Guest post: “Morality” sounds better than “submit or else”
Originally a comment by iknklast on “Militant secularists” again.
What values exactly, is there some secularist tome I can refer to
Barr probably knows, but assumes his audience doesn’t, or that they agree with him, that the only value they are really concerned about is the value of freedom to make up your own mind about god. The freedom to send your children to school without being converted to a believe they find unacceptable.
Barr believes that what secularists want is like what Christians want – to send their children to school to have their beliefs reinforced, and to convert all the other little kids to their beliefs. Some secularists probably want this, but on the whole, we want our kids taught to think, how to read, how to write and do math, and in general become educated, not brainwashed.
There is a lot of projection in this. The Evangelical Christians want unencumbered access to other people’s kids. They assume that is what the secularists want. They are afraid someone is coming for their kids because they are ‘coming for’ other people’s kids.
In short, the only value at stake here is belief in the god that Barr believes in. That is for so many Christians the true morality. Believing in God, worshiping God, submitting to God, becoming a “servant” to God. And making everyone else do the same.
But if they use the words “moral” and “values”, it sounds better than “submit or else”. They never actually have to specify those morals because everyone else will fill in what they think morality is. And they can see that morality in Trump because he is willing to force everyone to submit. That’s the only moral they really care about; all the rest are window dressing designed for control. Control people’s sex and diet, and you have them in your control. Mostly.
That’s the whole ball game, isn’t it? They want their god’s Godliness to be the equivalent of the water a fish swims in, an unquestioned, ubiquitous, inescapable constant. Pledge of Allegiance, mandated school prayer, intelligent design, Supply Side Jesus. They think that these things are the healthful oxygen in the water when they’re actually stultifying pollutants.
Mark 16:15-16 King James Version (KJV)
15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.
16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.
Christianity operated on the same imperative as followed by business and projects like the British Empire. If you don’t grow, you will shrink and die out. And the religion almost did in its first 200 years, but was successfully rescued by Greek converts and St Paul, basing himself on Greek communities around the Mediterranean; with the notable exception of the Athenians, with whom he reportedly trod warily.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areopagus_sermon
The Bible might be a good place to start – Matthew 22:21 specifically. That’s the “render unto Caesar” bit. The bit that says that there’s god stuff, and that’s all groovy, and there’s world stuff, and that’s all groovy, and that they can be kept apart.
See also John 18:36.
Q:Is there some secularist tome I can refer to..?
A: The Bible might be a good place to start .
Classic stand-up comedy.
My question, What values… etc., was in reference to Barr saying “… that militant secularists are trying to impose their values on religious people…” Barr implies there is some set of values that are being put forth to replace the values of religious people, which I think is untrue. There is no venerated Book of Secularism to refer to, and morality does not disappear when you remove religious coercion. Barr seems to view this as religion vs. religion, which iknklast has outlined above. I have seen atheism referred to as religion also, usually by people who insist that people can’t get along without some idea of god or other (more projection), which i also think is untrue.
Religious people often seem under the misapprehension that moral values must derive from a book, and their statements about secular values are, I think, as much about the origin of values as what those values are. I’m certain there are good books about the origins of values from a secular standpoint, but darned if I can remember what they might be; perhaps by Russell Blackford or Victor Stenger or AC Grayling, all philosophers. (Sam Harris wrote a book on the topic that I haven’t read but sounds dreadful.)
As for books that attempt to put forth a secular code of values, the Humanist Manifesto is often quoted, which I find disturbing, because it turns into another instance of “do this because the book says so”. AC Grayling tried to fill the gap with The Good Book, and it’s decent, but it has the same problem.
Well if secularism could be contained in some kind of ‘one size fits all’ ideological system, then it would violate its own principles, namely thinking for yourself, which is a dynamic process. Religions are dead, quite literally, because they resist inquiry and revision.
Sackbut:
My observations of animals lead me to the conclusion that their commonest moral principle is ‘don’t attack lest you be attacked’ combined with ‘attack by all means if you think the benefits will outweigh the costs.’
The Golden Rule, which I believe originated with Confucius (551–479 BC) relies on its adherent being capable of empathy, which I am not sure that animals are even capable of. (The jury is still out, IMHO.)
But we humans are empathy-capable. Our inclination to be so is enhanced if we have an authority as powerful as the Son of God to tell us what we should and should not do.
Otherwise, we have to think for ourselves and publicise our thoughts as best we can in whatever circumstances.
CAUTION: Anyone purporting to speak on behalf of God, or even TO BE God in whatever form or guise, is possibly a fraud. No correction: is likely a fraud. No, correction again: is 99.999999% certain to be a fraud, consciously or unconsciously.
Tangentially related at best, but here’s something I just stumbled across:
https://imgur.com/gallery/bCqRp
Omar, I think that’s only predator animals you are referring to, and it’s probably more instinct than morality.
twiliter, I was idly contemplating these themes this morning as I walked down to the greengrocer for limes. I passed by the house of one of my daughter’s friends, whose parents had pulled her out of her very progressive school for a more traditional school that didn’t impress me very much, with the goal of later attending a school my son found utterly dehumanizing. I like the girl, and her parents as well, but why they would make such a choice didn’t really compute for me until I remembered that they are practicing Catholics (as opposed to cultural Catholics or recovering Catholics, no offense intended please). The doctrine of Catholicism (and most other varieties of Christianity) differs very much from the ethos of humanism in that it’s a zero-sum game. The roles of people, and the possible outcomes of people, have already been determined. What is a sin, and how one may be forgiven for it, is already written. In a sense, the only free will people have is to either comply or not comply with the rules laid down by God. For humanists, or secularists, the game is open-ended: we create the world, and what the world may become is yet undetermined. We have the freedom to determine who we will become and what that will mean. Education is, for the progressive, about the student creating herself, and possibly becoming something entirely new. For the traditional, it is about the student being trained to comply with a limited set of rules and roles. Freedom means something entirely different in the two cases.
To bring this back to Barr, we can understand how this man can violate every ethical guideline for his professional behavior, and yet believe that he is the one standing for morality, if we consider that he is constitutionally unable to understand human freedom. For a man like him, any deviation from his set of assumed strictures on human behavior must be considered sinful. There can be nothing new that is not of the devil. He seeks the ultimate end of Republicanism in an imperial presidency so that sinful people will not be allowed to determine their future collectively, but will instead be forced to return to the past. Domination and punishment are good for the souls of children and countries alike.
Zowie. Glorious comment.
[…] a comment by Papito on “Morality” sounds better than “submit or […]
twiliter @#10: No. The species whose behaviour I have observed at first hand, and have read a bit about as well, are the domestic ones: chiefly cattle (I am a in the cattle business) but also sheep, (omnivorous) pigs and poultry, and (carnivorous) dogs and cats. Wild species I am most familiar with include kangaroos, snakes, lizards, and a variety of birds.
Most of them live in hierarchies, reflected in their behaviour but commonly masked if they are aware of other species being present (eg, human, dog.) So aggressive behaviour can be both within and between species.
Omar, I see what your saying, but surely cattle are not predatory? Attack or be attacked? Attack if you can get away with it? I worked on several cattle ranches too when I was young, and also had horses. The only time I saw either be aggressive was in self defense, and of course the fight for mates is mostly absent in a domestic setting, but the hierarchies are usually worked out without much prolonged aggression. I don’t think most herbivores are predatory, and while I don’t know the numbers, omnivores could go either way. I think all this stuff is instinctual and has nothing to do with working out what is right or wrong (morality), in the way human culture does. I think most animals have ways to defend themselves, but there are many that don’t behave aggressively by default. The squirrels run around my backyard finding food without bothering anyone or each other, and run for the trees when there’s danger, unlike the hawks which are always looking for those same squirrels to make a meal out of, i.e. predatory. Anyway, I think predators are necessarily aggressive by nature and instinct, but not all animals are predators despite their capacity to be occasionally hostile, for example when defending themselves. I don’t think either have anything resembling a moral code that could be articulated in human terms without anthropomorphizing.
Well stated Papito #11.
By definition. But like all animals, arguably including arthropods, they have dominance hierarchies. Maintenance of their individual positions in the hierarchy is their ‘moral code’: an internal state determining outwardly observable behaviour. Much human behaviour likewise.
Animals I think tend to be more perceptive than we think they are, and thinking is perception. At the same time, we humans think in language, which adds another dimension to it. Animals may encode information into the sounds they generate in ways of which we are still not aware, but then again maybe not. (What information do they have?) Much animal communication is ‘non-verbal’ in the sense that it does not involve sound.
Well I’m not a sociologist, but I don’t think hierarchy equals morality. I suppose we could point to some overlap?