Morality without Religion.

The Marquis de Sade provided the definitive statements regarding the total absence of ethics for atheists. Imitating ethical behaviour is merely a strategy.

Sophistries to try to avoid that are nothing to do with anything.

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

joefromchicago wrote:
But you just got finished saying that religious rituals constitute ethical obligations. If circumcision is a religious ritual, then isn't that an ethical obligation?

Only for the believers in the religion. For non-believers in the religion, it isn't an ethical obligation.

Well, that contradicts what you said before:

Earlier, Thomas wrote:

But hypothetically, if I believed in the god of the Old Testament, I may* well believe he's entitled to us circumcising our infant sons. In this case, I would consider the gentile in this case to be acting unethically.

So which is it? Is the gentile acting unethically or not?

Thomas wrote:

[Playing advocatus moral relativisti]

By stating your question in the passive voice and saying should be judged, you are implying that ethical standards are absolute. But they aren't. They are relative to who does the judging. Jews should condemn gentiles for not circumcising their sons because Jews think circumcision is a duty to god, and Jews, unlike ebrown p, aren't moral relativists. Non-believers in the Old Testament shouldn't condemn gentiles because they don't believe there is such an obligation to god.

[/Playing [i]advocatus moral relativisti[/i]]

I have no idea what you're trying to do here. Are you presenting your own ideas or are you just playing at being a moral relativist? Either way, it's a complete muddle. I encourage you to try again.

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@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

it's a complete muddle.

It's clear to me what he's saying; perhaps the fault is in the beholder.

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@joefromchicago,

He is muddled Joe.

He uses expressions such as-

Quote:

Jews think circumcision is a duty to god

Which is not the case. Some Jews he ought to have said. Possibly the majority. Even the vast majority.

He doesn't consider that some Jews, a small number, may have the tribal wisdom to know that circumcision is necessary for the general welfare of the collective in the particular circumstances it finds itself in. And they might well not wish to broadcast their reasons to the others. The plebs. Who might not like the idea one bit (geffit--one bit-tee hee hee) and would be unprepared to agree to it with insufficient seeming cause to an average young man who is unsure of any benefits.

A fundamentalist might have it done at puberty, as some African tribes do, and without anaesthetic. Giving it the infants is because it's unseemly for a 14 year old lad to cry and understandable in an infant. It does bring Freud into play though.

As is usual, when the plebs have to be made to do something they don't like to do some outside transcendent authority is called upon to be where the buck stops. God, say. Or Our Great and Glorious Nation. One can't use the scientific method for the reason I stated. Logical and rational explanation would be no use. As contemporary events are proving. The Great and Glorious Nation is run by men such as ourselves only grown more cynical. I don't know how many would be willing to be circuncised for the Great and Glorious Nation. Not many I should think.

Suppose it turned out that scientists had found that having a bit of tender skin snipped off your dick provided immunity to certain unfortunate conditions for maybe thirty or forty years. Premature ejaculation say. You can easy see that a circumcised dick would be less sensitive than one that spends most of its life cuddled up in a foreskin and when, on the rare occasions it pop its head out it would go Pop! Would you have the snip? Under anaesthetic of course.

One might speculate on this endlessly, some have, but I think I can see that there's a possible connection between circumcision and many another important structure of communal living. Populatation density for example.
Shiny, sparkling trinkets and glittering jewels: the proliferation of: Chapter VI, sub-section 42a, Clauses 1 to 6.

Thomas is a pleb like me. But he's one of those plebs who can't abide the thought that there's something going on he doesn't understand because he understands so many things that the idea that there are things he doesn't understand aggravates him so much that he acts like he understands and ends up saying "Jews think circumcision is a duty to god". Which is untrue. We see their theologians in turbans and tall hats. Muttering.

I gave up long ago bothering about what is going on. I know that what we think was going on 300 years ago was nothing like what was going on to those who were going through it. I accept that I don't understand what is going on.

I got in a muddle myself before that simple truth dawned upon me.

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@spendius,

spendius wrote:

I gave up long ago bothering about what is going on.

Go, then, and trouble us no more.

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@DrewDad,

I didn't say I wasn't interested in what is going on. It's fascinating. We lose interest in things we understand.

You go and trouble us no more.

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@spendius,

When I can quote a passage from a great American work of art to support the gist of my previous post I can hardly be expected to resist such a temptation.

So here it is--

Quote:

As Queequeg's Ramadan, or Fasting and Humiliation, was to continue all day, I did not choose to disturb him till towards night-fall; for I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations, never mind how comical, and could not find it in my heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool; or those other creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the inordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his name.

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It was perhaps philosophy's most lasting contribution to the world to suggest a morality that was not grounded in a kind of duty to God. Whatever you think of Kant's philosophy as a whole, the notion of ethics as grounded in the self-consistency of autonomy and free will has been profoundly important. Another interesting approach to an ethics that is not grounded in dogmatic rules is Miguel de Unamuno's existentialist argument in The Tragic Sense of Life which implies that in order for life to have meaning, one ought to live a life that makes you irreplaceable (e.g., by being the best shoemaker in town). Rather than embracing nihilism, he draws the conclusion that, "If it is nothingness that awaits us, let us so act that it shall be an unjust fate." Not an analytic proof, but a compelling idea nonetheless.

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@DrewDad,

So what? Brown's contention is that the first commandment constitutes an ethical statement which a non-believer cannot utter. That means that he is inferentially saying that believing in Jehovah (the burden of the first commandment) is an ethical statement. It is not. It is a doctrinal statement. Therefore, it is not a refutation of Hitchens' challenge. Once again, you're attempting to change the terms of the argument. You don't even get a "nice try" for that silliness.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

That means that he is inferentially saying that believing in Jehovah (the burden of the first commandment) is an ethical statement.

I don't think he's inferring it at all; he's stating it flatly.

Setanta wrote:

It is not. It is a doctrinal statement.

To a believer in Yaweh, it is an ethical statement. Believing in Yaweh is the right thing to do and not believing in Jaweh is the wrong thing to do.

Setanta wrote:

Therefore, it is not a refutation of Hitchens' challenge.

Sorry you feel that way, but you're completely wrong on this one.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

That means that he is inferentially saying that believing in Jehovah (the burden of the first commandment) is an ethical statement. It is not. It is a doctrinal statement.

So you keep saying, Set, but just saying it don't make it so.

Doctors, lawyers and accountants and many other groups all have certain ethical standards that each group must abide by that the others do not. All those within any of the given groups certainly hold that these ethical standards are a measure of their ethics, yet I doubt that they would extend them to everyone, certainly not John & Jane Q Public.

I wonder if any lawyer, doctor or other has ever tried to get off a breach of ethics charge by claiming it is only doctrinal, that breaching whatever, ain't worthy of punishment. From what I've seen of the bible, that didn't go over all that well with god.

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@DrewDad,

Well, he didn't flatly say that, and in fact, he either through ignorance or willfully being disingenuous misquoted the text of the bible--which is why i provided quotes of the passages in Exodus and Deuteronomy. Your claim about what a believer in Jehovah would consider ethical is pretty damned laughable. If the commandment were addressed to those who already believe in Jehovah, what is it's purpose? Are you saying that believers in Jehovah have to be told to believe in Jehovah? Brown was clearly wrong about the first commandment, but your interpretation is just plain idiotic.

No, DD, you're the wrong one, as is so often the case. You have failed completely to make your case, and you've tried on more than one occasion to introduce changes in the terms of the argument, such as talking about universal moral truths (never discussed by me or Brown) and bringing up some nonsense about exclusion.

Joe goes even further, not only noting as i did that the first commandment isn't a moral injunction, but a command about right belief--and he then goes further to demonstrate why he doesn't consider any of the commandments to be ethical rules, in his post #3728435:

Quote:

If we accept that morality is system of beliefs regarding right and wrong conduct, then the first commandment (depending on how you number them) isn't a moral injunction at all, since it doesn't command right conduct but rather right belief. The first commandment, in other words, doesn't tell people how they should act, it tells them what they should believe.

In a broader sense, though, the ten commandments aren't actually ethical rules, since they all are backed with an implicit (or sometimes explicit) threat of punishment. If someone, for instance, refrains from coveting his neighbor's wife only because he's afraid of god's wrath, then it is debatable whether or not he is acting morally, since he is motivated by fear of doing what is wrong rather than by a desire to do what is right.

As i said earlier, ethics tells you what you must or must not do, while doctrine tells you what you must or must not believe. Clearly, on that basis, the first commandment is a doctrinal injunction. Even more than that, Jehovah doesn't even justify the command on an ethical or moral basis, saying rather, in justification: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me . . . (and one mean son of a bitch, too!).

This makes several times i've explained my position, and why i've taken it. The entire burden of your argument is "no it isn't," and you don't even supply bad logic to back up your position. Hell, you just recently seem to have noticed what part of Hitchens' remarks Brown was responding to--as though that were news to anyone who's been in this discussion from the beginning.

If you don't come up with anything better than a "no it's not" argument, and trying to blow smoke with irrelevant remarks about a very specific argument i had with Brown, i see no reason to continue to respone, or to be courteous about it.

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Setanta is the sort of bloke who would refuse to bow down to the Flying Spaghetti Monster despite the mass of that deity's worshippers having hegemony over the whole world. His sense of personal dignity is more important to him as long as he can have on Ignore the aspects of his lifestyle which result from that hegemony.

In other words he's a moron.

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@spendius,

And this is the sort of **** he lives by-

Quote:

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it. -- Samuel Clemens

In actual fact the world is being run by people who are doing their best given their admitted incapacities and the recalcitrance of the material. Mr Bush went grey in office. Mr Blair looked like a ghost by the time he went.

The facile flip remark is aimed at the unintelligent.

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@spendius,

The likes of Mark Twain and his bloody silly fans think it is all simple and should be settled by men like them over a dinner. Total insanity.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

This makes several times i've explained my position, and why i've taken it.

Ooooohoo, the Ican Principle - if I repeat it enough it becomes the truth. 'several' isn't enough, Set. Beginner that you are, you'll have to state it at least 15 times. Only then it will gain the degree of veracity necessary for DrewDad to bow at your feet.

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@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

I have no idea what you're trying to do here. Are you presenting your own ideas or are you just playing at being a moral relativist?

I'm trying to do both. Let me try to separate things.

1) To a believer in the Old Testament god and his Old Testament rules, circumcising your sons is an ethical obligation, because humans have ethical obligations to god.

2) To me, there is no ethical obligation to circumcise: In my best judgment, there exists no god for us to have ethical obligations to. and there is nobody else who might benefit from the circumcision.

3) To both me and the believer, the conflict between #1 and #2 means that one of us must be wrong -- because neither of us is a moral relativist.

4) To a moral relativist,the conflict between #1 and #2 means the believer is right given his beliefs, and I am right given my beliefs. It is impossible, and may not even be meaningful, to investigate which one is right.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

The entire burden of your argument is "no it isn't," and you don't even supply bad logic to back up your position.

You seem to have just described yourself to a "T".

Setanta wrote:

This makes several times i've explained my position,

I'm aware of your belief that having the last word makes you "right" and the "winner". In reality, it just makes you a tiresome bore. Good luck with that.

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I haven't claimed that i've won anything. I explained that i consider the first commandment to be a doctrinal injuntion, why i think so, and that therefore it does not constitute a refutation of Hitchens' claim. There is a limited number of times that i'm going to tediously repeat what i've been saying for pages and pages. I'm not the only one here who holds this position. I don't see you playing your stupid game with Joe, who has made the same point.

Therefore, i see no good reason to go over the same ground again and again. If you were to happen to actually address the text of the first commandment, and actually to attempt to cobble together an argument that it is an ethical statement, and why you say so, there might be something to discuss. You haven't, and there isn't.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

There is a limited number of times that i'm going to tediously repeat what i've been saying for pages and pages.

Judging from your behavior on other threads, I'm going to guess that limit is extremely high.

Setanta wrote:

I'm not the only one here who holds this position. I don't see you playing your stupid game with Joe, who has made the same point.

I think Joe understands that two reasonable people can disagree. Perhaps I'm overestimating you by considering you "reasonable".

Setanta wrote:

Therefore, i see no good reason to go over the same ground again and again.

Good. Please stop doing so.

Setanta wrote:

If you were to happen to actually address the text of the first commandment, and actually to attempt to cobble together an argument that it is an ethical statement, and why you say so, there might be something to discuss. You haven't, and there isn't.

I have. Thomas has. Ebrown has. You happen to disagree. Good for you. Go play.

I'll add that I've attempted to expand the discussion beyond the first commandment, but you seem stuck on this one issue. There are many other areas where believers constrain their behavior where non-believers would not. Blasphemy, working on the Sabbath, etc.

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