Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex
But as has been asked several times in this thread, if religious morality is what we need then which religious morality are you advocating? It seems to be judeo-christian, but in that case which judeo-christian morality, and how forcefully to we impose it on the non judeo-christians?
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I understand your questions. What I need to clear up about my argument is that I'm talking about the value system, not the theology. Theology can be a personal choice, but it's values that determine behavior, and that morality has to be universal and therefore not a personal choice.
For example, you can believe in the Holy Trinity and I can believe that the Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of the first Buddha. But we both share the common value that stealing is wrong. There is actually a lot of overlap of values between the Buddhist value system and the JudeoChristian (JC) one, and that's fine.
The reason I don't advocate for Buddhism is that it doesn't value fighting wrongdoing like the JC one does, and therefore will eventually be destroyed or subjugated to regimes that perpetrate more evil, as we are seeing already. The result is a worse world. To many, physical violence even in self defense is wrong. This is a major difference with JC and in fact is a more and more a shared value with the Western European Secular system (WE).
In this regard, the WE system is worse, because many don't even believe in a universal concept of wrong to begin with; it's a personal choice. They seem to have a problem identifying evil and even doubt its existence. This is emblemized by Sweden, who could not see any moral difference between the Allied and Axis powers in WWII, nor between the US and Soviets in the Cold War, or the Israelis and Palestinians today. I think this is because they have put the value of equality above all else, to the point that humans are all the same inside (regardless of their outside behavior apparently), terrorists are freedom fighters or justified because those who they attack enabled them, animals have the same worth as people, etc.
Now, I understand that not everyone falls neatly into the WE or JC category and we all have a certain combination of these beliefs. This is because the WE people's grandfathers who built their cities and societies came from the JC tradition, and it has evolved and morphed from there into WE secularism. I point to the Scandinavian examples because the process is more advanced in Europe and the US is far more religious still.
In the JC system, fighting both in self defense and in aid of others who arevictims of wrongdoing is not only permissible, it is an obligation, which is one of the reasons the US has always had an interventionist foreign policy. I am not saying it's perfect and doesn't often make mistakes. My point is that the benign, "enlightened" secular world has done harm by enabling the harmful forces, both secular and radical religious.
Just because I am not religious myself, doesn't mean that I can't acknowledge the real world consequences of important differences in these ideologies.