Abstract and Political Ideas

Objective Morality:

The reason that atheists or anti-theists fall short in debates with theists in regards to human nature and with it morality, is because the theist gives examples of human nature that are not yet understood in science, such as that of giving blood or donating organs and abstract ideas like good and evil.  The problem with an argument of morality outside of a divine being is that it is not rooted within any substance, or at least that substance has to come from within us as a society.  The theist doesn’t have to rely on their own ideas of revealed truth because they rely on the idea of a perfectly good creator as the basis of moralities existence (A perfect being is a problem in and of itself).  However, this can also be used as a reason to see religious morality as fundamentally wrong, and I would contend that no revealed religion has a net positive morality.

On the subject of altruism, it is not a good argument to bring up.  All you have to do is look at humanity as a whole to see how this variance among us falls short.  Blood, plasma, and organ donors are not the majority of our population.  Blood drives work because we place them in convenient locations to pick up people willing to donate, but most of those people don’t seek it out. They are simply willing to participate if it is placed in front of them.  Plasma donors, which I was twice a week for two years, are paid because of the amount of time it takes to be a donor.  Just to confess, the only reason I stopped was because of the scar tissue build up. It became longer and longer for the puncture to heal over.  In the end it was almost a full day.  Organ donors, let me be specific here, pre death organ/bone marrow donors are the most altruistic among our society, but again, they make up a very small percentage of the human population.

Objective morality has to exist outside of any influence.  This type of morality would be unquestionable.  If the Christian religion has an objective morality then what we read about God in the Bible would have to be good even if we, as a society, would view them as wrong. 

For example:

Should there be a law that requires rape victims to marry their attackers?

Deuteronomy 22: 28, 29 - If a man finds a young woman who is a virgin, who is not betrothed, and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are found out, then the man who lay with her shall give to the young woman’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife because he has humbled her; he shall not be permitted to divorce her all his days.

Should we treat prisoners of war, including women and children, in the same way that Moses did?

Numbers 31 : 15-20 - And Moses said to them: “Have you kept all the women alive?  Look, these women caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the Lord in the incident of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man intimately. But keep alive for yourselves all the young girls who have not known a man intimately.  And as for you, remain outside the camp seven days; whoever has killed any person, and whoever has touched any slain, purify yourselves and your captives on the third day and on the seventh day.  Purify every garment, everything made of leather, everything woven of goats’ hair, and everything made of wood.”

            This also brings up the idea of sin.  In the Old Testament, sin isn’t that big of a problem.  All you have to do is perform the correct ritual to become clean again, however Jesus talks about these sacrifices not being good enough to completely remove the sin.  Which raises the question in my mind…?  Why would god tell us to perform the rituals if they weren’t good enough?  Or maybe Moses didn’t understand what god was telling him to do, and if so then what else did he get wrong?

The best I can say about the Christian religion is this… If you want to follow it to the letter of its commandments than we have to change our laws to reflect it, but if you want to follow some rules and remove others then it becomes Christian philosophy and not a religion.

Is abortion objectively wrong?   I would estimate that 85% of the American population would say no.  From what I see in this country, abortion is acceptable on both of the political sides of the debate.  Looking at varies poles taking during the last presidential election shows that a small percentage of Americans view abortion wrong in all situations.  In fact, the only noticeable difference between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on the subject is the argument over what to call themselves, pro-choice or pro-life. 

1.      The stereotypical pro-life individual states that abortion is wrong EXCEPT in special cases like incest, rape, or danger to the life of the mother.

2.      The stereotypical pro-choice individual states that abortion should not be used for birth control BUT ONLY in special circumstances like incest, rape, or danger to the life of the mother.

In the end objective morality is not obtainable.  Everything we do as a society comes from within us.  We request or suffer through capital punishment even though we are told not to kill.  We tell people not to hit their children even though the bible states that if you spare the rod, you spoil the child. Even something as simple as don’t worship false idols is broken every Christian holiday with Christmas trees or Easter eggs, which come from pagan rituals.

Catholics seem to be the worst with all of the saints they have.  I may be wrong, but why pray to St. Giles for help with breastfeeding?  Why not just pray to god?  Not to get to side tracked, but the Catholics idea of religion seems to flow straight out of the polytheistic Roman religion.  This is easy to see since early Christians were trying to convert Romans to their beliefs.  Yahweh is more powerful then Zeus (of course, when you convert, your god has to be more powerful), after that you can find straight forward connections between angels/saints and all of the lessor deities within roman mythology.

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Other subjects within morality and philosophy:

The moment we, as a species, began using tools, we started to step outside the natural order and carve our own path.  All of our moral ideas existed within our social norms before they were religious.    

Underage sex

Capital punishment

Homosexuality

Abortion (Albeit, this is a modern subject)

There is no objective morality within our society.  Morality changes from one culture or generation or religion to another.  Even within these themes there are degrees of variation. All morality comes from the individual and we seek out others like us or ones to bring to our side.

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The problem I see among most philosophical subjects is that the philosopher looks for universal truths, but we have to acknowledge that most people live an animal existence along a spectrum.  Most of us live from one day to the next in the same way that people have since we became tribal, more so in the rest of the world than here in America but still.  The average life span has doubled over the last two thousand years; we have greater technology than any other known creation, but we all live a simple existence.  We work for money to buy food and a home.  Most have children because of a drive or need I have yet to personally understand.  Most of us don’t create Google or Windows or Apple…  The vast majorities of us don’t make millions of dollars or have extravagant success.  Yet a growing majority or us here in American are voting for a desire to take what others have gained and redistribute it among those who haven’t succeeded. 

Some say that the great financially successful people among us owe a debt to society that is paid through taxes.  Or because society made Bill Gates rich he owes society for his wealth.  To me this doesn’t make sense…  Bill Gates offered a product that most people wanted and we gave him our money for his intellectual property.  This is the truest form of democracy.  It’s a simple transfer of goods and the more people that transfer their wealth to you the more wealth you have.  What I don’t understand is the sense of entitlement?  Why would I be entitled to someone else’s intellectual success?

This wasn’t a problem until the federal government began to feel entitled to its citizen’s wealth.  It seems very common today, that most people don’t understand why America was different from every other country when it was founded. 

Oh… Where to begin….

How about property rights?  In the early drafts of the Declaration of Independence, the phrase consisting of …Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness… read …Life, Liberty, and Property.  It was changed because the abolitionists at the time believed that slave owners would use this phrase to their advantage, believing slaves to be property. 

            Sidenote:  This same problem arose during early talks about the official census.  Slave owners wanted slaves to be counted as a full person and abolitionists didn’t want slaves counted at all. Does that seem counterintuitive?  The compromise was to include slaves as 3/5 of a person.  This sounds wrong on the surface, but you have to remember that slaves were property not people.  If slaves were counted as a whole person then the slave owners would have a majority in Congress forever and the Abolitionists would never get anywhere.

And on this very sensitive subject I want to switch to taxes…

The very idea of taxation makes me a slave. 

Taxation is the taking of my earnings

The taking of my earnings results in forced labor

Forced labor is slavery.

All of this comes around full circle with the idea of fundamental rights and the original idea for this discussion.  America is different than any other country because we as a society recognize certain liberties that cannot be infringed upon.  The best way to look at this is for me to make a simple statement.  These rights, freedom of speech, religion, guns, etc…  They are my rights… Not OUR rights, but MY rights.  The whole purpose of laying down these rights as individual is that the majority isn’t allowed to suppress them.  This has been tested in the Supreme Court over and over. For me, the most sensitive would be the case with the Westboro Baptist church.  They have a right to say the things they believe.  They can stand on any corner in America and scream out their beliefs, and I can’t stop them, but I have the same right.  I can scream (or type) anything I want and no one can stop me, as long as I don’t harm someone else. The right that gives the Westboro Baptist Church the ability to protest soldier’s funerals is the same right that allows bikers and veterans to stand guard at those funerals in support of the families.

Now push this idea out to include property rights.  Do I own my body? Do I have a right to sell my labor? If I have to work 30% of the time for taxation then I am a slave to our society 30% of the time.

Do I own myself or does society own me?

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Kant’s idea of moral good stands against religion.  Doing things because they are good, not because of reward.    The moral law is outside of self-interest, self-interest blemishes the moral good.

We have to stop playing their game, the religious game… we have to accept logic and reason and not give into hope when thinking of truth.

To say that the universe is made just for us is to show your ignorance.  Nearly everything about the universe can kill us. 

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Objective Freewill:

Freewill isn’t free… or you knowing your will…

To say that freewill is possible isn’t a valid truth.  Your choices are dependent on your past, so there is a grey area of determinism and freewill.  What I see is a macro vs. micro argument. 

Freewill vs determinism to philosophy is the same as relativity vs quantum mechanics is to physics:

Ones placement within the space and time they inhabit is not there responsibility. 

Determinism is a conscience of the long term and freewill is the conscience of the short term

How do you exchange the idea of God is good and social determinism?

Freewill isn’t that easy, but neither is determinism.  It is a problem of absolutes and misunderstanding.  Freewill isn’t an internal state, but an external freedom.  Don’t think of freewill as something you have, it is, to some degree, what you are given.  Think of it as freedom of choice.  You are given a choice, but you don’t create the choice.  This is difficult because I can give choices to others, but I can’t give choices to myself.  This is the problem of freedom.  I have freedom but I can’t give freedom and with that I can give choice but I don’t really have choice. 

At the same time, determinism isn’t an absolute.  Science can show us that we make decisions before we consciously make them.  We don’t yet understand how we make these decisions, but that doesn’t exclude the idea of freewill.  You may not have much of a choice, let’s say 99.9% toward A and 0.1% toward B, but you are still free to make the choice, and we have examples of that everywhere around us.

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Never expect social acceptance from within your circle.  They 
will never see your depth of understand or why you have changed or why you feel a need to move on.

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You can only have what you can imagine to be yours

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To finish, I will ask a”simple” question:

If you can’t understand 4^th dimensional warped space-time, the fact that GPS for your car relies on time differences belonging to Einstein’s equations, the ability of electrons to exist in more than one place within the same moment or the evolutional relationship between yourself and an oak tree, then how do you think that you can possibly understand the will of a being capable of creating it?

If you wish to deny these cutting edge scientific revelations…? Please explain to me how your car runs??? How we have advanced in technology??? Everything we are today, stems from the same type of science.  The same science that gives us the theory of evolution is the same science that gives us the internal combustion engine or the nuclear reaction.