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tonyrey
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A superb example of the genetic fallacy!
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Peter_Plato
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My error here. The “democide” totals do actually include war mortalities, but are extended to include deaths of all forms as caused by government actions.
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Portofino
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Well, that’s a glib dismissal. And how many times have we been told that Nazism was the necessary consequence of atheism and secularism (genetic fallacy, writ large).
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tonyrey
Guest
The belief that the Germanic peoples are superior to everyone else and entitled to dominate the world certainly has an atheistic foundation. It is derived from Nietzsche’s theory of “the death of God”, the Superman and the Will to Power:
“The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth.” - Thus Spoke Zarathustra
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ThinkingSapien
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Actually, it sounds rather compatible with imperialism.
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tonyrey
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Which is incompatible with the teaching of Jesus.
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ThinkingSapien
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So I’ve been told, but it seems there are examples of nations in which the main religion was some form of Christianity that also followed an imperialist philosophy. It doesn’t seem that atheism is a necessary foundation for a people to feel superior and be dominating.
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tonyrey
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Not all versions of Christianity reflect the teaching of Christ.
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Portofino
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I am glad you mentioned Nietzsche
I studied him, for many years (and it would seem that you are no stranger to him, yourself).I wouldn’t say that Nazi racism relied on atheism, so much as on pseudo-science (ironically, the ancient Israelite belief in “God’s chosen people” can be construed as a quasi-racist notion; there, the belief is not in having being singled out by nature, but singled out by God). According to many, America has similar pretensions of being “God’s chosen nation.”
The other irony about Nazism and communism is that they were ideologies. True skepticism was absent; to the contrary, both ideologies relied on blind faith. How different this is from Montaigne’s “que sais-je?” (what know I?) Real skepticism is questioning one’s own knowledge and keeping one’s mind open to not having definitive answers.
As for Nietzsche, he ironically detested Germany (“Europe’s lowlands,” he called it); was disgusted by anti-Semitism (he almost broke off contact with his sister, for her having married the leader of a burgeoning anti-Semitic movement); and was averse to politics (calling himself “the last apolitical German”).
In this same book, Zarathustra, he wrote that, “the State is the coldest of all cold monsters.”
If Hitler read Nietzsche, he must have been proof-texting him
Sadly, it’s well-known that “the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”
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Sair
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Then I think it’s fair to say that not all versions of atheism reflect the kind of nihilism and despair that is assumed to be the province of ‘atheists’ in general.
To pre-empt the probable response that “atheism logically entails nihilism and despair” or words to that effect, I will also point out that there are plenty of ideas derived from Christianity - even perspectives demanded by Christianity - that have been conceived and played out through the past couple of millennia, that are rather less than edifying! And I think you’ll find that the Gospels, as the primary source for all things Christian, are rather less than consistent in their representation of Jesus’ life and teaching…
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Sair
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Well, Christianity did provide a potted justification for imperialism in the form of the charge to spread the ‘good news’ - as long as the conquerors took missionaries with them, it was all A-OK!So I’ve been told, but it seems there are examples of nations in which the main religion was some form of Christianity that also followed an imperialist philosophy. It doesn’t seem that atheism is a necessary foundation for a people to feel superior and be dominating.
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Sair
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That’s actually quite a lovely thought.
I think you’re absolutely right in saying that we have no need to “prove” that life, for sentient beings, is preferable to nonlife - the mere fact of this being a common preference of the vast majority of sentient living things (and even quite a few living things considered to be nonsentient, such as many plants) is quite enough.
Let’s take the usual Western approach to suicide prevention, for example. The desire to end one’s own life is considered to be a sign of some disorder or extreme hardship (and in the past, it was simply construed as sin). The implication is that living carries the only possibility of reward, whether that is objective or subjective. And if one examines the circumstances of many who end their own lives, it would appear that the subjective rewards of life far outweigh the objective ones. I’m happy to leave it to the supernaturalists to claim that the former do not matter.
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Sair
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Different category of beings. All those listed above have the capacity to experience pleasure as well as pain. That capacity is important.
You’re forgetting not only the other people attached to the person in question - don’t their feelings matter to you? - but the subjective interest the person in question has in remaining alive. An unborn foetus has no interests and no attachments, if the parents don’t wish to keep it. That might sound harsh to those who imagine that first-trimester human foetuses (but, interestingly, no sentient nonhuman animal) are cute little bouncing babies just waiting for the opportunity for life, but that is the reality - the presentient foetus has no interests of its own, so the interests of the parents are the first consideration. Billions of unwanted dogs and cats - born and fully sentient, with an interest in remaining alive - just to give one example, are euthanased every year because no human wants badly enough to care for them. Why don’t the so-called pro-lifers give a darn about them?
If it is thought to be ‘kinder’ to kill a dog or cat than to allow it to suffer, then the same compassion ought to be extended both to unwanted human foetuses and to those already born and sentient humans whose terminal illnesses have rendered their lives intolerable. The primary difference here seems to be between those who think that life (usually only human life, that is) is somehow sacred, independently of the actual experience of the one living that life, and those who find the value of life to reside in the possibility of subjective rewards that can only be had by sentient living things.
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Sair
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What is also forgotten, often, in arguments for the superiority of religiously-sanctioned or absolute morality over naturally evolved and evolving morality is that just as there are those like the Nazis, who will happily twist naturalistic, scientific concepts into excuses for cruel and violent behaviour, there have always been those who use religious concepts for exactly the same purpose - just look at the shooting of Malala Yousafzai by the Taliban for the heinous crime of seeking an education whilst also being female - does anyone doubt that the religious beliefs of the perpetrators of this atrocity allowed them to sleep soundly because they had pleased their god?
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Sair
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This is a very fair comment. As you say, there are some fairly concrete prohibitions imparted by the ethic of “do no harm” in terms of paedophilia, rape and other forms of sexual assault. But regarding actions between consenting adults, there is a vast grey area in which the benefit gained versus the harm done is largely a matter of the individual preferences of the parties involved. It’s a complex maze to navigate…
To take just one example, that of homosexuality - the kinds of behaviours associated with the ‘homosexual lifestyle’, such as transitory, clandestine encounters, are practised just as much by heterosexual people, but don’t come in for the same level of condemnation. Not to forget that for much of Western history - at least after the Ancient Greeks - any individuals (primarily males, since not many people comprehended female homosexuality) who had homosexual inclinations were more or less forced - on pain of death, imprisonment or brutal ‘medical’ treatment - to pursue clandestine, transitory relationships if they were to express themselves at all. It’s quite obvious from this and many other circumstances that prevailing social norms shape human behaviour as much as they result from our innate tendencies, and this is yet another consideration when addressing morality…
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tonyrey
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An arbitrary distinction which overlooks the fact that** they are human beings in the process of development**.
It is important but it is not the sole consideration. An unborn child has as much right to life to one that has emerged from the womb.
I’m not forgetting them at all but unlike you I’m considering those who have no one to care for them…
How callous can you get? You wouldn’t be alive now if your parents had decided to kill you…
Your concept of equality is tailored to suit your requirements…
Animals are not persons.
According to that argument unwanted human foetuses should not be killed because they are not suffering.
Morality based on the prospect of subjective rewards is not morality. It is mere expediency. It entitles you to destroy anything that doesn’t offer you a reward!
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JDaniel
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Portofino:
There’s an aspect of this that no one seems to want to look at. The world media, ruled by secularism, never seems to look at the so called scandal in the Catholic Church for what it is. Repeatedly, they call what has come to light, “pedophilia” and “child molestation,” when it is NOT. It is pederasty. Pederasty is sexual relations between two consenting adults, or, more precisely, between an adult and a teenager. Whether or not a teenager has the self-power to resist is debatable. But, they are certainly NOT children, in at least the legal definition of the word.
Pederasty-style molestations do not preclude themselves to just to young males. A young female undergoes the same process when she is over-powered by a man who has work-related power over her, or caste-related power over her. Consider the typical actress who goes to Hollywood to discover whether her ship might come in. That makes it hard for her to resist him. But, although there were some very few instances of actual pedophilia occurring within the Church, the majority were not. The fact is, that where pedophilia takes place is outside of the Church! There’s far more danger for a young child outside of Church gates, than within those gates, and far more danger of pederastic occurrences. The internet is replete with the statistics. So, the attention was turned to the so-called “cover-up.”
Now, the question is, “Why did all of this occur?” It occurred precisely because the Church lowered her requirements and admitted gays and gay-lenient men into her seminaries. At least two (or three) seminaries, a few years back, had their head vicars replaced by vicars who were considerably more lenient on the rules for admission and allowed many gays and over-leniency to slip in. Pederasty is a “gay” thing, not a “non-gay” thing. All a gay Priest had to do was to search out someone who was youngish and vulnerable, and voilà, a quiet lover. So, to say that, “the supposed harm that homosexuality constitutes has not been demonstrated, and – if it does not harm others,” is blatantly wrong and descriptive of someone with his/her head in the sand! This stuff has harmed my Church incredibly!
God bless,
jd
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JDaniel
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Tonyrey:
It’s very, very interesting that almost all of the pro-death advocates will place an immense amount of significance on “development” in every other subject arena (e.g., evolutionary development, scientific development, mental development, etc.), EXCEPT when it comes to the unborn human child. Here, the word, “development,” is stripped of any meaning. Incredible! They have to know that they are being extraordinarily disingenuous.
And more so, as it truly depends upon us adults to stand up for him or her in case those rights are challenged or usurped.
Clearly!
God bless,
jd
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norain
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This is not a purposeless universe.In a purposeless universe there is no reason why anything exists. How then can anything - including morality - possibly have a **rational **foundation?
Next.
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tonyrey
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Whether it is or not is implied in the OP!
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