Very likely. There seems to be a continuum from south China down through Vietnam from north to south, at least in terms of facial structure and language--probably other stuff, too.
Very likely. There seems to be a continuum from south China down through Vietnam from north to south, at least in terms of facial structure and language--probably other stuff, too.
Seconding the gratitude. It does remind me of something I learned in college about East Asian religion, that for a lot of these folks, the idea of "religious" as a separate category from any other part of life would seem very strange. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but appeasing evil spirits isn't any less practical than getting a routine check up or brushing your teeth. I don't think there's a separate box for most people called "religion." This is all just stuff you do, all integrated. I think westerners have this way of treating God-stuff like it's some kind of super-existent or non-existent quality that's just...different.
I think I've read this is what life might've been like for the early church, since the Romans had a god for every practical thing imaginable.
Pardon me if I'm off-base, that's a lot of reflect on.
But going back to a non-realist view of morality: It seems to me that like a lot of people who talk about human-made moral codes you're thinking of creating a moral code like the people who drafted the new Constitution for South Africa after the fall of apartheid. But one can create a Constitution with reference to what one thinks is morally fairer and more just. One would no such reference in place if creating a new moral code.
I don't understand why not. Can you more plainly explain what you see as the difference?
Very likely. There seems to be a continuum from south China down through Vietnam from north to south, at least in terms of facial structure and language--probably other stuff, too.
Seconding the gratitude. It does remind me of something I learned in college about East Asian religion, that for a lot of these folks, the idea of "religious" as a separate category from any other part of life would seem very strange. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but appeasing evil spirits isn't any less practical than getting a routine check up or brushing your teeth. I don't think there's a separate box for most people called "religion." This is all just stuff you do, all integrated. I think westerners have this way of treating God-stuff like it's some kind of super-existent or non-existent quality that's just...different.
I think I've read this is what life might've been like for the early church, since the Romans had a god for every practical thing imaginable.
Pardon me if I'm off-base, that's a lot of reflect on.
I think you're on to something here. Christianity has over the centuries become more intellectual and less practical (in the sense of something you practice) and hence less physical. Prayers before meals is about as practical as many Protestants get, in my experience.
Even during the church service, Catholics for example involve more bodily movements than low-church Protestants. Active such as genuflecting, crossing oneself with holy water, kneeling, sitting, standing, bowing; passive such as smelling the incense. Perhaps lighting a candle or kissing the feet of a statue of your saint or Mary or both. And of course Lent. All very physical. But the trending direction, especially among Protestants, is toward an intellectual and aphysical religion. Even the Catholics have whittled Lent down from a 40 day fast to not eating meat on Fridays or Ash Wednesday, and outside of Lent the weekly abstinence has been removed. As an increasingly intellectual religion, Christianity thus a decreasing toehold on everyday life.
@Lamb Chopped .
I know one Vietnamese person who is Moslem. The only one I have come across.
LKKspouse worked with migrants and our neighbourhood changed from a strong Greek presence who moved out and rented their places to Vietnamese, with some great eating places opening up, and a fabulous French style boulangerie. One of my wife's school friends worked with Vietnamese migrants and married the person employed to be her interpreter.
Our SBS TV channel had a four part fictional series called Hungry Ghosts, that had a family haunted by persons such as those who died in the American War but who had not received a proper burial. I understood this to be a Buddhist belief in Vietnam, but maybe there is some syncretism with animism.
But going back to a non-realist view of morality: It seems to me that like a lot of people who talk about human-made moral codes you're thinking of creating a moral code like the people who drafted the new Constitution for South Africa after the fall of apartheid. But one can create a Constitution with reference to what one thinks is morally fairer and more just. One would no such reference in place if creating a new moral code.
I don't understand why not. Can you more plainly explain what you see as the difference?
You can't make a new moral code out of whole cloth while referring to ideas of what is fair and just because if you already have ideas of what is fair and just you already have a moral code. You wouldn't be creating a new moral code: you'd just be tidying up your existing code. Basically, it would amount to bootstrapping.
(Yes - we do have various instinctual ideas that given we have a moral code we see as proto-moral, like compassion and a primitive objection to cheating. But we also have similar instinctual ideas that my moral code at least sees as amoral or immoral like respect for 'strong' leaders, excluding outsiders, and disgust at non-standard sexual practices. Declaring that some of those ideas form as set that is the foundation of morality and others form a set isn't requires one to already have a concept of morality that doesn't arise out of those sets.)
You can't make a new moral code out of whole cloth while referring to ideas of what is fair and just because if you already have ideas of what is fair and just you already have a moral code. You wouldn't be creating a new moral code: you'd just be tidying up your existing code. Basically, it would amount to bootstrapping.
This is the editing I mentioned earlier. Humans could very easily have interjected the supernatural into the mix during one such bootstrapping. Easy to argue with your fellow primate. Less so with a god/gods, and yet we have. In general, we don't do slavery any more, or genocide, or so-called honor killings to name a few.
You can't make a new moral code out of whole cloth while referring to ideas of what is fair and just because if you already have ideas of what is fair and just you already have a moral code. You wouldn't be creating a new moral code: you'd just be tidying up your existing code. Basically, it would amount to bootstrapping.
This is the editing I mentioned earlier. Humans could very easily have interjected the supernatural into the mix during one such bootstrapping. Easy to argue with your fellow primate. Less so with a god/gods, and yet we have. In general, we don't do slavery any more, or genocide, or so-called honor killings to name a few.
Bootstrapping is impossible. That's my point. You can't start from all moral positions are up for grabs and construct a morality for moral reasons.
Just as in your little Just So story about it being more difficult to argue with gods than your fellow primate (*) so it is more difficult for your fellow primate to argue with you when you tell them honour or fairness requires that they give you the antelope leg than if you just tell them you want it. But it is no more candid on your part to appeal to human-created morality than to appeal to human-created supernatural or rational of them to accept your appeal. (I've seen various philosophers who believe in non-realist meta-morality and to my mind they all flannel when they get to this point.)
(*) I'll note here that you seem to be assuming that all religious morality is divine command theory. Divine command theory - the belief that what makes something morally wrong is that God says it is - is pretty rare in Christianity between Paul and the high medieval period. The New Testament seems more to present itself as ethical advice than orders. (I think one could read the Tanakh that way as well.) I don't think this necessarily affects your specific point here but it may affect the broader discussion.
In any case, while you have quibbled with my framing of the question, you have not actually answered the question which was why do you think God's people being left without a moral compass would be a problem giving "responsible people" a reason to create a replacement?
The short answer would be because people tend to find abrupt change disturbing and destabilising. It would create a messy and chaotic situation, which quite a lot of people find distasteful.
Certainly if that floats your creative impulse that gives you a reason to do it. Whether it gives anybody else a reason to refrain from acting according to their interests or to do something they don't want to do is quite another question.
Pardon the cut but this line struck me...from @Dafyd
[snip] [...] a primitive objection to cheating [...] [/snip]
I think as soon as you have a notion of "cheating" and that it is objectionable, then you likewise must have a notion of fairness. And I think that, with compassion, might be the grounding for a lot of moral positions. I don't like being cheated, I don't like watching people get cheated, so people shouldn't cheat. And we can eventually agree on that.
And these rules serve practical purpose. You can find examples on the OT of what was called "apodictic law," where it's really obvious that there was as community, and something bad happened, and so they had to make a rule to deal with it. "If a guy digs a hole and an ox falls into it" level stuff.
For humans to coexist, morality has to exist and there's probably a general convergence toward certain norms because we're all kinda the same animals surviving in more or less the same ways, stuff like "don't poop where you eat." This may be akin to apophasis. You can't figure out what's right all of the time, but you can start figuring out what's not-wrong, and eventually it's all the same difference.
I'm not certain that you need divine rulings for that.
Then again, I'm not usually one to regard "basis for human morality" as the fundamental purpose of God. I've known too many ethical atheists and amoral theists.
Some animals have been found demonstrating a concept of "fairness" (for example sharing with another if the reward from the reward system was "improperly" given). It seems thus hard-wired into us, and doesn't need a supernatural explanation.
Like hero worship of orange-skinned con artists it doesn't require a supernatural explanation. Therefore it together with the hero worship of orange-skinned con artists can form a basis for morality.
Ok - the orange-skinned bit isn't hard-wired (probably).
Now if you want to use our biological sense of fairness as a basis for morality but not hero worship of charismatic leaders then you're doing so on some other basis than that it's hard-wired.
Like hero worship of orange-skinned con artists it doesn't require a supernatural explanation. Therefore it together with the hero worship of orange-skinned con artists can form a basis for morality.
Ok - the orange-skinned bit isn't hard-wired (probably).
Now if you want to use our biological sense of fairness as a basis for morality but not hero worship of charismatic leaders then you're doing so on some other basis than that it's hard-wired.
Just look at the OT narrative surrounding the transition from Judges to Kings. It's not particularly new. They supposedly had a divine morality and they still fell for it, hard.
Now if you want to use our biological sense of fairness as a basis for morality but not hero worship of charismatic leaders then you're doing so on some other basis than that it's hard-wired.
Just look at the OT narrative surrounding the transition from Judges to Kings. It's not particularly new. They supposedly had a divine morality and they still fell for it, hard.
I'm making a philosophical point about justification not a sociological point about what people actually believe.
Now if you want to use our biological sense of fairness as a basis for morality but not hero worship of charismatic leaders then you're doing so on some other basis than that it's hard-wired.
Just look at the OT narrative surrounding the transition from Judges to Kings. It's not particularly new. They supposedly had a divine morality and they still fell for it, hard.
I'm making a philosophical point about justification not a sociological point about what people actually believe.
Like hero worship of orange-skinned con artists it doesn't require a supernatural explanation. Therefore it together with the hero worship of orange-skinned con artists can form a basis for morality.
Ok - the orange-skinned bit isn't hard-wired (probably).
Now if you want to use our biological sense of fairness as a basis for morality but not hero worship of charismatic leaders then you're doing so on some other basis than that it's hard-wired.
The question I was answering was, if not God, where does our sense of fairness come from? Not, Can an entire ethical system be created from our biological senses without dragging in stuff we don't want? This is quite the straw man.
Now if you want to use our biological sense of fairness as a basis for morality but not hero worship of charismatic leaders then you're doing so on some other basis than that it's hard-wired.
The question I was answering was, if not God, where does our sense of fairness come from? Not, Can an entire ethical system be created from our biological senses without dragging in stuff we don't want? This is quite the straw man.
As you did not quote the question you were answering, I assumed you were continuing the conversation in which I brought up our primitive biological sense of fairness.
I mean, if you're really into theism, I think there's a false dichotomy between primitive biological sense and God. If God created us, by whatever means, then it would say some really weird things about God if our natural wiring wasn't somehow nudging us in a holy direction.
I mean, if you're really into theism, I think there's a false dichotomy between primitive biological sense and God. If God created us, by whatever means, then it would say some really weird things about God if our natural wiring wasn't somehow nudging us in a holy direction.
And/or that animals might have some kind of spiritual nature, and moral impulses, as well.
I mean, if you're really into theism, I think there's a false dichotomy between primitive biological sense and God. If God created us, by whatever means, then it would say some really weird things about God if our natural wiring wasn't somehow nudging us in a holy direction.
And/or that animals might have some kind of spiritual nature, and moral impulses, as well.
We really aren't that different. I might get into a deeper quibble about what exactly defines a "moral impulse." Everyone wants to arrange their surroundings to their comfort. We have cats in our house and you can see them do it all the time, knocking things over to get our attention, for instance. In a moral universe, the cat will get fed on schedule. If that does not happen, the cat will act to try to reinforce the properly moral universe.
You may think I'm cracking a joke, and you're not wrong, but I think it's a true one.
I mean, if you're really into theism, I think there's a false dichotomy between primitive biological sense and God. If God created us, by whatever means, then it would say some really weird things about God if our natural wiring wasn't somehow nudging us in a holy direction.
And/or that animals might have some kind of spiritual nature, and moral impulses, as well.
We really aren't that different. I might get into a deeper quibble about what exactly defines a "moral impulse." Everyone wants to arrange their surroundings to their comfort. We have cats in our house and you can see them do it all the time, knocking things over to get our attention, for instance. In a moral universe, the cat will get fed on schedule. If that does not happen, the cat will act to try to reinforce the properly moral universe.
You may think I'm cracking a joke, and you're not wrong, but I think it's a true one.
I myself believe animals (and other things, actually; it’s part of why I describe myself as an Anglo Catholic Episcopalian with a dash of Shinto…) have a spiritual essence, though I don’t think they’re fallen in the way that we humans are. (Or the bad angels are.) How the inner workings of this, well, works, I don’t know, for them or us, other than I don’t understand it to at all be merely/exclusively biological or physical.
I mean, if you're really into theism, I think there's a false dichotomy between primitive biological sense and God. If God created us, by whatever means, then it would say some really weird things about God if our natural wiring wasn't somehow nudging us in a holy direction.
And/or that animals might have some kind of spiritual nature, and moral impulses, as well.
We really aren't that different. I might get into a deeper quibble about what exactly defines a "moral impulse." Everyone wants to arrange their surroundings to their comfort. We have cats in our house and you can see them do it all the time, knocking things over to get our attention, for instance. In a moral universe, the cat will get fed on schedule. If that does not happen, the cat will act to try to reinforce the properly moral universe.
You may think I'm cracking a joke, and you're not wrong, but I think it's a true one.
I myself believe animals (and other things, actually; it’s part of why I describe myself as an Anglo Catholic Episcopalian with a dash of Shinto…) have a spiritual essence, though I don’t think they’re fallen in the way that we humans are. (Or the bad angels are.) How the inner workings of this, well, works, I don’t know, for them or us, other than I don’t understand it to at all be merely/exclusively biological or physical.
I got enough things in life to suss out, but...yeah. We're all kinda animae, or kami if you prefer, hahaha. It feels appropriative to say I'd be Shinto-influenced, but I've definitely picked up enough Zen that I'd be lying if I said it wasn't part of my way of being.
Comments
He worked there for over 25 years, and my grandmother was born there.
Seconding the gratitude. It does remind me of something I learned in college about East Asian religion, that for a lot of these folks, the idea of "religious" as a separate category from any other part of life would seem very strange. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but appeasing evil spirits isn't any less practical than getting a routine check up or brushing your teeth. I don't think there's a separate box for most people called "religion." This is all just stuff you do, all integrated. I think westerners have this way of treating God-stuff like it's some kind of super-existent or non-existent quality that's just...different.
I think I've read this is what life might've been like for the early church, since the Romans had a god for every practical thing imaginable.
Pardon me if I'm off-base, that's a lot of reflect on.
I don't understand why not. Can you more plainly explain what you see as the difference?
I think you're on to something here. Christianity has over the centuries become more intellectual and less practical (in the sense of something you practice) and hence less physical. Prayers before meals is about as practical as many Protestants get, in my experience.
Even during the church service, Catholics for example involve more bodily movements than low-church Protestants. Active such as genuflecting, crossing oneself with holy water, kneeling, sitting, standing, bowing; passive such as smelling the incense. Perhaps lighting a candle or kissing the feet of a statue of your saint or Mary or both. And of course Lent. All very physical. But the trending direction, especially among Protestants, is toward an intellectual and aphysical religion. Even the Catholics have whittled Lent down from a 40 day fast to not eating meat on Fridays or Ash Wednesday, and outside of Lent the weekly abstinence has been removed. As an increasingly intellectual religion, Christianity thus a decreasing toehold on everyday life.
I know one Vietnamese person who is Moslem. The only one I have come across.
LKKspouse worked with migrants and our neighbourhood changed from a strong Greek presence who moved out and rented their places to Vietnamese, with some great eating places opening up, and a fabulous French style boulangerie. One of my wife's school friends worked with Vietnamese migrants and married the person employed to be her interpreter.
Our SBS TV channel had a four part fictional series called Hungry Ghosts, that had a family haunted by persons such as those who died in the American War but who had not received a proper burial. I understood this to be a Buddhist belief in Vietnam, but maybe there is some syncretism with animism.
(Yes - we do have various instinctual ideas that given we have a moral code we see as proto-moral, like compassion and a primitive objection to cheating. But we also have similar instinctual ideas that my moral code at least sees as amoral or immoral like respect for 'strong' leaders, excluding outsiders, and disgust at non-standard sexual practices. Declaring that some of those ideas form as set that is the foundation of morality and others form a set isn't requires one to already have a concept of morality that doesn't arise out of those sets.)
This is the editing I mentioned earlier. Humans could very easily have interjected the supernatural into the mix during one such bootstrapping. Easy to argue with your fellow primate. Less so with a god/gods, and yet we have. In general, we don't do slavery any more, or genocide, or so-called honor killings to name a few.
Just as in your little Just So story about it being more difficult to argue with gods than your fellow primate (*) so it is more difficult for your fellow primate to argue with you when you tell them honour or fairness requires that they give you the antelope leg than if you just tell them you want it. But it is no more candid on your part to appeal to human-created morality than to appeal to human-created supernatural or rational of them to accept your appeal. (I've seen various philosophers who believe in non-realist meta-morality and to my mind they all flannel when they get to this point.)
(*) I'll note here that you seem to be assuming that all religious morality is divine command theory. Divine command theory - the belief that what makes something morally wrong is that God says it is - is pretty rare in Christianity between Paul and the high medieval period. The New Testament seems more to present itself as ethical advice than orders. (I think one could read the Tanakh that way as well.) I don't think this necessarily affects your specific point here but it may affect the broader discussion.
Certainly true, if that's responding to me.
[snip] [...] a primitive objection to cheating [...] [/snip]
I think as soon as you have a notion of "cheating" and that it is objectionable, then you likewise must have a notion of fairness. And I think that, with compassion, might be the grounding for a lot of moral positions. I don't like being cheated, I don't like watching people get cheated, so people shouldn't cheat. And we can eventually agree on that.
And these rules serve practical purpose. You can find examples on the OT of what was called "apodictic law," where it's really obvious that there was as community, and something bad happened, and so they had to make a rule to deal with it. "If a guy digs a hole and an ox falls into it" level stuff.
For humans to coexist, morality has to exist and there's probably a general convergence toward certain norms because we're all kinda the same animals surviving in more or less the same ways, stuff like "don't poop where you eat." This may be akin to apophasis. You can't figure out what's right all of the time, but you can start figuring out what's not-wrong, and eventually it's all the same difference.
I'm not certain that you need divine rulings for that.
Then again, I'm not usually one to regard "basis for human morality" as the fundamental purpose of God. I've known too many ethical atheists and amoral theists.
Ok - the orange-skinned bit isn't hard-wired (probably).
Now if you want to use our biological sense of fairness as a basis for morality but not hero worship of charismatic leaders then you're doing so on some other basis than that it's hard-wired.
Just look at the OT narrative surrounding the transition from Judges to Kings. It's not particularly new. They supposedly had a divine morality and they still fell for it, hard.
Ah, thanks for clarifying that distinction.
The question I was answering was, if not God, where does our sense of fairness come from? Not, Can an entire ethical system be created from our biological senses without dragging in stuff we don't want? This is quite the straw man.
And/or that animals might have some kind of spiritual nature, and moral impulses, as well.
We really aren't that different. I might get into a deeper quibble about what exactly defines a "moral impulse." Everyone wants to arrange their surroundings to their comfort. We have cats in our house and you can see them do it all the time, knocking things over to get our attention, for instance. In a moral universe, the cat will get fed on schedule. If that does not happen, the cat will act to try to reinforce the properly moral universe.
You may think I'm cracking a joke, and you're not wrong, but I think it's a true one.
I myself believe animals (and other things, actually; it’s part of why I describe myself as an Anglo Catholic Episcopalian with a dash of Shinto…) have a spiritual essence, though I don’t think they’re fallen in the way that we humans are. (Or the bad angels are.) How the inner workings of this, well, works, I don’t know, for them or us, other than I don’t understand it to at all be merely/exclusively biological or physical.
I got enough things in life to suss out, but...yeah. We're all kinda animae, or kami if you prefer, hahaha. It feels appropriative to say I'd be Shinto-influenced, but I've definitely picked up enough Zen that I'd be lying if I said it wasn't part of my way of being.