See, I don't have a problem with religions thinking homosexuality is wrong, but the insistence that the government shouldn't legalize the unions bothers me.
This. But expecting people outside of a particular religious fold to follow the particular code of a religion is ridiculous. If they don't recognize the religion as truth, why would they? I also think it's dangerous, but that's a whole long different thing.
Sixty years ago or so, C.S. Lewis (hardly a flaming liberal, religiously speaking) proposed that we'd all be better off if there was a stark line drawn between civil marriage and religious marriage (he was, of course talking to Christians, so about Christianity in particular). Civil marriage would be governed by the state, and its rules enforced on all citizens who married, and Christian marriage would be governed by the church, and rules would be enforced by its own members, etc.
Now, it was divorce laws and objections to them were the basis of his argument in favor of a strong separation between religious and civil marriage, but I think his rationale could be (should be) applied to the issue of religious objection to extending marriage rights to same sex partners.
To say that all a person's morals derive from their world view is, I think, a little simplistic.
But of course, that's an enormous over-simplification of the points I was making, Wolfram. I was objecting to the suggestion that it is dangerous or wrong to base morals on a belief in the supernatural (when what was at issue when the subject came up was actually law, not morals, to begin with), largely because I think morals are part of a person's world view, as are his opinions of the supernatural.
I don't think a person always or even usually renders moral judgments only after examining his own world view. I think that if a person explained the reasoning behind his moral judgments, eventually he'd be letting you in on his world view (or, the rest of it, because what's "right" or "wrong" is part of a world view, as much as a deity, many deities, no diety, everything is deity, or it's not possible to ascertain truth about deity).
I think one true test of whether your religion informs your morals, or vice versa, is whether you would behave in a way that's contrary to your morals if dictated by your religion.
Don't you think most people behave in ways contrary to their own (professed, at least) morals at least once in a while, though--sometimes because of weakness or fear, or an impossible situation, or because a situation arises in which two principles are seemingly in conflict with one another? Doesn't that say more about character than about which informs what.
I see what you mean, but I also think that's as much of a measure of how faithful a person is to his own moral code. For example, most of us would say as a general statement that truth is good and lies are bad. Now there are some circumstances in which some of us would think lying was advised, and that might tell us more about world view, as you mention.
And of course, we all would have all sorts of reasons and explanations for why we lied, even though, in general, we think truth is better. It's unlikely we'd try to say lying is good. It's more likely we'd be explaining why we were exempt from the lies-are-bad part of our code in a particular set of circumstances.
For example, say a crazed (but dumb) child murderer shows up at my door, and says, "Are your children home? If you say they're home, I'm going to enter your home and kill them." Now, I still think truth is good, and lying bad. And in fact, given my particular religious beliefs, it may even be that I should answer truthfully or at least not answer and try to thwart the killer another way. But I'm on the spot, and I think my duty to protect my children's life is more important than being perfectly truthful, in this circumstance.
I'd never try to tell you after I lied--that lying was, in general, good. I would instead be trying to show (continued...)
( continues...) why my actions were allowable, even though I breached a part of my code (tell the truth), when I found it in conflict with another part of my code (protect my children).
But one could argue that what Jesus actually founded was a sect of Judaism, and Christianity as a seperate religion was founded by Paul.
I'm not totally sure about this... my read of Paul's letters doesn't give me a sense that what he was talking about was that vastly different from what Jesus was talking about. But that's just my layperson's reaction; it's been years since I did any serious scholarly reading on the subject.
I used to know all this stuff. Really, I did.
I was objecting to the suggestion that it is dangerous or wrong to base morals on a belief in the supernatural (when what was at issue when the subject came up was actually law, not morals, to begin with), largely because I think morals are part of a person's world view, as are his opinions of the supernatural.
Huh. Where I thought we started was with the suggestion that the belief (or not) in the supernatural was the basis of one's moral beliefs, and a lot of people were arguing that. I didn't get the sense that people were saying that it was a bad thing one way or the other, just that what was presented as universal was not actually so. I don't know if I skimmed, or we just took different things from the argument - if it's the latter then I have a better understanding of why you're arguing this so hard.
Cindy, this started from your statement:
Everyone in the world bases moral judgments on beliefs about the supernatural
I don't think anyone interpreted that as a value judgment, but a fair number of people objected to its accuracy as a blanket statemtent about human nature.
Where I thought we started was with the suggestion that the belief (or not) in the supernatural was the basis of one's moral beliefs, and a lot of people were arguing that. I didn't get the sense that people were saying that it was a bad thing one way or the other, just that what was presented as universal was not actually so.
What Brenda Said.
brenda, you maybe just missed the beginning. We were talking about the Afghani who was under a death sentence for his conversion to Christianity, 15-20 years ago--the one who just got asylum in Italy.
Someone said commented about the problem of using Sharia law as the law of the land. Then, Rick said:
Agreed. But I think that it also illustrates the general problem of basing moral judgments on beliefs about the supernatural. That happens in this country too.
In my first response, I was way overly-simplistic, because I said:
Everyone in the world bases moral judgments on beliefs about the supernatural (because beliefs about the supernatural include those who believe nature is the only reality--that is, that there is no supernatural). The problem is more about basing legal judgments on beliefs about the supernatural, and trying to regulate thought and expression--in this case, those thoughts are opinions on the supernatural.
I then got way less simplistic over the course of the conversation yesterday and today, to better explain what I meant, which is that I don't think you can divorce one part of your world view from another. I think if someone renders a particular moral judgment, if you pick at his reasoning, eventually, you're going to start discovering his world view.
There was a Daily Show guest recently who was a fundie, and was studying translations of the bible, and then became an agnostic when he discovered how completely different some copies were from others. Like a massive game of Telephone resulting in what we have today.
Like, Jesus would say, "pass the matzo ball soup" and that would translate into, "Fuck da Caesar."
I wanted to pick up the book, but now can't remember the title or author, and the Daily Show site is giving me no love.
Plus, I brought apples and croissants and brie for breakfast
I'm now officially dying for a hot ham & brie croissant. With an apple.
One of the things that I admire about the Bible is the fact that you only have to read a few pages before you find out whether you are cut out for a Biblical religion. There is no attempt to be vague about the issues or to keep you in suspense. Right there at the beginning, a disembodied voice calls down to Abraham and says, ‘I am God, and I demand that you kill your son.” Now, a person could respond in several ways to this demand:
If you, like Abraham, would answer “Yes, I’ll kill my son for you because you are God and I know that the highest good is to follow your will,” then you probably will make a good Jew, Christian, or Muslim.
If you would say “Killing my son goes against all that I know about morality, so in the absence of clear evidence that there is a God and that this God has the highest moral authority in this situation, I must refuse,” then you probably would make a good agnostic.
If you would say “There is no God, and only some kind of sick bastard would be telling me to kill my son,” then you probably would make a good atheist.
You get to make your choice right at the beginning. Is right and wrong determined by this supernatural God’s will (or, in reality, by stories that purport to reveal the supernatural God’s will) or is right and wrong determined by reason and experience and consequences that we can observe in the natural world in which we live? It’s a powerful, elegant, and clear dilemma that tells you where you stand before you even finish the book of Genesis.
