Harbal wrote: ↑Sat Jul 01, 2023 7:20 pm
I'm not interested in the arguments about whose God is the real one, or the best one.
I thought that was perhaps the case. But at least you could easily find out that He's not the
same one, the one the Muslims claim. They would
like to say they follow in the same tradition, since theirs is not old enough; there's just no warrant for believing that. Really, theirs starts with Mo's misreadings of the beliefs of an odd sect called the Nestorians and his broken remembrances of what he had heard about Torah. But Mo himself, as Muslims will all freely tell you, was, and remained, illiterate all his life.
So, fear of political correctness can trump law. That's a pretty terrifying realization.
Even worse, political correctness can change the law.
Indeed so. Very troubling.
Whether we are made in the image of God is debateable, but what isn't is that we are made in the image of each other, we are all of the same kind, and that is rationale enough.
I don't think it is, for the simple reason that resemblance doesn't make an argument for equivalency. There are powerful ways of telling the story -- like the Social Darwinist narrative, for example, or Randianism, or Nietzscheanism -- where some people are thought to be just plain better than others, and more deserving of the lion's share of resources. And some such views, such as those of the eugenics crowd, even hold that the race is better off if the "inferiors" die.
So we do need some way of assuring ourselves that we have a right assessment of what human beings are worth. And mere resemblance doesn't provide enough for that.
Morals fall into the category of things that cannot be objective, in the same way as the assertion that apples taste nicer than pears does.
That's assumptive, of course. And were it correct, it would mean that "Do not kill" would be on parallel with, "Killing tastes nice/doesn't taste nice." Too bad that tastes differ, in that regard.
Even so, whether we realise that or not, our moral convictions very often feel like objective truths, and we act upon them as if they were.
Yes, that's true. But likewise, the moral convictions of northern Pakistanis that their family honour has been offended, so they must rape your sister in order to restore their honour would feel like an objective truth to them.
We could always do better, but as long as our society's morality is founded on good moral principles, we should never be too far out as long as we don't lose sight of them.
But "we" are not the problem. The problem is that not everybody believes what "we" believe, and we need grounds for saying to such, "Even though you believe X, you are simply wrong about that, and we shall not permit it here."
The trouble with religious morality is that most of us are not religious experts, and have to rely on those who are to tell us what is what.
You're right: that IS a problem. But it might not be a terminal one. It takes very little real research to find out basic things about differences among religions. And philosophy is very helpful, too: for while it cannot always tell us much about morality itself, it often alerts us to basic incoherencies and inconsistencies in the moral propositions others offer to us.
Now, the Church follows society, even though it tends to drag its heels. I want it to stay that way.
Okay. What when society ends up following the new religions? For as demographics shift, that will become inevitable. Will we not still need a way of saying, "Though you are in the majority now, and hold the political power, still, you have no legitimacy in enslaving/raping/oppressing/etc.? Will not the suffering need some grounds for at least knowing what wrongs are being done to them? And should not a clear, political case be made for the enshrinement in law of some very basic rights, like free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of conscience, and freedom of belief?
But on what shall we base such freedoms, if we have convinced ourselves that freedom is just a formality invented by our perishing society, with no more endurance than it has?
It's just the proportions? So if we have three criminals in a group of 10 people, our crime situation is improving when later we have 100 people and there are 28 criminals?
I can see the headline now: "Crime is improving, as we now only have 25 more criminals than we did before."
