[Peace-discuss] Bellicose rhetoric???

[C. G. Estabrook]

Why is there anything instead of nothing, Mort?


Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> 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
>>