[Peace-discuss] Bellicose rhetoric???

[C. G. Estabrook]

Uh, right...


E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
> Ratiocination is good.
> 
> It's that sometimes the ratio between rampant ratiocinators who ratiocinate
> routinely and non-ratiocinators who rarely ratiocinate but routinely rant
> about ratiocinations seems irrational.
> 
> 
> 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
>>> 
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>> 
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