henry quirk wrote: ↑Mon Mar 30, 2020 5:49 pm
But I'd agree with you that to do that is wrong. It's not so easy to say why it's wrong, though.
Sure it is: god made man as a free will.
Well, fine: but the problem is that that same "god," by Deism's telling, has departed. He's not coming back. So while he may have
started out men with a free will, they are left without anything beyond that initial position.
Are men to be free
always? Or was man's freedom just like the starting line at a a race, in which the stronger competitors were quickly to outstrip and dominate the weaker in the natural course of the race. Who says which way the story continues, since that god has no revelation to tell us?
And anyway, what is the penalty for changing the rules after the game begins? That god is gone, and won't be calling anybody to account.
...bein' a free will means some folks will choose assholery over a more noble course (and they do this no matter which of our gods happens to be the real McCoy).
Absolutely. In fact, that's analytically true. To have a genuine "choice" between good and evil entails that one has a genuine choice to do evil. To be sure, one may
not choose to do the evil, and still be volitionally free in choosing the good. But the fact remains that one has to have had the choice to do evil...and statistically, that also explains why some do.
It is not obviously the case that if someone doesn't want to be enslaved, we should care at all.
Sure it is: no man craves the leash. Knowin' that is foundational to givin' a shit (but obviously knowin' that doesn't mandate givin' a shit).
"No man craves...?" But what thought should the enslaver have for what his victims "crave"? What tells us he owes them anything near the respect he chooses to give to himself, or any respect at all, for that matter? In point of fact, the enslaver "craves" to have slaves. That "craving" also does not legitimize his desires...so "craving" is off the table either way.
Why not simply say, "I'm the stronger; you are the weaker. Therefore, I make you my slave, whether you like it or not. And who is there to say to me 'No,' for my power is there to refute all such protests."
This is the state of things now. The question is: Are these motherfuckers wrong in a real way or just wrong as a matter of opinion?
Absolutely. That's the issue.
I may be dead, but I won't be slaved.
Commendable, perhaps. Some potential slaves made the same decision, and threw themselves overboard while at sea. However, is there not a better solution: namely, to stay alive and seek the means to break the claim of the enslaver on the enslaved?
Now, that's still okay for Deism, of course. What gets sticky there is the question of why we should be equally morally constrained against slavery if God has extracted his interest from His creation and permanently departed for parts unknown. As the saying goes, "While the cat's away, the mice will play." And this "Cat" is not coming back at all, according to Deism. So that being so, why should we not choose to play the game on any terms we personally choose -- including enslaving other people if it serves our personal agenda to do so?
Mannie, bein' blunt, your god, with all his love and rules and attention, has done a poor job keepin' the mice in line.
You mean you understand the fact that mankind can do evil (like enslaving people) seems to you to suggest that God's not in control of the situation? I ask because if so, it seems to me that that conclusion isn't self-evident. Especially if we believe in free will, and if God has created us with free will, then a situation of temporary injustice and inequity is just the kind of thing we should expect to see -- men using their free will for purposes both good and bad, and not being prevented from either choice...at least for now.
It's all well and fine to preach comeuppance in the afterlife but that's cold comfort in the here and now.
Well, that critique begs the essential question, doesn't it, Henry? And that question is, "Is there an afterlife in which justice can be established?"
If there were, then the objection vaporizes. If there is not, then the objection is futile: for my power is limited to the here and now, in which injustice prevails, and my personal power will continually wane until I become incapable of defending myself anymore. Injustice has then been granted the permanent reign. I will lose my noble battle to resist it. And that's pretty cold comfort in itself.
My deism, my god, is honest: you're on your own so get up offa your knees and fight.
But here's the interesting thing, Henry. Deism sponsors few charities, few movements of liberation of others, and no claims to rights. On the other hand, it's empirically very obvious that Theists have historically be highly contributory to things like education, medicine, prison reform, universal rights, foreign aid, political reform, poor relief and multicultural preservation. Why would that be?
Perhaps that's because the Deist is alone in this world. He has to fight alone...for himself, and by himself. Whether he has incentive to care for his neighbour, far less the alien, the oppressed, the poor or the suffering, well, there seems no reason necessarily to think so. (I have a sneaking suspicion you're a fairly good neighbour yourself.) But theoretically, anyway, it's every man for himself...which is perhaps okay for young men in the prime of life, but not much good for anybody else, including even the same man at the beginning or at the end of his life.
That is surely astonishing, and a thing we would never expect from a universe sprung from some indiscriminate primordial vacuum, or something equally random. But it would hardly be surprising, if we thought there were a rational Creator who put things into place that way, and designed them to be discoverable and comprehensible to the human mind...