Roadtoad
Bufo Caminus Inedibilis
I’m hoping that in splitting this topic, we can get down to the root of this discussion, as opposed to continuing the sermons that seem to have marked this topic. While some such as Delphi Ote and others, have taken the time to actually read what’s here, and try to discuss this issue, (Lostnick3: While we do not necessarily agree, thank you, sir, for your efforts), it remains that this has now become the place where we have nothing more than mental masturbation, as opposed to debate and discussion. I don’t have to agree with people, but damn it, I do expect to be treated with respect, and I demand that others be treated with respect as well. If you can’t manage that, you’re better off either going to a board where that kind of childish behavior is tolerated, or starting your own board. (I should note, in all fairness, that the Firestream board doesn’t put up with it at all. Good for them…)
When you start discussions regarding morality, you’re going to automatically draw in a discussion regarding God. Morals and ethics have become so tied in with religion in our society, that it becomes difficult to disentangle the two. Part of this has been because groups such as the Moral Majority, (which actually was neither), and their ilk have tried to co-opt those issues for their own political gain.
Which is fine, I suppose, yet, in reading Plato and other writers, it becomes clear that morality as we have come to know it in this country, (and perhaps through the Western world), has deeper roots than we want to admit to. Considering everything from the Code of Hammurabi, to what has been unearthed in sites in Turkey, Iraq, and surrounding territories, the basic moral code that much of our society clings to, wrapping it in the Shroud of Turin or whatever else comes in handy, probably has more to do with our nature as herd animals than any Divine Revelation.
As it was explained to me, a moral is nothing more than an expressed principle of conduct, ethics is the application of same, and law is its codification. Pretty simple stuff, once you get down to it. In other words, (to take from Mosaic Law), if you know that eating shellfish is going to make you sick, (primarily because your culture lacks the skills and resources to create cauldrons, and potable water and salt are at a premium), the moral is “Don’t eat clams, lobster, crab, or mussels,” the ethic is you keep that sort of thing from people, and the law is written down and passed on to your children, hopefully to keep them from eating something that will kill them.
This gets down to the root of it: Morality’s main goal isn’t to make God happy, it’s to keep you alive. If your survival requires that you be a part of a larger group, partly to keep you from being eaten, partly because it’s easier to hunt and gather food when you’re working with others, it becomes necessary to create a basic code of conduct to keep you from irritating other people, and to keep other people from irritating you. If you just knocked off the first four of the Ten Commandments, you’ve pretty much got the basics of Common Law as we know it. In other words, if it isn’t yours, keep your mitts off of it. Unless she’s yours, stay out of her bed. Don’t lie to or about other people. Simple stuff. Or, as Jesus put it, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
What made the Jewish Torah stick as well as it did was that at its heart was the idea of Mercy. Most law, as I understand it, is pretty stern stuff. Under the Jewish law, you could make a sacrifice, or pay restitution, and be released from punishment. (I know, this is a gross oversimplification of a very complex set of laws, but I think you get the idea.) In other words, should a person so choose, they could offer a sacrifice before the priests, and in turn, they would be forgiven by the community, in part because God said that was acceptable. If I were to steal from you, if I repaid you four times the value of what I took, then offered up an animal sacrifice, in theory, I was forgiven. (“We cool?” “We cool.”) Common sense, of course, says you watch a thief like a hawk, and if it’s within reach, you nail it to the floor, but you get the idea. (I was going to say “nail it to the table top,” but I know too many thieves who‘d try to steal the table, too, simply because it was a challenge.)
If you’re going to hold a society together, partly because, if you don’t, the tribe down the river is going to come upriver and kick your ass, you have to have some rules. But, you also have to have a Judge, one who can pronounce sentence when there has been an infraction. Sure, you have the tribe’s chief, or a priest, but they have to represent something greater, otherwise, they have no authority. If you’re dealing with a primitive man, who doesn’t quite grasp this concept, (though it’s very likely the leaders of the tribe did), you have to have someone over the chief or priest. “If I don’t hold you to this law, then I am the one who gets smacked down.“
Let’s take a concept such as marital fidelity. If your best hunter has a friend who’s screwing your best hunter’s wife, your tribe’s survival depends on keeping this guy happy. Since the basic laws have no muscle with this dude, you have to hit him with his fear of the unknown. “Either quit screwing that woman, or God will declare your punishment. And we will arrange the meeting.”
So now, we not only have our bounder buddy facing death, but the possibility that God will lay an extra smack down on him. Just think: An eternity of punishment, whether it’s being burned alive, or being stuck with Ashley Simpson singing to you. If it were me, I’d take the fire. Less painful. (Although, quite frankly, it would be an appropriate punishment FOR THE ROTTEN LOINFRUIT OF MINE THAT DECIDED TO EAT THE LAST OF THE SUGAR-FREE CARAMEL PECAN ICE CREAM. Thanks a lot, Matt.)
The goal is not to kill people, but to keep them from doing things which are destructive to the group as a whole. Or, as Jesus explained, it was so that they might have life, and that more abundantly. (I know, there’s a contextual issue here. We’ll work on that as this progresses.) This is why restoration of someone who’s broken fellowship with the group figures so strongly in the Judeo-Christian ethic. It’s why it has the staying power that it does. It’s the deviation from that, with people like Jimmy Swaggert, Pat Robertson, Ernest Ainsely, and their ilk, grooving on the misery that people would face in the afterlife they preach, that has contributed to the decay of the Christian Church. (Kathy, are you getting this?)
We dwell together. We are dependent on one another. As the tools we use become more and more complex, the circle of our dependencies grows. Take something as simple as going down the street to buy a hamburger. There’s a little hamburger stand down the street where Peggy and I go once in a while when we have extra cash. It’s not fancy, but the burgers are great.
If we walk, you have to take into account the shoes we wear, (Payless Shoe Source cheapies), the clothes, (my jeans are Wal-Mart cheapos, since I can’t afford better, and Peggy makes many of my shirts, but she gets the fabric where she can. Usually, they’re remnants at fabric stores), and so on. Someone had to make the fabric, someone had to make the rubber for the shoes, someone had to make the machines that put all that together. Take into account the fuels used to bring it to us, the skilled labor that put the final assembly in place, and you are beginning to get a clue about just how complex walking down the street for a burger is.
And we haven’t even gotten to the burger itself, about the rancher who raised the beef, the dairyman who made the cheese, the farmer who grew the lettuce, the tomatoes, the cucumbers, and the people who processed all of that, not to mention the mutt truckers like me who hauled it to the burger stand. There have to be rules which govern our behavior. We have to rely on FACTS, we have to trust one another, and we have to be able to rely on people keeping their word, and acting in our mutual best interest. (Kropotkin discussed some of this. If anyone knows where I can find a cheapie copy of Mutual Aid, I would really appreciate it.) It is what keeps our society working.
So, where does this place the Atheist, the Agnostic, the Skeptic, and anyone else of that ilk, whether they call themselves “Brights,” or not? The reality is that Atheism is really nothing new. You can trace it through history. I sincerely question whether Aristotle had a religion he followed. Obviously, Spinoza questioned God’s existence, and his name was smeared across nearly the whole of Europe in his day. I suspect we’re only beginning to truly appreciate what he managed to accomplish in his day. However, having said this, the absence of a God does not necessarily make someone evil, cruel, amoral. In fact, considering what has been done in the name of God, the case can be made that greater good has been accomplished apart from God. When you consider that Jerry Falwell was once an ardent supporter of segregation in the South, claiming that there was Biblical precedent for it, and he has yet to repent of it, I’m left to wonder.
I would further point out that there are more than a few Christians, and I mean well beyond the Fred Phelps psychopaths, who not only say or do nothing when there are incidents of gay bashing, but there are those among them who actively support such violence because homosexuality is “sinful.”
Add in those who promote the idea of America being some divinely ordained nation, ignoring the backroom gamesmanship behind such things as the Panama Canal, the enthronement of the Shah of Iran, and some of our bloodier messes in both war and diplomacy, and you begin to wonder how a more pragmatic view of the world could do worse.
I need to be a part of a civil society. I would ask you where the civility is in a mandate that people believe in a God, whether there’s evidence for it or not. I can’t be the only person who attended TAM IV who remembers Phil Plait’s frustration with George W. Bush’s hand-picked head of NASA, a supporter of (un)Intelligent Design.
At the root of a civil society is the requirement that we deal with people as they really are. We must deal with facts, not merely what we believe.
Does this mean morality changes over time? Of course it does. In our day, we’ve reduced the risk of the transmission of communicable disease, and as a result, blood transfusions are fairly commonplace. Consider this in light of Biblical edict, (and understand that you’re dealing with a society which dealt with disease with either exile or quarantine), and you can get an idea of just how far we’ve come.
Or take a look in your local grocery store: You can get a ham spiral sliced, honey cured, and ready to serve. In the day of Moses, when eating pork carried with it the very real risk of trichinosis, (which back then was very fatal), the Biblical ban on eating pork made sense.
But, consider Peter’s vision, as described in Acts. A cloth was laid out before him, and he was told to kill and eat what was put before him. Nothing was “unclean” anymore. Whether you accept this as a genuine vision from God, or Peter’s acceptance that he was moving into areas where pork products were relatively safe to eat, the bottom line is that a moral was changed. The ethos of the day was altered. It made sense to allow people to eat what they chose. And once you had better sanitation, once you were taking care to keep animals healthy, once you had health regulations that made the food you bought relatively safe, it was okay to have a steak, lobster, shrimp cocktail, baked potato with sour cream, cheese, and chives, green salad with bleu cheese dressing, and apple cobbler with ice cream for dessert. In 6 A.D., that would have been unheard of. In 2006, it’s acceptable, and even desirable for some of us. The morals of the past have changed.
Society changes. It changes because the facts say it should. It will continue to change. Resisting change because it might make God mad ultimately denies God, however you conceive of Him. The Bible itself shows how our ethics, our values, have changed through the centuries. We’re not perfect. We never will be.
To suggest that an Atheist or Skeptic lacks a moral center because of a lack of faith in God is to deny the realities behind our ethics, our morals. If anything, it’s a denial of God, because it is bearing false witness. Our morals came about not because we fear Evil, but because we fear Death. We look to what works, we develop behavior patterns which enhance what we’ve learned, and codify it, so our children know that this is the right way to proceed.
The slander of people who do not share the belief in a god is ultimately a denial of everything that a Christian, a Jew, hold dear. It is something that should be seriously reconsidered. It is a matter of Fact. And that should be the goal, so that we might have life more abundantly.
When you start discussions regarding morality, you’re going to automatically draw in a discussion regarding God. Morals and ethics have become so tied in with religion in our society, that it becomes difficult to disentangle the two. Part of this has been because groups such as the Moral Majority, (which actually was neither), and their ilk have tried to co-opt those issues for their own political gain.
Which is fine, I suppose, yet, in reading Plato and other writers, it becomes clear that morality as we have come to know it in this country, (and perhaps through the Western world), has deeper roots than we want to admit to. Considering everything from the Code of Hammurabi, to what has been unearthed in sites in Turkey, Iraq, and surrounding territories, the basic moral code that much of our society clings to, wrapping it in the Shroud of Turin or whatever else comes in handy, probably has more to do with our nature as herd animals than any Divine Revelation.
As it was explained to me, a moral is nothing more than an expressed principle of conduct, ethics is the application of same, and law is its codification. Pretty simple stuff, once you get down to it. In other words, (to take from Mosaic Law), if you know that eating shellfish is going to make you sick, (primarily because your culture lacks the skills and resources to create cauldrons, and potable water and salt are at a premium), the moral is “Don’t eat clams, lobster, crab, or mussels,” the ethic is you keep that sort of thing from people, and the law is written down and passed on to your children, hopefully to keep them from eating something that will kill them.
This gets down to the root of it: Morality’s main goal isn’t to make God happy, it’s to keep you alive. If your survival requires that you be a part of a larger group, partly to keep you from being eaten, partly because it’s easier to hunt and gather food when you’re working with others, it becomes necessary to create a basic code of conduct to keep you from irritating other people, and to keep other people from irritating you. If you just knocked off the first four of the Ten Commandments, you’ve pretty much got the basics of Common Law as we know it. In other words, if it isn’t yours, keep your mitts off of it. Unless she’s yours, stay out of her bed. Don’t lie to or about other people. Simple stuff. Or, as Jesus put it, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
What made the Jewish Torah stick as well as it did was that at its heart was the idea of Mercy. Most law, as I understand it, is pretty stern stuff. Under the Jewish law, you could make a sacrifice, or pay restitution, and be released from punishment. (I know, this is a gross oversimplification of a very complex set of laws, but I think you get the idea.) In other words, should a person so choose, they could offer a sacrifice before the priests, and in turn, they would be forgiven by the community, in part because God said that was acceptable. If I were to steal from you, if I repaid you four times the value of what I took, then offered up an animal sacrifice, in theory, I was forgiven. (“We cool?” “We cool.”) Common sense, of course, says you watch a thief like a hawk, and if it’s within reach, you nail it to the floor, but you get the idea. (I was going to say “nail it to the table top,” but I know too many thieves who‘d try to steal the table, too, simply because it was a challenge.)
If you’re going to hold a society together, partly because, if you don’t, the tribe down the river is going to come upriver and kick your ass, you have to have some rules. But, you also have to have a Judge, one who can pronounce sentence when there has been an infraction. Sure, you have the tribe’s chief, or a priest, but they have to represent something greater, otherwise, they have no authority. If you’re dealing with a primitive man, who doesn’t quite grasp this concept, (though it’s very likely the leaders of the tribe did), you have to have someone over the chief or priest. “If I don’t hold you to this law, then I am the one who gets smacked down.“
Let’s take a concept such as marital fidelity. If your best hunter has a friend who’s screwing your best hunter’s wife, your tribe’s survival depends on keeping this guy happy. Since the basic laws have no muscle with this dude, you have to hit him with his fear of the unknown. “Either quit screwing that woman, or God will declare your punishment. And we will arrange the meeting.”
So now, we not only have our bounder buddy facing death, but the possibility that God will lay an extra smack down on him. Just think: An eternity of punishment, whether it’s being burned alive, or being stuck with Ashley Simpson singing to you. If it were me, I’d take the fire. Less painful. (Although, quite frankly, it would be an appropriate punishment FOR THE ROTTEN LOINFRUIT OF MINE THAT DECIDED TO EAT THE LAST OF THE SUGAR-FREE CARAMEL PECAN ICE CREAM. Thanks a lot, Matt.)
The goal is not to kill people, but to keep them from doing things which are destructive to the group as a whole. Or, as Jesus explained, it was so that they might have life, and that more abundantly. (I know, there’s a contextual issue here. We’ll work on that as this progresses.) This is why restoration of someone who’s broken fellowship with the group figures so strongly in the Judeo-Christian ethic. It’s why it has the staying power that it does. It’s the deviation from that, with people like Jimmy Swaggert, Pat Robertson, Ernest Ainsely, and their ilk, grooving on the misery that people would face in the afterlife they preach, that has contributed to the decay of the Christian Church. (Kathy, are you getting this?)
We dwell together. We are dependent on one another. As the tools we use become more and more complex, the circle of our dependencies grows. Take something as simple as going down the street to buy a hamburger. There’s a little hamburger stand down the street where Peggy and I go once in a while when we have extra cash. It’s not fancy, but the burgers are great.
If we walk, you have to take into account the shoes we wear, (Payless Shoe Source cheapies), the clothes, (my jeans are Wal-Mart cheapos, since I can’t afford better, and Peggy makes many of my shirts, but she gets the fabric where she can. Usually, they’re remnants at fabric stores), and so on. Someone had to make the fabric, someone had to make the rubber for the shoes, someone had to make the machines that put all that together. Take into account the fuels used to bring it to us, the skilled labor that put the final assembly in place, and you are beginning to get a clue about just how complex walking down the street for a burger is.
And we haven’t even gotten to the burger itself, about the rancher who raised the beef, the dairyman who made the cheese, the farmer who grew the lettuce, the tomatoes, the cucumbers, and the people who processed all of that, not to mention the mutt truckers like me who hauled it to the burger stand. There have to be rules which govern our behavior. We have to rely on FACTS, we have to trust one another, and we have to be able to rely on people keeping their word, and acting in our mutual best interest. (Kropotkin discussed some of this. If anyone knows where I can find a cheapie copy of Mutual Aid, I would really appreciate it.) It is what keeps our society working.
So, where does this place the Atheist, the Agnostic, the Skeptic, and anyone else of that ilk, whether they call themselves “Brights,” or not? The reality is that Atheism is really nothing new. You can trace it through history. I sincerely question whether Aristotle had a religion he followed. Obviously, Spinoza questioned God’s existence, and his name was smeared across nearly the whole of Europe in his day. I suspect we’re only beginning to truly appreciate what he managed to accomplish in his day. However, having said this, the absence of a God does not necessarily make someone evil, cruel, amoral. In fact, considering what has been done in the name of God, the case can be made that greater good has been accomplished apart from God. When you consider that Jerry Falwell was once an ardent supporter of segregation in the South, claiming that there was Biblical precedent for it, and he has yet to repent of it, I’m left to wonder.
I would further point out that there are more than a few Christians, and I mean well beyond the Fred Phelps psychopaths, who not only say or do nothing when there are incidents of gay bashing, but there are those among them who actively support such violence because homosexuality is “sinful.”
Add in those who promote the idea of America being some divinely ordained nation, ignoring the backroom gamesmanship behind such things as the Panama Canal, the enthronement of the Shah of Iran, and some of our bloodier messes in both war and diplomacy, and you begin to wonder how a more pragmatic view of the world could do worse.
I need to be a part of a civil society. I would ask you where the civility is in a mandate that people believe in a God, whether there’s evidence for it or not. I can’t be the only person who attended TAM IV who remembers Phil Plait’s frustration with George W. Bush’s hand-picked head of NASA, a supporter of (un)Intelligent Design.
At the root of a civil society is the requirement that we deal with people as they really are. We must deal with facts, not merely what we believe.
Does this mean morality changes over time? Of course it does. In our day, we’ve reduced the risk of the transmission of communicable disease, and as a result, blood transfusions are fairly commonplace. Consider this in light of Biblical edict, (and understand that you’re dealing with a society which dealt with disease with either exile or quarantine), and you can get an idea of just how far we’ve come.
Or take a look in your local grocery store: You can get a ham spiral sliced, honey cured, and ready to serve. In the day of Moses, when eating pork carried with it the very real risk of trichinosis, (which back then was very fatal), the Biblical ban on eating pork made sense.
But, consider Peter’s vision, as described in Acts. A cloth was laid out before him, and he was told to kill and eat what was put before him. Nothing was “unclean” anymore. Whether you accept this as a genuine vision from God, or Peter’s acceptance that he was moving into areas where pork products were relatively safe to eat, the bottom line is that a moral was changed. The ethos of the day was altered. It made sense to allow people to eat what they chose. And once you had better sanitation, once you were taking care to keep animals healthy, once you had health regulations that made the food you bought relatively safe, it was okay to have a steak, lobster, shrimp cocktail, baked potato with sour cream, cheese, and chives, green salad with bleu cheese dressing, and apple cobbler with ice cream for dessert. In 6 A.D., that would have been unheard of. In 2006, it’s acceptable, and even desirable for some of us. The morals of the past have changed.
Society changes. It changes because the facts say it should. It will continue to change. Resisting change because it might make God mad ultimately denies God, however you conceive of Him. The Bible itself shows how our ethics, our values, have changed through the centuries. We’re not perfect. We never will be.
To suggest that an Atheist or Skeptic lacks a moral center because of a lack of faith in God is to deny the realities behind our ethics, our morals. If anything, it’s a denial of God, because it is bearing false witness. Our morals came about not because we fear Evil, but because we fear Death. We look to what works, we develop behavior patterns which enhance what we’ve learned, and codify it, so our children know that this is the right way to proceed.
The slander of people who do not share the belief in a god is ultimately a denial of everything that a Christian, a Jew, hold dear. It is something that should be seriously reconsidered. It is a matter of Fact. And that should be the goal, so that we might have life more abundantly.
