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John Adams and Alexander Solzhenitsyn Were Right
A huge reason for the success of Western Civilization is that our Judeo-Christian faith focuses on improving yourself. You are made in God’s image. Act like it. Look inside yourself. Are there improvements that you could make in your soul? Well sure, but that’s really hard. But with God – the creator and master of the entire universe – watching you and taking a personal interest in your soul, perhaps you might give it a try. So we work at it. With varying degrees of success, to be sure, but we work at it. Our religious leaders are constantly imploring us to study the lessons of the Bible, and take them to heart. Don’t criticize others when you are so flawed. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, and so on. Fix yourself first. A society full of Jews and Christians who truly believe in their God and seek to please him; that society is generally a pretty nice place.
John Adams was characteristically insightful when he observed, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” I would argue that this is true not only of our Constitution but also of any other government ever conceived.
Adams’ point is that if the behavior of people is not governed by their religion, then it must be governed by their government. He was a student of history. He knew that that does not end well.
In Matthew 22:21 Jesus said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s.” He understood that government was necessary to manage the affairs of men, but when it comes to managing really important things, like our souls, only God could do that. I would presume that students of the 20th century could reach no other conclusion.
Because government, understandably, takes a different approach. The government manages citizens and things, not souls. So it is essentially in the business of telling people what to do, and what not to do. What else could the government do? There is no other way.
In Christianity, you seek to improve yourself. In government, you seek to improve others. Modern progressives and others who have a great deal of faith in the power of government to improve our lives should stop and consider this very important distinction. And they should consider how well this has worked in the past.
Over the course of history, this has been tried in many different ways. Tribes governed by chiefs. Kingdoms governed by royal families. Socialist systems. Communist systems. And so on and so forth. They all look different on the outside, but on the inside, they’re all the same. They involve telling other people what to do. And for whatever reason, this doesn’t seem to work very well. In fact, these systems seem to rapidly, and consistently, devolve from ineffective to catastrophic. Every time. There is no other way.
It would appear that the only way to improve a society full of people is to improve the actual people. One at a time. From the inside out.
Teachers recognize this phenomenon. A kid from a good family is easy to teach. A kid from a horrible home will be either very difficult or impossible to improve, no matter how talented and dedicated his teachers are. The damage is done. There’s nothing to work with. And good teachers can recognize which kid is which by the end of the first week of school. They know which kids will be in college prep courses, and which will be in detention. They do their best with everybody, of course. But they know how things will turn out. They’ve seen it before.
So as we abandon our religious faith as individuals, we hope that improved government can maintain this very nice society to which we have been accustomed. And despite its flaws, our government is certainly one of the best in the world.
But it doesn’t matter. The damage is done. There’s nothing to work with. Teachers would understand. John Adams was right.
Viktor Frankl felt that freedom was a negative aspect (a lack of something – a lack of oppressive government), and that the corresponding positive aspect was responsibility. He said, “I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.” He didn’t understand how one could exist without the other.
The government can’t create 300 million responsible, moral individuals, by fiat. That is the work of parents, and of the church. There is no other way.
We’ve tried other ways. Those who believe that morality and ethics can be created by pure reason should stop and think about that if they study the history of the 20th century. Or even studied the history of any era, if you think about it.
To look deep into oneself, and critically judge what one sees, and then undertake to improve upon it to the very best of your ability – that is agonizingly difficult. The government cannot encourage us to do that. Only religion can.
On the contrary, if our behavior is governed by a system of laws, then it is only natural to work around and within those laws as effectively as possible. Most people are reasonable, and that is a reasonable thing to do. But even if your behavior is reasonable, and even legal, it may not be ethical. Which seems harmless. But as it turns out, it’s not harmless. Thousands of years worth of brilliant men, from Moses to Solzhenitsyn, have spent their lives explaining to us why this is so incredibly dangerous.
We pursue wealth and technological advancements to make our lives easier. And it works. I don’t walk to work. I drive a car. With air conditioning. It’s nice. Much easier than walking. And I like easy. We all hope to avoid things that are difficult. That effort to make difficult things easier is human nature, and it leads to many of the things that make our modern lives so pleasant. We prefer easy things over difficult things.
So we naturally prefer the government to religion. Religion is hard. Improving myself is really hard. It’d be so much easier for me to just tell other people what to do. Would I rather seek out the worst flaws of my character and endure the agony of brutal self-criticism and go through difficult work needed to improve them? Or would I rather put a political bumper sticker on my car and go vote? One can understand why so many people choose the bumper sticker.
Who will get more votes? The 1700’s theologian Jonathan Edwards, whose stump speech is “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God?” Or Bernie Sanders, who says you can do whatever you like, and he’ll give you whatever you want? Actually, forget Jonathan Edwards. A nice, unthreatening Republican can’t win elections if he simply suggests that someone has to pay for all of Bernie’s programs. That sounds hard. We, naturally, prefer easy.
Some will choose the bumper sticker. They always have. Understandably. But what happens when a quarter of us do that? Or half? That’s when things get dicey. And then, inevitably, violent.
Choosing the easy path makes things difficult, eventually. It always does.
There is no other way.
When I have an idea for a post, I often just write it as it appears in my head – just dump it onto the page, with little concern for quality. I type fast. This part generally takes 20-30 minutes. No more, because I get bored as quickly as I type.
Once my thoughts are on the page, I save it, and come back to it in a week or a month, when I feel like posting something. At that point, I’ll generally reorganize it, cut its length by half or so, and clean it up in an effort to achieve, well, coherence, at least. This part takes another 20-30 minutes, usually, unless my original version was total garbage. If this part takes more than 30 minutes, I’ll generally consider that post hopeless, dump it, and try another old first draft to work on, if I’m still in the mood.
I came back to this post today to clean it up, and thought, “Eh, whatever.” I’ve been doing that more and more recently. Sorry about that.
So to paraphrase somebody famous that I’m too lazy too look up, “Sorry this is so long, because I was too lazy to make it short.” Or something like that. It’s easier to just post it.
Again, we often choose the easy way. And that leads to sloppy essays and deadly government.
You’re lucky I’m just writing an essay, and not writing policy.
Published in General
And Jesus intended you should literally pluck out your eye if it causes you to sin.
You guys don’t believe in the truth of Scripture. Quoting the hard verses to people who do while ignoring the context is a cheap (and, frankly, ignorant) way to interpret Scripture to us.
The Hebrews were “in the wilderness.” What does that mean? Are we still in the wilderness (after Christ?). Should we, therefore, put the ban on all the peoples (and their animals) who practice human sacrifice (abortion)? Do you see Jews or Christians doing that, or advocating for it?
What is the lesson to be taken from the stoning for working on (or not honoring) the Sabbath? God takes honoring the Sabbath very, very seriously, and so should we.
You misinterpret Scripture because you don’t view the story of salvation history in its totality, but only take out the parts you don’t like as a kind of “gotcha!”. You don’t get this incident in the same way you don’t get Donald Trump when he speaks in hyperbole. /only sorta joking
But the original post referenced the Judeo-Christian faith.
So we agree that there is no such thing as the Judeo-Christian faith. But then the argument is that there are Judeo-Christian values.
Even though the Bible does depict God as commanding that a man be stoned to death for gathering wood on the sabbath, this isn’t what people usually mean when they speak of Judeo-Christian values.
The use of the term “Judeo-Christian values” seems to be an example of rhetorical slight of hand, a means of distracting people from how different the values we tend to hold are from the values expressed in the Bible.
Now you seem to be advocating moral relativism by indicating that when God commanded that a man be stoned to death for gathering wood on the sabbath, it was a good decision (because all of God’s decisions are good), but that if a society decided to stone a man to death for gathering wood on the sabbath it would be a bad decision.
I didn’t interpret, I quoted. It is what it is.
But I actually agree with you, Western, that leaving context out when quoting scripture you don’t believe in to make a ‘gotcha’ point is probably not that insightful about any particular religious or cultural tradition, and is arguably cheap and ignorant.
Good point. And one that should inform all our discussions. True.
You can make a pro-life argument from a secular humanist perspective, arguing that the unborn child’s life has value such that abortion is wrong.
Now, if a doctor tells pregnant woman that if she continues her pregnancy she faces a high risk of dying or suffering a stroke, this complicates the question in that particular case. You might have some people arguing that the woman should be allowed to have the abortion while others would argue that since her risk of death/stroke are not 100 percent, she would continue with the pregnancy.
Still, to even ask the question, “How to we protect as many human lives as possible?” is to argue from a humanist perspective.
When the Bible depicts God in Genesis 6 of commanding a global flood for the purpose of wiping out all of humanity except for 8 people (including Noah and his arc), God isn’t trying to protect as many human lives as possible. God is trying to eliminate nearly all human life.
Now, at this point you can say that I have no right to interpret scripture. But it seems this is a clever way of you, the Christian, of smuggling humanist values into your Christian theology.
Sorry, I’m getting bored with this argument, so I haven’t read your comments carefully.
On the stoning incident, I will say the context is “in the wilderness” and “they didn’t know what to do with him” — God’s revelation is incomplete (Christians believe it wasn’t complete until Jesus) and the Hebrews are theologically immature. Honoring the Sabbath is one of the Big Ten (not the football conference, you heathens! ;-)) and God needs to impart to the Hebrews the seriousness with which he intends to hold us to them.
But, Jews were not and are not known for killing their own for every violation of the Big Ten. You don’t hear of mass graves for the secular Jews who violate the Sabbath command, do you? What are the adherent Jews thinking? Aren’t they disobeying this “command” if they don’t stone the slackers? Maybe we should ask them.
Obviously, the common religious view is these were one-off incidents while God was forming His people. Was there slavery in early Hebrew society? Yep, as there was in every society. The Biblical passages addressing the issue weren’t necessarily commanding slavery everywhere and always and have to be viewed in context of the times. By the time Jesus came around, he didn’t say, “Go and make slaves of all nations.” He said, “Go and make disciples.” Paul said “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free…” Do you think this was a positive development? Do you think secular humanists would have come up with it on their own?
Secular leftism has a strong current of the will to power. “We humanists will decide what is right and wrong, what is good and evil, and the rest of you unenlightened will be made to live by it.” I think this is indisputable.
If one takes the Bible seriously, God gave people commandments and “Thou Shalt Not Buy, Sell or Own Human Being” is not one of God’s commandments. So, in the 19th century you had Christian churches divided on the slavery question because those who looked to the Bible as an authority on issues big and small knew that the Bible did not contain a prohibition on slavery.
Human beings had to “wing it” and abolish slavery using “brute facts,” reasoning and empathy.
Your criticism of “secular leftism” seems correct. But here is my criticism of the original post and similar arguments made by Dennis Prager. Marxism-Leninism and the Divine Command Theory aren’t the only choices available to people living in the 21st century.
The Muslims running Iran seem to subscribe to Divine Command Theory. So, apparently, did the September 11th suicide bombers.
We should reject both Marxism-Leninism and Divine Command Theory, in my opinion. If we do that, we still have a lot of work ahead of us. I’ll admit that.
I think I’ll give it a shot. It will take several comments, and I won’t launch them all just now. And some other replies might come first!
Meaning only that there is no such thing as a single religion. There are shared doctrines. There is no completely shared list of doctrines.
That would not follow. What would follow is only that there is no completely shared list of values. There are some shared values. Human beings being made in G-d’s image is the first one (unless there’s one from even earlier in Genesis that I haven’t noticed).
It never was the only choice in any century.
Divine Command Theory, if G-d is taken as arbitrary, is indeed problematic. But that’s not what Christians believe; Divine Command Theory is developed in a direction far, far away from that notion.
More below.
Absurd. Nothing remotely resembling moral relativism follows from her remarks. What follows is that different situations call for different responses. That’s not moral relativism; Kant, Mill, Aristotle, Confucius, Augustine, and everyone else who is not a moral relativist agree on this.
Now to get back to looking at the Sabbath-breaking death-penalty punishment.
First, there’s this.
The first lesson here is that many of G-d’s commands in the Bible are plainly contextualized: For this kingdom or this society or this era in history, not for all times and places and peoples.
On this point I think you would be hard-pressed to find a single Jewish or Christian theologian who disagrees.
In short, no one thinks we’re supposed to be stoning Sabbath-breakers today (and one wonders if anyone ever has after this particular incident), and few if any informed readers think the Bible implies any such thing.
The second lesson from WC concerns what this passage does instruct us to do: to take the Sabbath seriously. (Here there may be reasonable doubt whether Christians are required to observe the Sabbath as such; a question for cautious New Testament interpretation!)
Now WC’s hermeneutic does seem to rely on G-d’s authority, but G-d is charged with being arbitrary or a being jerk; more generally, some of you are apparently questioning the idea that G-d can have any moral authority. On this, see below!
Some preliminaries might be helpful, so here is a short intro to the study of ethics. There are several different moral concepts. Six important ones are character, the results of our actions, the intentions of our actions, the proper function of human beings, happiness, and obligations.
Different moral traditions focus on different concepts. And this is neat: These concepts can be sorted into two categories. Each of them is either the goal and the fundamental concept of a moral tradition, or the strategy of a moral tradition for reaching that goal as well as a test of how we know right from wrong. Here are the major moral traditions:
Virtue Ethics (Aristotle):
–the goal of ethics: to be happy by functioning properly
–the fundamental concept: the proper function of the human being
–the strategy for reaching the goal and the test of right vs. wrong: character
Utilitarianism (Mill):
–the goal of ethics and the fundamental concept of the tradition: happiness
–the strategy for reaching the goal and the test of right vs. wrong: the results of our actions
Deontology (Kant):
–the goal of ethics and the fundamental concept of the tradition: obligation / moral law
–the strategy for reaching the goal and the test of right vs. wrong: our intentions
More below:
Now all three traditions agree on moral realism, the theory that some moral claims are objectively true. Probably the best way to elaborate on this is to explain that our concepts refer to reality. My concept of my teacup refers to my teacup, a real thing. The moral concepts also refer to real things: Happiness really is a valuable thing, humans do have proper functions, there is such a thing as moral law, and so on.
I am a terribly unfashionable philosopher because I accept all these concepts as representing realities, and subscribe to all three traditions (broadly speaking).
More below:
Some people say that objective morality only makes sense if there’s a G-d. I think that is mistaken. Aristotle’s ethics works without G-d. Proper function of the human being makes sense with or without a G-d. (In metaphysics, maybe someone will want to argue that proper function points to design or something. But let’s stick to ethics!)
However, I think the idea of moral law only works with a G-d. (Helpful intro to this area: this YouTube video.) Moral law requires a moral lawgiver.
Ethics works without G-d, but not every kind of ethics. You can have Aristotle without G-d, but not Kant: No moral rules incurring guilt if we break them.
Continued:
And here’s the point with respect to biblical passages about G-d killing humans: If the concern is that G-d appears to be violating moral law, then that concern is misplaced. G-d cannot violate moral law. Moral law can only exist if G-d does, and G-d’s actions by definition are consistent with moral law.
Is there any source of moral obligation to human beings–the sort of obligation the violation of which incurs guilt–without G-d? Kant, as far as I can tell, never gives a clear answer. Nor Mill. Locke and the Bible give a clear answer on the source of this obligation: G-d.
If there’s another idea, I’d like to hear it.
Continued:
The gist of it, I suppose, is that G-d has authority to command what is right and also to punish sin.
And why shouldn’t He?
(I’ll do more sometime later.)
Obviously we have to deal with the idea that G-d’s character is arbitrary or that G-d is a jerk or whatever.
A typical (not universal) view in biblical theology is that God’s commands are a source of moral obligation, and that God’s commands are rooted in God’s character, which is a good character.
In other words, divine arbitrariness is explicitly written out of the best Divine Command Theories. Divine goodness and love is explicitly written in. See Robert Adams on the subject. (I can link to a book or something if it helps.) Or this video for an introduction.
Finally, there may be any number of other reasons why the death penalty for a Sabbath-breaker might make some kind of sense we can understand. Here is one suggestion.
To heal the world of sin and build up creation–to enlist his image-bearers in their job of cultivating creation–G-d finds it necessary to cultivate a specific people group, teaching them to not murder, not commit adultery, and be busy workers and cultivators in the world (much of the stuff @iwe is so good at talking about), and so on.
Unfortunately, at this point in their history the Hebrews in the wilderness are an emerging society. Other than the Passover, which is just once a year, they don’t have very many rituals or symbols of cultural identity. One rare people-making thing they do have is the weekly Sabbath rest.
Continued:
So when a person violates that custom he is undermining the creation and cultivation of an entire society. His offense might be compared to burning an American flag on the Fourth of July. Or to the kid who plays video games at the family dinner table. It’s not necessarily the evil of the action in itself that is so bad; it’s the action’s assault on the cultivation of community.
Is burning a piece of cloth a crime? Not as such. But some actions of cloth-burning can be reasonably punished. Is playing video games a crime? Not as such, but some instances of playing video games may call for parental discipline.
Is the death penalty a punishment all out of proportion for the offense of Sabbath-breaking? I trust G-d to make that call.
But we may reasonable posit that it is; the consequences were almost infinitely beyond flag-burning or playing video games at dinner. The world desperately needed the Jews to be a people, and perhaps the Jews needed the Sabbath to be a people. The consequences of Sabbath-breaking were enormous.
I seem to recall Kant is a pissant, I read that somewhere.
Moral obligation is not so hard to fathom, so long as you are not so sociopathic to deny that other people exist. Moral obligation comes from realizing that if you don’t condemn crimes, such as theft or murder, then someone can kill you or steal from you without penalty. Society is created to come to as close as possible a collective agreement/understanding of what is right and wrong as possible. Some do a better job than others.
This is a very convenient claim for people who want to believe in a moral lawgiver.
There is a big difference between manners and morality. The problem with many societies is that they conflate the two and make acts like burning a flag, or desecrating the Koran illegal. Neither is objectively immoral, but some would claim so and inflict punishments for such silliness.
So, murder is immoral, but not observing the sabbath is not. I think most of us are glad that Jews are not killing people for the latter anymore, but it can’t be denied that at one time (perhaps many times) the Jews were little better than Pol Pot or Kim il Sung and his progeny. (If you read Josephus’ account of the siege of Jerusalem, he describes his countrymen in ways that are very reminiscent of Al Qaeda.)
The Jewish/Christian god is only occasionally and coincidentally ever moral. Calling for stoning for the not observing the sabbath reveals the true purpose of the Torah was not to teach morality, but to instill strict discipline on a community that was in fact among the earliest non-henotheistic (intolerantly so) religions and one of the earliest major societies dedicated to racial purity. Christianity did away with the racial purity angle, along with the dietary controls and other silliness, and put more emphasis on morality in a purer sense. But neither can claim to be the source for morals. People had morals long before either of those religions came along.
It would be so wonderful to have a statue of responsibility somewhere on the West Coast. But the Golden State has lost all ability to care about responsibility, with Oregon and Washington state following along in her wake.
Speaking of responsibility, there is a lot more wrong with Sen Sanders than his wanting everyone to have everything free.
California is a real &^*# hole in terms of election integrity.
Now I know I keep harping on this but it is the truth: the fault lies with Bernie. Leaders among his supporters tried to tell him that Hillary stole the Primary out from under him. Yet he willingly played along with the DNC for whatever reason. (Supposedly his wife was threatened; his grandkids were threatened, et al.)
So thirteen separate voting districts across the USA had activists who tried to have lawsuits against the DNC. Their belief was that the Primary had been stolen out from under Sen Sanders, and they wanted it proven in court.
In twelve of those cases, judges ruled that the voters had not been injured in any way shape or form. That only Bernie had been injured. That unless he participated, there was no single “person of standing” so the court cases were not deemed to be valid. Bernie declined to participate and those cases never went forward.
Only in San Diego County did the judge feel that voters themselves are injured when elections are not fairly held. He allowed the activists to go forward without Bernie. The case was heard and the judge decided that the DNC had fraudulently flipped the votes from the Bernie column over to HRC. Hillary’s primary victory was ruled as stolen.
And as far as any of this goes: no thanks to Bernie who wouldn’t agree to participate. His participation would have gone against the interests of his lords and mistresses in the DNC.
To me, voting is a sacred right. If Bernie Sanders couldn’t do other than obey the DNC on this, then he is beyond contempt.
####
I think that is it in a nutshell. When you look at the 1830’s social mores of Great Britain’s more fashionable homes, those people who still had involvement in slavery were disdained and shunned. But the old money crowd certainly didn’t donate the ill gotten gains of their ancestors to the working poor in the poor houses.
Northerners were taught in their churches that the slave owners were sinners, while I imagine that in Southern churches the preachers let the congregations know the tremendous service they were doing by rescuing the African slaves from the Dark Continent. After all, here in the USA, they could learn about Jesus and be saved!
No one I can think of would praise slavery. Yet most people refuse to believe that had they been born to a wealthy Southern plantation family in the South, circa 1840, it is highly unlikely they would have given up the life of luxury and opportunity to leave home, travel to Chicago and live with cousin Martha in her tenement while preaching the word of the Abolitionists to the public.
After all, what was involved was far more than leaving behind fancy clothes, weekends on fox hunts and the like. You’d be spending time chopping wood for the fireplace in winter, hauling water from the local corner pump every day, storing ice in the summer and any manner of inconveniences we who have AC and heat, running water, flush toilets, phones, TV’s computers can no longer fathom. All those 19th Century chores in addition to living on rice and beans just to hope you could get out the word and end slavery.
I, along with Skyler, would like to discuss this idea that
There is a difference between [a] laws that are discovered and [b] laws created by human beings.
When the Indiana state legislature passes legislation punishing those who fail to yield to a school bus with a 500 dollar fine, this is law that falls into category [b], laws created by human beings.
The law of gravity is a law that falls into category [a]. If I were to argue that there is such a thing as “objective morality,” I would argue that moral laws are super laws of the universe and that they fall into category [a].
I might also argue that human beings have a limited ability to understand the exact properties of these moral laws of the universe. Also, sociopaths are lacking in sufficient empathy towards their fellow human beings so that even if they believe that torturing or killing another human being is morally wrong, they engage in this behavior anyway.
I have found the Biblical interpretations of @westernchauvinist and @saintaugustine interesting, but I think these interpretations are human, not divine, interpretations. This isn’t to say that I think their interpretations are correct or incorrect, only that one can find a Jewish Rabbi or a Christian Theologian who has a different interpretation of the Bible.
So, even if all Americans decided to sign up for Judeo-Christian values, we would still disagree over whether the minimum wage should be 15 dollars per hour or if there should be no minimum wage at all. Until recently, relatively Godless Germany (compared to the United States) had no minimum wage!
Some might think that people who work on the sabbath should be punished by civil authorities. Others would see this as wrongheaded micromanagement by government.
We would continue to debate how many immigrants should be naturalized into American citizenship each year and whether these immigrants should be mostly high-skill immigrants or “chain-migrants” who have American citizens as relatives. We would have to debate how much money to spend on national defense and what our relationship should be to non-Christian, non-Jewish foreign countries as diverse as Japan, Saudi Arabia, India and Thailand.
We would have to consider whether we should expand Medicare or reform it so that its costs don’t overwhelm projected government revenues.
It’s not clear that Judeo-Christian values can answer these questions. Now, if representative democracy is a Judeo-Christian value, at least we can all agree that we should all accept the results of elections and obey laws, even those we disagree with.
As a conservative with libertarian leanings, I get a bit nervous when a politician says that he or she will support the public policies that Jesus would have supported because many of Jesus’s teachings were downright impractical.
And very rarely stable. And don’t even get me started on Heidegger.
And a very inconvenient claim for all of us; as Lewis puts it, “We have cause to be uneasy.”
But convenience and inconvenience are evidence neither for nor against.
So my moral obligation to others boil down to my own self-interest?
Whence moral guilt? If I murder, on this account, all I’ve done is risk harming myself. That doesn’t make me any more guilty than, say, ignoring good advice from a lawyer makes me guilty rather than just somewhat foolish.
And there’s the thought experiment from Plato: Suppose I had the power of invisibility, so that I could do anything without being discovered. What, on your account, could possibly be said against killing innocent people I don’t like, stealing, and so on?
Would you mind saying what the difference is? On your account morality is just a strategy for getting what I want. Are manners much less?
Bad manners can get me in trouble much more easily than occasional surreptitious theft. On your account, that should make bad manners more immoral than theft.
An interesting conclusion, to be sure. I’m not sure what your premise is for it, unless it’s this:
And this is an interesting conclusion, to be sure. What is your premise for it?
It was most evidently not about racial purity, since anyone could join the community by also joining the religion. Indeed, it appears that rather a lot of non-Hebrews joined the trek out of Egypt.
Indeed. Whoever disputed that? My remarks on Aristotle should show that I myself would not.
This looks good to me, except that I don’t know what “super laws of the universe” means.
I’m confused. I thought you were discussing the idea that moral law requires a moral lawgiver. But it doesn’t look like you say anything at all about that idea in this comment.
Indeed. But so what? The same is true of my interpretation of Milton, where Satan is a villain. You can find interpreters who think he’s the hero. The difference between their interpretation and mine is that theirs fails to correctly describe the meaning of the text.
It’s the job of humans to figure out which human interpretations of the text are factually correct, and there are ways of figuring this out.
It’s not always easy, or even in every case possible, to do so definitively. Nor is it easy for medical researchers to give the final and complete answer on the causes of asthma, or to easily give a definitive answer to every factual question.
But there are ways, and they should be used.
I don’t think you’re disagreeing with anyone here. Neither Kant nor Mill nor Aristotle nor a set of biblical values easily answers every question. We have to carefully apply principles to circumstances and all that.
Part of what is under discussion here is the theory that certain values to which even you subscribe are rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition–the theory that you are already signed up on some of those values whether you realize it or not.
Namely: Is it your view that you have a moral obligation to human beings, the sort of obligation the violation of which incurs guilt when you violate it? That idea plainly may be derived from the Bible, or from reflection on G-d (as in John Locke). How do you justify the claim that we have such obligations?