{"id":3313,"date":"2009-11-16T06:51:02","date_gmt":"2009-11-16T14:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=3313"},"modified":"2009-11-16T06:51:28","modified_gmt":"2009-11-16T14:51:28","slug":"practical-morality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/practical-morality\/","title":{"rendered":"Real-World Morality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Secular Right\u2019s readers have been raising<\/a> the hoary \u201cwithout God, no morality\u201d topos again:<\/p>\n

The problem with creating a notion of \u201csecular authority\u201d is that you run into . . .\u00a0 the \u201cgreat sez who?\u201d Eventually, without a belief in a transcendent moral order . . .\u00a0 appeals to authority eventually are futile. . . .\u00a0 Maybe two or three generations can feed off of the inherited patrimony of the civilization without embracing its underlying ethos, but eventually that patrimony gets exhausted and the \u201cgrand sez who?\u201d phenomenon sets in.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Would someone please provide an actual example of such endless moral regress without the God trump card?\u00a0 If I may borrow a phrase from my misspent youth<\/a>, it seems to me that we are \u201calways already\u201d embedded in a moral environment far more complex and sophisticated than the blunt pronouncements of the Ten Commandments (i.e., those not commanding obsequiousness before God).\u00a0\u00a0 The question of some original source beyond human law and custom for our most basic principles, in my experience, never comes up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Would someone please provide an example of
\na. someone actually claiming that murder, say, (or theft) is fine at all times and places, or
\nb. someone claiming that murder (or theft) is fine at all times and places because there is\u00a0 no God, or
\nc. someone claiming that murder (or theft) is fine at all times and places because there is\u00a0 no God, and then being recalled to sanity by an invocation of the Sixth (or Eighth) Commandment?\u00a0<\/p>\n

I have simply never witnessed the need to reference to God to establish the validity of our laws against extortion, say.\u00a0 Real-world moral disputes are more complicated:\u00a0 Is health care a right?\u00a0 Who should pay for it and how much should one group pay for another\u2019s health care?\u00a0 Is economic regulation theft?\u00a0 Is theft admissible to stave off starvation?\u00a0 We answer these questions by drawing on our innate and developed moral intuitions and our society\u2019s legal framework.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Does anyone really believe that Denmark and Copenhagen are going to stop enforcing contract law because they have \u201cexhausted the patrimony\u201d of Leviticus and are uncomfortable invoking God as the source of their commercial code?<\/p>\n

During large swathes of European history when religious belief was at its pinnacle, burning heretics at the stake and bludgeoning to death members of opposing sects were considered perfectly compatible with the Ten Commandments.\u00a0 Today, we would disagree, not because we have suddenly discovered that murder is wrong, but because that inevitable human taboo has been fleshed out differently, under pressure from Enlightenment values.\u00a0 In 1608, Pope Paul V ordered that Rafael\u2019s Deposition, painted to honor a mother\u2019s fallen son, be spirited in the dark of night away from its home in Perugia\u2019s church of S. Francesco al Prato.\u00a0\u00a0 Paul V bestowed it on his nephew, Scipione Borghese, for his art collection.\u00a0 Today, a pope would not secretly purloin an altarpiece painting, not because he has suddenly discovered the Eighth Commandment, but because our conception of the proper scope of papal power has changed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Secular Right\u2019s readers have been raising the hoary \u201cwithout God, no morality\u201d topos again: The problem with creating a notion of \u201csecular authority\u201d is that you run into . . .\u00a0 the \u201cgreat sez who?\u201d Eventually, without a belief in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[58,57],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3313"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3313"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3316,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3313\/revisions\/3316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}