KN the issue came back to an implicit foundation, as the raft and spaceship metaphors inadvertently showed], and the question of the reality of ought as is captured in the key example or the like.
c –> The crucial issue you are studiously brushing aside is that we find ourselves morally governed, and that we cannot escape this — your own case as just discussed gives abundant illustration as to how you yourself cannot escape.
For religious people, that “Is”, obviously, is God. God’s existence grounds morality because God tells us what is good behavior and what is sin.
d –> Strawman. The starting issue is, that we find ourselves morally obligated, as can be ascertained as abundantly obvious fact, e.g. consider how we quarrel, i.e. habitually by trying to show one another in the wrong, and/or excusing oneself. We just don’t find ourselves — apart form a few monsters — saying shut up you sheep and slide down my throat nicely.
e –> This presents us with the reality of being morally governed, which your own rhetoric above shows, quite plainly. So OUGHT is real. That means that when we go about worldview shopping, we need to kick some tires and see that in particular, we must have an IS in the foundation of whatever view we take up [and remember how the worldview raft under continual partial repair sits on the foundation of not only the water but the principle and forces of floatation], that can properly ground OUGHT. And, that is a matter of philosophical discussion [--> cf a 101 that addresses morality, here], prior to any particular species of religious commitment per particular doctrines, traditions and texts.
f –> What you are doing in short, is to try to duck addressing a philosophical issue that is inconvenient — the Hume Guillotine issue on the IS-OUGHT gap that leads to Anscombe’s point that unless an IS that grounds OUGHT is in the foundation or root of our worldview, forever after it will be an ungrounded injection. {Let me add a clip from Arthur Holmes on this:
However we may define the good, however well we may calculate consequences, to whatever extent we may or may not desire certain consequences, none of this of itself implies any obligation of command. That something is or will be does not imply that we ought to seek it. We can never derive an “ought” from a premised “is” unless the ought is somehow already contained in the premise . . . .
R. M. Hare . . . raises the same point. Most theories, he argues, simply fail to account for the ought that commands us: subjectivism reduces imperatives to statements about subjective states, egoism and utilitarianism reduce them to statements about consequences, emotivism simply rejects them because they are not empirically verifiable, and determinism reduces them to causes rather than commands . . . .
Elizabeth Anscombe’s point is well made. We have a problem introducing the ought into ethics unless, as she argues, we are morally obligated by law – not a socially imposed law, ultimately, but divine law . . . . This is precisely the problem with modern ethical theory in the West . . . it has lost the binding force of divine commandments. [Ethics: Approaching Moral Decisions (Downers Grove, IL: 1984), pp. 70 – 72.]}
g –> And, when I have suggested that a serious candidate to be that IS (the only one in the end that has had any reasonable prospect of success — which you seem to wish to brush aside) is the inherently good, loving and wise architect of our world, the creator God, I am here only at the God of the Philosophers [on the table since at least "that Bible-thumping fundy": NOT -- Plato]. But, an ad hominem soaked strawman ignited through clever suggestions is so much more convenient to dismiss . . .
But does He? The problem with this ethical position is that God clearly has not communicated to us this distinction at all.
h –> Thus speaks the ever-wise BD, ex cathedra even. Sorry, if we want a more credible and thoughtful source on the subject, let’s first turn to Locke in the intro to the essay on human understanding, Section 5:
Men have reason to be well satisfied with what God hath thought fit for them, since he hath given them (as St. Peter says [NB: i.e. 2 Pet 1:2 - 4]) pana pros zoen kaieusebeian, whatsoever is necessary for the conveniences of life and information of virtue; and has put within the reach of their discovery, the comfortable provision for this life, and the way that leads to a better. How short soever their knowledge may come of an universal or perfect comprehension of whatsoever is, it yet secures their great concernments [Prov 1: 1 - 7], that they have light enough to lead them to the knowledge of their Maker, and the sight of their own duties [cf Rom 1 - 2 & 13, Ac 17, Jn 3:19 - 21, Eph 4:17 - 24, Isaiah 5:18 & 20 - 21, Jer. 2:13, Titus 2:11 - 14 etc, etc]. Men may find matter sufficient to busy their heads, and employ their hands with variety, delight, and satisfaction, if they will not boldly quarrel with their own constitution, and throw away the blessings their hands are filled with, because they are not big enough to grasp everything . . . It will be no excuse to an idle and untoward servant [Matt 24:42 - 51], who would not attend his business by candle light, to plead that he had not broad sunshine. The Candle that is set up in us [Prov 20:27] shines bright enough for all our purposes . . . If we will disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do muchwhat as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly. [Text references added to document the sources of Locke's allusions and citations.]i –> Here we see a noted philosopher, whose legacy is grounding modern democracy and liberty in the self-governing community and nation state showing how to properly use the resources of a religious tradition in a philosophical discussion.
j –> And, when we turn to his pivotal argument that anchors the civil peace of justice and grounds the legitimate and lawful state in the community as the guardian of justice, here we find him citing “the judicious [Anglican Canon Richard] Hooker” in his famous 2nd essay on civil government, Ch 2 sect 5 — and I will continue the cite, as it shows Hooker using a famous pagan philosopher, Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics, to underscore his point about how we do in fact have a very widespread consensus on core morality:
. . . if I cannot but wish to receive good, even as much at every man’s hands, as any man can wish unto his own soul, how should I look to have any part of my desire herein satisfied, unless myself be careful to satisfy the like desire which is undoubtedly in other men . . . my desire, therefore, to be loved of my equals in Nature, as much as possible may be, imposeth upon me a natural duty of bearing to themward fully the like affection. From which relation of equality between ourselves and them that are as ourselves, what several rules and canons natural reason hath drawn for direction of life no man is ignorant . . . [[Hooker then continues, citing Aristotle in The Nicomachean Ethics, Bk 8:] as namely, That because we would take no harm, we must therefore do none; That since we would not be in any thing extremely dealt with, we must ourselves avoid all extremity in our dealings; That from all violence and wrong we are utterly to abstain, with such-like . . . ] [[Eccl. Polity,preface, Bk I, "ch." 8, p.80]j' –> Unless and until you can overturn such principles as widely understood, and as particularly evident in our quarrels, then your dismissal of the case collapses. The widespread existence of statements of the Golden and/or Silver Rule [that pivot on recognising the equal moral value of the other so the principle of mutual respect appears {Cf here and cases here, also a course unit here}], is a first strong evidence that you have widely missed the mark here.
k –> That we may often err or stumble does not imply that we do not have adequate means to hand to persistently seek, know and do the right. And since you evidently have a particular distaste for Christian expressions of morality, let me cite an often overlooked bit of that “obscure epistle”: NOT, by Paul, that is so foundational to Christian theology and moral thought (which are inseparable, whatever the judges in the recent Owen and Eunice Johns case in the UK may wish to imagine or cleverly assert, the better to rob those they object to of their freedom of conscience . . . ):
Rom 2:6 God “will give to each person according to what he has done.” 7 To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. 8 But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger . . . . 14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, 15 since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.) . . . .
13:8 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
11 And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. 12 The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. 13 Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. 14 Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature. [NIV '84]The evidence for this assertion is that every sect of every religion has its own version of what sin is.
k' [oops . . . ] –> Strawman being set up . . .
In Catholicism, use of contraception is a sin, whereas in most protestant sects it is not. In some Christian belief, homosexual acts constitute sinning, while in others they do not. (This is true even within certain sects, witness the controversy in the Episcopal church surrounding the sexual orientation of Bishop Gene Robinson.)
l –> The Catholics have a case in moral philosophy, not scripture as such on that. They may be wrong, but that does not mean that this means anything more than that we may err. To put this next to a case of blatant apostasy that would push aside strictures in the text that directly address a specific perversion of the Creation order for family and sexuality, shows a failure of seriousness.
To many Christians, abortion is murder, to others it is not a sin at all.
m –> Again, a confusion between opinion and what is right [mere disagreement does not disprove the existence of that which is objectively right, an error of subjectivism and radical relativism], but here on a subject where the implications are beginning to be evident all around us: abortion having fallen in many powerful but increasingly perverted and corrupted institutions, the erosion of the value of human life is proceeding apace as there has been injected the destructive notion that there is life unworthy or life, “Lebensunwertes Leben.” So, we see infanticide, euthanasia and looming through the mists, the whole-scale elimination of those deemed not fit to live by the powerful.
The unborn child at six weeks, six days
showing head, eyes, hand (and with
the beating heart visible, cf. here.)
n –> The unborn child is indisputably human, indeed half the time such a child is not even of the same sex as his mother. So, we have no moral right to deem the unborn child “Lebensunwertes Leben.” Nor the infant, nor the diseased or disabled, nor the elderly, nor Jews nor those of my own race, etc etc. (I hope you have enough sense to be ashamed.)
These are just three of many, many examples of Christian ethical beliefs that contradict one another.
o –> A confusion of the existence of error and disagreement for the non-existence of that which is correct. The very undeniable reality of error itself is the grounds on which such collapses. For, it is undeniable on pain of necessarily providing a counter-example and refuting itself, that error exists. So, truth, and indeed truth knowable even to undeniable certainty exists. hence, radical relativism that reduces truth to mere opinion collapses.
p –> And, by focussing on points of disagreement on moral truth, you have sought to divert attention from cases that there is no reasonable dispute on. For instance, the very focal case that you have been challenged with ever so often in this thread and have repeatedly ducked: we ought not to abduct, torture, rape and murder an innocent child.
q –> As has repeatedly been seen, the most you can say is, “that’s unloving,” emotively exploiting the MORAL content of neighbour love, while refusing to acknowledge that moral content and how it governs even you.
I have not even addressed the differences in ethical imperatives between Christian faiths and the other religious traditions.
r –> The same error of refusing to examine consensus and highlighting cases of disagreement on the rhetorical pretence that different opinion disestablishes truth.
If God really did have a set of ethical guidelines that He wants us all to follow, wouldn’t He have made it clear to all human beings what those guidelines are?
s –> You have had abundant opportunity to see that there is indeed a consensus on key cases, and that there is a wider pattern of core morality that is in common and shows that we are morally governed by the force of ought, but you wish to rhetorically brush it aside. Please, consider the consequences of such folly as highlighted by Plato in the Laws, Bk X, 2350 years ago — and notice, this is obviously a pagan speaking and testifying to the moral government of humanity and what happens when it was ignored:
Ath. . . . [[The avant garde philosophers and poets, c. 360 BC] say that fire and water, and earth and air [[i.e the classical "material" elements of the cosmos], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art, and that as to the bodies which come next in order-earth, and sun, and moon, and stars-they have been created by means of these absolutely inanimate existences. The elements are severally moved by chance and some inherent force according to certain affinities among them-of hot with cold, or of dry with moist, or of soft with hard, and according to all the other accidental admixtures of opposites which have been formed by necessity. After this fashion and in this manner the whole heaven has been created, and all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only. [[In short, evolutionary materialism premised on chance plus necessity acting without intelligent guidance on primordial matter is hardly a new or a primarily "scientific" view! Notice also, the trichotomy of causal factors: (a) chance/accident, (b) mechanical necessity of nature, (c) art or intelligent design and direction.] . . . .Can you imagine anything more cruel than setting up rules of behavior along with punishment of an eternity in Hell for violating them, and then not making it crystal clear and unambiguous to all human beings exactly what those rules are?
[[Thus, they hold that t]he Gods exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them; and that the honourable is one thing by nature and another thing by law, and that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.- [[Relativism, too, is not new; complete with its radical amorality rooted in a worldview that has no foundational IS that can ground OUGHT. (Cf. here for Locke's views and sources on a very different base for grounding liberty as opposed to license and resulting anarchistic "every man does what is right in his own eyes" chaos leading to tyranny. )] These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might [[ Evolutionary materialism leads to the promotion of amorality], and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions [[Evolutionary materialism-motivated amorality "naturally" leads to continual contentions and power struggles; cf. dramatisation here], these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is, to live in real dominion over others [[such amoral factions, if they gain power, "naturally" tend towards ruthless tyranny], and not in legal subjection to them.
t –> Strawman, soaked in ad hominems and ignited through snide dismissals. God is just, and there is quirte evident warrant for the core principles of morality as already was outlined and as can be accessed in materials that are not hard to find. That those who willfully choose to disregard the evident truth and the right and willfully do that which is oppressive, exploitative and destructive should face eternal accountability for same, is just.
u –> As for the doctrine of a place of eternal separation from God, kindly observe the primary example and illustration that our Lord gave: Gehenna, the ill-managed city dump south of Jerusalem which was doubtless almost always afire from spontaneous combustion and/or fires set to get rid of particularly offensive rubbish. It is quite evident that God is just to provide a place where those who reject him can set up their own world. That it deteriorates into the chaos of an ill-managed dump — as so easily tends to happen here on earth when men forget God and his justice — is their fault, not his.
Do you doubt that an omnipotent and omniscient God could not have done so if He had wished to?
v –> With all due respect, I must correct. For, having shut your eyes firmly to lock out the blatantly obvious, you now complain against him who gave you eyelids to use for a better purpose. If you will not heed Paul above, then at least heed Locke in his warning on the candle that is set up in us that shines brightly enough for all our purposes:
Men have reason to be well satisfied with what God hath thought fit for them, since he hath given them (as St. Peter says [NB: i.e. 2 Pet 1:2 - 4]) pana pros zoen kaieusebeian, whatsoever is necessary for the conveniences of life and information of virtue; and has put within the reach of their discovery, the comfortable provision for this life, and the way that leads to a better. How short soever their knowledge may come of an universal or perfect comprehension of whatsoever is, it yet secures their great concernments [Prov 1: 1 - 7], that they have light enough to lead them to the knowledge of their Maker, and the sight of their own duties [cf Rom 1 - 2 & 13, Ac 17, Jn 3:19 - 21, Eph 4:17 - 24, Isaiah 5:18 & 20 - 21, Jer. 2:13, Titus 2:11 - 14 etc, etc]. Men may find matter sufficient to busy their heads, and employ their hands with variety, delight, and satisfaction, if they will not boldly quarrel with their own constitution, and throw away the blessings their hands are filled with, because they are not big enough to grasp everything . . . It will be no excuse to an idle and untoward servant [Matt 24:42 - 51], who would not attend his business by candle light, to plead that he had not broad sunshine. The Candle that is set up in us [Prov 20:27] shines bright enough for all our purposes . . . If we will disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do muchwhat as wisely as he who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly. [Text references added to document the sources of Locke's allusions and citations.]Here’s an alternative possibility: God is not interested in morality—morality is a human invention and a human preoccupation. Rather, God is interested in the expansion of love in the Universe. If we want to act in concert with God’s will, we will not be asking “What is the right thing to do?” Instead, we will be asking “What is the loving thing to do?”
w –> Having gone around the circle of your rhetoric a couple of times, triumphantly you announce your pre-determined conclusion that does not even see how it undermines itself. Please, please, please, think again and do better.
We are each of us made in the “image and likeness” of God. If one wishes to access our God-like nature, one of the ways to do so is to live in the question, “What would Love do now?” and act accordingly.
x –> Which immediately leads tot he moral content of the principle of neighbour love, as you know or should know. But refuse to acknowledge.I trust that this example is sufficient to call you to rethink. You are making yourself into a poster-child of what goes wrong when we let radical subjectivism and relativism in the door.
Please, please, please, think again.>>
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Ideas -- especially morally tinged ideas -- have consequences, and we have a duty of care to see that our ideas are as sound as possible as a result. Radical relativism and linked emotive subjectivism patently do not meet that test. But unfortunately, rhetoric exists as that destructive art that can make the worse seem the better case, and the better seem the worse. So, let us beware. END
PS: I have notified of poster-child status, here.
