Hope it's ok that I jump in on the jump in. The thing that gives me
pause throughout this NG is the moral relativism that pervades these
(and most) discussions that jump off from the notion that there is no
God and therefore no "Truth" on which to base a morality (an
equivocation, but an often made one.) Lot's of rationalists nee
existentialists of my acquaintance accept people's faith as a social
glue that holds the fabric of moral society together, and never mind
whether it's "true" or not...
It is almost a cheap shot to point out the oxymoronic character of the
statement "Moral judgements are always a substitute for understanding",
but there it is. Further, the intentional equivocation of "holding a
moral judgement" and "clinging to a moral judgement", suggesting some
sort of desperation or irrational obstinacy on the part of the holder,
reveals more about the biases of the author who, seeming to believe that
all moral judgements are delusions, must have a hard time controlling
that ubiquitous impulse to reach across the counter and choke the
clueless retail clerk, to say nothing of teaching children good from
bad.
Whew. That we must build a morality based on human observation rather
than blind faith is the existential gauntlet thrown down by Kierkegaard
and picked up by better minds than my own. I would humbly participate
in it's development, which at the high end is something that this NG
nobly contributes to. At the low end, we throw up our hands and decry
all morality or attempts to discern it as delusion, begging the question
of why we're here in the first place- having gotten over the first
heady rush of memetic observation, are we mere librarians, cataloging
these meme's as we see them, or do we strive to build something decent
and enduring, based on what we know about the way people transmit
information?
Some thoughts.
Love,
Ian