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 ...
Webster tells me that "objective" -- the noun -- is "anything external to or independent of the mind," and that truth has to do with reality and facts.
Good and evil are concepts that are internal within the mind -- they are therefore non-objective.
Those religious would say that evil exists outside the mind, but I'd say that there is more far more truth in the saying: "Evil lies in the eye of the beholder."
So what you're saying is: Rand is a liar and a fraud -- just like I said in my first post on the subject.
If they [i.e., good and evil] are objective, they are true regardless of whether there are living things to recognize them.
Given that I provided the definition of "objective," to which you've now referred, and we're discussing the merits of Rand's claim that good and evil are absolute moral concepts, I fail to understand your charge of "ambiguity."
Webster's definitions for the words "absolute" and "concept" back me up on this ...
"the Absolute ... Philos, that which is thought of as existing in and by itself, without relation to anything else"
"concept: an idea or thought, esp. a generalized idea of a class of objects; abstract notion"
... as does Rand, who writes ...
Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute, and so is a human life.
In thinking about your ambiguities, the Randian term "cult of moral grayness" kept coming to my mind. She wrote an essay using that term as the title, and she writes therein ...
Just as in epistemology, the cult of uncertainty is a revolt against reason -- so, in ethics, the cult of moral grayness is a revolt against moral values. Both are a revolt against the absolutism of reality.
Happy holidays ...
The truth is that some concepts are absolutes. Those concepts that are absolutes are those pertaining to existents -- things that exist.
With respect to our discussion about good and evil, please observe that the concepts "good" and "evil" are meaningful only to creatures with the ability to reason -- humans. With that thought in mind, it becomes obvious that all concepts are by-products of the human ability to reason.
Moving along with that thought regarding "good" and "evil," I'd say that the reason for moral study is to identify matters involving the preservation and continuance of life, with a follow on objective being to identify ways to preserve, and perhaps enhance, life.
In short, morality is a concept developed by man -- using reason -- for the preservation of human life.
An afterthought ... I think kids will understand what I've written in this post more often than adults; and that said understanding (within those kids) will usually be "corrected" by those "knowing better" adults.
Thank you for your patience.
Without hesitation, they both answered "yes" and -- given the Clinton/Gore record
Two things. I'm pleased that you were a republican partisan enough to have your Bush signage up two years prior to the 1992 election. Perhaps I'm amused that you did'nt take down your two year old signage.
The other thing I find remarkable is that the ten year old depicted in this story was politically informed enough to discuss the record of an Arkansas Governor and Tennessee Senator.
I used the term, because Rand's philosophy very definitely dealt in the realm of moral absolutes. She called her philosophy Objectivism precisely because her moral precepts were alleged to be objectively true -- that is, absolute. Let's look at this in more detail.
Suppose you've come up with some personal versions of "good" and "evil," and so have I. Suppose also that my version of "good" is significantly different from yours.
Is it logically reasonable for this to occur? For example, can both our (different) concepts be right? Can we both be wrong? Or if one of us is right, is the other automatically wrong?
Rand would say that only the last of those three cases would be fully acceptable to her. The first one is moral relativism, and the second one is unresolved.
Now what, really, is a moral absolute? It's something along the lines I tried to suggest to you a while back. Look again at the definition of "objective" -- in the realm of morality, an "objective principle" would be one that applies to any given person, and thus to all persons. (For example, "murder is wrong.") The concept is quite simply true. Something would be right or wrong even if you or I had never been born. (This is what Rand's "A is A" is all about.)
According to Rand, these concepts, being "objective," are supposedly discoverable by humans to the extent that their faculties of reason are not blocked by fear or irrational belief (her "mystics of muscle" and "mystics of mind").
The problem with Rand is simply that her approach is fundamentally illogical, and (as I've pointed out at length) self-contradictory. Objective reality doesn't work the way Rand needs it to work.
Worse, from her perspective, there is a class of morality which is logically consistent, and in contradiction to Rand: I'm speaking of the idea of "Might Makes Right," which among other things has the advantage of being observable in nature. So Rand's "objective" philosophy is obviously not correct -- at least, not on the terms in which she offers it.
The underlying question here is: of those things most people call good or evil -- how can we logically say that they really are good or evil, and not merely a set of "lifestyle choices?"
There's only one way: God has to say so. This inevitably leads to the question of whether or not God actually exists, and we humans are not adequate to the task of proving His existence. HOWEVER.... God is adequate to the task of proving His existence to us. He makes Himself known to us, if we will let Him.
What if, in this Holy season, you gave it a try? Nothing big, no resounding conversions necessary -- just think about it a little bit. Entertain the notion that God does exist. See whether His existence makes logical sense, and whether His existence lends logic to things (like morality) that would otherwise have no logic. Just give it a shot.
Yeah, it's amazing how man is so quick to extrapolate...
I'll admit, I do it myself on occasion. "Hi I'm an artist" = "Hi I futzed around in college for nine years majoring in basket-weaving and now I have no direction or ambition in life; you wanna buy my crap?" "Hi I'm a democrat" = "Hi, I automatically assume that I'm morally and intellectually superior to you, you back-woods redneck conservative inbred." "Hi this is Twyla from your credit card company and we need to talk to you about..." = "Bend over." And so on.
Extrapolation, blanket assumptions and generalizations can be tremendously time-saving and efficient. One must gauge, however, the appropriate extent to which one should generalize, i.e. how important a counter-example is...
I know a fair number of fundamentalist Christian types, and they're all fairly reasonable folk. At least they ain't out killing infidels or anything.
Either you are incredibly ignorant and have not studied both religions, or just want to misinform. The muslim is actually trying to follow and be a good muslim, the Christian is not.
It is more eye-opening to say that A would still be A, but that nothing would be right or wrong if humans didn't exist.
I'd also note that the matter of "A is A" comes to us from Aristotle via Rand and it pertains to reality, not morality.
We can definitely say that reality is an objective absolute because it deals with existents; whereas the concepts of morality, good, and evil are not absolutes because they are not about existents. A rock, for instance, is an existent; but nothing involving morality, good, or evil can be associated with a rock.
Using the rock terminology as a prop ... We can say that good and evil people are existents (absolutes) because people exist; but we cannot say that good and evil rocks are absolutes (existents) because morally classifiable rocks do not exist -- leading us to a conclusion that there is nothing absolute about morality -- with a corollary being that man needs no supernatural assistance in knowing good from evil.
It is that supernatural assistance, by the way, that often leads to hate, murder, mayhem, persecution, or war; leading me to another conclusion -- that those humans preaching hate, murder, mayhem, persecution, or war are self-appointed evil messengers of false gods.
It was Rand's work in epistemology that influenced me in writing this; epistemology being about things like (using chapter names from Rand's book on epistemology) cognition and measurement, concept-formation, abstraction from abstractions, concepts of consciousness, definitions, axiomatic concepts, the cognitive role of concepts, consciousness and identity. She writes in there (Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, pb, pg 47 of 164) that ...
"Epistemology is a science devoted to the discovery of the proper methods of aquiring and validating knowledge. Ethics is a science devoted to the discovery of the proper methods of living one's life. Medicine is a science devoted to the discovery of the proper methods of curing disease. All the applied sciences (i.e.,technology) are sciences devoted to the discovery of methods.
Happy holidays ...
But again: Rand said that her morality was derived from Objective Reality. As is quite obvious from her quote on epistemology, she made no distinction between physics, math, or ethics. Rand would say that there is a set of principles -- as valid and rational as any mathematical proof -- by which we humans are supposed to live. They're objective, and by virtue of that, they exist independently of you, or of me.
The problem is (as you've no doubt tired of being told) Rand's attempt to derive those principles from Objective Reality is irrational and self-contradictory.
It is that supernatural assistance, by the way, that often leads to hate, murder, mayhem, persecution, or war; leading me to another conclusion -- that those humans preaching hate, murder, mayhem, persecution, or war are self-appointed evil messengers of false gods.
Rather than blaming it "supernatural assistance" (which I gather you think doesn't exist in the first place) it would be best to blame the people who commit the crimes, wouldn't it?
The end products of religious philosophical indoctrination are fervent adults acting mindlessly -- Muslim suicide-bombings and prayer ceremonies come to mind.
Fervent adults are much like trusting children and when humans of any age commit evil acts following a religious leader's guidance, that leader deserves prosecution.
Being objective is not a natural existent like a rock or a speck of dust, it is an internally dependent conceptual matter within humans.
I don't think Rand would agree with you. For example, 2+2=4 even if there were no humans to know about it -- it's an objective fact. Rand contended that moral principles are along the same lines.
What a stupid, bigoted comment.
I'd remind you that the end products of religious philosophical indoctrination include things like Western Civilization, the U.S. Constitution, Bach's music, and the system of morality that Ayn Rand tried and failed to reproduce.
It's a good link Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Mao Ze Dung, Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, Hafez alAssad, Papa Doc Duvalier, Benito Mussilini, and Pol Pot did not have the problem inherent in any philosophical system rooted in mysticism -- that means religion.
That is such a relief. We better watch out for that fundamentalist Christian you know. He could be dangerous.
Oh but you see he is smarter than you and me. He knows best. We should just trust his brave new world. What could go wrong ?
I don't know about Bach, but the others are primarily the result of Aristotle ... and secularism resulting from religious persecutions.
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