This sentence just saved me from writing several paragraphs.
Anyone claiming that religion has anything to do with any absolute has to explain the wide range of moralities enforced by religion over time and space. The “absolute” has ranged from abstinence to polygamy, from killing no one, even criminals, to sacrificing your enemies in carload lots. Religion is just a way for those who claim to be in contact with the “absolute” to be able to enforce whatever their personal morals are, and not have to offer ethical arguments.
I can only wonder if Chief Pedant has ever read any Ethics, from Aristotle on down. Ethics doesn’t trade in absolutes, and depends on current opinions and on social experiments which might falsify previous ethical predictions. But while not absolute, it is far from arbitrary.
Or not. One of the disadvantages of being an atheist is you’re convinced you’ll never get to say “SEE? I TOLD YOU SO!”
You’ve made a fundamental mistake here. Humanism depends on agreed upon values. The agreement is the basis, and it’s validity is limited to the agreements.
Of course, when humanists argue with religious people, they can fall into the pit of lacking a shared foundation for making moral equivalents. That may be your point here, and if so, it’s a good point. But to say that morality depends on religion is to misunderstand what ethics is all about.
It’s about how to answer the question “What is the right or wrong thing to do?”
Evidently you have no answer to this question. Well, it’s a hard question to answer, but I’m confident that it would be a bad thing for me to go out into the world and intentionally create as much misery as I could. This is the kind of shared value that even atheists and religious people can usually agree on (and sometimes, work from there, to find shared conclusions.)
See, you’re making that mistake again. It’s not about absolute standards, but shared ones. Or at least, through discussion, finding out where values are NOT shared and thus coming to a better understanding of the other point of view. (Of course, the usual intent is to convince the other guy he’s wrong … but that’s not the point of a good philosophical discussion.)
I stand by my claim that your equation of religion and humanism isn’t useful or enlightening, and contradicts what most people mean by the terms.
The answers I’ve heard–and I’m just relaying them, not endorsing them–are:
–Gay relationships are rooted in narcissism, not real love, and shouldn’t get the legitimacy of the state’s imprimatur.
–Homosexuals have traditionally never* had the right to marry, asserting such a right requires finding something in the law or constitution from whence this right emanates, and it doesn’t.
–When a gay couple with children breaks up, the kids have one parent with legal standing and one unrelated stranger who tries to hang around a lot. Marriage might give the unrelated stranger undeserved legitimacy.
*Obviously, this is an old argument with lots of qualifiers attached to it. The laws of many US states and EU countries now assert this right, but the Constitution, English common law and the Magna Carta all fail to address it directly.
By “absolute” I mean external–i.e., external to us as humans, and with authority over us as humans.
I do not argue that we humans cannot develop mutually agreed upon standards against which we decide to behave, and I do not disagree that this is a reasonable approach for our society’s well-being.
I am pointing out that the “morality” of taking this sort of action is qualitatively different from an Absolute Morality. If a society decides to sacrifice children in the hope of a better harvest, the fact the society agrees upon this approach does not make it moral (nor is it immoral). It’s simply convention. Morality is a religious concept, dependent upon a paradigm which posits an external absolute independent of what humans agree upon.
Once again, there’s no such thing and the whole concept simply doesn’t work. There’s no evidence such a thing exists, we have no evidence it’s even possible. If it does exist, we know nothing of it and can’t communicate with it, which makes it useless as a guide for morality or anything else. Nor if such an “absolute” existed would it have any authority over us. Nor do we have any evidence that if such a thing exists that following it is desirable.
Given that it’s based on something real and is actually workable, that’s true.
No, it’s a useless killing of innocent people. But the fact that you say it’s “just convention” helps demonstrate why your “it’s all relative” philosophy is useless and destructive. Your “moral” philosophy can be used to justify any atrocity, and is completely worthless as a moral guide.
OK good; we’re beginning to reach an understanding here.
I am pointing out that the “morality” of taking this sort of action is qualitatively different from an Absolute Morality.
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Granted. However, I didn’t say that there was an Absolute Morality, and I didn’t assert that only an Absolute Morality is necessary for moral discussions. Quite the opposite. DerTris argues that AM is not even worth discussing, and while I agree with that position (yeah, I read Sartre’s The Flies) I wouldn’t posit that it’s the only possible position to argue.
I think you’re mistaken here. Morality is simply the result of an ethical process, whether that be based on someone’s idea of an absolute arbiter of right and wrong, or based on agreements on what is right and wrong.
For any moral arguments to have merit here, is has be grounded in some shared value. The whole point of most good moral arguments is to force the other side to see that their position contradicts one of their own values. Otherwise, it’s pissing in the wind. I bet we’d agree on that last bit, anyway.
Well, maybe not pissing in the wind, but it’s difficult for an agnostic to convince a religious person that “He who made everything” doesn’t get special priviliges to define right and wrong (and vice versa). That argument rarely goes anywhere, though it can be fascinating when argued well. It can also get a bit technical.
Morality isn’t a religious concept. It’s simply the issue of “right vs. wrong”. It’s essential to consider regardless of the basis of one’s value system. In humans, I’m confident that it’s strongly based on our intuitive “moral sense,” which preceded religion (even chimps have it, though few would argue that they have religion.)
The fact that morality has worn the clothes of religion for thousands of yeard does not mean that it’s inherently religious.
But I think there’s good news here, that we’re down to essentially two arguments. One is what “morality” means, and IMHO we’ve come down to essentially a semantic argument. You evidently mean something different by it than I do, because to me, morality is about discussing right and wrong, even if it’s based on shared values.
The other is whether moral arguments can apply to this subject of this thread. My position is that they can, but they’re only useful to the extent that they’re based on shared values. If there is no shared value on which an argument rests, it’s just stating one’s values (sort of like stating an opinion, but not exactly.) Like many arguments, there is not an objective answer. I doubt you’d disagree with that last bit, as well.
Something interesting about these kind of “what about the children?” arguments (and I realize this isn’t your own position, Krokodil, just something you’re repeating) is that, in the US, it’s a lot easier for a same-sex couple to adopt a child than it is for them to enter into a legally recognized union with one another.
Take a look at the Wiki maps on LGBT adoption in the US and same-sex marriage in the US. Adoption by same-sex couples and/or step-parent adoption by the same-sex partner of a person with biological children is legal in more states than recognize same-sex marriage or civil unions, and is only legally prohibited in nine states. A number of states that have amended their constitutions to ban same-sex marriages either allow or have not prohibited adoption by same-sex couples.
UNDESERVED? A non-biological parent who raised a child from birth isn’t “legitimate”?
Both my (straight) brother and my (lesbian) sister have adopted children. Are you telling me his son is my nephew but my sister’s daughters aren’t my nieces?
The only one I have heard (and it’s not very good) is that the government has no business with marriage at all but that there is an unenumerated right through tradition for a man and woman to marry and so under the Ninth Amendment the government needs to protect it.
Annie… I hear ya. My (lesbian) niece is going through a very aggravating custody battle with her babymama/ex, in a state with very conflicted policies about gay relationships. You’re preaching to the choir here.
That there should be NO recognition of marriage as far as the government is concerned. It is not that marriage is banned but that the government does not have a role recognizing any marriage. But since there is a Ninth Amendment right to marry a member of the opposite sex and so the government needs to protect that right.
The problem as I see it is as a contract, it is the govenments responsibility to regulate marriage in terms of next-of-kin, joint property, etc. In fact this argument would support SSM as a contract between two adults or emancipated minor (legally able to sign contracts). I would also question that if marriage is a right by tradition why is it necessarily limited to marriage between a man and woman? Also, what about the tradition of marrying while young? I believe most states you need to be 18 or 16 with parental concent (until recently it was 12 years old in Kansas) so is it an unenumerated right to marry while 12 or 13 or 14 years old?