This has been coming up a lot lately, so I decided to put it down
somewhere I could easily reference it. This observation is in no way new
or original, only the phrasing is uniquely my own.
Did you ever do those obnoxious math proofs in school? Add X number plus Y number to get Z result. Now show the proof. Did you ever get points knocked off because your proofs contained errors, even though you arrived at the correct result?
In
morality as with math it's entirely possible to come up with good
answers for the wrong reasons. And like those math proofs, you can't
actually be sure you got the right answer because it doesn't add up.
That's why I don't trust morality that isn't grounded in reality. People
can and do claim their gods demand all sorts of things. They demand
sacrifice, they demand worship, they demand obedience, etc. Occasionally
people hit on useful things like "love thy neighbor as thyself." But
just as often they use it to justify bad things like "homosexuality is
an abomination" and "I do not suffer a woman to teach."
If you
want to convince me that a morality is valid, you have to show me the
work. Show me that the morality is rooted in reality and not simply
claimed to be the wisdom of a god.
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1 comment:
Your ideas fit nicely with modern ideas of ethics and morality. Religious morality is unable to deal with moral dilemmas like the trolley problem or the prisoner's dilemma.
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