Xian Morality

[ShackledNoMore]

It really irritates me to see xians, especially the loud vocal ones, considered to be the de facto guardians of morality when in fact they are not. It is insane to me that secular liberals are put on the defensive (and they usually respond by claiming that they are xians too and how important jeebus is to their values), while religious conservatives go unchallenged for the most heinous acts and policies.

 

When is someone going to have the backbone to call them on the carpet on their moral shortcomings instead of freely ceding a moral high ground to them that is the opposite of what they deserve?

 

Things like:

 

The Global Gag Rule: Resulting in many deaths, the spread of disease, and much suffering over the last eight years.

The War in Iraq: The lies to justify it and the horrible and needless loss of life that resulted from it.

Torture: How can something like waterboarding be considered anything other than pure evil? It's not even as though it can be justified as useful, given it's nothing more than an instrument of duress.

Stem Cell Research (and squelching science in general in favor of religion): How much preventable suffering, death, and reduction in quality of life might this have caused?

Persecution of Gays: Even more insidious because they can claim that gays should not be discriminated against, all while both the good old boy network and inequitable legislation pummels this demographic.

 

I'm elated, mind you, that the above positions are becoming unpopular and that we finally have a president who appears to be working hard to undo this insanity. I'm elated that my rant is becoming slightly less relevant now than it would have been a couple of years ago. Yet nevertheless, frequently, even the religious left and those apathetic to religion still dance around the religious right's claim to the moral high ground as sacrosanct. I submit that things like those on the above list are morally reprehensible, no matter HOW loudly (and ironically) their promoters trumpet their morality from the hill tops. I submit that those who espouse such "values" should be called out and put on the defensive for these morally decrepit positions. They irony that they are held in esteem while their opponents are challenged as immoral is almost surreal, and it's a sad state of affairs.

[Guest QuidEstCaritas?]

It really irritates me to see xians, especially the loud vocal ones, considered to be the de facto guardians of morality when in fact they are not. It is insane to me that secular liberals are put on the defensive (and they usually respond by claiming that they are xians too and how important jeebus is to their values), while religious conservatives go unchallenged for the most heinous acts and policies.

 

When is someone going to have the backbone to call them on the carpet on their moral shortcomings instead of freely ceding a moral high ground to them that is the opposite of what they deserve?

 

Things like:

 

• The Global Gag Rule: Resulting in many deaths, the spread of disease, and much suffering over the last eight years.
  

• The War in Iraq: The lies to justify it and the horrible and needless loss of life that resulted from it.
  

• Torture: How can something like waterboarding be considered anything other than pure evil? It's not even as though it can be justified as useful, given it's nothing more than an instrument of duress.
  

• Stem Cell Research (and squelching science in general in favor of religion): How much preventable suffering, death, and reduction in quality of life might this have caused?
  

• Persecution of Gays: Even more insidious because they can claim that gays should not be discriminated against, all while both the good old boy network and inequitable legislation pummels this demographic.
  

 

I'm elated, mind you, that the above positions are becoming unpopular and that we finally have a president who appears to be working hard to undo this insanity. I'm elated that my rant is becoming slightly less relevant now than it would have been a couple of years ago. Yet nevertheless, frequently, even the religious left and those apathetic to religion still dance around the religious right's claim to the moral high ground as sacrosanct. I submit that things like those on the above list are morally reprehensible, no matter HOW loudly (and ironically) their promoters trumpet their morality from the hill tops. I submit that those who espouse such "values" should be called out and put on the defensive for these morally decrepit positions. They irony that they are held in esteem while their opponents are challenged as immoral is almost surreal, and it's a sad state of affairs.

 

 

Amen brother! Let's run 'em out o' town with pitchforks and hand-held cacti. Fuckin' bastards.

 

Er. I know what you are saying, but think back to the liberal time period during the rise of Hitler. It doesn't seem like the liberals of the time in all their wisdom had the nuts to stand up to Hitler and his brigade of Alpha Male Brown Shirts.

 

When intellectual discussion fails then there is only one of a few things one has left that one can do in order to preserve liberty. And trying to reason with a Hitler is not one of them. Appeasing conservatives is not one of them either. Liberal society is indeed the best society, but I suspect that the constituency of such a society is close to powerless when it comes to stopping rabid conservatives who won't listen to reason and insist on violence as the final solution to retarded xenophobia, racism, hardcore prejudice, and other equally inane fascist mob dreams commanded by the Almighty Dipshit roasting marshmellows in the sky. People with an herbivorish Bonobo mindset won't win against Wolves.

 

Of course as the Nazi's eventually realized, might doesn't make right. It just makes a lot of dead liberals, communists (cough *terrorists*), dead Jews (why do they always have to get slaughtered and when are they going to get a fucking break for crying out loud?), and dead gays, mentally ill, non-Chosen People, etc. At the end of the day they got their City on a Hill and their fucking German Pride was broken once again, just like after WWI. It seems like the Germans learned the lesson that all Chosen People learn when they get duped by the same madmen that give the religious authorities such secret hardons.

[OpheliaGinger]

Wolves have more morality then these people. When I used to be ubber conservative and listen to right wing talk radio, Sean Hannity was a proponent of waterboarding; we should subject those who are proponents to waterboarding and show them how torture doesn't get you accurate information. Torture someone long enough, they will confess to the most absurd of accusations.

[Guest QuidEstCaritas?]

Wolves have more morality then these people. When I used to be ubber conservative and listen to right wing talk radio, Sean Hannity was a proponent of waterboarding; we should subject those who are proponents to waterboarding and show them how torture doesn't get you accurate information. Torture someone long enough, they will confess to the most absurd of accusations.

 

 

All this is true, but it wasn't the point I was trying to make.

 

And yes waterboarding is indeed torture of the kind that is used for "confession" and Maoist type "struggling".

 

It's purpose is not to glean information.....

[Jedah]

When a xian asks me this, I respond with pointing out the Paradox that comes with transferring absolute knowledge to a non absolute being.

 

Here is an interesting thing to ponder when questioning whether or not religious people who believe in an absolute being that dictates right from wrong have a better grasp on ethics then those who do not believe...

 

The entire premise that to be ethical requires an absolute being rests on the idea that the answer to the euthyphro dilemma is that it is "right because God says so". This makes God an objective being- meaning that all he says is 100% truth and reality. If God were to say leprechauns exist, they would. In comparison, we are subjective beings. Reality is not bended to our will. If we believe that we see a leprechaun during an acid trip, it does not mean that leprechauns exist. It just means they exist in our mind. Our thoughts and opinions on reality are subjective and thus open to question.

 

To put it in simpler terms, think of God ( Objective ) as a game programmer and us ( Subjective ) as characters in his game ( Reality ). The programmer dictates reality and we have no choice but to go with it.

 

The thing about being a subjective being is that pretty much everything we experiance or think is subjective. For all we know, everything we hear, breath, touch, and know is an illusion via a system similar to "the matrix". We can "know" things for 99.9999 % but we can never reach 100%. Every piece of knowledge we come accross must first be comprehended by our subjective minds. Which explains why we humans have different opinions on what things mean - different ideals mean different things to two different subjective minds that have experienced reality through other perspectives. Ironically, this is why we even have different religions in the first place.

 

Now lets take it up a notch and look at the relationship between a subjective being and an objective being. If one of us was to talk to God and God was to tell us the meaning of life, would he then have objective knowledge regarding life's purpose ? Actually, he wouldn't. In order to understand the objective knowledge that is being transferred, the subjective being in question would go through a number of subjective walls.

 

First: acknowledge that they are talking to an objective being ( God ) - Subjective. How does the person know they are talking to God and not their own hallucination ? Even if He really was talking to God, it doesn't change the fact that his understanding of the situation is still subjective.

 

Second: Acknowledge and comprehend the wisdom that has been given to you by the objective being. Wake up ! You just got told the meaning of life. So now what do you do ? Simple, the first thing the subjective being would do is attempt to figure out what he has been told actually means to him. whether this is done subconsciously or consciously doesn't matter, if the subjective being has any hope of remembering what he has been told, he goes through this step.

 

This creates a problem: No matter what, a subjective being cannot gain access to objective wisdom even if it is told directly to you by the almighty one himself, because Just by comprehending what it is you have been told through a subjective mind, the objective wisdom you have gained becomes subjective to your own understanding and thus becomes subjective in the process. Its the same as pouring water into orange juice, no matter how much watter is poured in their will still be some orange juice inside. its that barrier between 99.999999999999999% and 100% that we as subjective beings, by definition cannot ever cross.

 

 

In other words, even if an absolute objective being exists that dictates the reality behind ethics...as far as we are concerned and as far as we can comprehend, it doesn't matter. As subjective being's we will always find ourselves turning to our own reason at one time or another, because thats what we ultimately understand. Even if God were to give us Objective knowledge of morality we would still only be able to comprehend that objective knowledge through a subjective mind. Our ethical standards would still be subjective.

 

If God was to tell us that murder is in fact, morally good, how many of us would honestly just flat out stop thinking about what we feel is right or wrong and go kill everyone we know and love ? Except for the few extremely brainwashed individuals, most of us would try to protect our families from the inevitable onslaught to come. Personally, I would give God the finger. But thats just me.

 

And if I feel like drilling them a bit, I will dig deeper by pointing out the ultimate flaw that the paradox essentially means: Because morality will always be subjective to your own understanding of it regardless of where you got it, attempting to follow a moral law when you do not understand the reasoning behind it does not make you an ethical person at all. In fact, just the opposite. By following a rule you do not understand you are going against what you "know" is right, and in doing so you are the one who is being evil.

 

This leads to a conclusion filled with delicious irony. Christians who call homosexuality evil but cannot name a single reason other then "Because gawd said so" for it being wrong are being immoral by doing so. And not just homosexuality, but pretty much everything else that they cannot find any social justification or benefit to humanity other than "The bible says so" falls under this wing as well.