tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post3325879462720430749..comments2024-03-26T14:20:38.103-04:00Comments on The Thought Criminal: If You Don't Believe All People Are Made In The Image of God You Will Have No Secure Basis For Asserting Equality Of Any KindUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-76538672614743963112016-01-13T14:33:37.750-05:002016-01-13T14:33:37.750-05:00I just re-read the end of your essay and wanted to...I just re-read the end of your essay and wanted to offer a ray of hope.<br /><br />I'm sure you have heard naturalists (atheists, whatever name they're calling themselves today) say, "We don't need God (spirituality, beliefs, dogma, etc) to be moral. We're good people, we are kind, compassionate, yada yada."<br /><br />And you would be, from a purely intellectual point of view, to respond as you did in this excellent essay, and explain to them the Jewish, then Christian roots of their "secular humanist" view.<br /><br />But from a more experiential point of view (or perhaps more appropriately worded, a more mystical perspective?), perhaps we might say (though we definitely wouldn't say this explicitly to the humanist!) that their "intuition" - moral intuition? - regarding goodness, kindness, compassion, equality, etc - did not necessarily have to come through various religious/cultural institutions (or what's left of them today). Because they ARE in truth spiritual beings (sorry, that phrase probably sounds ugly to you, but since I just arrived here for the first time I don't know what language to use - souls?) made in the image of God, of course they would have access to a fundamental moral intuition of the essential moral worth of all human beings.<br /><br />I have found, in fact, that taking this perspective immediately lessens the resistance I've had in talking about, say, Indian philosophy - BOTH to secularists and those of a rather fundamentalist religious persuasion. Start with what we have in common - with the fundamentalist, that we have an essential connection to God; with the fundamaterialist, with the fact that we share a fundamental intuition regarding equality, kindness, compassion, etc. <br /><br />Not sure if this makes sense - as I said, I just arrived at this page and am not sure how to word this here, but hope it is at least interesting! Now off to your post on Messiaen... (studied his music when I was majoring in composition many moons ago)Donhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13741454531338054082noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-86384957503696156492016-01-13T14:19:14.147-05:002016-01-13T14:19:14.147-05:00TC: You might be interested in reading some of Sri...TC: You might be interested in reading some of Sri Aurobindo's political writings. As someone who had a prominent - if not the predominant - influence on the independence movement in India at the beginning of the 20th century, and also as someone who received the highest quality classical education at Cambridge and later taught himself Sanskrit to read the Indian philosophic classics in the original, he was fully aware of the challenges of secular vs spiritually based morality.<br /><br />In the chapter, "Standards of Conduct" in "The Synthesis of Yoga," he deftly weaves the understanding of the relationship between our essential equality as "spiritual beings" and the inequality of our superficial nature. He also has several chapters on equality later in the same book, and also in his "Essays on the Gita."<br /><br />I think you'd find, if you examined many of the greatest writings of the Tibetan Buddhists, many similar ways of understanding our essential equally from a spiritual point of view (and just to add, the "creator God" that the wisest Buddhist reject is not the God of Christianity but the Deist God of that very same Enlightenment that you so deftly skewer. <br /><br />Apart rom that, extremely interesting and well-written column.Donhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13741454531338054082noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-20572008486806113682015-12-28T11:14:51.076-05:002015-12-28T11:14:51.076-05:00"Voltaire was a pretty repulsive racist whose..."Voltaire was a pretty repulsive racist whose writings on the subject could be used intact in white supremacy pamphlets today. "<br /><br />Citation, please. Otherwise I'm going to assume you based that statement on the work of Prof. Otto Yerass.steve simelshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13247393763004076992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-86937634660437729852015-12-28T10:26:18.121-05:002015-12-28T10:26:18.121-05:00I am convinced that the only durable basis for act...I am convinced that the only durable basis for acting out of equality, for achieving political equality, a basis from which people will make the self-sacrifice necessary for that to happen, passing up opportunities to press for their advantage over other people in violation of their rights, is by that very assertion that it is an equal endowment from God. I don't think any other basis has any hope of making an actual difference in society, certainly as politics or even social relations. The difficulty of making it real in the United States, even when that is one of our national slogans, shows that it has to really, truly be believed with a strength to make it actual in real life. The Thought Criminalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01381376556757084468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-19260877153475876002015-12-28T10:22:16.052-05:002015-12-28T10:22:16.052-05:00I think Moore's most valid idea is that we kno...I think Moore's most valid idea is that we know many day to day facts with a certainty that any level of logical verification could ever achieve. <br /><br />I agree that Sartre's ideas are unlikely to ever become a reality in any real society. They are, further, complicated by his advocacy for Marxist regimes which were engaged in total depravity. <br /><br />I came to the conclusion that the argument that atheists were morally superior based in the otiosity of contented university profs is probably a fluke and nothing to base a general observation of atheist morality in. It's lack durability under testing is best judged when a rival writes a paper attacking their work or there is a department shakeup or a tenure struggle. As Steve Weinberg showed at Sean Carroll's summer camp for atheist scholars, it's pretty much the morality of spoiled two-year-olds. The Thought Criminalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01381376556757084468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-81293498834065930962015-12-28T10:12:45.075-05:002015-12-28T10:12:45.075-05:00Adding: and interestingly Jefferson's cleares...Adding: and interestingly Jefferson's clearest statement (though not his alone) about "egalitarian democracy" starts out with "All men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights."<br /><br />Apologists on-line (the unserious kind) try to explain (atheist-splain?) that Jefferson didn't mean what that obviously says, but take it out and where do we all get "certain inalienable rights" that call to judgment a Stalin or a Pol Pot?Rmjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811456254443706479noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-27683330726493500122015-12-28T10:09:50.143-05:002015-12-28T10:09:50.143-05:00I'm familiar with G.E. Moore's attempt to ...I'm familiar with G.E. Moore's attempt to create an ethical system, his <i>Principia Ethica.</i> The fact that is is obscure explains its success. I've also read Aristotle's "Ethics," which has nothing to do with morality (Socrates was more of a moralist).<br /><br />The only valid atheistic ethic I know of is Sartre's, and it's so burdensome no one wants to talk about it. Even John Rawls' Theory of Justice is just namby-pamby Christian morality without Jesus, and therefore without any force to make us conform to Rawl's wishful thinking, except that things might be nicer if we did.Rmjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811456254443706479noreply@blogger.com