[MD] The Moral Landscape

[Steven Peterson]

Hi Platt, John,

Platt:
>> Finally, it seems to me your common sense approach to morality is
>> suspiciously like the morality of the Judeo-Christian tradition, you know,
>> go in peace, love thy neighbor, help the poor, and all that. So as much as
>> we might like to think we have discovered a rational morality, in the end
>> it
>> looks like good old religious-based morality after all.



Steve:
You are aware that some form of the Golden Rule has been articulated
by just about every culture you can think of? That we ought not do to
others what we wouldn't want done to ourselves is a pithy moral
principle that encapsulates much of what we have learned about
morality, but it is not Judeo-Christian morality any more than it is
Confucian morality. If some of religious-based morality happens to
agree with our best understanding of morality, then so much the better
for those religions, but it doesn't mean that morality is
religion-based, and we ought not forget that it is our best
understanding of the world that stands in judgment of religion here
rather than the other way around.



John:
> Yes.  It's like they want to throw out all the old nasty theism, but keep
> the part known as morality that came with it so our society doesn't revert
> to the jungle.
>
> Yer hittin' them bullseyes, Platt, you old Zen archer you.


Steve:
Does the fact that the Pythagorean theorem is true lend any credence
to Greek mythology? Since it obviously does not, then by that
comparison we certainly can throw out theism (if it is indeed false)
and keep whatever part of Judeo-Christian morality that happens to be
true (while dumping all the Judeo-Christian morality that happens to
be false). If there are truths to be known about morality, then they
aren't Muslim truths or Buddhists truths or Russian truths or Western
truths anymore than there can be Hindu versus Jain algebra or
Christian versus Mormon medicine.

If it actually turns out to be rationally justifiable to say that
murder is wrong (which of course it is), then it makes no difference
to the question of what is true about morality that the Ten
Commandments seem to agree. What matters is rational justification.
"Thou shalt not kill," if actually justifiably true, is not a
Christian truth. It is simply the truth.

If it actually is wrong (which of course it is) that rape is immoral,
then it makes no difference to the question the fact that rape has
been a staple of religious ritual throughout the world and that the
prohibition against it does not appear in the Judeo-Christian Top Ten
and that it was commanded by God on multiple occasions to be done to
the enemies of Israel. If it actually is rationally justifiable that
it is wrong (as all the research indicates) to beat our children with
sticks, then it makes no difference that that the Bible tells us that
we ought to beat our children with sticks.

Best,
Steve