Posted on 03/13/2005 9:49:16 AM PST by Lando Lincoln
BTTT
My stand: just because it's in the Bible doesn't mean that it's the actual Word of God. That goes double for the Old Testament.
"Despite the generally propagated myth, Galileo got into trouble with the Church, not because he advocated the theory that the earth revolves around the sun, but because he was a man with a colossal ego and a startling lack of judgment."
Newsflash: A man should NEVER get in trouble with the powers that be for speaking his mind. The Church was dead wrong in Gallileo's case, no matter how apologists try to frame it. The mind boggles that anyone would even TRY to defend it at this late date.
My view is not negative, it's logical progression.
If you have no limits other than your own choice, there is nothing to stop you other than your own power or ours. I gave you (and other humans) acknowledgement for being able and willing to learn.
Why would you care about others if there is no God? I'm really asking. If you weren't created that way, why care?
And why would the Creator make us this way? And then tell us that we're made in His Image.
So now you are asking for a reward, rather than avoiding punishment? The reward is avoiding the downside. If there is no downside to an action then it is not immoral.
Morality is not the justification of what we want; it is the denial of what we want but what centuries of experience and tradition have told us we should not have...
I guess the question is whether you are smart enough to understand the consequences of your actions and accept them. If you are, then you can safely do things that people 100 years ago would have considered insane or immoral, like jumping off a cliff. I have made the jump many times.
Denial is interesting. One of the driving human forces is the desire to have what we don't have. Many childless couples want a baby more than anything, sick people want to be well, poor want to be rich, rich people want freedom and time, unloved people want to be loved. The trick to a good life is accepting who you are and understanding the costs of your actions. Everything you do has a cost and a reward
No. The problem is that no human has the mental capacity to see all possible downsides. That is why the accumulated knowedge of the ages is far superior to the limited product of one mind. That is why capitalism is superior to socialism, and why tradition is superior to pure rationalism. There is a place for rationalism, but only when we understand its limits.
To define "moral" as "lacking a downside" is the height of hedoism. It is also very dangerous. If I can kill someone I hate with an absolute certainty of getting away with it, is it moral? Of course not. The lack of a downside is not what determines morality, because no one is qualified to determine there is no downside...
The very definitions you base being a "good man" come from a long religious cultural history.
What I'm saying is that without that, without God, the very definition of what is moral and what is not changes in the culture. What is defined as being a "good man" will change.
And I'm not saying those who do not believe in God can't be good moral people. The picture is bigger than that.
The movements today are to erase that history. Without that we will slide into the European view of the world and with it a very different moral basis that follows.
I think that is dangerous.
Who said anyone had to see "all possible downsides"? Simply understanding most of the downsides is all that is necessary. I would also argue that capitalism is superior to socialism precisely because it does not follow tradition and instead innovates at every point. I do agree that we can learn from our past, but if we blindly follow tradition we are doomed to repeat it.
To define "moral" as "lacking a downside" is the height of hedoism. It is also very dangerous. If I can kill someone I hate with an absolute certainty of getting away with it, is it moral? Of course not. The lack of a downside is not what determines morality, because no one is qualified to determine there is no downside...
Interesting misuse of logic here. First you say that doing something with absolutely no downside is immoral and then you say that it is impossible to determine whether or not there is a downside. You can't claim that there is no possibility of a downside and then claim that there is a possibility of a downside.
First of all, I think it is useful to point out that the old Traditional Conservative Russell Kirk had modified his view on this issue ever so slightly over the years. In the first 30 years after The Conservative Mind he would state the first principle of conservatism as "belief in a Transcendent Moral Order." by the Nineties however, he he was citing it as "a Belief in an Enduring Moral Order." I would like to think that like many on this forum he had met many "old whig" style conservatives that he fully agreed with that he knew were fully in agreement that Moral Principles were constants and not situational and he felt that as Prudence was the first virtue of conservatives, common bond should be acknowledged.
Few can read Hayek and not get the understanding that while not a religious man by any means, he supported religious morality as an anchor to society and as a foundation for the state. He held with Adam Smith that for mankind in general, religion was the most reliable transporter of morals, in a solid sense, from generation to generation.
I have met many here that hold few religious views and yet appear to agree that morals are constants and not the realm of schemes and metaphysics based upon rationalistic formula.
The real dread that this author's instructor, Voegilin, had as I understand it, was fear of those holding that government could give us paradise on earth, instead of in heaven. Voegilin held that this was "immanitizing the symbols of Transcendence". Instead he reminded us that Man is imperfectable and as such, he and his constructs can't be made to substitute for salvation, regardless of whatever form of "grace" one understands. This is what the Rationalists from the Communists to the leftist/capitalists of today don't believe.
As Sowell says, they want us to follow the "vision of the anointed" and turn over to central control all the big issues of each era because they frame them all as problems or worse yet, crisis.
As Burke said, it is all in the particulars. If your principles give you morals that meet the criteria above, I join with you in general conservatism and look for something more tangible to agree and disagree on other than your personal religious beliefs. I have met many. so-called religious people that fail to see their belief in God as anything other than a platform for enlightenment sentimentality and social schemes.
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. 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.
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? 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. 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.
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.
Actually, it is YOU who claimed that an action without a downside is moral. That claim posits two things. First, that there is such a thing as a choice without a "downside." I refute that in the second part of my statement. As human beings are incapable of seeing all ends, either your entire formulation is wrong, or you must mean by "an action without a downside" an action that the individual cannot rationally see has a downside. Secondly, if that is the case, I point out that some actions that are clearly immoral can be framed as not having a "rational" downside to an individual. Thus both of your claims fail. This is not contradictory... simply an advance refutation of the defense that I knew you were going to make (and did with your "Simply understanding most of the downsides is all that is necessary" comments)...
Thanks great article and bookmarked
Let's back up a second. You may be having this debate because some here disagree on what your terms mean. I am assuming we mean when we say "morality," any doctrine or system of moral conduct, any particular set of moral principles or rules of conduct. "Ethics" is often used interchangeably, but ethics are simply the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation.
You assert that God is necessary for BOTH of these. Do Buddhists have no morality, then? Did Soviet Russia have no morality whatsoever? In my experience, Buddhists have a sense of duty and obligation far above that of the common Christian. The Soviets had no compunction about dismissing Western morality in pursuit of their goals, but they almost never allowed Western capitalism or religious thought to openly exist, unless they were desperate--which to me seems like a basic set of principles without the involvement of a higher power.
While YOUR ethics may be tinged with and wholly based upon your belief in a higher power, one may develop principles in the absence of divine inspiration but out of pure self-interest (say, the law of the sea, or the diplomatic practices and immunities), AND one may have beliefs as to good or bad based wholly upon a vision of right conduct not inspired by God but by peaceful coexistence with one's fellow man.
Any secular source that you can find traces its premise back to a belief in God.
"Secular source" meaning...what, exactly? If you believe that everything comes from God, NOTHING could have happened without God and there is no such thing as a "secular source." Worse, you haven't chosen anything but a "higher power" as your source of morality. That could be interpreted to be almost anything, as could morality. These are words rife with interpretive difficulty. Did John Wayne Gacy's morality come from God? How about Charlie Manson's? They both certainly had their own beliefs as to what was moral and immoral. I don't think a higher power inspired them in developing their morality.
So if you remove the premise of the existence of God the entire foundation upon which morality is defined collapses.
YOUR morality, you mean. Others may well have developed a moral code that does not include such lofty aspirations as doing right before God. I think for your dramatic language to be true, you must assume that there is some sort of higher power holding back the folks who believe in that morality, ala the Island of Dr. Moreau. Unfortunately, there is no House of Pain around the corner every day for humans. There is no such higher power wielding a whip for the whole of humanity on a daily basis. There MUST be other justification for many.
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?
Those who distinguish civil from theological intolerance are, to my mind, mistaken. The two forms are inseparable. It is impossible to live at peace with those we regard as damned; to love them would be to hate God who punishes them: we positively must either reclaim or torment them. Wherever theological intolerance is admitted, it must inevitably have some civil effect; and as soon as it has such an effect, the Sovereign is no longer Sovereign even in the temporal sphere: thenceforce priests are the real masters, and kings only their ministers.
Now that there is and can be no longer an exclusive national religion, tolerance should be given to all religions that tolerate others, so long as their dogmas contain nothing contrary to the duties of citizenship. But whoever dares to say: Outside the Church is no salvation, ought to be driven from the State, unless the State is the Church, and the prince the pontiff. Such a dogma is good only in a theocratic government; in any other, it is fatal. The reason for which Henry IV is said to have embraced the Roman religion ought to make every honest man leave it, and still more any prince who knows how to reason.
Jean Jacques Rousseau:Civil Religion
He says this about Hobbes:
Of all Christian writers, the philosopher Hobbes alone has seen the evil and how to remedy it, and has dared to propose the reunion of the two heads of the eagle, and the restoration throughout of political unity, without which no State or government will ever be rightly constituted. But he should have seen that the masterful spirit of Christianity is incompatible with his system, and that the priestly interest would always be stronger than that of the State. It is not so much what is false and terrible in his political theory, as what is just and true, that has drawn down hatred on it.
One basis for building a moral society can be drawn from conventions built over time in said society. The duty of the conservative is to conserve societal conventions that have proven over time to be just and equitable to the greater part of civil society. In matters of State; reason should rule. I tend to agree with Albert Einstein when he said, "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
Great post BUMP.
Thanks LibertarianInExile! BTW, I checked your FR homepage; if I had taken the trouble to create one, I'd have been proud if it had been exactly like yours.
Thanks! I wish it was a little sharper in coding, and it probably will be as I get better at HTML, but it's been fun putting it together.
BTW, you might enjoy the links page as well, if you didn't get a chance to look at it. I haven't lurked over there recently, but your link to infidels.org is a nice reminder it is out there for consideration by all, even those believers who simply wish to challenge their own theistic views.
My morality is of my own choosing, and I accept that many may believe in a different one. My view of God is my own, too. And I will be damned (pun intended) if I will be told that morality cannot be without God, when I know lots of moral folks who would not believe in God if He personally took a holy dump on their doorstep.
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