Quote:
Originally Posted by David E
Yes! Otherwise, the choices are: "Chairman Mao", or "whatever you think is right". And I argue that the consequences of these are not good at all.
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Those are hardly the only choices. (anarcho-syndicalism, benevolent despotism, Ayn Randian objectivism, the list goes on.)
In any case, "whatever you think is right" is misleading. We are all accountable to
both our own moral consciences (those of us that have 'em, of course) and the prevailing social order we live in. So far, no society I'm aware of has been built around just "whatever each individual thinks is right."
Any social group large enough to need a system of government is going to outlaw the big ticket items like murder and theft - it's a total no-brainer as to why. Heck, even a population without a formal code of laws is going to end up shunning or eliminating the thieves and murderers in its ranks. No god needed, though one or more may be invoked. (Theft and murder by
those in charge is another matter of course. Those are control mechanisms, and we already know that they can be invoked to further both religious and non-religious ideologies.)
You rightly abhor the cruel dictatorships that have renounced God, but then you also declared the peaceful secular systems as inferior, apparently for being ill-equipped to defend themselves and others. I'm not sure I buy that as an inevitability. In any case, you have admitted now that the US is a secular government, so, hooray. Belief is up to the individual conscience, as it jolly well should be. (The old "every state determines its official religion" model has lapsed - and thank goodness it has. A free market in regards to belief is the only way to go - government neither endorses nor prevents, so long as believers don't infringe on others. This works for you, right?)
Anyhow, you've tipped your hand. You're a theist, or at least you are committed to the presuppositions of a theistic worldview. It's no shame, but you sound as though you are only barely on the agnostic spectrum, and don't really want to be there. (No offense intended if this isn't accurate.)
Voltaire favored the deistic god of the Enlightenment - a being who set up the laws of nature and got them going, then retreated to some impossibly remote distance, completely and utterly uninvolved with human affairs. Voltaire had nothing but disdain for church dogma and the wielding thereof. His famous quote doesn't necessarily have to be read as an endorsement of the god idea. It could as easily be a shrug of resignation. ("Such is the way of man") Had Voltaire lived long enough to learn of Darwin and natural selection, it is quite possible that he would have abandoned his deistic god and gone atheist.
GD said it well - if there isn't a god, our formal systems of law and morality must have human origins. (And to whatever extent our moral tendencies are biological, they have pre-human origins as well - of course, homo sapiens have reached a point where we can overcome the brutal "red in tooth and claw" imperatives of the natural world. It's a gradual process, of course) If that is the case, embracing superstition simply because it feels right hardly seems like any way to progress.
On the other hand, if in fact there is a theistic god, one who has moral preferences and will be handing out some form of cosmic justice in the hereafter, this being has not bothered to make itself known in uncertain terms. (Mythical stories of Shamash handing the moral law to Hammurabi, Yahweh giving the lowdown to Moses, etc, are fascinating historically, but obviously human in origin, no longer practiced, and incompatible with modern mores.) There is no single divine story that clearly stands out above the others, except where either individuals prefer it, or power structures declare and enforce it - add to that the fact that the vast majority simply take on the god beliefs they were born to. If I find myself in front of a deity after I die, I will join Bertrand Russell in asking, "Why did you hide?"
Sorry for this rambly post. This discussion is messy and multi-limbed, and I'm not a very organized thinker. I hope the other participants are having fun also.