Posted on 12/17/2003 1:56:16 PM PST by LyricalReckoner
In Muslim countries – I mean countries where they go by the the clerics rule – you can get away with murder. Literally. You can kill your daughter if you think it will improve your standing in the community.
But England is not a Muslim country and it’s not easy to get away with murder there.
Consider the case of Heshu Yones, a 16-year-old girl who was stabbed to death by her father, Abdallah. (The Yones’ emigrated to England from Iraq. Kurds, they fled Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror).
Why did her father kill his daughter? Because he believed she was having sex with her boyfriend. Someone sent Abdallah a letter accusing Heshu of acting like a whore. So, he decided to kill her for the sake of his honor.
A spokesman for the police cautioned Muslims about religiously-inspired murder: “Violence in the name of culture will not be tolerated. Murder in the name of honor will be punished by the severest penalties available in law.”
Abdallah was sentenced to life in prison.
(Excerpt) Read more at misterthorne.org ...
I agree; and I thank you for your objective analysis.
I'd be interested in knowing what you think Social Darwinism is.
Nonsense, notwithstanding your misunderstanding of what a Christian is, the person you described is not a Christian. He's insane, and so are you if you think anyone is buying this garbage.
I can't help noticing that you're quoting Rand at me as if it were scripture -- didn't you say that wasn't allowed? ;-)
Anyway, that particular passage is a logical train wreck.
Consider, for example, the following.
Existentially, the activity of pursuing rational goals is the activity of maintaining one's life; psychologically, its result, reward and concomitant is an emotional state of happiness.
I'm sure that you, like most of us, have been made very happy by something completely unexpected -- say, a cool, sweet-smelling breeze during a lovely sunset. There is no way we can claim that that particular happiness resulted from the pursuit of rational goals. Thus, Rand's statement is incomplete. Happiness can result from other sources as well. If we accept that happiness is an objective good, then we must also confess Rand's rationalist approach does not fully and properly describe the source of happiness.
The statement is also incomplete in another way: there are things that make us happy precisely because they are not related to maintaining our lives. For example, I've found that watching a small child following ants can make me extraordinarily happy -- despite the fact that it is quite irrelevant to the maintenance of my own life.
And when one experiences the kind of pure happiness that is an end in itself -- the kind that makes one think: "This is worth living for" -- what one is greeting and affirming in emotional terms is the metaphysical fact that life is an end in itself.
In other words, "what makes us happy is objectively good." The problem with this statement is that it's not objective, even for an individual. (After all, some of those suicide bombers were probably happy to get onto a crowded Jersualem bus -- yet you condemned them as evil....) It is difficult to accept logic that places a non-objective "highest moral good" a the pinnacle of an allegedly objective philosophy.
It also requires us to accept the claim that a thing cannot be good unless it makes us happy. Thus, we must exclude any moral imperative for which we might say, "this is worth dying for" -- after all, in Rand's world, the dead cannot be happy.
Let's stop here to define "objective." As Webster's puts it:
Objective ... b: of, relating to, or being an object , phenomenon, or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers : having reality independent of the mind
Let us assume that Rand's statement about happiness is really objective. Thus, because what makes me happy is an objective good, and watching a small child following ants has made me happy, it should make me happy, every time. And yet, just as a child's interest in ants can make me happy, it can also infuriate me if it delays my doing things related to the maintenance of my life. The same objective act has therefore evoked in me two diametrically opposed reactions. (And, of course, for it to be truly, truly objective requires us to extend the example to all people -- something we obviously cannot do.)
Thus we see that Rand's "statement of objective fact" is not objective after all.
Now, you and I undoubtedly agree that there are things which are truly good, and things which are truly evil -- and they'd be so even if you or I had never been born. This puts Ayn Rand in something of a hole: if good or evil exist independently of any given individual, then their source obviously cannot be the individual; rather, the source of good or evil must be elsewhere, and can only be discovered by individuals. Rand says that this source is "objective reality," but objective reality tells us that Rand's particular philosophy can at best be a relativist one.
I'm afraid you're simply going to have to admit one of two things: there are either no moral absolutes such as good or evil; or the definition of good and evil must be supplied to us from a supernatural source.
IOW, you're now claiming that a suicide bombing, or attacking others with a weapon, is not, in and of itself, evil or good. Evil or good are defined with regard to other moral considerations. What are those considerations, and what is their source?
The ethical question to be answered is ... Do you save your son and let the others perish, or do you save the others and let your son perish? The objectivist would save his son; but the altruist would save the many ... and live unhappily ever after.
This is, of course, pure crap even by Rand's standards. There are numerous problems with it.
First off, Rand's conclusion implies that the objectivist's happiness depends on the life of his son. Thus, the objectivist -- any objectivist -- is not an end in himself. Instead, the objectivist's moral end is his son. It's OK to say this -- it's consistent with the observable facts of evolution -- but it's not Objectivism.
Second, Rand is telling us that our aquatic objectivist's happiness can only be achieved if he sacrifices the lives of the other scouts to his own ends -- a strict no-no, according to Rand.
Third, Rand somehow assumes the objectivist can never again be happy if he saves the other scouts and loses his son. Once again we see that our hero's happiness is embodied in his son -- and now we understand that it is only embodied in his son, and thus has absolutely nothing to do with rational pursuits and maintenance of life.
If we were seriously applying Rand's ethics, a real objectivist would simply swim to shore and let them all drown. After all, it's not his fault those kids can't swim -- let nature take its course!
Thus, we have another, typically Randian, over-constrained situation.
As usual, Rand's conclusions are contradicted by the terms of her own philosophy. (Or perhaps you've done it for her, which would suggest that you don't understand her reasoning as well as you think you do.)
Good and evil have to do with life and the maintenance thereof. There is no such thing, for instance, as an evil rock.
-- and they'd be so even if you or I had never been born.
Not true.
The concepts of good and evil are relevant only to living things; they have no meaning whatsoever -- they are not "so -- to non-living (unborn or dead) things.
huh? to whom?
I pray to a trascendental god that cannot possibly exist in reality.
If god created all that exists in reality, he cannot possibly exist in reality.
To put it in context, here is what I said:
Indeed, Rand's epistomology of Reason (not to mention her own novels) would suggest to us that the real "absolute" is closer to Social Darwinism than anything else. Yet I'm pretty certain that Rand considered much of Social Darwinism to be quite evil.
Looking again at Mr. Webster:
social Darwinism an extension of Darwinism to social phenomena; specifically : a theory in sociology: sociocultural advance is the product of intergroup conflict and competition and the socially elite classes (as those possessing wealth and power) possess biological superiority in the struggle for existence
The theory of evolution is based on observation of Objective Reality, and the theory places us squarely in the evolutionary chain. The basic tenet of the Darwin's theory is one of "improvement through survival" and the tenets of Social Darwinism (as defined above) are an obvious and logically consistent extension of the theory of evolution.
Up to this point, Rand's philosophy actually agrees with Social Darwinism. Where the two part ways with is this: reason applied to evolution suggests that the ultimate measure of "good," is the advancement of the species, and that the individual is merely a means to humanity's end. If we apply Rand's first two premises -- which can and do lead us to Social Darwinism -- we can logically conclude that in order for a person to be good, he should apply his reason (a product of evolution and our mark of "improvement") toward support of the "improved" among us, and the suppression of those who are "backwards."
Rand tries to wriggle out of this by saying that we shouldn't sacrifice others to ourselves. But reason, drawing from what we can observe from evolution, suggests that this is precisely what we should do, if and when it suits the needs of "the species."
At this point it's appropriate to highlight that Ayn Rand's novels come dangerously close to advocating Social Darwinism -- her heroes are Moral Giants, whose Superior Reason and Ability makes it right and proper that others should do as they say. (Whittaker Chambers uncovers Rand's unacknowledged debt to Nietzsche in his famous review of Atlas Shrugged.)
The thin wall protecting Rand's philosophy from Social Darwinism is that unaccountable rule that we "can't sacrifice others for our ends." In order for it to stand, requires us to acknowledge that humans have "intrinsic moral worth," the source of which is not something that Rand's philosophy can uncover.
Good and evil do not exist independently of any living thing ... see post 107.
If they are objective, they are true regardless of whether there are living things to recognize them. That's what "objective" means.
The concepts of good and evil are relevant only to living things; they have no meaning whatsoever -- they are not "so -- to non-living (unborn or dead) things.
You've missed the point entirely. You and I are both alive. Would your tenets still apply to me, regardless of whether or not you were born?
Because Rand's tenets are allegedly objective, you are required to answer "yes" to that question. Which says that the origins of "good" and "evil" is not your reason. Instead, those concepts exist independently of your existence, or my existence. In fact, if they are objectively true, they would exist even if there weren't any human beings.
And once again we run against the rocks of objective reality. Objective reality is simply chock-full of things that we accept as natural among animals, but consider "evil" when humans do them to each other. Ayn Rand's objectivism is completely unable to account for this difference, because it specifically requires us to base our judgements on what we can observe.
Your concepts of what constitutes "evil" cannot be found in nature. Thus, if you want to call it evil when a salamikaze stabs his daughter to death, you've got to look outside of nature for the reason. (Social Darwinism could probably justify it on eugenic terms.)
Aha! "Social darwinism" has finally hit a dictionary and it's just what I thought it would be -- another mad-dog-attack name against Objectivist politics -- "social Darwinism" means anti-Capitalism.
You were right about that in post 73. Rand, being all for Capitalism, would detest social darwinism. .
But that calls up another of your post 73 statements ...
Rand's epistomology (sic) of Reason (not to mention her own novels) would suggest to us that the real "absolute" is closer to Social Darwinism than anything else
... for question.
What does that statement mean? What "absolute" are you talking about?
Are you not hiding behind ... meaningless ambiguities ... in most eveything you write?
Just to be really clear here: YOU were the one teaching them what was right and wrong in that case. They didn't come up with it themselves.
LOL!!!! So you reject the dictionary definition -- I've discovered that this is not an atypical response for Randians, BTW, and I fully expected you to yelp about it.
Seeing as you apparently don't like it, I think you've assumed the burden to tell us what, precisely, is wrong with Mr. Webster's definition of Social Darwinism.
Had you actually paid attention to my post, you'd have noted that I did define the terms -- well, as best I could, given that I'm trying to operate within the constraints defined by Ms. Rand.
And what am I to conclude from your dismissal of logic as "meaningless ambiguity?" If you don't understand what I'm saying, then ask for clarification. Your utter silence on the points I've made suggests that you do understand what I've said, and cannot find a proper response.
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