the more free you are, the more responsible you should be.
it’s quit easy to be both free and responsible with easy and relatively harmless things. But conjugality and sexuality are neither easy nor harmless.
I know for a fact that my lifestyle is not for everyone. Some people shouldn’t ever dream of the kind of sexual freedom i got, not because they are “not worthy”, but because they are not really willing to pay the price. That’s why i will never proselytize this lifestyle, and i would abandon it for the sake of social stability or legality if it was really necessary.
[quote]Further, you recognize that one can’t mock a theist’s belief (though still not sharing that belief), and then turn around and claim to know the difference between real good and real evil. And, you seem to recognize that while one could abandon a claim to KNOWING good and evil, one then has no firm base from which to criticize the actions–past, present, or future–of the religious. Not if one doesn’t even believe in the truth of their own individual, relative, adopted menu of morals and virtues.
“Rape is wrong. Well, ok, that’s just my personal opinion. It might be ‘the right’ for someone else. We’re both just as right and just as wrong, in reality.”
Not the stuff a civil society can last long on–morals and virtues not even believed to be true in reality.
You also seem, and this could just be me, to have arrived at the same conclusion as I have. Very, very few of those claiming to have abandoned moral truths, have. They talk as if they have, in order to not give an inch to the theist. After all, one can’t examine moral truths, good or evil, under a microscope or through a telescope, either. So, one must let them go as fairy tales, too. Or, at least pretend to. Again, to no longer be able to say,
“I KNOW rape is evil.”
Now, it becomes,
“Well, in my opinion, emotionally, while knowing evil doesn’t exist, I THINK rape is evil.”
Yeah, that’s a foundation of sand right there. No, I suspect most hold at least some of their morals as truths. That is, to believe in their heart, rape is evil outside of any man’s opinion. Faith…
You, though, seem comfortable with the existence of truths outside of human opinion, whim, or emotional state, even if a physicist can’t seem to find them. It’s not theism, but it sure aint this New Atheism. Nor does your brand of atheism seem like the kind that turns purple in the face because it overhead a Christmas carol in public, about a God he doesn’t even believe in. In short, you SEEM to recognize that mankind requires at least some kind of faith. And if not in God(s), than at least in the true existence of good and evil. [/quote]
Indeed, i’m not a post-modern relativist.
I do think that a society need a collective consensus about moral values. A common axiology. Because it’s the only way to avoid anomy.
In the past, faiths, mythologies and religions provided such a collective consensus, but modernity changed that.
Now, our societies are no more religiously homogenous, nor traditionnal. And that won’t change in our lifetime.
Relativism can’t provide such a consensus. by definition.
Moral pluralism may work, but will not last.
Utilitarism will not work, because utilitarism is nothing more than amoralism under cover.
Therefore we need something else.
Probably a new kind of utilitarism.
Right now, our utilitarism is an industrial one. It suppose that all things are theoretically equal, abondant and replaceable. This utilitarism is therefore unable to evaluate anything without exchanging or destroying it.
We need to acknowledge that some things (life for example) are unique, and therefore absolutely scarce.
A rational axiology should conclude, even in the absence of faith, that absolutely scarce things have an infinite and absolute intrinsic value.
Granted, it’s not really a categoric imperative (that would indeed require some kind of faith). It’s only an hypothetic one.
But that could be a good start.
); ‘Riddles usually require a unique or uncommon answer. Bears have a variety of common colors but only one unique one.’ I got the right answer entirely without using geometry like I was ‘supposed to’. If several different people agree on something for a variety of reasons, does that make it right? If someone arrives at the right answer for the wrong reason, is that wrong? Ever have an “original” idea and then discover it already existed? If your idea is better, but theirs is actually implemented (or yours is unimplementable and their can be), is one right or wrong?