M
Monkey487
Guest
[FONT="] [FONT="]Do Not Miss The Forest For The Trees. A Response to the Article [/FONT][FONT="]“Critics of gay marriage often base their arguments on the certainty of their religious convictions. But societies without doubt are dangerous places, argues Adam Gopnik.” [/FONT][FONT="]by Mark Jennings. (Part 2 of 5)[/FONT]
In the last century there has been a growing threat to the founding principles as various men laid the groundwork for increasing the power of human regulation over an ever increasing number of individual affairs. This push on ‘gay marriage’ is just the latest salvo. As Gopnik implies, law ought to be more about ‘manners’ as we all are to be infused with doubt (in and for the interest of peace) about the rightness of anything. Law is a matter of convention as we grope about for order unafraid of the ‘slippery slopes’ because in the end ‘what is is right.’ (Gold star for correctly guessing who that saying is attributed to.) Gopnik is consistent here and I commend him for that. In his world there is no Lawgiver but us—as his comments on pigeons and heifers makes clear. Yet is this man really one who truly doubts?[/FONT]
[FONT="]It pains me to see such a double standard passing for something thoughtful. Yes, we are all hypocrites at times and to degrees but it is only to those who hold to the values found within the Natural Law that the label of ‘hypocrite’ really seems to stick; getting a relativist to stand on something as like trying to nail jelly to the wall. As Saul Alinsky in ‘Rules for Radicals’ astutely pointed out that in order to win you must use your opponents own values against them. (Often the accusations are based upon both uncertainty and misrepresentation of what our values really are.) The friendly and allegedly ‘judgement free’ system can then, in some odd reversal (due to growing ignorance and obfuscation,) gain the ‘moral’ high ground against those who believe that they themselves are sinners. It is a brilliant strategy and it is working very well because the Natural Law basis for reason has been seriously eroded in our new supposedly kinder, gentler society. It works because nobody wants to be called stupid, a hypocrite, or just plain mean. [/FONT]
[FONT="]How could I possibly accuse Gopnik of hypocrisy when he is claiming to champion the cause of universal doubt in the interest of world peace? With this statement…[/FONT]
[FONT="] “Though science has given us genuine certainty about a great deal of celestial and human conduct - we know that men and women sprang from apes, as we know that gun laws limit gun violence - science cannot give us any certainty at all about ends, about what we ought to feel and how we ought to live. We know for certain that men and women sprang from apes but each of us must choose how to land that leap.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]There is no doubt in this statement which, if true, eliminates completely both the reality and relevance of the moral natural law. (The scientist becomes the new priest; and we all know who pays them right?) Without a doubt, he sweeps aside thousands of years of careful thought along with the basis of the U.S. Constitution. (It essentially embraces what Jean Paul Sartre said about truth (there is none other than perhaps yourself) and about choosing a path, philosophy, and/or goal (doesn’t really matter what) to give your life meaning.) There is no doubt in his mind that the universe has ever had a relevant God so that the elites among us have always merely imagined such a power to harness some version of the ‘divine right of kings’ to lord over the little people who cower and fear at the terror, carnage, and cruelty left in their wake. The masses embrace these various religious myths for fear of impending wrath of whoever and whatever; pure and simple right? Will the introduction of the new paradigm free us from the tyranny of the religious folk? Nietzsche argued that we should eliminate the old myths and create bold new ones to free us from ‘slave morality.’ I believe that he was too optimistic. The new ‘overmen’ will just appoint themselves as the new masters through a mountain of lies and a few trinkets and handouts—because fallen men are fallen men. Marx too was (and is) wrong. There are countless millions of human corpses which bear witness against his philosophy and still bear witness against what is being proposed that we should believe today. These atheist philosophers share in common the belief that ultimately man makes the rules. [/FONT]
[FONT="]If I truly believed there were no God, I would certainly believe the version of history Gopnik has presented. But I do not because simply I do not have enough faith to be an atheist. Atheists must embrace the belief that we are nothing more than very sophisticated machines created by infinite repetition; and that ultimately ‘what is is right.’ I find it very contrary to common experience that I really do not have any free choices and that there are no things which are evil (no matter what we may try to conjure up concerning them.) There are too many gaping philosophical holes in a system infested with very dangerous slippery slopes that Gopnik claims we should not fear. Though I do not believe that you need to be religious to act in a relatively moral fashion, atheists can act morally because they too are made in the image of God just like everyone else—yet all men sin because rebellion is hereditary. The trouble morally with atheism in that morality itself has no foundation to support any moral action in a God-less world. I believe atheist philosopher Kai Nielson is correct in noting that from his point of view… [/FONT]
“We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons should not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn’t decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me… Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality.”
Kai Nielsen, “Why Should I Be Moral?” American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1984), p. 90.
[FONT="]They must hitchhike upon a moral system that is not their own; and it works (to some extent) because (even if they be denied or masked) the tenets of the natural moral law are woven into the fabric of every persons mind (Romans 2:14-15.) Yet we war and claim we have no Father. The very thought that we are ‘cosmic orphans’ (Eisley) is not freeing at all; it leaves me thinking briefly about Nietzsche’s madman despairing that who are we that we wipe away the horizon as we have now unchained ourselves from the sun. Unlike the madman, I am not shaken by the claims of a faith which really has no foundation. [/FONT]
[FONT="]I have no interest in embracing myths—myths lose their power when you no longer believe in them. Yet ‘playing pretend’ is sufficient for (perhaps most) people who figure that it does not really matter whether this or that is actually true but whether or not this or that actually ‘works.’ (The way I see it, what ‘works’ for most people is being on top of the pile; the elites thrive in the environment of what ‘works.’ Many Christians are so since it ‘works’ for them…so on and so forth…) Mine is not an existential faith but one that sees that attributing everything to mere accident (or actually inevitable due the power of infinite mathematics—monkeys and typewriters—as some have argued) is no sufficient explanation. Those claims to that which was before the ‘big bang’ are outside the realm of science simply because they are not observable nor can anything prior to the passage of the first t[SUB]p[/SUB] be even mathematically discerned.) Yet it is not the lack of sufficient explanation science has offered as to the origin of the cosmos which primarily pushes me to believe in God—to ‘fill in the gaps’ so to speak. Bonhoeffer wisely said that the knowledge of God lies with what we know—not in that which we don’t know. I know that I am a morally infused contingent being and I believe the testimony about the literally risen Christ is historically true. [/FONT]
In the last century there has been a growing threat to the founding principles as various men laid the groundwork for increasing the power of human regulation over an ever increasing number of individual affairs. This push on ‘gay marriage’ is just the latest salvo. As Gopnik implies, law ought to be more about ‘manners’ as we all are to be infused with doubt (in and for the interest of peace) about the rightness of anything. Law is a matter of convention as we grope about for order unafraid of the ‘slippery slopes’ because in the end ‘what is is right.’ (Gold star for correctly guessing who that saying is attributed to.) Gopnik is consistent here and I commend him for that. In his world there is no Lawgiver but us—as his comments on pigeons and heifers makes clear. Yet is this man really one who truly doubts?[/FONT]
[FONT="]It pains me to see such a double standard passing for something thoughtful. Yes, we are all hypocrites at times and to degrees but it is only to those who hold to the values found within the Natural Law that the label of ‘hypocrite’ really seems to stick; getting a relativist to stand on something as like trying to nail jelly to the wall. As Saul Alinsky in ‘Rules for Radicals’ astutely pointed out that in order to win you must use your opponents own values against them. (Often the accusations are based upon both uncertainty and misrepresentation of what our values really are.) The friendly and allegedly ‘judgement free’ system can then, in some odd reversal (due to growing ignorance and obfuscation,) gain the ‘moral’ high ground against those who believe that they themselves are sinners. It is a brilliant strategy and it is working very well because the Natural Law basis for reason has been seriously eroded in our new supposedly kinder, gentler society. It works because nobody wants to be called stupid, a hypocrite, or just plain mean. [/FONT]
[FONT="]How could I possibly accuse Gopnik of hypocrisy when he is claiming to champion the cause of universal doubt in the interest of world peace? With this statement…[/FONT]
[FONT="] “Though science has given us genuine certainty about a great deal of celestial and human conduct - we know that men and women sprang from apes, as we know that gun laws limit gun violence - science cannot give us any certainty at all about ends, about what we ought to feel and how we ought to live. We know for certain that men and women sprang from apes but each of us must choose how to land that leap.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]There is no doubt in this statement which, if true, eliminates completely both the reality and relevance of the moral natural law. (The scientist becomes the new priest; and we all know who pays them right?) Without a doubt, he sweeps aside thousands of years of careful thought along with the basis of the U.S. Constitution. (It essentially embraces what Jean Paul Sartre said about truth (there is none other than perhaps yourself) and about choosing a path, philosophy, and/or goal (doesn’t really matter what) to give your life meaning.) There is no doubt in his mind that the universe has ever had a relevant God so that the elites among us have always merely imagined such a power to harness some version of the ‘divine right of kings’ to lord over the little people who cower and fear at the terror, carnage, and cruelty left in their wake. The masses embrace these various religious myths for fear of impending wrath of whoever and whatever; pure and simple right? Will the introduction of the new paradigm free us from the tyranny of the religious folk? Nietzsche argued that we should eliminate the old myths and create bold new ones to free us from ‘slave morality.’ I believe that he was too optimistic. The new ‘overmen’ will just appoint themselves as the new masters through a mountain of lies and a few trinkets and handouts—because fallen men are fallen men. Marx too was (and is) wrong. There are countless millions of human corpses which bear witness against his philosophy and still bear witness against what is being proposed that we should believe today. These atheist philosophers share in common the belief that ultimately man makes the rules. [/FONT]
[FONT="]If I truly believed there were no God, I would certainly believe the version of history Gopnik has presented. But I do not because simply I do not have enough faith to be an atheist. Atheists must embrace the belief that we are nothing more than very sophisticated machines created by infinite repetition; and that ultimately ‘what is is right.’ I find it very contrary to common experience that I really do not have any free choices and that there are no things which are evil (no matter what we may try to conjure up concerning them.) There are too many gaping philosophical holes in a system infested with very dangerous slippery slopes that Gopnik claims we should not fear. Though I do not believe that you need to be religious to act in a relatively moral fashion, atheists can act morally because they too are made in the image of God just like everyone else—yet all men sin because rebellion is hereditary. The trouble morally with atheism in that morality itself has no foundation to support any moral action in a God-less world. I believe atheist philosopher Kai Nielson is correct in noting that from his point of view… [/FONT]
“We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons should not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn’t decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me… Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality.”
Kai Nielsen, “Why Should I Be Moral?” American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1984), p. 90.
[FONT="]They must hitchhike upon a moral system that is not their own; and it works (to some extent) because (even if they be denied or masked) the tenets of the natural moral law are woven into the fabric of every persons mind (Romans 2:14-15.) Yet we war and claim we have no Father. The very thought that we are ‘cosmic orphans’ (Eisley) is not freeing at all; it leaves me thinking briefly about Nietzsche’s madman despairing that who are we that we wipe away the horizon as we have now unchained ourselves from the sun. Unlike the madman, I am not shaken by the claims of a faith which really has no foundation. [/FONT]
[FONT="]I have no interest in embracing myths—myths lose their power when you no longer believe in them. Yet ‘playing pretend’ is sufficient for (perhaps most) people who figure that it does not really matter whether this or that is actually true but whether or not this or that actually ‘works.’ (The way I see it, what ‘works’ for most people is being on top of the pile; the elites thrive in the environment of what ‘works.’ Many Christians are so since it ‘works’ for them…so on and so forth…) Mine is not an existential faith but one that sees that attributing everything to mere accident (or actually inevitable due the power of infinite mathematics—monkeys and typewriters—as some have argued) is no sufficient explanation. Those claims to that which was before the ‘big bang’ are outside the realm of science simply because they are not observable nor can anything prior to the passage of the first t[SUB]p[/SUB] be even mathematically discerned.) Yet it is not the lack of sufficient explanation science has offered as to the origin of the cosmos which primarily pushes me to believe in God—to ‘fill in the gaps’ so to speak. Bonhoeffer wisely said that the knowledge of God lies with what we know—not in that which we don’t know. I know that I am a morally infused contingent being and I believe the testimony about the literally risen Christ is historically true. [/FONT]