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Dissident Heart 
Wisdom Personified
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 Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 9:26 pm Post subject:
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F. Nietzsche: Indeed, we philosophers and "free spirits" feel, when we hear the news that the "old god is dead," as if a new dawn shone on us; our heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, premonitions, expectation,at long last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be bright; at long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again; perhaps there has never yet been such an "open sea."
Geo: And 88 years later the first men landed on the moon. It's got to be connected somehow!! |
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DWill
Stupendously Brilliant
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Location: Berryville, Virginia
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| Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 8:29 am Post subject:
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| geo wrote: |
I know, I can't shut up.
We already do have a secular framework for morality. It's called the legal system and it exists separate from religion. It's not coincidence that religion agrees with already established social mores. As I've already said, we made religion, and we can make it do whatever we want. But is religion desirable in this modern age? What's it good for? |
I wouldn't want you to shut up. Thanks for your replies. I don't have any problem accepting your point that morality did not arrive by revelation, but was fashioned like other social customs. So, let's see, what could be my hang-up? Probably it has something to do with the usefulness of an authority outside of, and pictured as above, individual conscience. If it is a fiction that morality issues from a god, or somehow at least copies a moral tendency of the universe (as Transcendentalists believed), it might still be a useful fiction. If this assumption is withdrawn altogether, are we at sea in a moral sense? You say the law will uphold us, but I need to think more about that. I'm thinking of a more general moral grounding than specific laws provide us. Perhaps if we survey the world's religions and take from them common moral and ethical precepts, this would be a "creed" we could look to for guidance. Whether we viewed this as a product of the human brain, or of extra-human origin, would not apear to make very much difference. |
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Interbane
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| Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2008 9:24 pm Post subject:
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I'm thinking of a more general moral grounding than specific laws provide us.
"The Science of Good and Evil" by Michael Shermer |
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