[lit-ideas] Re: T'AINT FUNNY, MCGEE

From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2006 00:26:16 -0500
I agree with you completely.  I want to add that (this is opinion) people
search for a morality precisely because historically many, many, perhaps
most, people haven't had parents, real parents.  They're left teaching
themselves what's right and wrong simply from laws and other things that
society has to impose to function.  So much of the world has also grown up
in war and has PTSD.  Traumatized children grow up to be traumatized adults
who make very bad parents.  The U.S. has added to this burden.  Having
educated parents isn't necessarily the answer either.  Most CEO's and other
high functioning sociopaths who rip off taxpayers and commit white collar
crimes are begotten of usually educated parents.  Money above and beyond
enough to meet needs and not have to scrounge is irrelevant to raising
happy people who respect others.  I sound like a broken record, but I'll
say it anyway, we give what we have, and what we have we learn at home.  If
we're treated with respect, we'll give respect.  That's why I say that
"Kramer" is a very miserable person, because he's giving what he has, which
is hate.




> [Original Message]
> From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 12/9/2006 12:06:46 AM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: T'AINT FUNNY, MCGEE
>
> Julie writes:
>
> > In the absence of religion, where is an
> > generally decided on moral value to come from?  The inherent human 
instinct?
>
> Consider this.  People have done the vilest things in the name of 
> religion. This
> is simply a fact. Where, then, does the notion that such things were vile
come
> from? 'Well, they misinterpreted what God (or the gods) wanted humans to
do.'
> Yet why the urge to say this? Why not simply say, 'They have a religion,
and
> the tenets of that religion tell them to do what they do'? 'But what 
> they do is
> plainly wrong, so there's either a moral defect of some sort in their 
> religion,
> or they've misinterpreted the gods' instructions.' At some point, the
brute
> notions of right and wrong will either be grounded in religion or they
won't.
> If they're grounded in religion, they will either--as in an imagined case
in
> which humans are painfully sacrificed--be morally assessable, or they 
> won't. If
> they are, the assessment will either begin from another religious point 
> of view
> (Unitarians would probably consider the painful sacrifice of human beings
> wrong) or from elsewhere. And so on until we reach bedrock. However, if
the
> 'bedrock' is (some) religion, it will still always be possible to
evaluate the
> tenets and precepts of that religion from 'outside.'
>
> If the answer to a moral complaint about the teachings of a certain 
> religion is
> that those who interpret its teachings in a certain way have got it wrong
(so
> that it's just a mistake to see that religion as e.g. requiring painful
human
> sacrifice), such an answer would seem to require another moral point of
view
> upon which the complaint and this answer both depend.
>
> We might do a slow reading of the Euthyphro.
>
> Robert Paul
> The Reed Institute
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
> digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html


------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
[lit-ideas] Re: T'AINT FUNNY, MCGEE

Other related posts:
