God and morality

[MikeNovack]

Yet (you may note) their assignations, in their eyes, in their feelings, have the tone of religious certainty. They condemn evil and the very very bad with a nearly religious zeal. They are certain that they know what is evil and, by logical extension, what is good.

Yes. But if secularism were true, how do they know that evil exists? How do they become so certain, when their own worldview denies it's possible for objective evil even to be real?

That's the three-headed kitten.

That's not my question. My question is simpler: if you really believe your secularism, why don't you act like you do?

But I know the answer......... I wouldn't want secularists to act like secularism requires them to act, or to really believe what it implies they must believe........

Not exactly, IC. You are questioning why secularists are not acting according to how YOU think secularists would be required to act. You are questioning how THEY can be arriving at morality, etc. if they thought like YOU think they would be thinking.

The problem is in your head, not theirs.

The Szenes poem I put up was in this context, your bee in a bonnet of how secularists must be thinking: I'll reinsert it here
There are stars
whose light reaches the earth only after they themselves have disintegrated
and are no more.

And there are people
whose scintillating memory lights the world after they have passed from it.

These lights –
which shine in the darkest night – are those which illumine for us the path.

Now you can disagree with her about "where morality comes from, how can we learn to act rightly" but I want to see why you argue that she is unable to express her belief about that << even though a "secular" --- Szenes was a secular Jew >>

[Immanuel Can]

Yet (you may note) their assignations, in their eyes, in their feelings, have the tone of religious certainty. They condemn evil and the very very bad with a nearly religious zeal. They are certain that they know what is evil and, by logical extension, what is good.

Yes. But if secularism were true, how do they know that evil exists? How do they become so certain, when their own worldview denies it's possible for objective evil even to be real?

That's the three-headed kitten.


That's not my question. My question is simpler: if you really believe your secularism, why don't you act like you do?

But I know the answer......... I wouldn't want secularists to act like secularism requires them to act, or to really believe what it implies they must believe........

Not exactly, IC. You are questioning why secularists are not acting according to how YOU think secularists would be required to act.

No, I'm pointing out how secularism would cause them to act...if they actually believed their own worldview.

[Will Bouwman]

...IC. You are questioning why secularists are not acting according to how YOU think secularists would be required to act.

FYI MikeNovack:

If, as you wish to assume, there IS no God, however, then neither is any morality legitimizable. In fact, there is not even a way to say that whatever "morality" might be taken to be, it needs to be shown "legitimate" at all. For example, why should we not rape, pillage and loot whenever we wish? Only our post-Christian squeamishness or the fear of punishment by powerful others stands between us and that. But what if, like Nietzsche, we're courageous enough to be "bad" anyway? Who then shall say us nay, and on what basis shall we feel obliged to hear them on that?

If it is only Mr Can's "post-Christian squeamishness" that prevents him raping, pillaging and looting, those who have contact with him might thank god.

[phyllo]

Imagine long, long ago:

Atheist A: These a-holes won't stop doing bad stuff

Atheist B: What if we invent an all-seeing, all-powerful being who will punish them if they don't stop.

Atheist A: That's a great idea.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I've been taking the piss out of Jacobi for years because he is such an obvious pseud who doesn't know anything about philosophy. For the record, he doesn't read philosophers, he reads pretentious fascists and the philosophical vocabulary he uses all comes from their use of it which is why he doesn't actually know what most of these words mean.

Jacobi endorsing a clumsily piled up argument like yours was just two birds to hit with one stone. You should be able to see this without my assistance to be honest. You saw what he understood by "problem of evil" and you must have noticed the disconnect from the actual problem of evil, you take thing much more seriously than I do after all.

Well, I am not aware that I endorsed any argument. But I have definitely found Meta’s AI (available through WhatsApp) to be super-useful. It therefore seems to me that if it is used carefully it is an extraordinary research tool. Like a ‘living’ and interactive encyclopedia.

I am more interested in the psychology of a person whose forum position assumes a role of “grand philosopher” and whose tactics are purely negative. If this caustic attitude defines “philosophical pursuit” then I have indeed entirely missed the point of engaging philosophically with ideas. So all that I think could be said about Flash (without denying that he seems to be intelligent if also of lop-sided learning) is that ultimately whatever he is doing is “destructive”. And that destructive attitude seems to me to connect with a frame of mind that “tears down” rather than builds up. I define it as an “ailment” common in our present. I seek alternatives…

But again I do not conceal, nor minimize, one large element in my own approach. It starts with self-analysis but it extends more widely to all people. I defend “ad hominem” in the sense that, as with the “defect” I notice in Flash’s attitude and strategy, whatever he will do (think, communicate, construct) will be tinged with that same destructive violence that is his salient characteristic. This trait is really independent of any specific “philosophical platform” or school of philosophical thought and, in my view, should be recognized as pathological. So again I say that focus on “the man” is not at all irrelevant when we mull over the important issues up for examination in our present. But it has to be done fairly.

Now the other part needs also to be addressed. That of reading and investigating the thought of Dissident Right thinkers (which I have definitely done). Put simply, we are all of us, culturally, socially and politically in a time of very significant change and shift, even reversal, of opinion. To all appearances it looks to be a sort of train-wreck of “the Liberal order” constructed after WWll. What that portends for us is that ‘philosophically” (I mean here cultural conversation more than an academic milieu) we are all beset with all sorts if intellectual and ethical tasks. There are do many issues and questions that are thrust at us and that demand that we take a side. Unquestionably there are philosophical and political factions whose battles and games (striving for power) reflect, if one follows them back to their sources, coherent platforms in ideas. Both “Left tending” and “Right tending”.

I could say “Flash makes a poisonous accusation” when he sums up my concerns as being fascistic in orientation. It is a form of calumny, and it is ‘unethical’ to say something about another that is untrue. But don’t we live in a time when doing just that, employing just that tactic, is one of the most common characteristics of argument and discussion (“bickering”) in our present? Is that not a notable problem that arises time and again on this forum? Flash’s tactic, so common, is to make an outrageous accusation that requires a defensive posture. And that inevitably allows, at least for a while, the accuser to control the conversation. It is rhetorically devious however. So it cannot, in my view, be considered good application of philosophical skill.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Yes. But if secularism were true, how do they know that evil exists? How do they become so certain, when their own worldview denies it's possible for objective evil even to be real?

It seems to me that you could very quickly get a general answer to that question by asking the Encyclopedic AI 8-Ball! It would at least line-out for you the precise retorts that “secularists” make.

My view is that “in the end” and at a “final point” we cannot but see “the world” pretty much as I described it. It is an amoral system into which we are ‘subsumed’. But in the midst of that, faculties of awareness open for us. We are, in many senses, “unbearably imprisoned”. We struggle against this constantly. That defines human life.

The apprehension of metaphysical possibilities is what human awareness does, isn’t that right?

[Alexis Jacobi]

If, as you wish to assume, there IS no God, however, then neither is any morality legitimizable. In fact, there is not even a way to say that whatever "morality" might be taken to be, it needs to be shown "legitimate" at all. For example, why should we not rape, pillage and loot whenever we wish? Only our post-Christian squeamishness or the fear of punishment by powerful others stands between us and that. But what if, like Nietzsche, we're courageous enough to be "bad" anyway? Who then shall say us nay, and on what basis shall we feel obliged to hear them on that?

If it is only Mr Can's "post-Christian squeamishness" that prevents him raping, pillaging and looting, those who have contact with him might thank god.

Nice try, Wilbur, but that smear cannot stick. You missed the point. The Nietzschean manoeuvre is to attempt to recover a level of freedom that is idealized as a truer ethics than that we have all absorbed as “goodness”: the proper social behavior of a moral cow, i.e. a man of the herd.

It is not “Why should we not rape, pillage and loot” but what should keep us from, say, attempting to take over a continent, eliminate a problematic race and religion, and attempt by thorough and brutal force to establish political and racial dominion over the ‘cows’ and thus control the destiny of humanity in history?

[Immanuel Can]

...IC. You are questioning why secularists are not acting according to how YOU think secularists would be required to act.

FYI MikeNovack:

If, as you wish to assume, there IS no God, however, then neither is any morality legitimizable. In fact, there is not even a way to say that whatever "morality" might be taken to be, it needs to be shown "legitimate" at all. For example, why should we not rape, pillage and loot whenever we wish? Only our post-Christian squeamishness or the fear of punishment by powerful others stands between us and that. But what if, like Nietzsche, we're courageous enough to be "bad" anyway? Who then shall say us nay, and on what basis shall we feel obliged to hear them on that?

If it is only Mr Can's "post-Christian squeamishness" that prevents him raping, pillaging and looting, those who have contact with him might thank god.

Quite the opposite. It's a miracle a man like me doesn't do much worse than he does. Thank God for that. But then, salvation is just that: a miracle.

[Immanuel Can]

Yes. But if secularism were true, how do they know that evil exists? How do they become so certain, when their own worldview denies it's possible for objective evil even to be real?

It seems to me that you could very quickly get a general answer to that question by asking the Encyclopedic AI 8-Ball! It would at least line-out for you the precise retorts that “secularists” make.

One can only be interested in the retorts that are rational and consistent. For as I pointed out, most of the secularists are neither in their attitude to morality -- they act as if morality exists, and even make moral claims themselves, but all the while claim to believe in a worldview that should tell them that moral claims are impossible. According to secularism, here's no objective morality, remember?

My view is that “in the end” and at a “final point” we cannot but see “the world” pretty much as I described it. It is an amoral system

Well, I don't see it that way at all. Neither do Christians generally, or Jews, or many other 'religionists.' Things like Atheism, Materialism, Physicalism...these may require that perspective of us...but most people don't agree. Even, as I pointed out above, most secularists don't agree...though I agree with you what if they were consistent, then they "could not but see" the world exactly as you say.

So it seems we can see it another way. Almost everybody does.

We are, in many senses, “unbearably imprisoned”.

I'm finding it bearable.

The apprehension of metaphysical possibilities is what human awareness does, isn’t that right?

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here, so I can't tell if I agree or not.

[Gary Childress]

...IC. You are questioning why secularists are not acting according to how YOU think secularists would be required to act.

FYI MikeNovack:

If, as you wish to assume, there IS no God, however, then neither is any morality legitimizable. In fact, there is not even a way to say that whatever "morality" might be taken to be, it needs to be shown "legitimate" at all. For example, why should we not rape, pillage and loot whenever we wish? Only our post-Christian squeamishness or the fear of punishment by powerful others stands between us and that. But what if, like Nietzsche, we're courageous enough to be "bad" anyway? Who then shall say us nay, and on what basis shall we feel obliged to hear them on that?

If it is only Mr Can's "post-Christian squeamishness" that prevents him raping, pillaging and looting, those who have contact with him might thank god.

Quite the opposite. It's a miracle a man like me doesn't do much worse than he does. Thank God for that. But then, salvation is just that: a miracle.

Why is it a miracle, and what sort of things that are "much worse" are you referring to?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Well, I don't see it that way at all. Neither do Christians generally, or Jews, or many other 'religionists.' Things like Atheism, Materialism, Physicalism...these may require that perspective of us...but most people don't agree. Even, as I pointed out above, most secularists don't agree...though I agree with you what if they were consistent, then they "could not but see" the world exactly as you say.

Trust me, I understand how you “see it”.

Yet I struggle to understand how you manage not to see the world of Nature just as I describe it: physical certainly, brutal, amoral and “blind”. There is no alternative that I can find. Can you describe a “view” that makes sense that is an alternative?

[Alexis Jacobi]

We are, in many senses, “unbearably imprisoned”.

I'm finding it bearable.

Obviously I am referring to a general angst about the condition of living in a world that is mutable, unstable, potentially deadly from one moment to the next, and thoroughly impermanent.

I assume you simply did not care to read and consider what I clearly pointed out.

[Will Bouwman]

If it is only Mr Can's "post-Christian squeamishness" that prevents him raping, pillaging and looting, those who have contact with him might thank god.

Nice try, Wilbur, but that smear cannot stick.

That's not what Mr Can thinks, Gus:

It's a miracle a man like me doesn't do much worse than he does.

[Immanuel Can]

We are, in many senses, “unbearably imprisoned”.

I'm finding it bearable.

Obviously I am referring to a general angst about the condition of living in a world that is mutable, unstable, potentially deadly from one moment to the next, and thoroughly impermanent.

Yeah. But I've got no angst. This is not the only world there is, or will be. So while I have to accept that that's what you feel, and it seems very real to you, I've got to tell you I don't feel it.

[Immanuel Can]

If it is only Mr Can's "post-Christian squeamishness" that prevents him raping, pillaging and looting, those who have contact with him might thank god.

Nice try, Wilbur, but that smear cannot stick.

That's not what Mr Can thinks, Gus:

It's a miracle a man like me doesn't do much worse than he does.

Will's actually right. I have no delusions that I'm inherently a better man than others. I know myself too well for that. But I also know that, by the grace of God, I'm not what I used to be or could have been, so that's a bit of a consolation...no thanks to me.