t the attempts to draw conclusions from those vague ideas suffer the same slings and arrows as religion. A lot of these secularists with zealously tell me about Venn Diagrams about human well-being or Declarations of Human Rights with the conviction that it’s not similarly predicated upon the same “hocus-pocus” as religion.
The argument isn’t that those are better systems to supplant religion, the argument is that those are what we actually use.
Sure. But the problem is that you’ve divorced the truck from the engine, there.
Likewise you find a lot to agree with when it comes to whatever faith you do follow, because they align with what you understand intuitively to be ‘good’.
There’s the problem. The limit is, essentially, whatever I intuit as “good”. And if others disagree about the inherent “goodness” of my intuitions, cost-benefit analysis of whether I can pursue my own ends anyway is just as valid a reaction as reconsidering my aims.
The question becomes do you get better results from acknowledging the subjective nature of this or pretending it’s objective, though then we risk arguing from consequences and not truth.
Dan has done a great job in responding to your original question and I can’t add anything that he didn’t cover better than I would have anyway.
But as regards your cost benefit evaluation, I’d suggest that this is foremost in your evaluations of most things you do rather than ‘I wonder what God would think if I ignored that woman being threatened’. I’d suggest that what prevents you is the desire you have to avoid guilt (I should have stepped in).To avoid shame (Dad, why didn’t you help her?). And, although we don’t readily admit this, to feel that warm sense of pride (aw, shucks - anyone would have done the same).
This is actually the way the world works. It’s common across cultures and across time. If it didn’t work like this then we wouldn’t be here. Yeah, it doesn’t work perfectly. Yeah, it does allow people to take advantage of the sense of reciprocal altruism that has also got us to this point. To massively take adavantage on ocassion. But we aren’t perfect. And the fear of hell and the desire for life everlasting doesn’t appear to work too well (hell especially).
And one point I want to empasise that Dan brought up. A lot of people of any religion whatsoever have already personally evaluated the moral system that their religion espouses and have made a personal decision that it is correct. In that sense it is relative. Unfortunately, most do this from within the relgion having been brought up in it. I’ve never understood ‘my country right or wrong’. But I see that chin-up, fire-in-the-eyes claim from many religious people.
And apologies if my quoting method is a crock. I’m not likely to have access to a pc anytime soon and doing this on a tablet is an exercise in frustration.
