[Peace-discuss] Bellicose rhetoric???

[Morton K. Brussel]

All this preaching on this list!  Perhaps I can insert the opinion  
that "God" (or gods) are totally empty concepts, explaining nothing,  
but giving rise to endless ratiocination.  --mkb


On Nov 10, 2008, at 10:35 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> God is not a necessary component of morality for the simple reason  
> that God --
> the answer (which we do not know) to the question, "Why is there  
> anything
> instead of nothing?" -- is not a component of anything.
>
> God is not a thing in the universe -- we can't point to something  
> in the
> universe as the reason for the existence of the universe -- and God  
> and the
> universe don't add up to two. (Two of what would that be?  Two  
> things?  But God
> is not thing in the universe, etc.)
>
> Morality is a component of human nature (for the existence of which  
> God of course is the reason, as for everything), as grammar is a  
> component of
> language. Just as an intelligent visitor from Mars would think that  
> all humans
> were speaking one language with regional variations, so human  
> ethics might be
> regarded as the rules (or grammar) for humans' being together -- with
> some interesting regional variations... (That's what makes horse  
> racing, or at
> least philosophical argument -- and literature.)
>
> Well over a thousand years of Christian philosophical reflection  
> took it as a
> commonplace that the Decalogue is not a set of rules imposed from  
> outside, as it
> were, that might have been different, but rather rational  
> conclusions from
> reflection on what it is to be human.  (They did think it was a  
> little hard to
> derive the 3rd/4th Commandment -- there are different numbering  
> systems -- this
> way.)
>
> Christian theologians thought that, although ethics could be  
> descried rationally, that took effort (and time) -- hence all that  
> literature -- and so God generously provided in the Ten  
> Commandments as it were an operating manual ("documentation," we  
> would say) for being human.
>
> More on this from me (quoting others), if you want, at "The Subversive
> Commandments," <http://www.counterpunch.org/ 
> estabrook03292005.html>.  --CGE
>
>
> John W. wrote:
>> ... I'd be more interested in hearing one or both of you Bible  
>> scholars explain to Jenifer why God is a necessary component of  
>> morality.  Or conversely, how one can be moral without a belief in  
>> God.
>> John Wason
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss