[lit-ideas] Re: T'IS VERY FUNNY, MCGEE
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Steve Chilson <stevechilson@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2006 15:29:38 -0330
May I draw your attention to one of my more lucrative moonlighting jobs? (Prices
of particular items vary depending on buyers' individual needs and abilities.
All sales final. Some epistemic conditions apply.)
Walter C. Okshevsky
Manager and Chief Distribution Officer
Venn Diagrams, Truth Tables For All Occasions Ltd.
Quoting Steve Chilson <stevechilson@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Mr Paul makes an interesting statement below. "People have done the
> vilest things in the name of religion."
>
> And what religion, Mr Blanket Generalisation, do paedophiles and serial
> killers belong to?
>
> Now, which is MORE vile? Mass killing or selective killing?
>
> There's a question for your Sunday school brunch.
>
>
> On Fri, 08 Dec 2006 21:06:11 -0800, "Robert Paul" <rpaul@xxxxxxxx> said:
> > 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
> >
> >
> >
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> --
> Steve Chilson
> stevechilson@xxxxxxxxxxx
>
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