[brazzaville]

Good morning.

Your post is nothing but sanctimonious BS. I stopped believing in God when I was a child. Does that make me an immoral man? I do my best to minimize the harm I do these days and I do my best to not judge other's failings (not successfully, I'm afraid to say),but you say I am not moral because I don't believe in a supreme being.

If I were religious I would say that hypocrisy is a sin. You are being hypocritical when you say that atheists try to use morality to persuade others to buy into their point of view when you are doing the same thing.

Define morality for us. If you say a belief in a deity is the basis of morality then tell us which deity. I say one's actions define one's morality not whether they feel the need for a supreme power.


Michael Frazier

[CzarNicky]

Would it be hypocritical of me to say Amen?

[Ragnorak]

I'm not trying to be sanctimonious, its just a little philosophy 101.

You obviously have a sense of right and wrong. Where does this come from? Where is the original source for right and wrong or good and evil?

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. When an atheist appeals on moral grounds, the appeal is to centuries of tradition created by a belief in a deity.

If there is no God, no Creator, no Supreme Being, then there is no plan, purpose, or design to any of our lives other than what we choose it to be until we die and become worm food.

Following a moral code is humbling yourself to something that you place more value in than your own wants. What is an atheist humbling himself to and why?

(For the record, in rereading my first post it is harsher than I realized. I listened to Laura Ingraham the other day and heard the debate about how the cross at the war memorial in San Diego insults and degrades "foxhole atheists" so the acidic nature of my original post is probably the fallout from that.)

[mngalt]

I would assert that you are the very definition of a moral free rider. You claim to have a Godless personal moral code which is at least equal to that of us sanctimonious BSers. But, rather than us trying to explain morality to you, perhaps you could tell us from whence you derive your superior code, as it obviously closely parallels those found in most religious texts.

While sectarian wars and purges have undoubtedly occurred, the greatest atrocities ever committed by mankind have been at the hands of those who, in their own minds, have transcended the need to answer to a higher power. I commend to you the last graph of this most excellent article.

[OPS4]

You said:
"Define morality for us. If you say a belief in a deity is the basis of morality then tell us which deity. I say one's actions define one's morality not whether they feel the need for a supreme power".

Answer
Morality as seen in historical fact.

A Godless Germany brought Hitler to power, once they replaced God with nationalism, and a dictator who believed himself to be god, the devils ruled.


Morality is the good as outlined in the Bible.
The absence of good intentions, leave only the bad.

The Ten commandements, are what kept Men focused on The Golden Rule, as Jesus outlined, Do unto to others as you would have them do unto you. That is of course, if one follows the Ten Commandments, and not the rule of barbarians such as Hitler, Stalin, and the like.

Communism has always led to the evil dictators, The Ten commandments certainly was not the moral compass of these types.

God's laws are the difference, as outlined in the Old and New Testament, not in the book of Magik, or Mein Kampf.

I do not judge anyone who has your stance, I pray for them,
to have more of the Good in years to come, through Spirtual enlightenment.

Ops4 God Bless America!

[hocndoc]

Michael,
I'm sorry that you are irritated by our belief in God and the author's pointing out the evidence that it is under governments that are trained and restrained by Christian/Judeo-Christian principles that mankind has prospered and the horrors that result in those nations whose leaders hate God. That evidence should be enough for any rational man or woman to pause and consider whether there might be causation, rather than simply correlation.

If you'll take a look at the commandments in the Bible, both Old and New Testament, the reason we are told to do them is to do well, to live long and well, to prosper, as well as to go to heaven. Some take these as promises of rewards. I see them as evidence of the way the world runs, the way we humans are built, since we are created in the Image of God. I think that's why you have an urge to do your "best to minimize" the harm you do and a need to avoid judging the failings of others. Why would you do that if there is no restraint outside of what you can get away with? Why not maximize the good you can do for yourself and only judge whether other people are in the way of your happiness? If there is no ultimate, unconditional "Truth" or God, then why not "Might makes right," rather than "Do unto others?"

If you don't believe in God and are not trying to rule and run over the rest of us, you aren't talented enough to take advantage of the rest of us. Or you have learned by trial and error that you have limits.

[KDD]

The problem is that concrete moral issues have been preempted by the liberal presumption of privacy, and the relentless extension of the liberal language of autonomy has removed a common moral framework from our society. Somewhere we have lost our hold on the sense that there is a moral order independent of our choices and wishes.

We can point to many suspects in history as the causes of this loss, but only their common character really matters. It is the fate of a liberal political tradition to progressively consume its own moral substance. By removing more and more of the controverted issues from the public sphere and placing them in the private realm, it conveys the inexorable sense that there is no common moral order. There are only the "values" we choose to apply to ourselves. All that matters is that we are legally right in asserting our rights claims, and the legal order is finally accepted as the only moral order.

The independent moral order has not been abolished, of course. The fact that pornographers pose as (moral) champions of the First Amendment may be the clearest evidence that we still have in our civil society some sense of morality, and within that inchoate germ of self-realization lies the best hope for a moral reawakening. The inescapability of an order of good and evil, which is not ours to command but by which we will eventually be measured, is a steady pressure on our individual consciences, and it is made manifest by the elaborateness of attempts to deny it.

The problem is to find a way to make this moral order a presence in the public square amidst the dominant ethos of relativism. The Republicans have the best prospects, because their traditionalist intuitions are closer to the answer most of us seek. But they need to recognize that the problem is not completely new and that it has been successfully tackled in the past

edit

Wherever the exercise of self-restraint begins, it has the inestimable value of forcing the recognition that we live within an order of limits. Our rights are not a poisonous brew destined to subvert any sense of difference between good and evil. We may not be able to define to our satisfaction where the line is to be drawn. But we can discern clearly its outer limits. The unambiguous recognition of such boundaries is an indispensable element in preserving the awareness of a moral order beyond our construction. Without that awareness we would eventually cease to regard respect for an order of mutual rights as itself something right.

An order of rights without right is simply that. Only if we recognize this do we have any chance of retaining contact with an order of right beyond rights. What we have a right to do may not in fact be right to do. The difference is crucial and it must be embedded in the law itself, because only then can we prevent the collapse of the morally right into the legally right.

Acknowledging the limits of the law is indispensable to preserving the recognition of a moral order beyond it. Conversely, relieving legality of the burden of moral rightness is also indispensable to its preservation. The legal and the moral must remain distinct if they are to perform their roles of supporting and facilitating one another

------------------------------------------------------------
Rights Without Right

[KC Burke]

Trying to make a good post after KDD is a very difficult task. But there are some angles that I wish to offer in reply to you, Michael, that I feel are needed.

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.