America Without God: No 'Moral Facts'

[Moonglow]

If religion comes from God, and religion establishes the moral 'facts', which I assume to mean moral absolutes,

1. why aren't they uniform across all religions?

2. why can Men change the rules of any religion whenever they choose, within the limits of the religion's procedure for changing the rules (procedures composed by Men)????

I was just reading about the many changes religions have made to their particular version of the bible. They all have an agenda and they have changed the bible to help them push that agenda.

Funny to me is that all religions say their god is the 'one true god' and that all others are "idols". The basic selling point of all religions is that their god can beat up your god.

Well if you want me to join or convert you have to tell me why yours is better. Every popular religion has a unusual hook or twist that makes them better than the rest.

Not to me.

I've never found any religion more attractive to me than science and fact-based reality.

After being forced fed religion while being raised, I will study it, but never practice it...

 

[Dot Com]

Same here. While I do believe its a delusion, as long as they leave me alone and don't try to circumvent the Constitution by forcing it on schools and public places, I don't care what people choose to believe.

I also recognize that it may be a comfort or helpful to some. But, I can't help but notice that the "christians' who post here don't seem to be getting much peace, serenity, guidance or direction from their god.

Instead, they seem angry and bitter, always trying to prove they're the better christian because they can post more copy/pastes.

^ that

believe in whatever particular sky pixie you want, just don't try to make it mandatory in public institutions/shove it down people's throats.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Hasn't Political Chic said she home schools kids?

Thinking back to home schooled kids I would get in wild life rehab. They would be interested in working with animals but incredibly ignorant about very basic things. I've written about this before - that they wouldn't know things like measuring cups and spoons. They would often have terrible grammar and when required to write, could not compose a simple sentence.

Anyway, PC is what is wrong with home schooling. She hunts until she finds something that reinforces her opinion and then refuses any discussion or debate. I have no doubt she would do the same with young people. She would call them dumb and tell them her opinion is written in concrete.

IOW, the opposite of education.

 

[Dogmaphobe]

Morality is a product of reason, and those who treat the concept by doggedly following arbitrary "facts" are just as far from the mark as those who indulge in complete moral relativism.

Following a recipe does not make one a cook. A cook understands the process, and wants to know WHY they do what they do. If the only answer one returns for the question "why is this moral" happens to be "just because", they really aren't dealing with actual morality.

Too much of the right confuses social mores with morality. Too much of the left abandons the very notion of morality altogether through their hypocritical relativist sophistry. Precious few people are capable of moral reason.

 

[Esmeralda]

1. I was listening to Dennis Prager on the radio, and he referred to this NYTimes piece by a secular philosopher, called "Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts." http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.co...ildren-dont-think-there-are-moral-facts/?_r=0




2. Most children who weren't brought up in a religious household, with a clear recognition of God, fail to recognize the difference between moral facts, and opinions.

While the author of the article bemoans, as do most of us, that"the overwhelming majority of college freshmen in their classrooms view moral claims as mere opinions that are not true or are true only relative to a culture" he fails to grasp the reason for this situation..

3. ".... if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised?.... many college-aged students don’t believe in moral facts."




4. While raising an excellent point, our philosopher misses the brass ring, here: "What I didn’t know was where this attitude came from. Given the presence of moral relativism in some academic circles, some people might naturally assume that philosophers themselves are to blame."



5.He may not know the provenance.....but I know where the view originates. The proximate roots of this view can be traced to the anthropologist Franz Boas, who, in an effort to study exotic cultures without prejudice, found it useful to take the position that no culture is superior to any other. Thus was born the idea of cultural relativity.

The idea spread like wildfire through the universities, catapulted by the radical impetus of the sixties. ready and willing to reject "the universality of Western norms and principles."
Bawer, "The Victim's Revolution"

a. The more fundamental inception was the French Revolution, which threw out God and religion.
Without the concept of God who sets the rules of morality.....every moral fact is no more than an opinion.




b. "Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual human's beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture. This principle was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the 20th century and later popularized by his students. Boas first articulated the idea in 1887:

"...civilization is not something absolute, but ... is relative, and ... our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes."[1] ....
https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/t...elativism.html




6. Our philosopher seems shocked to find that the Enlightenment ideas, those of David Hume, have been accepted, wholesale, in society.
" When I went to visit my son’s second grade open house, I found a troubling pair of signs hanging over the bulletin board. They read:

Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.

Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes."

You can see where this leaves 'God' or 'religion.'




7. In the West, the dichotomy between empirical truth and morality, or values, began with the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, impressive as it was, so much so that many thinkers elevated empirical science to the sole source of truth.

a. Empiricism is the doctrine that all knowledge is derived from the senses: what we see, hear, hold, weigh, and measure. Where, then do we find moral truths? Clearly, under such a definition, values and morals could not be truths, but simply emotions, feelings.

b. Empiricist philosopher Hume reasoned this way: if knowledge is based on sensations, then morality, too, must come from sensations, i.e. pain or pleasure, or, as he put it, a matter of ‘taste and sentiment,” Hume claims then, that moral distinctions are not derived from reason but rather from sentiment.
Hume's Moral Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)



This view reduces morality to personal taste: “Whatever works for you.”

My experience of life is that non-religious people are far more moral and ethical than religious people.

 

[Statistikhengst]

How come its always the so-called "christians" who say, that without their "god"/religion/bible that they would have no morals or ethics, no sense of right and wrong?

Are you nutters really only one Sunday school session away from being mass murderers?

Spot -on.

Gesendet von meinem GT-I9515 mit Tapatalk

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Morality is a product of reason, and those who treat the concept by doggedly following arbitrary "facts" are just as far from the mark as those who indulge in complete moral relativism.

Following a recipe does not make one a cook. A cook understands the process, and wants to know WHY they do what they do. If the only answer one returns for the question "why is this moral" happens to be "just because", they really aren't dealing with actual morality.

Too much of the right confuses social mores with morality. Too much of the left abandons the very notion of morality altogether through their hypocritical relativist sophistry. Precious few people are capable of moral reason.

Once again, you do exactly what you accuse others of doing.

 

[Dogmaphobe]

Once again, you do exactly what you accuse others of doing.

and what, exactly would that be, you mindless hack?

 

[Meriweather]

2. Most children who weren't brought up in a religious household, with a clear recognition of God, fail to recognize the difference between moral facts, and opinions.

Children who are brought up in household of faith should be taught that every choice we make, everything we do, runs the gauntlet from the wicked to the ideal. People of faith believe God points and encourages us towards the ideal, while extending forgiveness when we fall short.

People can be idealists without being people of faith. I think the ideal leans more towards fact than it does opinion. Speaking of ideals instead of morals may give us a greater common ground and a better understanding of what each is speaking of.

 

[PoliticalChic]

If religion comes from God, and religion establishes the moral 'facts', which I assume to mean moral absolutes,

1. why aren't they uniform across all religions?

2. why can Men change the rules of any religion whenever they choose, within the limits of the religion's procedure for changing the rules (procedures composed by Men)????

I was just reading about the many changes religions have made to their particular version of the bible. They all have an agenda and they have changed the bible to help them push that agenda.

Funny to me is that all religions say their god is the 'one true god' and that all others are "idols". The basic selling point of all religions is that their god can beat up your god.

Well if you want me to join or convert you have to tell me why yours is better. Every popular religion has a unusual hook or twist that makes them better than the rest.

Not to me.

I've never found any religion more attractive to me than science and fact-based reality.

But there are no moral facts sans religion.


....according to the philosopher, the problem is due to the public school.



10. "...our public schools teach students that all claims are either facts or opinions and that all value and moral claims fall into the latter camp. The punchline: there are no moral facts. And if there are no moral facts, then there are no moral truths.

The inconsistency in this curriculum is obvious.

.... my son brought home a list of student rights and responsibilities. Had he already read the lesson on fact vs. opinion, he might have noted that the supposed rights of other students were based on no more than opinions. According to the school’s curriculum, it certainly wasn’t true that his classmates deserved to be treated a particular way — that would make it a fact. Similarly, it wasn’t really true that he had any responsibilities — that would be to make a value claim a truth.



It should not be a surprise that there is rampant cheating on college campuses: If we’ve taught our students for 12 years that there is no fact of the matter as to whether cheating is wrong, we can’t very well blame them for doing so later on.

If it’s not true that it’s wrong to murder a cartoonist with whom one disagrees, then how can we be outraged?

If there are no truths about what is good or valuable or right, how can we prosecute people for crimes against humanity? If it’s not true that all humans are created equal, then why vote for any political system that doesn’t benefit you over others?" http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.co...ildren-dont-think-there-are-moral-facts/?_r=0

 

[Dot Com]

2:55 onwards and 3:50 onwards

 

[PoliticalChic]

2:55 onwards and 3:50 onwards

Christopher Hitchens wrote…”God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything!”

Is that your position?

'Well, then how do with reconcile science with abortion, fetal stem-cell research, euthanasia, infanticide, cloning, animal-human hybrids, among the other ‘gifts’ of science, an ideology bereft of any sense of responsibility to human nature.'
David Berlinski

 

[Dot Com]

Yes it is. No matter how much good they might do, its based on a myth and monotheism has committed many atrocities throughout its history.

"celestial dictatorship" (Hitchens term) He's right. You can have it. As for me?

 

[LOki]

"Moral facts" informed by superstition are opinions.

There's no exception for Christian superstition.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Yes it is. No matter how much good they might do, its based on a myth and monotheism has committed many atrocities throughout its inception.

"celestial dictatorship" (Hitchens term) He's right. You can have it. As for me?

"...monotheism has committed many atrocities throughout its inception."

I love smashing the custard pie in the kisser of you anti-religion bigots.

Ready?

"On the other hand, let’s take a look at secularism’s rich history of mass murder, and we need not go back a thousand years to make the point. Here are the 800 pound gorilla death totals from some notable secular leaders from the recent past (from the book Death by Government by R.J. Rummel):



Stalin....42,672,000

Mao.....37,828,000

Hitler....20,946,000

Lenin....4,017,000

Pol Pot...2,397,000

Chiang Kaishek...10,214,000

Tojo.....3,990,000

Total......122,064,000

122 million slaughtered by people who believe as you do.



Now go wash that mess off your face.

 

[PoliticalChic]

"Moral facts" informed by superstition are opinions.

There's no exception for Christian superstition.

You, of course serve as a perfect of example of what the author spoke about.
You've been deprived of logic, facts, and morality by government schooling.

 

[LOki]

"Moral facts" informed by superstition are opinions.

There's no exception for Christian superstition.

You, of course serve as a perfect of example of what the author spoke about.
You've been deprived of logic, facts, and morality by government schooling.

Unsubstantiated nonsense. The expression of your ignorant opinion as fact.

Just like your superstition.

 

[Dot Com]

Yes it is. No matter how much good they might do, its based on a myth and monotheism has committed many atrocities throughout its inception.

"celestial dictatorship" (Hitchens term) He's right. You can have it. As for me?

"...monotheism has committed many atrocities throughout its inception."

I love smashing the custard pie in the kisser of you anti-religion bigots.

Ready?

"On the other hand, let’s take a look at secularism’s rich history of mass murder, and we need not go back a thousand years to make the point. Here are the 800 pound gorilla death totals from some notable secular leaders from the recent past (from the book Death by Government by R.J. Rummel):



Stalin....42,672,000

Mao.....37,828,000

Hitler....20,946,000

Lenin....4,017,000

Pol Pot...2,397,000

Chiang Kaishek...10,214,000

Tojo.....3,990,000

Total......122,064,000

122 million slaughtered by people who believe as you do.



Now go wash that mess off your face.

vs. Noah's Flood?

 

[PoliticalChic]

Yes it is. No matter how much good they might do, its based on a myth and monotheism has committed many atrocities throughout its inception.

"celestial dictatorship" (Hitchens term) He's right. You can have it. As for me?

"...monotheism has committed many atrocities throughout its inception."

I love smashing the custard pie in the kisser of you anti-religion bigots.

Ready?

"On the other hand, let’s take a look at secularism’s rich history of mass murder, and we need not go back a thousand years to make the point. Here are the 800 pound gorilla death totals from some notable secular leaders from the recent past (from the book Death by Government by R.J. Rummel):



Stalin....42,672,000

Mao.....37,828,000

Hitler....20,946,000

Lenin....4,017,000

Pol Pot...2,397,000

Chiang Kaishek...10,214,000

Tojo.....3,990,000

Total......122,064,000

122 million slaughtered by people who believe as you do.



Now go wash that mess off your face.

vs. Noah's Flood?

Gotcha running away from the facts I presented like you were burned.

And, you were.



I told you to wipe your face off....that's disgusting.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Define "murder" and what is bad (or good) about it.
Who says?

Our society says its wrong. Did you really need to read thou shall not murder to know its wrong?

"Our society says it's wrong."

You dope......

Your god must be very proud that you are following his teachings with your egotistical, know-it-all, holier-than-thou name calling and insults, always calling people stupid, dumb, "dope".

Did you learn that in Sunday school?

Winning hearts and minds....that's what I'm all about.
But...If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.


"....egotistical...."
Hmmm....got me.

The ego is the largest barrier from enlightenment. Its no accident yours is huge.

One needs reasons to be egotistical.....a condition you will, alas, never experience.