Tom Keats wrote:
> In article <KekOe.5857$Fq2.4390@trndny03>,
> Stephen Harding <[email protected]> writes:
>
>>>for various reasons, some based on revealed religion, some on species of
>>>natural law or philosophy. It's a good topic to mull over on the more boring
>>>parts of a bike ride.
>>
>>Well if secularists manage to throw out any law having a religious
>>basis to it, I don't think society will be well served if there
>>are no "ethical" or "socially acceptable" definitions of "good" or
>>"bad" (dare I even mention "evil") to replace them.
>
> I suspect Salman Rushdie might have a somewhat different take on that.
Why must one take negative results of religious based sense of
"right" and "wrong" to characterize religion?
Seems there are many instances in history where very bad things
happened from secular definitions of what was right or wrong, and
because too many people ignored the religious based interpretation.
******'s view of Jews; American slavery; the destruction of one
ethnic group by another whether it be "settlers" versus "Indians"
or Turks versus Armenians.
Surely you don't believe if there wasn't a "God wants me to" excuse,
that such things would not occur!
>>Hopefully, such definitions will be slow in being redefined as well.
>>Nothing worse than trying to keep up with what's "bad" today but maybe
>>not "bad" tomorrow, or not bad somewhere else, with some other group of
>>people.
>
> Some places a long time ago outgrew the criminalization
> of witchcraft.
>
> Maybe someday some places would outgrow criminalization
> of possession of small, personal quantities of marijuana
> (which I'm sure many people consider to be an "evil" substance.)
>
> For a less extreme example, not so long ago in Canada
> shopping on Sundays was virtually unheard of, thanks to
> some legislation called The Lord's Day Act. That was
> loosened-up in the '70s, although there are still communities
> (parts of Nova Scotia comes to mind) that adhere to the
> tradition of no shopping on Sundays. Anyhow, it used to be
> "bad" (and illegal) for a proprietor to open his shop for
> business on a Sunday. Now it isn't.
Why would it be any different under "secular" based law?
Instead of "God" saying you're bad to do this, it's "society"
or some other nearly equally nebulous entity.
The big difference is that what is considered moral in a
religious sense tends (IMO) to change more slowly than what
society considers good or bad.
If you're going to have a standard, I think it's best to have
one that stands up to time rather than, it being OK this year
but not OK next, or vice versa.
Moral implies God, which implies a force more powerful than
mere humans. If it's nothing but humans saying I can't do
this or that, seems to have less power to me.
One thing is certain, religious based or secular, you're still
going to have *someone's* definition of "good" and "evil" even
if you want to call it something else.
SMH
about your saying there's no such thing as evil (or words to that effect)