Who are the Moral Free Riders?

"Simply understanding most of the downsides is all that is necessary."

Says who? And who can say that the downsides you don't see aren't going to be the most catastrophic of them all? The capacity of the human mind is limited, and thus the product of the experiences of the millions of those who have gone before dramatically overwhelms the product of the "rational" individual.

This is probably the core of our disagreement. I agree that the law of unintended consequences is always waiting to pounce, even acts of charity and kindness can have terrible and evil repercussions, but if you can name an act with no downside that is immoral, I will concede the argument.

In the second part you are claiming that accumulated wisdom (morality) supersedes individual thought and understanding. I see just the opposite. The history of the world that I see is one of individuals turning recognized wisdom upside down. Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, Feynman, Bach, Bastiat, and Christ are just a few of millions of people who thought for themselves, rejected conventional wisdom and made our world better. I fully expect to see individuals continuing to turn the world upside down in the future.

But thank you for proving my point. Your definition of "morality" is hedonism, as it is based in the shifting desires of the individual. It is precisely the ability of tradition to present the accumulated wisdom of the ages that the individual mind cannot mimic. And the reverence of the power of tradition is the basis of conservatism/Old Whig liberalism.

No you misunderstand the difference between natural law and hedonism. Hedonism is purely the pursuit of pleasure, consequences be damned. Natural law on the other hand recognizes limits and balance. Someone who loves to eat and spends all their waking moments eating will get fat and die, the consequences are certainly foreseeable. Someone who understands the consequences of their actions may occasionally overindulge but they recognize that if they want to continue to enjoy eating in the long run they need to moderate their behavior. True happiness comes from balance, the extremes like the religious zealots and the hedonists never find what they are so desperately seeking.

As for capitalism being "anti-traditional," you must first warp the definition of tradition into a caricature first. Whence comes the common law that makes freedom and capitalism possible?

There have been many moments in history, but the Magna Charta and democracy in Greece are probably the seminal moments where the foundations were laid for freedom and capitalism. Notice that freedom and capitalism put emphasis on the individual and innovation, rather than the state and tradition

Whence comes the institutions, both social and economic, that provide its foundation? Name the man who invented them! They are all evolved traditions, and they operate based on the individual choices of groups of human beings, transmitted through the politic, social, and financial institutions of our nation.

Well, how about WILLIAM d'ALBINI for the Magna Charta. The most significant ideas though were laws that took power from the kings, religious rulers (God) and tradition and gave them to the people. In short as individuals increased in power and freedom society has benefited, at the expense of religious dictates.

How is it that you belief that you can, like a petulant child, ignore all of the thousands of years of social progress that it took to build these institutions, and simply assume that what exists now has always been, and can be manipulated in whatever way your "reason" tells you.

On the contrary, I greatly respect and appreciate the efforts of my ancestors, especially the struggles that they had to overcome the traditions and "morals" of their generation. It used to be "immoral" to doubt the word of a king who was gods appointed. Thank "God" my ancestors rebelled and cast down those evil institutions put in place by "GOD."

Oh, and to touch on another point proven so deftly by Hayek, be careful in your disdain for tradition. For reason is a product of tradition. It developed as a consequence of human tradition, not as some isolated or sui generis creation. It was the traditions of the Western world than enabled what you revere as "reason" (and what Hayek terms Cartesian rationalism) to develop in the first place.

It is odd that you would use that argument. Certainly we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. The fact that we can benefit from the experience and knowledge that has been gained by people who came before us makes our task easier to see the results of our actions. We no longer need to pray to "God" , "Allah" or "Elohim' for rain. We can now understand why it rains, and whether or not my wife was immoral has no effect on the rain. We no longer have to make human sacrifices for Spring to come. Thank you for making my point.

If you believe that there is no such thing as absolute right or absolute wrong than you are a moral relativist and we have an irreconcilable difference that cannot be resolved.

---Your conditional does not apply to me. However, I do believe that people have different views of what is right or wrong, contrary to your contention.

If you believe that there are absolute rights and wrongs, then the question is what is your basis for declaring these absolutes if it is not a Creator, a Higher Power, God.

---You keep arguing as if what I believe is important. However, your statement was that NO ONE could have morality or ethics without belief in a higher power. I disputed your statement and asked you to back it up. In so doing, I gave you concrete examples and defined the terms. You keep asking the question I've given you answers to already. I've mentioned two systems of thought that do not believe in a higher power, Buddhism and Soviet atheism, but nonetheless had morality and ethics, though you might have disagreed with them. Game, set, match.

Many "ones" have done so with and without claims of divine inspiration. The Taliban, the Saudi Government, the Nazis, Al Qaeda, the Soviets are among them. What is your basis, if any, for declaring the actions of these groups to be objectively and inherently wrong?

---Not a proper question insofar as my response to your post is concerned. You argued that NO ONE could have morality or ethics without a belief in a higher power. The Taliban, Saudis, and Al Qaeda, and arguably the Nazis, all had some belief in a higher power. The Soviets and Buddhists have none. They had and have their own morality--which YOU may consider amoral, but are a set of principles for daily life, and a basis for judging right and wrong, nonetheless. Whether you or I find those morals or ethics repugnant is beside the point. They had and have them, even if we don't agree with them.

You will find that every "moral" basis to objectively condemn such groups traces its roots back to a belief in a Higher Power. Absent this existence all moral judgments become relative. If you know of a reasonable basis for absolute moral judgment absent a Higher Power, I'm all ears.

---As to the latter, sure. How about the good of the state? How about the good of the tribe? Or the will of the people? I saw your 'floorism' argument earlier. That won't wash here. Nor does your contention that every moral basis to objectively condemn such groups traces its roots back to a belief in a Higher Power. Utilitarianism alone is enough to condemn the Soviets--no higher power need apply.

---As to the former, you keep saying it, but you cannot make it true in so doing.
Personally, it matters more to me how someone lives their life than whether or not they engage in philosophical reflections on the meaning of life. The reality on the ground is that atheism as a belief system is being imposed on all the citizens of this Country. Atheists are demanding that monuments of the Ten Commandments that were donated by Hollywood to promote the film "The Ten Commandments" be torn down, and that crosses over War Memorials be removed, and that the Pledge of Allegiance be altered, and a slew of other things that can only be achieved by colluding with activist judges to subvert the due process of this representative Republic.

---You do understand that if you state that "atheism as a belief system is being imposed on all the citizens of this Country" that you are engaging in hyperbole. No one is asking any person to believe in atheism. It may be that secularist agenda are being pursued at many levels, but that isn't an atheist one, necessarily, just as a constitutional government is not a cruel one. If our government gives nothing to the tsunami victims, that does not make America cruel. If our government does not back prayer in school or provide imposition of force to restrict some moral decisions, that does not make it atheist. There are other belief systems that have a higher power at their root, besides your own, that have a perspective on morality that isn't yours, and still includes room for government latitude on even highly questionable moral decisions. The Hindus leap to mind.

---Further, I have no idea how this could possibly persuade me to buy your assertion that NO ONE could have morality or ethics without a belief in a higher power. In fact, it seems quite the opposite to me. It's obvious you disagree with the principles these folks hold. But it doesn't have anything to do with them not having any principles or beliefs in what is good or bad--just that they disagree with YOUR beliefs.

I think a detailed discussion and analysis of their "belief system" is more than in order. I happen to be willing to give them everything they believe in-- nothing

---You oversimplify and think it scores points, when what it does is demonstrate your unwillingness or inability to confront them on those ideas. You simply don't understand that while YOU hold your own morality, they may hold a different one. Morality is not just my set or your set of rules, it's that set of principles that everyone has. And everyone has a different morality, whether you like to imagine otherwise or not. While we both may profess to be Christians, there are plenty of Christian embezzlers and thieves. While there may be lots of atheists and homos out there, not many of them give a rat's patoot about the Ten Commandments or want atheism as a belief system imposed on all the citizens of this Country. And while I may have an ethical base that says that charity and good works are the right thing to do, it does not necessarily mean that I want government intervening in that arena--a totally separate question. I may have ethics that say government is evil while at the same time I believe murder is evil, and believe in the vendetta.

---You either missed the definition I posed earlier or choose to ignore them. Either way, you are incorrect in your assertion and continue to argue that YOUR morals are correct while others' are wrong, when our argument is not on that topic.

The history of the world that I see is one of individuals turning recognized wisdom upside down. Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, Feynman, Bach, Bastiat, and Christ are just a few of millions of people who thought for themselves, rejected conventional wisdom and made our world better.

Unfortunately, almost all of the men you name were far from "unique" individuals turning the world upside down. While the historical school known as Whig History tended to look at human progress as the accomplishments of "great men," it has long ago been discredited. Almost every figure you name merely took the next step to make discoveries or theories that would have been made without him (Newton is probably the only figure that fits your argument). Einstein expanded on the mathematics of Minkowski, Feynman coalesced the ideas of his time in a new way (he also had a gift for promotion), Christ... ever heard of Mithraism? Humanity advances by slow evolutionary processes, not because some superman miraculously steps in and reinvents everything.

On the contrary, I greatly respect and appreciate the efforts of my ancestors, especially the struggles that they had to overcome the traditions and "morals" of their generation. It used to be "immoral" to doubt the word of a king who was gods appointed. Thank "God" my ancestors rebelled and cast down those evil institutions put in place by "GOD."

You continuously connect tradition with repression (a classic leftist non sequitur), and yet you ignore the repressive qualities of rationalism. Marxism was nothing if not the ultimate rationalistic philosophy, the same for socialism. The idea that the human mind can "order" society better than the traditions passed down through the ages is the basis of their construction. Just because they do not support your position doesn't mean you can ignore their kinship to your ideology. And they are kin, as they are based in the same fallacy that the works of the individual mind can replace the accumulated knowledge of the past. No one here is advocating a theocracy (to defeat your strawman), but many of us would say that the time-honored definition of marriage rests on more than your "intellect" can possibly justify.

Well, how about WILLIAM d'ALBINI for the Magna Charta.

You need a better history book. The Magna Carta simply bound the king to the tenets of common law, that recent rulers had ignored in an attempt to impose their own will. It forced King John to recognize the traditional rights of the nobility, and it was only later evolutionary development that extended these rights to the common man, and later to all men. Far from being the product of rationality, the Magna Carta is the ultimate enshrinement of the desire to preserve tradition against an individual's usurping of power.

Enjoyed your posts here. BUMP!

Great article.

However, your statement was that NO ONE could have morality or ethics without belief in a higher power.
This was not my statement. My assertion was and continues to be, to borrow your own phrasing, that NO ONE can have an ABSOLUTE morality without a belief in a Higher Power. You most certainly can have a RELATIVE morality. A relative morality is what the liberals call moral relativism-- there are no absolutes, you need to look at the culture and the context. You referenced my "floorism" argument-- I made no such argument so perhaps you are responding to the wrong person.

you are incorrect in your assertion and continue to argue that YOUR morals are correct while others' are wrong

Absent a few implied condemnations such as rape and genocide I have not espoused any particular morality as superior or inferior to any other. I have quite simply stated, and will state again, that morality traces its roots back to a belief in a Higher Power and that the notion of absolute right and absolute wrong is logically contingent on the existence of that Higher Power. Absent the existence of a Higher Power there is no rational basis to declare something even as heinous as rape and genocide objectively wrong.

Many "ones" have done so with and without claims of divine inspiration. The Taliban, the Saudi Government, the Nazis, Al Qaeda, the Soviets are among them. What is your basis, if any, for declaring the actions of these groups to be objectively and inherently wrong?

---Not a proper question insofar as my response to your post is concerned. You argued that NO ONE could have morality or ethics without a belief in a higher power.
If you want me to debate your response to something I did not say, you're talking to the wrong person. Otherwise the question remains entirely proper for the discussion at hand.

Unfortunately, almost all of the men you name were far from "unique" individuals turning the world upside down. While the historical school known as Whig History tended to look at human progress as the accomplishments of "great men," it has long ago been discredited. Almost every figure you name merely took the next step to make discoveries or theories that would have been made without him (Newton is probably the only figure that fits your argument). Einstein expanded on the mathematics of Minkowski, Feynman coalesced the ideas of his time in a new way (he also had a gift for promotion), Christ... ever heard of Mithraism? Humanity advances by slow evolutionary processes, not because some superman miraculously steps in and reinvents everything.

While I agree that they are not unique men I disagree with your disparagement that they merely took the next obvious step in progress. The amazing thing about genius and insight is that it is so obvious in hindsight. History tends to look obvious in hindsight too : )

If natural progression is so crashingly obvious why don't you explain the Unified Field Theory. I am sure it will be obvious to me once you explain it.

You continuously connect tradition with repression (a classic leftist non sequitur), and yet you ignore the repressive qualities of rationalism. Marxism was nothing if not the ultimate rationalistic philosophy, the same for socialism. The idea that the human mind can "order" society better than the traditions passed down through the ages is the basis of their construction. Just because they do not support your position doesn't mean you can ignore their kinship to your ideology. And they are kin, as they are based in the same fallacy that the works of the individual mind can replace the accumulated knowledge of the past. No one here is advocating a theocracy (to defeat your strawman), but many of us would say that the time-honored definition of marriage rests on more than your "intellect" can possibly justify.

So you set up a strawman comparing "rationalization" to Natural Law and then try to claim that even though the majority of governments in the past were theocracries or at least backed by GOD my using them is a strawman argument. Prior to the 17th century how many governments weren't Ordained by GOD? Not many I would guess.

And as far as marriage goes, what do Tradition and Morals have to say about it? As far as I can tell arranged marriages, plural marriages, old men marrying young women, old women marrying young men, serial polygamy (people swapping partners through divorce), etc. doesn't leave many forbidden forms of marriage does it?

You need a better history book. The Magna Carta simply bound the king to the tenets of common law, that recent rulers had ignored in an attempt to impose their own will. It forced King John to recognize the traditional rights of the nobility, and it was only later evolutionary development that extended these rights to the common man, and later to all men. Far from being the product of rationality, the Magna Carta is the ultimate enshrinement of the desire to preserve tradition against an individual's usurping of power.

The Magna Charta started the process that broke kings right to rule by decree and bound them to obey rules and laws that that were created by "Common Men." That is what common law means, laws for the commoners as opposed to nobility. Tradition for millenia had taught that rulers were superior to "Common Men" free to govern without any rules or constraint. Tradition is simply the powerful trying to retain the status quo. If that is your definition of a conservative then I guess I am a liberal by your standard.

May I suggest a book, "Constitutional Chaos" by Napolitano. He shows that even today our government does not live by the same rules and regulations it imposes on us "commoners." I guess tradition supports the governments viewpoint :)

That is what common law means, laws for the commoners as opposed to nobility.

WHAT!?!?!? So far, I have been impressed by your knowledge and demeanor (a quite worthy opponent), but that statement is absolutely ridiculous! Common law has nothing to do with the "class" of people it covers. A standard definition (from Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law):

Main Entry: common law
Function: noun
a : a body of law that is based on custom and general principles and embodied in case law and that serves as precedent or is applied to situations not covered by statute :

as a : the body of law that was first developed in the English courts of law as distinguished from equity and that allows for particular remedies (as damages or replevin) —compare EQUITY 2

b : the body of law developed in England that is the basis of U.S. federal law and of state law in all states except Louisiana —see also the JUDICIAL SYSTEM in the back matter —compare CIVIL LAW 2, STATUTORY LAW

Common law describes how the law was made (unwritten precedent as opposed to codified law), not who it effects. It developed over time, thus being a law held in "common" by the various people in England, and the Magna Carta was imposed in order to restore this traditional law to its rightful place with respect to the subjects of the King. Have you ever actually read the Magna Carta? It refers only to freemen and noblemen (collectively between 10-20% of the population at the time), not to the commoners (i.e. serfs). You are WAY off base here...

Well let me quote Blacks Law Dictionary.

"Common Law. As distinguished from law created by the enactment of legislatures, the common law comprises the body of those principles and rules of action, relating to the government and security of persons and property, which derive their authority solely from usages and customs of immemorial antiquity, ...."

Contrast that with this from Blacks Law Dictionary.

"King can do no wrong. This maxim means that the king is not responsible legally for aught he may please to do, or for any omission."

Clearly the King and his representatives lived under an entirely different set of rules (none) than the common people. You can also look up sovereign immunity etc.

While you are correct that the Magna Charta didn't immediately affect the common people or serfs it was the wedge in the door. At this point in human history the commoners (serfs) came with the land and were slaves for almost all intents and purposes. Women were chattel and had the same rights as cows. Is this the tradition you so vehemently support?

"It appears that no rational purpose exists for limiting marriage in this state to opposite-sex partners," Kramer wrote.

Not trying to bring a fight over from another thread (feel free to respond to me back on the original), but I wanted your reaction to this article. Seems to me this is exactly what we were debating. Traditional marriage has served many purposes, some beyond the ken of the "rational" mind. Here we have the rational overthrowing the traditional (the tyranny of the "mind" you dismissed) and an event that a conservative would definately agree is immoral...

First I have some questions : ) What does morality and tradition tell you about polygamy? Arranged marriages? Serial polygamy? Old married couples divorcing for financial reasons? Heterosexual couples marrying with no intention of having children? Who can't have children? Homosexual couples who want to marry and adopt children?

Like I said before everyone has a natural desire to have what they don't have. In a rational world their would be no reason at all for gays to get married. But because of inheritance, taxes, social security benefits etc. there are rational reasons for gays to get married. And with the way anti discrimination laws are written it is hard to stop people who are obviously gaming the system.

So what does the all knowing tradition and morals tell you unequivocally to do in this situation? : )

Protagoras as having said that man is the measure of all things, meaning that there are no such things as God, morality, or eternal truths.

Must it mean this? Does Man ever ask what God's other interests are, besides Man?

My assertion was and continues to be, to borrow your own phrasing, that NO ONE can have an ABSOLUTE morality without a belief in a Higher Power.

Post 2: All morality stems originally from a belief in God.
Post 14: All of the notions of right and wrong, good and evil trace themselves back through history to a belief in God and a greater purpose to human life than participating in the food chain.
Post 39: If you don't believe in a "Higher Power" than there is no basis to declare anything to be absolutely right or absolutely wrong.

Your assertion was certainly at the least unclear...but since you've been demonstrably proven wrong in more than one post and only now are you bringing this 'clarification' up, it's much more likely you're simply backing off a claim you can't substantiate.

You most certainly can have a RELATIVE morality. A relative morality is what the liberals call moral relativism--there are no absolutes, you need to look at the culture and the context.

No, see, here again you miss the point of what a morality is and what I'm saying. I think you really want desperately for there to be only your morality, when there are different ones. There may ultimately be only one correct one, and there are certainly absolutes in my morality, but there are many moralities out there, some of them without any absolutes. That's not relativism. I'm not saying that all moralities are of equal status or should be at all accorded that. Eichmann had a morality--warped, but his own.

You referenced my "floorism" argument--I made no such argument so perhaps you are responding to the wrong person.

Yep. Wrong poster. See post 31.

Absent the existence of a Higher Power there is no rational basis to declare something even as heinous as rape and genocide objectively wrong.

How so? If I have a rational basis to declare something as heinous as rape or genocide objectively wrong, a higher power must exist? How do you explain the Soviets signing on to the UN convention on genocide in 1954? Did the Soviets believe in a higher power?

The Taliban, the Saudi Government, the Nazis, Al Qaeda, the Soviets are among them. What is your basis, if any, for declaring the actions of these groups to be objectively and inherently wrong? ...the question remains entirely proper for the discussion at hand.

You DID say that NO ONE could have morality or ethics without a belief in a higher power, and you ignored my question earlier ("Not to take you too far off the path here, but is it impossible that one leads a life in accord with a higher power's wishes, and die, then go to heaven or nirvana, without knowing that higher power exists?"). Under THEIR moral code, their actions WEREN'T objectively or inherently wrong. Under American law, their actions were wrong--note I say nothing about American morality because there is no longer a national moral code.

But I'll demonstrate for you how a Buddhist could answer your question without appealing to a higher power: their actions were objectively wrong and inherently wrong because people should not harm other people. Buddha said so: "Let him [the householder] not destroy, or cause to be destroyed, any life at all, or sanction the acts of those who do so." He didn't say "if you want to get to see God do this," or "if you don't want me to be angry with you, since I'm God, you do this." Buddha simply said, "don't do this." And some people thought he was a wise man and followed his teachings.

My morality, and your question, has nothing to do with the fact that other people (in this case, Buddhists) may have a moral code and an ethical sense when they perform acts outside of OUR code of morality. They may know right from wrong--in the context of their ethical system. They may even have the same absolutes we do. But they do not necessarily need a higher power to have those absolutes, and to claim otherwise is simply a claim, one without any proof.

Is this the tradition you so vehemently support?

Nice strawman fallacy. You should be ashamed of yourself.

It is the product of that tradition, the present U.S. and its constitutional Republic that I support. I am beginning to think you are being purposely dense. As I said before, you cannot pretend that the individual rights you value sprung full-garbed like Athena from the brain of the gods. The present ideas of individualism and freedom are the products of that long tradition.

But you want to pretend that, now that tradition has gotten us this far, your rationalism can take over and do it "better." No thanks; down that path lies Mao and Stalin.

Your strawman, that somehow supporting the present products of tradition means desiring a return to monarchy, is both disingenuous and fallacious. But I'll throw you a bone. I state unequivocally that the modern concepts of freedom and individualism could not have been developed had not Europe gone through those primitive ideas and cultures in the past. In other words, my argument (using a biological metaphor) is that, while I don't particularly want to breed Archeopteryx today, they were a necessary transitional species from reptile to bird. You are arguing that birds simply appeared out of the ground, and that somehow we can kill them all and replace them with a "better" species if we want to.

Sorry, but your view is fundamentally flawed, because it assumes that you can retain all of the features and benefits of our liberal (in the original meaning) traditions while replacing the traditions themselves with something else you just "designed" in your own mind. And that is ludicrous on its face...

I will spell it out for you :)

Tradition is a fluid and ever changing concept. Some cultures sacred values are crap to others. Our traditions and values have changed dramatically over the years and not all of them have been positive. Some of our traditions and "rights" are killing us, literally, abortion, low birth rates, socialism, etc. to name a few. Basing your morals on tradition makes even less sense than trying to understand why we have the traditions and morals in the first place.

Instead of attacking each other because of ignorance, maybe we should try and figure out solutions before we follow Europes path into doom. Our number one problem is how to increase our birthrate. For some reason prosperity is almost always linked to a declining birth rate, we need to figure out how to break that link.

It could be that the muslim culture will beat out our culture simply by out breeding us. Then what will our precious values and morals amount to?

No, see, here again you miss the point of what a morality is and what I'm saying. I think you really want desperately for there to be only your morality

First, it is generally easier in these types of discussions if you stick to what people actually write and not what your psychological profiling of them leads you to believe they mean. This is an intellectual exercise to make a point, and hardly qualifies as a desperate want or attempt to impose my morality as the one and only.

Post 2: All morality stems originally from a belief in God.
Post 14: All of the notions of right and wrong, good and evil trace themselves back through history to a belief in God and a greater purpose to human life than participating in the food chain.
Ok, so where does morality originally stem from, a secular goat in a loin cloth on a mountain in Tibet? Was it the original idea of some guy named Fred born in 1926 who said, "Can't we all just get along?" If you pick up a morality or ethics textbook and go to the footnotes, and then get those books and go to their footnotes, and so on and so on, you will find they trace their roots back to belief systems that at their founding premise assumed the existence of a Higher Power. The school of thought known as morality originated based on a belief in a Higher Power. The school of thought known as ethics grew out of the school of thought known as morality. This isn't my opinion it is just a fact.

Post 39: If you don't believe in a "Higher Power" than there is no basis to declare anything to be absolutely right or absolutely wrong.
I can see how using the word "absolutely" twice when talking about absolutes could be a little "unclear."

How so? If I have a rational basis to declare something as heinous as rape or genocide objectively wrong, a higher power must exist? How do you explain the Soviets signing on to the UN convention on genocide in 1954? Did the Soviets believe in a higher power?

Personally, I don't think anything at the UN has ever had anything to do with morality, nor is morality a particularly good starting point for an analysis of Soviet treaty signing motivation. You seem to think that in personally, or collectively, viewing something as always wrong that this qualifies as an absolute morality-- it does not. You can have a moral code that has a rational basis to declare something always wrong. At the same time, someone else can have a rational basis to declare that very same thing not wrong, or even right and desirable. Either you believe that those two value systems can coexist with no contradictions (moral relativist) or you believe that one must be right and the other wrong (absolute morality.) Compare the rational basis for these two contradictory value systems and you will find it is rationally impossible to declare one absolutely correct and one absolutely incorrect without looking to a Higher Power. (If you can, I'm all ears.) I'm not saying that rational arguments cannot be made on both sides-- I'm saying they can be made on both sides and that is the very thing that makes them relative and not absolute.

I'm not saying that all moralities are of equal status or should be at all accorded that. Eichmann had a morality--warped, but his own.

Ok. Why? What is your rational basis for declaring one morality definitively superior or inferior to another? What moral authority do you draw upon to declare Eichman's morality to be wrong? Is it just your subjective opinion that Eichman was wrong or was he objectively wrong on the face of what he believed?

Getting back to the atheists-- and try not to read any superiority complex into this, it is only an intellectual argument to make a point. This Country was founded based on a certain set of beliefs. All our laws trace themselves back to the Constitution-- it's the thing that says we can make laws, the Constitution traces itself back to principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence-- it's the thing that says we can make our own government. Thomas Jefferson and those who helped him write it reasoned that "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." They based this on the belief, "that all men are created equal" and have "certain unalienable Rights." That belief is premised on those rights being "endowed by their Creator." If you dispute the postulate the those Rights are endowed by a Creator, all that followed that postulate-- the founding of America, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and all of our laws-- is brought into question. If "Nature's God" does not entitle men "to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station" and found their own country, what does?

So all of our Constitutional Rights are premised on the existence of a Creator. Therefore there is a certain level of irony in an atheist-- who based on the definition of what he is disputes the premise of those rights-- invokes those rights to try and abolish the symbols that are the basis for those rights existing in the first place.

" -- Western civilization is founded upon the moral rules of conduct deriving from our Greek philosophical and Judeo-Christian religious traditions. Atheistic and agnostic --- are moral free riders who benefit from living in a society ordered by the morality of spiritual religion --- "

______________________________________

Flawed premise bump.

The greatest leaps of knowledge in mathematics and the physical sciences occurred in the 17th century, many decades before the revival of Greek sophists’ secular materialism by French Revolutionary philosophers.

The notion knowledge advanced further during the 17th century than it has advanced since is as absurd as the concepts that the Earth is flat or that six million Jews just sort of dropped off the records in a bureaucratic snafu.

Service to the community. Why? One must have a belief (not any factual data, because such data does not exist) that your service somehow makes life "better" in the community (another subjective).

Nonsense. To take an obvious counterexample, if you pick trash off the streets, it is an objectively observable fact that the streets are clean rather than dirty as a result.

Living a moral life is no guarrantee of success, but a society that is moral has a far better chance of prospering than one that isn't. Yet the basis of rationality-based morality is most often the indivdiual. Thus the individual, choosing on the basis of his "rational" interests, has no motive to choose those options which are vital to society but undesirable to himself.

This comes down to one of two things: ingrained habit or fear of punishment. This is equally true in either secular or religious systems, and thus provides no basis whatsoever for a choice between the two.

Truly moral people are moral because they know that behaving that way is the surest way to a satisfying life. They don't have to overcome temptation or fear, they simply are.
This is where I disagree. Many of the tenets of morality actually restrict us from behaving in ways that we might find more satisfying.

Really, it's quite obvious that the original statement referred to one's long-term prospects for a satisfying life.

It would be very satisfying to eat a gallon of ice cream, but if I do that I'll get a stomachache, and if I keep doing it I'll get too fat to pursue many other desired activities.

bttt