Today's philosophy

[Pugsly]

Attention…this post is NOT about evolution! It is about Western civilization collapsing into loving thuggery.
…

Here is the secular philosophy of love–a case for morality without God…(perhaps you will recognize it):

The world evolved randomly. There is no god…no meaning or purpose…We are, therefore, utterly free to do whatever we want! But, then…that’s the first problem…we are also free to harm each other. Such a world is naturally divided between the predator and the prey…the Strong and the Weak.

Premise #1…Everyone is born free to enjoy everything we desire…but for the fact that The world is naturally divided between the Strong and the Weak…and the Strong must be CONTROLLED…or the Weak will never be free.

Premise #2…For people to fully realize their free enjoyments…the problem of the Strong must be addressed. If you are not for controlling the Strong…then YOU are part of the problem…YOU are “evil”.

Premise #3…If you see the world divided between the Strong and the Weak, and you are for CONTROLLING the Strong and helping the Weak to be free…then you are Empathetic. You are “good”.

Premise #4…The natural world is morally divided between the Strong and the Weak…the Empathetic and the Manipulative…those who seek equality in all things vs. those who speak of hierarchical inequalities

Premise #5…Those who work for herding the Weak into powerful groups to control the Strong…are doing a great service…vs…those evil people who speak of individual freedom and hierarchical concepts like religion

Premise #6…The goal of the human race is to achieve a worldwide government that imposes control over all sources of Strength and lifts up the Lowly…a government that imposes Empathy amid world peace and progress and human enjoyment. A government that will not tolerate unequal speech or hierarchical thinking…perhaps jailing or executing the religious and those who manipulate others

 

[Love4All]

Attention…this post is NOT about evolution! It is about Western civilization collapsing into loving thuggery.
…

Here is the secular philosophy of love–a case for morality without God…(perhaps you will recognize it):

The world evolved randomly. There is no god…no meaning or purpose…We are, therefore, utterly free to do whatever we want! But, then…that’s the first problem…we are also free to harm each other. Such a world is naturally divided between the predator and the prey…the Strong and the Weak.

Premise #1…Everyone is born free to enjoy everything we desire…but for the fact that The world is naturally divided between the Strong and the Weak…and the Strong must be CONTROLLED…or the Weak will never be free.

Premise #2…For people to fully realize their free enjoyments…the problem of the Strong must be addressed. If you are not for controlling the Strong…then YOU are part of the problem…YOU are “evil”.

Premise #3…If you see the world divided between the Strong and the Weak, and you are for CONTROLLING the Strong and helping the Weak to be free…then you are Empathetic. You are “good”.

Premise #4…The natural world is morally divided between the Strong and the Weak…the Empathetic and the Manipulative…those who seek equality in all things vs. those who speak of hierarchical inequalities

Premise #5…Those who work for herding the Weak into powerful groups to control the Strong…are doing a great service…vs…those evil people who speak of individual freedom and hierarchical concepts like religion

Premise #6…The goal of the human race is to achieve a worldwide government that imposes control over all sources of Strength and lifts up the Lowly…a government that imposes Empathy amid world peace and progress and human enjoyment. A government that will not tolerate unequal speech or hierarchical thinking…perhaps jailing or executing the religious and those who manipulate others

Source?

It strikes me initially as paranoid. Especially premise 5. It strikes me that very few, if any, social liberals actually want to sacrifice individual freedom for the sake of “the Weak controlling the Strong.”

Premise 4 — “the Strong and the Weak…the Empathetic and the Manipulative” Did you mean this, respectively? Are you equating the Strong with the Empathetic and the Weak with the Manipulative? That seems inconsistent with the rest of your gist.

Premise 6, is it not the aim of the Catholic Church any more to rule the world? When did they give that up?

 

[polytropos]

Institutionalized hedonism. This system starts by acknowledging that humans have desires. I would say the “core” premise of this moral system is that those desires are entitled to protection. The rest of the premises basically set up language for describing conflicts that might arise when someone who is “Weak” is prevented from fulfilling their desires. The last premise asserts that this should be enforced through government.

The issues I see is that it probably doesn’t handle competing desires very well. Also the “Strong” & “Weak” designations seem a bit simplistic to me.

Premise 4 — “the Strong and the Weak…the Empathetic and the Manipulative” Did you mean this, respectively? Are you equating the Strong with the Empathetic and the Weak with the Manipulative? That seems inconsistent with the rest of your gist.

I believe, looking at premises 2 & 3, that the Empathetic are those who advocate controlling the Strong, while the Manipulative are those who would allow the Strong to oppress the Weak, so neither group is necessarily equated with either the Strong or the Week.

Premise 6, is it not the aim of the Catholic Church any more to rule the world? When did they give that up?

This has never been my understanding of it, except in the respect that the Catholic Church would desire as many adherents as possible. The reason for that would not be “ruling” - although from a secular perspective, one might look at it that way.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Source?
Premise 6, is it not the aim of the Catholic Church any more to rule the world? When did they give that up?

The Catholic Church has never wanted to " rule the world. " Its only desire is to convert men to faith in Jesus Christ under the guidence of the Holy Spirti Who works through the Magisterium of the Church.

You may have gotten this notion from the middle ages where the Church stepped in during the decline of the Roman Empire to restore order to Europe in the face of feudalism. However, the Church soon learned that this was not compatible with her mission of bringing salvation to the people of the world. But I am sure there were certain individuals in the history of the Church who did have the idea of ruling the world. But the desires of such individuals, whoever they were, must be distinguished from what the Church actually taught. Linus2nd

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Love4All

**Premise 6, is it not the aim of the Catholic Church any more to rule the world? When did they give that up? **

They never gave it up. Christ the King came to rule the world, if the world will have him.

 

[Bradski]

The world evolved randomly. There is no god…no meaning or purpose…

That would be no ultimate purpose. There is plenty of purpose and meaning in individual lives. Therefore this statement is incorrect:

We are, therefore, utterly free to do whatever we want!

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Bradski
**
That would be no ultimate purpose. There is plenty of purpose and meaning in individual lives. Therefore this statement is incorrect:**

Really? As an atheist, what is your purpose in life and who assigned it?

 

[polytropos]

That would be no ultimate purpose. There is plenty of purpose and meaning in individual lives. Therefore this statement is incorrect:

There would be imagined purpose and meaning. To have meaning is to have a reason for existing - and there is no reason for existing, there is just existence. There is not any consequence for falling short of or not fulfilling that “meaning.” A feeling of purpose that is only incident of psychology is not purpose.

 

[Ismael]

Attention…this post is NOT about evolution! It is about Western civilization collapsing into loving thuggery.
…

Here is the secular philosophy of love–a case for morality without God…(perhaps you will recognize it):

The world evolved randomly. **There is no god…no meaning or purpose…**We are, therefore, utterly free to do whatever we want! But, then…that’s the first problem…we are also free to harm each other. Such a world is naturally divided between the predator and the prey…the Strong and the Weak.

…

Premise #6…**The goal **of the human race is to achieve a worldwide government that imposes control over all sources of Strength and lifts up the Lowly…a government that imposes Empathy amid world peace and progress and human enjoyment. A government that will not tolerate unequal speech or hierarchical thinking…perhaps jailing or executing the religious and those who manipulate others

So first there is nopurpose… but then the human race suddenly has a ‘goal’?

Sounds like a big contraddiction.

---

Premise #1…Everyone is born free to enjoy everything we desire…but for the fact that The world is naturally divided between the Strong and the Weak…and the Strong must be CONTROLLED…or the Weak will never be free.

Ok since there is no God and no purpose… how do you derive that …Everyone is born free to enjoy everything we desire? In that case we are ‘just born’ and have no ‘real rights’, just fictitious rights made up by someone.

Premise #2…For people to fully realize their free enjoyments…the problem of the Strong must be addressed. If you are not for controlling the Strong…then YOU are part of the problem…YOU are “evil”.

Ok the problem here is: are all enjoiments ‘good’ or compatible with this view? Obviously not.

Premise #3…If you see the world divided between the Strong and the Weak, and you are for CONTROLLING the Strong and helping the Weak to be free…then you are Empathetic. You are “good”.

Although I am for the strong helpimg the weak one could just the same claim that a person who believes this is weak and selfish.

Since the world has no purpuse, there is only biological evolution, which favors the stronger and more fit, there is really no point to this.

Are we basing good and evil on ‘enjoyment’? Well then: the strong could illude people to be happy (eg using drugs) so that they “enjoy themselves”… but that would not be real freedom.

Premise #4…The natural world is morally divided between the Strong and the Weak…the Empathetic and the Manipulative…those who seek equality in all things vs. those who speak of hierarchical inequalities

False dichotomy.

Hierarchy does not mean unjust inequality. In science you have professors, post-docs, phd’s, students in an hierarchy based on level of education and merit.

Is such division unjust? Should we have freshmen decide what experiments to run at the LHC?

Premise #5…Those who work for herding the Weak into powerful groups to control the Strong…are doing a great service…vs…those evil people who speak of individual freedom and hierarchical concepts like religion

To bad for that premise, that religious organizations are the organizations that mostly help the poor.

The Catholic ‘Caritas’ is the organization the is most involved in charities helping ‘the weak’.

I am not saying that there are only religous charities, but just underlining the wrong idea that religion must per se mean oppression.

Premise #6…The goal of the human race is to achieve a worldwide government that imposes control over all sources of Strength and lifts up the Lowly…a government that imposes Empathy amid world peace and progress and human enjoyment. A government that will not tolerate unequal speech or hierarchical thinking…perhaps jailing or executing the religious and those who manipulate others

Sounds to me a lot like Soviet Russia or ‘1984’ by Orwell.

First the claim of ‘freedom’ ‘enjoyment’ ‘equality’…

… and then a proposal for a government who must by hierarchical (and imposes things on people) a government that executes people for saying their opinion.

"will not tolerate unequal speech " and what is unequal speech? Is claiming that pedophiles are evil also unequal speech since we prevent them from enjoying kids?

This whole discourse is just an exercise in incoherent, self refuting and confused statements that contradict each other.

More over they sound as the manifesto for a dictatorship.

---

 

[Bradski]

Really? As an atheist, what is your purpose in life and who assigned it?

Twenty five years is a long time to live a life without purpose and which seemed to have zero meaning. How did you cope?

I’ll hope that you coped quite well. You must have had a job - hopefully one that satisfied you. You must have had friends and family. Maybe you had/have a wife and children that brought you happiness. Perhaps you enjoyed travel and the arts. A decent glass of wine now and then and good food. A good book. Learning something new every day. Maybe you looked at your son one day and hugged your wife and said: Hey, we did that!

If someone had asked back then if your life had purpose and meaning, then I’m sure you would have been as puzzled by the question as I continually am now. But maybe you felt that there was something missing and that your belief now fills that void. That’s good. But not everyone has that void.

But you can trust me on this: if I thought that a belief in a deity would make me a happier man, a better husband, a better father, a better person, even if there was no happy-ever-after, then I’d be taking Pascal’s wager.

 

[Pugsly]

Ismael…the logic of the purposeless life is SURVIVAL…and then Pleasure

To freely do either one or both…you need to keep the predators at bay

therefore…the Primal drivers of a godless humanity is Survival via Victim manipulations…ie…herding and whatever else will level the playing field=equality

the “morality” that would arise from this scenerio…is based on these 2 Primal drivers and an apeal to “natural equality”=a dog is a boy is a fish…all are of equal worth…and all have one overarching purpose…Survival…individually and collectively.

What I’ve outlined is a world that doesn’t acknowledge God…and it has historical support.

Here in the West we are watching our civilization give a final rejection of the Christian God…as a worldly philosophy based on fear displaces it.

Personally…I know there is a God and I believe in His Son Jesus Christ as the author of life itself.

 

[Pugsly]

Institutionalized hedonism. This system starts by acknowledging that humans have desires. I would say the “core” premise of this moral system is that those desires are entitled to protection. The rest of the premises basically set up language for describing conflicts that might arise when someone who is “Weak” is prevented from fulfilling their desires. The last premise asserts that this should be enforced through government.

The issues I see is that it probably doesn’t handle competing desires very well. Also the “Strong” & “Weak” designations seem a bit simplistic to me.

Well, yes…those designations are very simplistic. The envy of the 1% is simplistic The Occupy Wall Street crowd is simplistic…the hatred of Walmart is simplistic…the rush to control everyone’s soda size in New York is simplistic…the rush to legislate in knee-jerk fashion at every crisis is simplistic…the efforts to manufacture false crisis like Global Cooling inthe 70’s and Global Warming in the 90’s and Climate Change now…so as to gain raw control of world economies…is simplistic.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Bradski
**
If someone had asked back then if your life had purpose and meaning, then I’m sure you would have been as puzzled by the question as I continually am now. But maybe you felt that there was something missing and that your belief now fills that void. That’s good. But not everyone has that void. **

Everyone who is without god has that void and is trying to fill it. Why are you here at Catholic Answers?

But you did not answer my question. What is your purpose, and who assigned you that purpose? Describing what you do with your life is not describing a purpose. All you are doing is describing a state of being or a series of sensations.

**Twenty five years is a long time to live a life without purpose and which seemed to have zero meaning. How did you cope? **

I did not cope well. I floundered a lot. With the help of Mozart and others, I finally found my way back to the purpose assigned to me by God.

 

[jonathan_hili]

Interesting post, Pugsly, but what about the cooperative aspects of human nature and that we are a communal species, desiring human love and interaction with one another? That seems very much part of who we are.

Also, you haven’t defined what you mean by “strong”. In human societies, mere physical strength counts for very little. Often the most successful are intelligent, charismatic or cunning (or a combination of these traits).

Ultimately, this isn’t a good example of a case for morality without God, because it is just based on opinion and not objective moral values. There is no reason why anyone is obliged to do anything under this moral system.

 

[Portofino]

There would be imagined purpose and meaning. To have meaning is to have a reason for existing - and there is no reason for existing, there is just existence. There is not any consequence for falling short of or not fulfilling that “meaning.” A feeling of purpose that is only incident of psychology is not purpose.

It seems you are using “reason” in an ultimately metaphorical sense, as when one refers to “a reason to get up in the morning.” I would consider your use of a “reason for existing” to be synonymous with a “motivation for existing” – and *that * is something many human beings have, as a matter of fact. That experience of feeling motivated to stay alive is not illusory or imaginative; it just is.

The most you can say is that it is an insufficient motivation (a motivation that ought not to be); but you would be stating an opinion, one that is not free of a definite emotional content. It is a matter of opinion – a value judgment – as to what constitutes a “sufficient” and “reasonable” motivation for staying alive, and what doesn’t.

Indeed, I would be hard pressed to come up with the definition of a “rational motivation,” where rational is not used in the metaphorical sense of “an emotionally compelling reason.” Once the notion of “emotionally compelling” enters the equation – the proverbial “reason for getting up in the morning” – we are not truly talking about reason at all, but about subjectivity and emotion.

Just so, I don’t see that it is necessarily “rational” to have the motivation to stay alive, if God exists and has decreed that life has value. I would see it, rather, as an “emotionally compelling reason”, precisely for someone who needs to believe in God in the first place, in order to have an emotionally compelling reason.

Others, of course, would see the existence of an afterlife (for example) as a compelling motivation not to want to stay alive as long as possible, but rather die as quickly as possible.

 

[polytropos]

It seems you are using “reason” in an ultimately metaphorical sense, as when one refers to “a reason to get up in the morning.” I would consider your use of a “reason for existing” to be synonymous with a “motivation for existing” – and *that * is something many human beings have, as a matter of fact. That experience of feeling motivated to stay alive is not illusory or imaginative; it just is.

The most you can say is that it is an insufficient motivation (a motivation that ought not to be); but you would be stating an opinion, one that is not free of a definite emotional content. It is a matter of opinion – a value judgment – as to what constitutes a “sufficient” and “reasonable” motivation for staying alive, and what doesn’t.

Indeed, I would be hard pressed to come up with the definition of a “rational motivation,” where rational is not used in the metaphorical sense of “an emotionally compelling reason.” Once the notion of “emotionally compelling” enters the equation – the proverbial “reason for getting up in the morning” – we are not truly talking about reason at all, but about subjectivity and emotion.

Just so, I don’t see that it is necessarily “rational” to have the motivation to stay alive, if God exists and has decreed that life has value. I would see it, rather, as an “emotionally compelling reason”, precisely for someone who needs to believe in God in the first place, in order to have an emotionally compelling reason.

Others, of course, would see the existence of an afterlife (for example) as a compelling motivation not to want to stay alive as long as possible, but rather die as quickly as possible.

Actually I think when I use “reason” in that context I am referring to “is vs. ought.” Motivations are purely animal responses to drives. Self-preservation is something I am motivated to do because I am an animal. This is not the way I used reason in my last post. A reason is something that “ought” to be; existence is something that “is.” Without God, our mind “is” the way it is and creates a psychological motivation to live, but that psychological motivation merely “is.” There is not a reason for it, and there is not a reason to fulfill it. It is just resultant of physics.

I think this could wind up being largely semantic. If God exists (in the Catholic sense) and you believe in Him, then I imagine there would be both an emotional motivation and a deducible reason to live. The emotional motivation results from our animal nature; the reason (in the strictly rational sense) would be deduced from humanity’s creation in the image of God.

 

[Portofino]

Actually I think when I use “reason” in that context I am referring to “is vs. ought.” Motivations are purely animal responses to drives. Self-preservation is something I am motivated to do because I am an animal. This is not the way I used reason in my last post. A reason is something that “ought” to be; existence is something that “is.” Without God, our mind “is” the way it is and creates a psychological motivation to live, but that psychological motivation merely “is.” There is not a reason for it, and there is not a reason to fulfill it. It is just resultant of physics.

Is the difference between chance and design, perhaps? If love exists by chance – a cosmic accident – then there is no (ulterior) purpose to love. But if love exists because it was designed “intentionally” by a Creator, then it has an ulterior purpose, or is intrinsically purposeful (“purposeful,” to me, suggests conscious intention, design). I still wouldn’t see a logical “ought” to love, however, given that humans have free will. The only “ought” is in the consequences of not loving, which I don’t consider “logically necessary” form of “ought” (rather, it would be conditioned upon the avoidance of unpleasant consequences). It would be conceptually simpler if humans did not have free will, and love (for example) were as obligatory and as incontrovertible as the law of falling bodies.

I think so much of this argument hinges, though, on how one defines God, which is perhaps where the confusion comes in (is it a self-fulfilling definition, a kind of supra-subjectivity or supra-consciousness that we declare to have the status of objective truth?). Does the God concept mean, frankly, whatever we “want” it to mean, so that it resolves all paradoxes? Is it not the ultimate conceptional version of a “theory of everything”?

Regarding intrinsic purpose – if I create a work of art intentionally, to what extent does that work of art have intrinsic meaning and purpose? In a limited sense, I suppose it does have intrinsic meaning and purpose (the “meaning” of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, for example, whereby the author put layers of meaning into the work of art that were “by design”).

 

[Pugsly]

Interesting post, Pugsly, but what about the cooperative aspects of human nature and that we are a communal species, desiring human love and interaction with one another? That seems very much part of who we are.

Also, you haven’t defined what you mean by “strong”. In human societies, mere physical strength counts for very little. Often the most successful are intelligent, charismatic or cunning (or a combination of these traits).

Ultimately, this isn’t a good example of a case for morality without God, because it is just based on opinion and not objective moral values. There is no reason why anyone is obliged to do anything under this moral system.

You are right about your first point…

1. I believe what Dr Victor Frankl claims in “Man’s Search for Meaning”…that one of the MOST BASIC needs of humanity is MEANING. That is why this godless “morality” tends to elevate Nature as it’s overarching and ubiquitous god.

However, as to your dismissal of my premise…even Nietsche bemoaned a world without god…because he could see the cruelty of it.

 

[jonathan_hili]

You are right about your first point…

1. I believe what Dr Victor Frankl claims in “Man’s Search for Meaning”…that one of the MOST BASIC needs of humanity is MEANING. That is why this godless “morality” tends to elevate Nature as it’s overarching and ubiquitous god.

However, as to your dismissal of my premise…even Nietsche bemoaned a world without god…because he could see the cruelty of it.

Perhaps I am unclear about what your premise is. I thought you were trying to establish morality on an non-theistic or naturalistic plane? Like Nietzsche, I don’t think that’s possible: without God, anything is permitted (though that’s Dostoyevsky! Nietzsche would kind of agree, though).

 

[Pugsly]

Perhaps I am unclear about what your premise is. I thought you were trying to establish morality on an non-theistic or naturalistic plane? Like Nietzsche, I don’t think that’s possible: without God, anything is permitted (though that’s Dostoyevsky! Nietzsche would kind of agree, though).

Sorry about my spelling…As to my OP…my entire point is to delve into the Primal Drivers of human nature and then show how the godless run a society.

Without God…anything is NOT permitted by large collectives or secular societies. Without God…there is fear…the #1 primal driver…and that is why you see here in the West…(as the Judeo-Christian God is “finally” rejected after 500 years of assault)…a god-free society tries to control EVERYTHING…even what you eat and drink…what you speak…etc.