still adjusting to entering my 40s

You had a birthday recently? Congratulations! And good luck with the move.

Happy birthday, libkitty!!!

I love Lily's evil grin! Great pictures.

Thumb your nose at wine snobs.

Goatse iPod skin. Totally not gross. Just funny.

Wow.

ION, Lillian is unbelievable. That kid should be in pictures!

Goatse iPod skin. Totally not gross. Just funny.

That just made me laugh so hard that now my throat hurts.

It's not spaceships, but this could still be a useful link to keep handy: [link]

Ack, I had to leave last night, and now there's too much catching up.

You don't think, like BT posits, that morals can determine religious beliefs?

I saw billytea's point last night, and I'm glad you highlighted that bit ita, because I do largely agree with that assertion too, even though it's coming at the issue from the opposite direction. I think if a person suddenly found his overall world view in direct opposition to that part of his world view where his morals live, it might even be easier to ditch the world view, than change his opinion on what's right and wrong. Right and wrong can feel so gut-ty. At any rate, there'd have to be some harmonizing, or something.

My original point was that world views (which include some opinion on the supernatural, even if that opinion is "I can't know") and morals aren't two separate realms. One is part of the other. Rick's assertion on the conversion/asylum case would have come across as more sound to me if he'd said it illustrates the general problem of basing legal judgments (rather than 'moral') on beliefs about the supernatural.

We probably don't have to consciously check that our moral opinions are in agreement with what we think is the truth about the world at large, because moral issues often common sensical to us (as individuals), as do our respective world views. But, if we trace a moral judgment back through enough rounds of "and why/on what basis do you think that", we ought to find some harmony (at least in the mind of the person rendering the judgment) between a person's opinion on moral issue X, and his beliefs about the reality of life.

Example:

Q: Is rape right or wrong?
A: Wrong.
Q: Why?
A: Because it involves Person A forcing himself on Person B.
Q: So, why is that wrong?
A: Because Person B has the right to consent?
Q: Why?
A: Because Person A's right to freedom does not give him the right to impose on the will or freedom of others.
Q: Why is that wrong? Why is it okay to limit A's freedom to protect B? Why can't a person do whatever he wants?
A: Because [whatever]

The answer at this point may have to do with whatever the answerer thinks are human rights, and we might hear somewhere, a discussion about the general expectation and necessity of fair play in a successful society.

Soon, we'll start getting to world view. When we do, a religious person's 'whys' might differ from those of an areligious person, but both still have reasons and they're tied into their thoughts about the meaning, rights, and responsibilities of life, regardless of whether those thoughts are grounded in agnosticism, atheism, pantheism, dualism, or monotheism (or your ism of choice), which all include consideration of whether or not there is a supernatural realm, and if so what it's like, and the relative importance (or un-) concerning natural life on earth.

Probe a Jewish person's thought process and maybe he'd say something about the necessity of loving one's neighbor. A Christian might say that too, so dig some more, and he'd talk about doing to others as he'd like done to himself. Make them both go back further and you might hear something about God being absolute goodness, and sovereign, and along the lines of all life having value because it's God given, or that humans are made in God's image, etc.

Go far enough back in a Wiccan's thought process, and you might find a philosophy akin to the Rede that ties into the moral judgment at hand, and it might include something about the harmony of nature. In a Buddhist's thought process and maybe you'll find something about discipline, or being awake enough to reality that all you do is in service of ending the suffering in life. A Hindu might discuss karma and dharma.

In an atheist's reasoning for his moral judgment, perhaps we'd find something like: since this life is all there is, we need to value it, and valuing others is integral to that, and the only way to achieve a (continued...)

( continues...) successful society. An agnostic might say nearly the same thing, but might qualify it with some reasoning along the lines of: since the natural world is all we can know about, and that we can't know about the presence or absense of the supernatural...etc.

Moral judgments and world views aren't going to necessarily be predictive of each other to anyone other than the person that holds them. Different reasons and different rationalizations (and even different moral positions themselves) appeal to different people for any number of reasons.

We do know a number of deeds that are obviously good and obviously bad to most people, regardless of their individually held world views. But how a person looks at life, his relation to other inhabitants of the world, and the world itself--why and how both it and we are here (this is all 'world view'), ties into his view of right and wrong (and as billytea points out, vice versa)--that is, it is part of the reasoning that lies to his moral judgments.

Do most of us go through this process when we're making a moral judgment? No, at least not usually, seldom consciously, probably not in cases that seems cut and dried, like the general one I've provided above. I think the time a person would be most likely to do this (and then probably not too consciously), is when he has to render a moral judgment that somehow puts two or more of his principles in conflict with one another.

And I realize no one cares about this conversation any longer, which is the nature of Natter, but there we go.

mmm... spicy Topic!Cindy!brain...

Mmmmm... I had delicately spiced lamb samosas for lunch with a tamarind sauce that was to die for. Seriously, I licked the spoon. Also it's in the 60s out so it was a nice walk, too.