FOR RECORD: An explanatory note to KF of UD

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Re this:

The principles on which this site is run are summarised here and here.  The key rule is: “assume other posters are posting in good faith”.

That does not mean that you have to believe that they are posting in good faith, simply that you should make that assumption for the purposes of discussion.

I will not “correct” posts – people are responsible for their own posts, and for any errors they contain.  I will not delete posts, although I may move posts to a different thread, or to the Sandbox or to Guano.  They remain publicly viewable. I will however, delete links to porn or malware, and posting such links or material are the only grounds on which I will ban anyone.  Posters are complete free to disagree with me, with each other, and to be mistaken.

UD is run on different lines.  Fine.  I prefer mine.

283 thoughts on “FOR RECORD: An explanatory note to KF of UD”

  1. Hotshoe,

    It appears that you, also, are arguing against some stereotypical position and not what I am actually saying. I am not arguing that the USA is a “Christian nation”. My argument is that the First Amendment was never intended to be used the way it is being used today to strip the public sector of religious iconography, crosses or prayer, and certainly not to turn religious expression in the military into a “hate crime”.

    Please try and focus on the argument I’m actually making.

    The question is whether they believe that the government should have any preference for religion. And the answer is black and white: No.

    That’s belied by the facts. As president, Thomas Jefferson approved treaties that included using federal funds to pay Christian ministries to evangelize native americans. These treaties were ratified by congress. That is an act in direct conflict with your view on the First Amendment, and in direct support of mine.

    Another fact that contradicts your view and supports mine: when the capitol building was completed, one of the first official acts of congress was to approve the use of the capitol as a church. Jefferson not only attended church services at the capitol building regularly, but as President ordered the military band to play for church services.

    A “preference” is not an “establishment”, and the founding forefathers clearly demonstrated an overwhelming preference for Christianity and used the resources of the federal government to express that preference, which is in direct contradiction to your perspective.

    From the Library of Congress:

    Congress appointed chaplains to minister to itself and to the armed forces; it sponsored the publication of a Bible; it imposed Christian morality on the armed forces; and it granted public lands to promote Christianity among the Indians. Most conspicuous were the national days of thanksgiving and of “humiliation, fasting and prayer” that Congress proclaimed at least twice a year throughout the war. These proclamations were always accompanied by sermonettes in which Congress urged the American populace to confess and repent its sins as a way of moving God to grant national prosperity.
    Scholars have recognized that Congress was guided by “covenant theology,” a Reformation doctrine especially dear to New England Puritans, which held that God had bound himself in an agreement with a nation and its people, stipulating that they “should be prosperous or afflicted, according as their general Obedience or Disobedience thereto appears.” Wars and revolutions were, accordingly, considered afflictions, as divine punishments for sin, from which a nation could rescue itself by repentance and reformation. Year in and year out, therefore, Congress urged its fellow citizens to repent “of their manifold sins” and strive that “pure undefiled religion, may universally prevail.”

    Liberty Bell Inscription:
    “ Proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof” [Leviticus 25:10]

    The fact of Christian iconography being carved into stone in virtually every federal public building erected since the founding of the country belies your argument, and supports mine – my actual argument, not the argument you seem to be intent on rebutting.

    “We are not to attribute this prohibition of a national religious establishment [in the First Amendment] to an indifference to religion in general, and especially to Christianity (which none could hold in more reverence than the framers of the Constitution)”

    “At the time of the adoption of the constitution, and of the amendment to it, now under consideration [i.e., the First Amendment], the general, if not the universal sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship. Any attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.” – Justice Joseph Story

    You and I can engage in a battle of quotes if you wish, but the trump card is what the founding forefathers actually did when in positions of federal public service. What they actually did when in positions of government authority and power clearly and demonstrably proves that they did not intend the first amendment to be used the way it has been used ever since the Warren ruling.

  2. I’m not making an argument that America should be a “Christian nation”, hotshoe.

  3. It’s incredibly boring to keep reading about what ID isn’t or what ID advocates aren’t advocating.

    It would be refreshing to see a proposed curriculum or an updated Wedge Document that outlines wha ID proponents think actually happened in the history of life.

    Of course when they do produce teaching materials — as the Discovery Institute recently did — the results are so mockable that one could only hope for a new Dover trial.

  4. William J. Murray:
    Once again, davehooke, the argument is about principle, not about history or fact.

    Why am I not surprised you dismiss fact?

    I’ll break it down super-simple for you: Authoritarian regimes are responsible for the greatest atrocities in history. State-sponsored famines are particularly notable.
    Minorities inevitably suffer terribly. Torture is commonplace.

    The onus is on you to somehow explain how authoritarian regimes could be in principle beneficial, when they have in actuality been such blights on history.

    Please also present your reasoned argument, which we will read and consider, as to why the free exchange of views should be suppressed.

  5. Not American, but I have to say what the founding fathers intended should not be especially relevant. What matters is what is for the good. The US Constitution is not an unamendable, for-all-time-perfect document.

  6. I didn’t say I dismissed fact; I said, it’s not about fact or history, but rather about principle.

  7. Let’s consider legal scholars considered to be the finest of their times that have the added benefit of living at a time when the context, meaning and intent of the phrases and terminology used in the constitution was still fresh – or at least much fresher than 1947-53 (which is not a “century” of Supreme court support for your position).
    In the supreme court case of Vidal v. Girard’s Executors, 1844, where the city of Philadelphia was hoping to block the establishment of a Deist school, US Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story delivered the United States Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion that agreed with Philadelphia:

    Christianity… is not to be maliciously and openly reviled arid blasphemed against, to the annoyance of believers or the injury of the public… It is unnecessary for us, however, to consider the establishment of a school or college, for the propagation of… (against) Deism, or any other form of infidelity.
    Such a case is not to be presumed to exist in a Christian country…
    Why may not laymen instruct in the general principles of Christianity as well as ecclesiastics… And we cannot overlook the blessings, which such men by their conduct, as well as their instructions, may, nay must, impart to their youthful pupils.
    Why may not the Bible, and especially the New Testament, without note or comment, be read and taught as a Divine Revelation in the school(s) — its general precepts expounded, its evidences explained and its glorious principles of morality inculcated?
    What is there to prevent a work, not sectarian, upon the general evidences of Christianity, from being read and taught in the college by lay teachers?
    It may well be asked, what is there in all this, which is positively enjoined, inconsistent with the spirit or truths of the religion of Christ?
    Are not these truths all taught by Christianity, although it teaches much more?
    Where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament?”

    From Holy Trinity Church v. U.S., Feb. 29, 1892, which was a unanimous decision to allow a church to contract services from a pastor from England, even thout it apparent was in violation of a immigrant labor law:

    There is a universal language pervading them all, having one meaning. They affirm and reaffirm that this is a religious nation. These are not individual sayings, declarations of private persons. They are organic utterances. They speak the voice of the entire people.
    While because of a general recognition of this truth the question has seldom been presented to the courts, yet we find that in Updegraph v. Comm., 11 Serg. & R. 394, 400, it was decided that, “Christianity, general Christianity, is, and always has been, a part of the common law of Pennsylvania; * * * not Christianity with an established church and tithes and spiritual courts, but Christianity with liberty of conscience to all men.”
    And in People v. Ruggles, 8 Johns. 290, 294, 295, Chancellor KENT, the great commentator on American law, speaking as chief justice of the supreme court of New York, said: “The people of this state, in common with the people of this country, profess the general doctrines of Christianity as the rule of their faith and practice; and to scandalize the author of those doctrines in not only, in a religious point of view, extremely impious, but, even in respect to the obligations due to society, is a gross violation of decency and good order. …
    The free, equal, and undisturbed enjoyment of religious opinion, whatever it may be, and free and decent discussions on any religious [143 U.S. 457, 471] subject, is granted and secured; but to revile, with malicious and blasphemous contempt, the religion professed by almost the whole community is an abuse of that right. Nor are we bound by any expressions in the constitution, as some have strangely supposed, either not to punish at all, or to punish indiscriminately the like attacks upon the religion of Mahomet or of the Grand Lama; and for this plain reason that the case assumes that we are a Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply ingrafted upon Christianity, and not upon the doctrines or worship of those impostors.”
    And in the famous case of Vidal v. Girard’s Ex’rs, 2 How. 127, 198, this court, while sustaining the will of Mr. Girard, with its provisions for the creation of a college into which no minister should be permitted to enter, observed: “it is also said, and truly, that the Christian religion is a part of the common law of Pennsylvania.
    If we pass beyond these matters to a view of American life, as expressed by its laws, its business, its customs, and its society, we find every where a clear recognition of the same truth. Among other matters, note the following: the form of oath universally prevailing, concluding with an appeal to the Almighty; the custom of opening sessions of all deliberative bodies and most conventions with prayer; the prefatory words of all wills, “In the name of God, amen;” the laws respecting the observance of the Sabbath, with the general cessation of all secular business, and the closing of courts, legislatures, and other similar public assemblies on that day; the churches and church organizations which abound in every city, town, and hamlet; the multitude of charitable organizations existing every where under Christian auspices; the gigantic missionary associations, with general support, and aiming to establish Christian missions in every quarter of the globe. These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation. In the face of all these, shall it be believed that a Congress of the United States intended to make it a misdemeanor for a church of this country to contract for the services of a Christian minister residing in another nation? “

    Once again, please do not derail this into supposing I am making an argument that the US is a “Christian Nation”; that is not my argument. My argument is that ever since that Warren ruling (and the insertion of that particular phrase into the opinion), it has been used to justify all sorts of radical actions and rulings that would would have been unanimously decided against prior to that ruling.

    More to come.

  8. William J. Murray:
    I didn’t say I dismissed fact; I said, it’s not about fact or history, but rather about principle.

    It is about fact. It is about history. Discussions of what should be that pay no heed to what is are moronic. As I said, the onus is on you to defend the principle.

  9. The onus is on you to somehow explain how authoritarian regimes could be in principle beneficial, when they have in actuality been such blights on history.

    The onus would be on me if that had anything whatsoever to do with my actual argument. I never claimed that an authoritarian regime could “in principle” be “beneficial” (whatever that means); my argument was that unless one had a principle by which authoritarian regimes could be considered “not good” as compared to others, then there is no means by which to make such a determination other than “because I say so” – which is the same principle the authoritarians use.

    So, you need some principle other than “because I say so” to establish that an authoritarian regime is “not good”. You need a principle of “what is good” other than “because I say so” – because the authoritarians can use that same principle to support their regime.

    I haven’t claimed that an authoritarian regime is good or not good; I’ve challenged others to explain by what non-authoritarian principle (something other than “because I say so” or “because I don’t like it”) can they determine that an authoritarian regime is “bad”, meaning, that we should not erect such a regime.

    You see, it’s an argument about the principle one utilizes in making such determinations; it’s not about, and cannot be about, whether or not any authoritarian regime has ever been “good” because you have yet to offer a non-authoritarian (“because I like it”, “because I say so”) principle by which to make a ruling on the “goodness” of any authoritarian regime in history.

  10. I never made a claim about the “good”ness or “bad”ness of authoritarian regimes; someone else did, and I challenged them to provide the principle by which they made such a determination.

    All you are doing now is trying to shift the burden on me when I made no claim about the “good” or “bad” nature of authoritarian regimes.

  12. William J. Murray:
    Who gets to decide what is “good”, davehooke?

    That’s what politics is for.

    Or perhaps you could just tell us what is good instead of playing word games

  13. The problem is, in a nutshell, that without an (assumed to be) absolute principle of “what is good” (what we should do), there are only (assumed to be) subjective/relative principles that are ultimately resting upon authoritarian principle, such as what Liz uses when she authoritatively defines morality in terms convenient to her view, ignoring hundreds of years of precedent that defined morality as something else entirely.

    Authoritarian regimes can be both secular or religious. Secularism is no bulwark against autoritarianism. But, unless you can tell me why authoritarianism is “bad” in the first place, and by what principle (standard), you have nothing but authoritarianism to reach such an evaluation.

  15. My argument is that ever since that Warren ruling (and the insertion of that particular phrase into the opinion), it has been used to justify all sorts of radical actions and rulings that would would have been unanimously decided against prior to that ruling.

    Yes, it’s a great shame that Dred Scott is not enforced.

    Might I point out that citing precedent is not “principled.”

  16. William J. Murray:
    The problem is, in a nutshell, that without an (assumed to be) absolute principle of “what is good” (what we should do), there are only (assumed to be) subjective/relative principles that are ultimately resting upon authoritarian principle, such as what Liz uses when she authoritatively defines morality in terms convenient to her view, ignoring hundreds of years of precedent that defined morality as something else entirely.

    Authoritarian regimes can be both secular or religious. Secularism is no bulwark against autoritarianism. But, unless you can tell me why authoritarianism is “bad” in the first place, and by what principle (standard), you have nothing but authoritarianism to reach such an evaluation.

    William, I asked you earlier, not sure whether you replied: what exactly is the definition that you think has a centuries-old precedent?

    You said “obeying god” – but what god, exactly?

    Any god or gods, or a specific one?

  17. Hucklberry Finn:

    I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking- thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me, all the time; in the day, and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a floating along, talking, and singing, and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him agin in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around, and see that paper.

    It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:”All right, then, I’ll go to hell”- and tore it up.

    It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head; and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn’t. And for a starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.”

  19. William J. Murray: So, whatever “politics” says is good, is good by definition?

    No, but in the absence of your list of absolute moral rules, it beats the rule of priests.

    You have yet to respond to the fact that even the 20th century, with Hitler and Stalin, has a better record record regarding violent death, than previous centuries.On that one metric, politics trumps religion.

  21. William J. Murray:
    I replied to that already, Liz. Not going to repeat it.

    OK, I’ll search. I hoped you could give me a link. I’ve been busier at the backend than the front of the site.

  22. petrushka: Yes, it’s a great shame that Dred Scott is not enforced.

    Might I point out that citing precedent is not “principled.”

    Context, petrushka, context. The argument about whether or not one has any sound basis by which call an authoritarian regime “bad” is an argument about principle.

    The argument about whether or not the Warren ruling, and what has ensued in the court system since, is in fact an argument about the constitution and whether legal precedent implied the ruling or if the ruling and opinion offered had a sound constitutional and historical basis.
    Not all arguments are about principle.

  23. petrushka: No, but in the absence of your list of absolute moral rules, it beats the rule of priests.

    You have yet to respond to the fact that even the 20th century, with Hitler and Stalin, has a better record record regarding violent death, than previous centuries.On that one metric, politics trumps religion.

    I asked you for your source. I don’t see where you supplied it. I’m hardly obligated to respond to a bald assertion.

  24. Liz,

    If you are not willing to concede that for billions of people, for hundreds of years, “morality” meant “obeying the word or wishes or commandments of god”, regardless of “which god” or what specific actions such obeyance entailed,, then I’m not willing to engage in this particular debate any further with you.

    There’s no use engaging in a debate where one side flatly denies the obvious.

  26. Ah, found it:

    William J. Murray:

    Which god? And why that one?

    What difference does that make?

    It makes a huge difference, because if “morality” has previously been defined as “obeying god” then what morality actually consists of depends entirely on what the god in question is perceived to demand. Which simply moves the moral choice to “which god?” rather than “what is right?” And, I’d say that precedent, if anything, has been to define God by what is right, than to definen what is right by what is God. In the Christian tradition that is explicit, in the gospels: “by their fruits you shall know them”; “would it be right for a man to pull his donkey out of a well on the Sabbath?” In other words: we discern God’s will by our sense of what is right, not the other way round. Morality may indeed consist of obeying god’s will, and not Satan’s, but historically, God and Satan have been by what is Right and Wrong, not the other way round.

    You made the comment and asked the question:

    I’d have said that the welfare of people/sentient beings was fundamental to the meaning of the word “morality”. What else would we have the word for?

    I’m pointing out that you are acting as if morality cannot possibly mean anything other than what is convenient to your position, when in fact morality has largely meant something else entirely for hundreds of years.

    No, I’m not. I’m asking you what else it could possibly mean. Defining it as “obeying god” is just buck-passing, seeing as we have to discern what is right before we can figure out whether god wants it. Unless we just choose rules from some arbitrarily chosen Scripture, which Huck Finn wisely rejected.

    You’re attempting to win an argument about morality by definitional fiat by summarily ignoring what “morality” has meant to billions of people for hundreds of years.

    No, I’m not. I’m pressing you to expand on what morality has meant to billions of people for hundreds of years. My contention is (and you could demonstrate me to be wrong) is that when you unpack “obey god” in the Christian tradition, you generally end up with a process of discernment that involves figuring out what is moral, not the other way round.

    Or, at least, when it does work the other way round, history tends to condemn those actions as immoral.

  27. William J. Murray:
    Liz,

    If you are not willing to concede that for billions of people, for hundreds of years, “morality” meant “obeying the word or wishes or commandments of god”, regardless of “which god” or what specific actions such obeyance entailed,, then I’m not willing to engage in this particular debate any further with you.

    There’s no use engaging in a debate where one side flatly denies the obvious.

    I’m not “denying the obvious” William. I agree that morality and obeying god have historically been considered equivalent. But “obeying God” is a black box. I want to know how you think people have figured out what God wants – because as far as I can see, the time-honoured method is to figure out what is good.

    And good, has, historically, tended to mean “what benefits others”. However, weirdly interpreted “benefits” has sometimes been.

    No?

  28. One might dispute some of Pinker’s data regarding violent death, but one can hardly dispute the fact that Abrahamic priests ordered the killing of one hundred percent of defeated populations. That’s their own record, and they seem proud of it.

    As they are proud of worshiping a deity that supposedly killed close to one hundred percent of all living things.

    Whether these are historical facts is somewhat beside the point. It is a fact that the Christian religion is descended from a tradition that committed genocide, and Christian children are taught that the carnage of Jericho is something to be proud of and sing songs about.

  29. petrushka: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature

    I don’t see any facts or figures there that support your claim, only an article about a book that supposedly reaches the conclusion you express. The article you refer to includes the following criticisms about the book and its conclusions:

    In his review of the book in Scientific American,[15] psychologist Robert Epstein criticises Pinker’s use of relative violent death rates as an appropriate metric for assessing the emergence of humanity’s “better angels”, and what Epstein sees as an over-reliance on historical data. He also argues that Pinker has fallen prey to confirmation bias, leading him to focus on evidence that supports his thesis while ignoring research that does not.

    Theologian David Bentley Hart wrote that “one encounters [in Pinker’s book] the ecstatic innocence of a faith unsullied by prudent doubt”. Furthermore, “it reaffirms the human spirit’s lunatic and heroic capacity to believe a beautiful falsehood, not only in excess of the facts, but in resolute defiance of them”.[16]

    John N. Gray gave a critical review of the book in Prospect.[17] Elizabeth Kolbert wrote a critical review in The New Yorker,[18] to which Pinker posted a reply.[19] Ben Laws gave a critical review published on CTheory.Net.[20]

    Craig S. Lerner, a professor at George Mason University School of Law, criticised the book in the Winter 2011/12 issue of the Claremont Review of Books.[21] Lerner and Pinker exchanged views in the correspondence section of the Spring 2012 issue.[22]

    John Arquilla criticized the book in a 3 December 2012 article in Foreign Policy. Arquilla criticized Pinker for using statistics that he said did not accurately represent the threats of civilians dying in war:

    “The problem with the conclusions reached in these studies is their reliance on “battle death” statistics. The pattern of the past century—one recurring in history—is that the deaths of noncombatants due to war has risen, steadily and very dramatically. In World War I, perhaps only 10 percent of the 10 million-plus who died were civilians. The number of noncombatant deaths jumped to as much as 50 percent of the 50 million-plus lives lost in World War II, and the sad toll has kept on rising ever since”.[23]

    Edward S. Herman of the University of Pennsylvania, together with David Peterson, wrote a detailed criticism of the book.,[24] concluding “…terrible book, both as a technical work of scholarship and as a moral tract and guide”, and describing Pinker as pandering to the “demands of U.S. and Western elites at the start of the 21st century”.

    So, unless you want to provide actual facts and figures that support your claim, you are not presenting me with any “facts” I need to rebut.

  30. William J. Murray: If you are not willing to concede that for billions of people, for hundreds of years, “morality” meant “obeying the word or wishes or commandments of god”, regardless of “which god” or what specific actions such obeyance entailed,, then I’m not willing to engage in this particular debate any further with you.

    I am not willing to concede that. Morality was never about obeying. Morality always involved making good judgments. People might have described it as “obeying God”, but there was never a codified list of rules to obey that could constitute morality. So describing it as “obeying God” was never more than a metaphor.

  33. BTW, when I googled that Huck quote to save me typing it out, I found it in this interesting, and pertinent, blog piece by Rachel Held.

    She says:

    I want to be faithful to the inspired words of the Bible, not bend them to fit my own desires and whims. Being a person of faith means trusting God’s revelation, even when the path it reveals is not comfortable.

    But another part of me worries that a religious culture that asks its followers to silence their conscience is just the kind of religious culture that produces $200 rewards for runaway slaves. The Bible has been “clear” before, after all—in support of a flat and stationary earth, in support of wiping out entire people groups, in support of manifest destiny, in support of Indian removal, in support of anti-Semitism, in support of slavery, in support of “separate but equal,” in support of constitutional amendments banning interracial marriage.

    In hindsight, it all seems so foolish, such an obvious abuse of Scripture.

    …But at the time?

    Sometimes true faithfulness requires something of a betrayal.

  34. OK, I think I might have finally figured out William’s position (with the help of Rachel Held):

    Is it your position, William, that we are in possession of a conscience and that as long as we posit that that conscience is god-planted, we have a rational basis for obeying it? But that if we do not posit a divine provenance for it, we have no rational reason to pay any attention to it?

    Yes, I know I’ve attempted another paraphrase, but it’s the only method I know for checking my understanding.

  35. I want to know how you think people have figured out what God wants – because as far as I can see, the time-honoured method is to figure out what is good.

    Most people that believed in an abrahamic god over the past few centuries didn’t believe they were “figuring out” what was “good” and then assigning that to “God”; they believed that God explicitly issued forth commandments via revelation about what they should and should not do and that their only job was to properly carry out the commandment, not the “goodness” of it.

    That God commanded it was, to them, the basis of what “good” was defined as. If, by revelation, God commanded that it was good to sacrifice your son or dash children upon rocks or mutilate young girls or blow up a building or burn a witch, that’s what was good. Period. No figuring out “if” the revelation was moral; it’s what **was** good by definition.

    Even if it meant doing things that you found horrifying or repulsive or sickening. Period.

    But “obeying God” is a black box.

    So is “doing good”. All you are doing here is denying or avoiding the obvious because it directly contradicts your authoritarian definitional fiat of what the word “moral” means.

  36. petrushka:
    The book has the data. Don;t be lazy.

    You made the claim. It’s not my job to dig up the facts and figures that support it.

  37. William J. Murray: Most people that believed in an abrahamic god over the past few centuries didn’t believe they were “figuring out” what was “good” and then assigning that to “God”; they believed that God explicitly issued forth commandments via revelation about what they should and should not do and that their only job was to properly carry out the commandment, not the “goodness” of it.

    That God commanded it was, to them, the basis of what “good” was defined as. If, by revelation, God commanded that it was good to sacrifice your son or dash children upon rocks or mutilate young girls or blow up a building or burn a witch, that’s what was good. Period.No figuring out “if” the revelation was moral; it’s what **was** good by definition.

    Even if it meant doing things that you found horrifying or repulsive or sickening. Period.

    So is “doing good”. All you are doing here is denying or avoiding the obvious because it directly contradicts your authoritarian definitional fiat of what the word “moral” means.

    OK, so your contention is that in the past people have considered that “doing good” was doing what appeared to them to be mandated by whatever scripture of whatever religious tradition they happen or chose to follow?

    I agree that some people have believed that. I would be surprised if it was a majority. Christianity, for all its historical faults and errors, has always (from the gospels onwards) had a strong tradition of doing right being more important than sticking to divinely ordained rules. That was Jesus’ big beef with the pharisees.

  38. William J. Murray: You made the claim. It’s not my job to dig up the facts and figures that support it.

    You asked for the source. I gave it to you. It’s not my job to read it to you.

    But go ahead and dispute the fact that your religious tradition includes theft and genocide ordered by priests, in the name of god.

  39. Lizzie,

    It is patently obvious that billions of people, for hundreds of years (including now), held morality as meaning obeyance to the revealed word of god, and that our own conceptions of what were right and wrong were secondary to that (lean not to your own understanding), even when it called upon them to do that which personally seemed wrong, horrifying, or disturbing, and even when one couldn’t understand the reasoning or sense of it.

    Obeyance was considered good. Faith was considered good. Being able to do terrible things just because god supposedly commanded it was considered good.

    I’m just not going to argue with people on a subject where they deny the patently obvious.

  40. petrushka: You asked for the source. I gave it to you. It’s not my job to read it to you.

    But go ahead and dispute the fact that your religious tradition includes theft and genocide ordered by priests, in the name of god.

    Yes, I asked for your source so I could determine if there was anything to your claim. Your source (the wiki article) doesn’t provide any material. If you are making the claim that the book provides such data, it is your job to provide the data or a link to it.

    Until you do so, you haven’t supported your claim here.

  41. petrushka: You asked for the source. I gave it to you. It’s not my job to read it to you.

    But go ahead and dispute the fact that your religious tradition includes theft and genocide ordered by priests, in the name of god.

    I don’t have a religious tradition. You forget, I invented my own god to believe in.

  42. Regardless of statistics, the trend in secular law has been toward softening bronze age laws. No more stoning; no more eye for an eye.

    This softening is apparent even in strict Muslim countries, where honor killing is illegal.

    It’s not a done deal, but it’s a trend.

    The simple fact is that consensus law and morality is more desired and more desirable than morality passed down directly from Hammurabi. Which is the original source for most of Leviticus.

  43. I don’t think we forget, William, or at least I don’t, but that’s what I find completely bewildering – if you can pick or invent – your own god, what is “objective” about it? What’s the difference between a do-it-yourself god and a do-it-yourself morality?

  44. Whether or not god actually exists is irrelevant to any argument I’ve ever made here.

    The arguments I have made is that in order to have a rationally coherent belief system concerning certain fundamental aspects of life, morality, and rationality, one must make certain assumptions. Those necessary assumptions are most efficiently achieved as a god (first cause, absolute good, etc.), regardless of whatever other characteristics one might add.

    I’ve stripped the concept of “God” down to the essential and efficient characteristics necessary to provide that sound basis.

    There’s nothing ontologically absolute or objective about any of it, because it’s not an argument about fact or evidence; what is absolute is the epistemological necessity of the specified assumptions expressed as characteristics and satisfied by the efficiency of the concept of God as supplier of those necessary characteristics of rational thought, morality, being, deliberacy and causality.

    Edit: to clarify, I mean one must make certain assumptions whether they are conscious of it or not, and whether they admit to it or not. Those assumptions are necessary whether one realizes it or not.

  45. WJM

    what is absolute is the epistemological necessity of the specified assumptions …

    … in your opinion. Yet your opinion on these ‘absolutes’ can only be relative. That it serves your purposes is not in dispute. But you are taking this to the intertubes and the publishosphere, and telling those that disagree that they are wrong … (incidentally, how has ‘efficiency’ crept into the stew?)

    eta: I see your own edit – neat! Those who disagree are still wrong; they just don’t know it.

  46. William J. Murray: what is absolute is the epistemological necessity of the specified assumptions expressed as characteristics and satisfied by the efficiency of the concept of God as supplier of those necessary characteristics of rational thought, morality, being, deliberacy and causality.

    I simply don’t understand this. I mean, I know how most of the words are defined, but am struggling to parse your noun clause:

    “epistemological necessity of the specified assumptions expressed as characteristics and satisfied by the efficiency of the concept of God as supplier of those necessary characteristics of rational thought, morality, being, deliberacy and causality”

    Can you rephrase?

  47. Ah, just seen your edit:

    William J. Murray: Edit: to clarify, I mean one must make certain assumptions whether they are conscious of it or not, and whether they admit to it or not. Those assumptions are necessary whether one realizes it or not.

    So, what are the assumptions that you deem necessary? (Yes, I realise you’ve probably said elsewhere, but it still isn’t cleary to me).

  48. …That God commanded it was, to them, the basis of what “good” was defined as. If, by revelation, God commanded that it was good to sacrifice your son or dash children upon rocks or mutilate young girls or blow up a building or burn a witch, that’s what was good. Period.No figuring out “if” the revelation was moral; it’s what **was** good by definition.

    Even if it meant doing things that you found horrifying or repulsive or sickening. Period. …

    Lizzie: OK, so your contention is that in the past people have considered that “doing good” was doing what appeared to them to be mandated by whatever scripture of whatever religious tradition they happen or chose to follow?

    I agree that some people have believed that. I would be surprised if it was a majority. Christianity, for all its historical faults and errors, has always (from the gospels onwards) had a strong tradition of doing right being more important than sticking to divinely ordained rules.That was Jesus’ big beef with the pharisees.

    Yes. Divine command has never worked for long in the christian establishments. God (supposedly) gave us a conscience so that we could use it to discern what is good and not. And those who followed ever jot and tittle of bible law while being bad people were a common trope in literature, because people in christian culture were expected to actively search their consciences for what was good and then do that good. God inspired, yes, (perhaps) but not god-commanded. It’s way too facile to claim “god said it, that settles it”. There’s evidence that was a view that some people held, not that it was ever the view which formed the basis for most people’s morality.

    As you say, the very foundation of christianity shows Jesus vs the Pharisees, the exemplars of the “god-commanded-it” school of morality.

  49. Liz said:

    I agree that some people have believed that. I would be surprised if it was a majority.

    Whether or not it was a majority is entirely irrelevant. The point is that your definition of “what morality is” is not the only definition that has ever existed, and is not the only definition currently in use, and that at least one other definition – obeyance to a (presumed) revealed set of commandment of God – has legitimate standing as a competitor to your definition of “what morality is”.

    So your question:

    Liz said:

    I’d have said that the welfare of people/sentient beings was fundamental to the meaning of the word “morality”. What else would we have the word for?

    .. has been answered.

  50. There’s evidence that was a view that some people held, not that it was ever the view which formed the basis for most people’s morality.

    Whether or not it was in majority is irrelevant.

    As you say, the very foundation of christianity shows Jesus vs the Pharisees, the exemplars of the “god-commanded-it” school of morality.

    And from where did Jesus supposedly get his authority to contradict what the Pharisees said was the will of god?

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