I am not religious. But I'm less smug about my superiority.
I have my own irrational values. For example, I decry cannibalism, or murder, or rape. But not all societies agree with me, and there is nothing in the laws of physics which makes those things wrong. If I'm ruthlessly honest with myself, my opposition to murder is no more rat…
I am not religious. But I'm less smug about my superiority.
I have my own irrational values. For example, I decry cannibalism, or murder, or rape. But not all societies agree with me, and there is nothing in the laws of physics which makes those things wrong. If I'm ruthlessly honest with myself, my opposition to murder is no more rational than an anti-abortionist's opposition to abortion. You could equally say about both that "it inspires emotions they enjoy experiencing (neurochemical explosions sort of like cocaine)." We have made different judgement calls, and have somewhat different values, but neither of us are operating entirely rationally, and we both have brain chemicals and social conditioning at work.
“If I'm ruthlessly honest with myself, my opposition to murder is no more rational than an anti-abortionists opposition to abortion.”
Do you really see these two things as equivalent societal dangers? Do you think the implications for civilisation would be equal if they were both made completely legal? This is a pretty astonishing position.
Also, please, no personal attacks. “Smug” is fairly benign as far as that goes, but it’s a slope I don’t want us to slip down.
The subject is whether certain values are rational or irrational and I contend that we non-religious types have many irrational beliefs and values as well, so we should be less convinced of our superiority to religious people.
Nowhere in that philosophical point was there any metric of societal danger.
I think you are abusing the analogies, as I was discussing asserted facets of rationality/irrationality with the analogies, and you remove them from that context and tried to compare their effect on society - a different topic and NOT the facet for which I was asserting the analogy.
This reminds me of a very common bad faith argument technique which you have likely encountered in online discussion. One person asserts that the relationship between A and B is similar to the relationship between C and D. One might agree or not, but instead of addressing that, another person says "Oh My Gawd, did you just compare A with C? I cannot believe how offensive (or wrongheaded) that is!.... ". Of course, the first person did NOT compare A with C.
It's an effective but dishonest way to deliberately miss the point and derail it. (This came up with, say, Gina Carano's firing from Disney). And I'm not saying that YOU did this, just that it reminds me of others doing this.
All analogies, even the best ever made, will fail if one chooses to instead compare a different facet of A and B than the facet which was asserted to be relevant. I speak of irrationality as a partially shared trait, you note different societal implications if they legalized - completely irrelevant to my point. I was NOT, NOT, NOT asserting that abortion is the same as cannibalism in all regards, which I hope you can recognize. But one can ALWAYS without exception find some other difference between any two analogized things; that however doesn't address the asserted similarity in a separate area.
“I think you are abusing the analogies, as I was discussing asserted facets of rationality/irrationality with the analogies, and you remove them from that context and tried to compare their effect on society”
If we’re talking about moral evils, one of the most rational ways I can think of to compare them is how they affect society. In fact, it’s the *only* rational way I can think of to compare them. I’d argue that this is the basis for the entire legal system.
The severity of crimes is weighed against others, not by some arbitrary internal moral sense, but by the impact they have. Murder is more heavily punished than littering because the former crime has a greater impact on society.
I don’t see at all how I removed your statement from its context. I just applied a measure for rationality to it. If you’re using a different measure of rationality, that’s totally fine, you could just explain what that is.
I’m not attacking you, I’m not trying to have a fight or catch you in some kind of “gotcha”, I’m not trying to derail the point. I’m asking you a question based on my interpretation of something you said.
But I was not talking about moral evils, much less ranking them - I was talking about the irrational basis for values. I could have instead used examples of things I am irrationally supportive of rather than opposed to; evilness as NOT the point.
My point was to confess that my own abhorrence of cannibalism, etc is just as irrational as somebody else's abhorrence of abortion (based on religion or not). I was responding the what appears to be distain for the irrationality of religious beliefs, assertions that such beliefs are sustained by and based upon neurochemical reactions etc - and pointing out that some of my own "axiomatic" base values are just a much sustained by and based upon neurochemical reactions, rather than being objective facts of the universe.
I was not in any way talking about (rationally or irrationally) comparing moral evils, a different subject, nor severity of crimes. I made no assertions about "relative degrees of evilness", only about both some of my values and some of the values of anti-abortion folks both being derived from non-rational underpinnings.
TL:DR: I cannot honestly claim that my beliefs about murder/cannibalism/etc are entirely objective or rational, in contrast to the irrationality of the beliefs of anti-abortion folks. No discussion of relative evil or merit is involved.
I am not religious. But I'm less smug about my superiority.
I have my own irrational values. For example, I decry cannibalism, or murder, or rape. But not all societies agree with me, and there is nothing in the laws of physics which makes those things wrong. If I'm ruthlessly honest with myself, my opposition to murder is no more rational than an anti-abortionist's opposition to abortion. You could equally say about both that "it inspires emotions they enjoy experiencing (neurochemical explosions sort of like cocaine)." We have made different judgement calls, and have somewhat different values, but neither of us are operating entirely rationally, and we both have brain chemicals and social conditioning at work.
“If I'm ruthlessly honest with myself, my opposition to murder is no more rational than an anti-abortionists opposition to abortion.”
Do you really see these two things as equivalent societal dangers? Do you think the implications for civilisation would be equal if they were both made completely legal? This is a pretty astonishing position.
Also, please, no personal attacks. “Smug” is fairly benign as far as that goes, but it’s a slope I don’t want us to slip down.
The subject is whether certain values are rational or irrational and I contend that we non-religious types have many irrational beliefs and values as well, so we should be less convinced of our superiority to religious people.
Nowhere in that philosophical point was there any metric of societal danger.
I think you are abusing the analogies, as I was discussing asserted facets of rationality/irrationality with the analogies, and you remove them from that context and tried to compare their effect on society - a different topic and NOT the facet for which I was asserting the analogy.
This reminds me of a very common bad faith argument technique which you have likely encountered in online discussion. One person asserts that the relationship between A and B is similar to the relationship between C and D. One might agree or not, but instead of addressing that, another person says "Oh My Gawd, did you just compare A with C? I cannot believe how offensive (or wrongheaded) that is!.... ". Of course, the first person did NOT compare A with C.
It's an effective but dishonest way to deliberately miss the point and derail it. (This came up with, say, Gina Carano's firing from Disney). And I'm not saying that YOU did this, just that it reminds me of others doing this.
All analogies, even the best ever made, will fail if one chooses to instead compare a different facet of A and B than the facet which was asserted to be relevant. I speak of irrationality as a partially shared trait, you note different societal implications if they legalized - completely irrelevant to my point. I was NOT, NOT, NOT asserting that abortion is the same as cannibalism in all regards, which I hope you can recognize. But one can ALWAYS without exception find some other difference between any two analogized things; that however doesn't address the asserted similarity in a separate area.
“I think you are abusing the analogies, as I was discussing asserted facets of rationality/irrationality with the analogies, and you remove them from that context and tried to compare their effect on society”
If we’re talking about moral evils, one of the most rational ways I can think of to compare them is how they affect society. In fact, it’s the *only* rational way I can think of to compare them. I’d argue that this is the basis for the entire legal system.
The severity of crimes is weighed against others, not by some arbitrary internal moral sense, but by the impact they have. Murder is more heavily punished than littering because the former crime has a greater impact on society.
I don’t see at all how I removed your statement from its context. I just applied a measure for rationality to it. If you’re using a different measure of rationality, that’s totally fine, you could just explain what that is.
I’m not attacking you, I’m not trying to have a fight or catch you in some kind of “gotcha”, I’m not trying to derail the point. I’m asking you a question based on my interpretation of something you said.
>"If we’re talking about moral evils"
But I was not talking about moral evils, much less ranking them - I was talking about the irrational basis for values. I could have instead used examples of things I am irrationally supportive of rather than opposed to; evilness as NOT the point.
My point was to confess that my own abhorrence of cannibalism, etc is just as irrational as somebody else's abhorrence of abortion (based on religion or not). I was responding the what appears to be distain for the irrationality of religious beliefs, assertions that such beliefs are sustained by and based upon neurochemical reactions etc - and pointing out that some of my own "axiomatic" base values are just a much sustained by and based upon neurochemical reactions, rather than being objective facts of the universe.
I was not in any way talking about (rationally or irrationally) comparing moral evils, a different subject, nor severity of crimes. I made no assertions about "relative degrees of evilness", only about both some of my values and some of the values of anti-abortion folks both being derived from non-rational underpinnings.
TL:DR: I cannot honestly claim that my beliefs about murder/cannibalism/etc are entirely objective or rational, in contrast to the irrationality of the beliefs of anti-abortion folks. No discussion of relative evil or merit is involved.