[lit-ideas] Re: Inner Moral :Law
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2005 10:23:24 -0400
> [Original Message]
> From: Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 8/2/2005 2:08:36 AM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Inner Moral :Law
>
>
>
> It shows that Ivan Karamazov may have been mistaken. God may (in
> some fictive modality) be dead, yet everything is NOT permissible.
>
> The existence or nonexistence of God need NOT be foundational to a
> rational morality. That seemed like a good point to debate.
>
Eric, I am an atheist and I can tell you from personal experience that God
and rational morality are unrelated. Utterly unrelated. Atheists are, if
anything, among the most rationally moral people you will ever meet.
Religious people have the hereafter to make up time. Atheists concern
themselves with making a better here and now. To me debating whether
people can be moral if they believe in God is like asking if people can
behave like adults if somebody isn't prodding them. Believing in God is
belittling to humanity. It reduces people to a bunch of children who can't
function without daddy, without God the Father. Really, why does God have
to be a father or a mother? Why can't God be an uncle or a friend or the
tree huggers' favorite, a porpoise?
Regarding permissibility, no matter what religious people do, they do it
with God's help. Only with his help is everything possible, which is to
say permissible. Bush talked to God before he invaded Iraq. God gave him
some bad advice unfortunately, but God permitted the slaughter of, to date,
25,000 people and permitted the flourishing of terrorist organizations that
would destroy the U.S. I'm tempted to think that Bush called God and
mistakenly got Allah and now there's a bit of snickering going on in
heaven. The point is, killing 25,000 people was not prevented by a belief
in God. It was, in fact, permitted, aided and abetted by a belief in God.
Please tell me where you see God enhancing morality in this, for that
matter in any, instance. The curious thing too which I've never understood,
which is why God is cruelest to those who supplicate him hardest (the
Holocaust, etc.). Evangelicals for the moment have a warm fuzzy thinking
that God smote those heathens with the tsunami without answering why he
played the trick on Bush. I suppose if they're all being raptured and will
go straight to heaven for saving embryos, it doesn't matter. On the other
hand, if God played such a trick on Bush, how can they trust him to keep
his rapture promise? BTW, the concept of rapture originated in the 19th
century. God spoke to somebody . I'll have to look it up.
Anyway, debating morality vis-a-vis God is like debating any superstition.
The question in my opinion is why people need superstitition, not whether
they need superstition to be moral, because it has yet to happen.
Andy Amago
> Somehow Bush got involved. Why not? He's a basic particular too.
>
>
> PS: Oh that's right, he's the "moral" alternative. So much the worse
> for him.
>
>
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