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

From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2006 01:02:31 EST
You and John have certainly framed the philosophical morality issue far  
better than I could reach for.  There are so many nearly satisfying  solutions 
(philosophically, logically, spiritually, physiologically) and all far  short 
enough to lead back to the vicious cycle.  OUT!  OUT!  
 
Julie Krueger
knowing how hamsters on the wheel feel

========Original Message========
    Subj: Re: [lit-ideas] Re: T'AINT FUNNY, MCGEE  Date: 12/8/2006 10:59:28 
P.M. Central Standard Time  From: _rpaul@xxxxxxxxx (mailto:rpaul@xxxxxxxx)   
To: _JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxxx (mailto:JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx)   Sent on:    

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 it  won't. 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
[lit-ideas] Re: T'AINT FUNNY, MCGEE

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