Post by shiftyeyes on Apr 28, 2009 17:02:29 GMT -5
First, the obligatory: I'm a first time poster, long time lurker.
Now for the post:
One of the arguments I have often heard against secular humanism, rationalism, and not legislating religious values is one that I would callChristian Religious Relativism. The argument goes: fundamentally, we all have various unproven/unprovable assumptions we work with that determine our outlook on what is true and was is right and wrong. For a Christian this is the accuracy of the Bible and the resurrection of Jesus. For an atheist, secular humanist, they are something like: I can trust my reasoning, and the rights of all humans matter equally. (I hope I conveyed this well; I did a must better job when recounting it back to a Christian Relativist.)
This argument is highly problematic. From an epistemological standpoint, it takes away the rational high ground, because we all work with unprovable assumptions (and if it could be proven it would lead to a new assumption, thus turtles all the way down). From a morality standpoint it's worse. It forces admission that all morality is based on some starting principle that cannot be evaluated against other starting principles for other moralities. This leads to all value judgments being cultural making it impossible to argue that another's views are wrong unless they agree to your framework. The alternative is to make all morality a result of self-interest but that turns people into unprincipled monsters and provides no argument against might making right. This has been used to argue against any law which is not clearly "in the rational interest of the state" free of morality, as all moralities are inherently "religious" views.
I feel like there are big problems w/ this argument, but I have a lot of trouble find them. To me, it doesn't take away high ground or ability to make non-"religious" value judgments. Rather, it feels like Zeno's paradox. It doesn't show that motion (morality/knowing) is impossible or suggest that I stop moving (being moral/thinking), but it does suggest that my basic way of understanding motion (morality/knowledge) is wrong and must be corrected. Unfortunately, it took over 1500 years for calculus to be discovered and used to solve Zeno.
Now for the post:
One of the arguments I have often heard against secular humanism, rationalism, and not legislating religious values is one that I would call
This argument is highly problematic. From an epistemological standpoint, it takes away the rational high ground, because we all work with unprovable assumptions (and if it could be proven it would lead to a new assumption, thus turtles all the way down). From a morality standpoint it's worse. It forces admission that all morality is based on some starting principle that cannot be evaluated against other starting principles for other moralities. This leads to all value judgments being cultural making it impossible to argue that another's views are wrong unless they agree to your framework. The alternative is to make all morality a result of self-interest but that turns people into unprincipled monsters and provides no argument against might making right. This has been used to argue against any law which is not clearly "in the rational interest of the state" free of morality, as all moralities are inherently "religious" views.
I feel like there are big problems w/ this argument, but I have a lot of trouble find them. To me, it doesn't take away high ground or ability to make non-"religious" value judgments. Rather, it feels like Zeno's paradox. It doesn't show that motion (morality/knowing) is impossible or suggest that I stop moving (being moral/thinking), but it does suggest that my basic way of understanding motion (morality/knowledge) is wrong and must be corrected. Unfortunately, it took over 1500 years for calculus to be discovered and used to solve Zeno.