Ciao,

Adrian

http://lashawnbarber.com/archives/2004/08/20/the-walter-williams-hour/

Gotta stop blogging so late and when brain dead. But thanks for covering my six o’clock

Yes. I’m not sure I would put it in terms of goodness versus morality, but, say, in terms of niceness versus morality, but I agree with your point.

The standard “I can be a good person without God” line is just what you say it is: an unrealistic extrapolation from the habitual niceness that comes easily to us in our comfortable, peaceful lives (although not all of us are even as nice as we think)—an unreasonable extrapolation from that to the ability of be truly good/moral when it’s really necessary to rise to the occasion.

In other words, we can’t claim to be reliably, infallibly good. Only God is reliably, infallibly good—trustworthy, as Scripture says. It’s for that reason that we say that we need God to be good. Non-believers can do good things. But to do the complete good and to do it consistently is something that we can’t do without the help of the One who does consistently, reliably, always do the complete good because he IS the GOOD.

It’s good “talking” with you.

Adrian

Goodness is relative to traditions, while morality remains absolute.

I dare say most of us here in the US are good to animals, ie pets and probably squeamish at bloodletting. However in another time and place, we wouldn’t think twice about kicking a dog or slaughtering livestock with a machete and leaving it to bleed to death.

If one has ever watched that excellent series on Shaka Zulu, with Peter Cele in the lead role, the interaction of goodness and morality are quite evident transcends the context of time & place. What we oftentimes do is equate morality with goodness.

Put another way, anyone in Shaka’s “shoes” would probably be just as bloodthirsty and evil. King David and 100s of other leaders bear witness to the age old adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Ok, since kings and rulers are a rarity, let’s break it down to the common man level. Knowing what we know now and given the way we were raised, we all heartily condemn slavery. Yet if anyone one of us were to find us in the right place and right time, we’d have no compunctions about partaking in the slave trade for our gain.

Whether hunting and capturing weaker tribes, supporting the logistics in getting them to port, housing and feeding the slave traders, or even tending to the slaves until they have been loaded into the ships for export, we’d all want a piece of the action. Such is human nature, ‘better them than us’.

The issue, it seems to me, is not whether a non-Christian/non-theist can see that there are what are called “exceptionless moral norms” (e.g. no possible circumstance could justify killing an innocent person in cold blood).

The real question is whether we are capable of not violating those norms on their own.

I submit that, in answering that question honestly for ourselves, we have to imagine ourselves, not as the nice people we think we are, and probably are, in our ordinary lives when everything is going OK. We have to imagine ourselves under duress in situations where it’s very tempting to do the wrong thing to get oursleves out of a tight spot.

Speaking for myself, I won’t venture to claim that I wouldn’t give into the temptation. The fact that I cannot claim that I won’t suggests, I think, that our goodness isn’t automatic and that much of what we take to be our goodness now is due to finding ourselves in easy circumstances where we’re not being put to the test.

Cordially,

Adrian

To comprehend that, you just might have to believe in God.”

Stated as respectfully as I possibly can…

I do not believe in your particular version of God, but I manage to comprehend it just fine.

As did Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and others.

Catz

Regards,

Josh

Maybe I’m not following you, but now you seem to be saying almost the opposite of what I took you to be saying before. Now you’re maintaining, I think, that humans sexual behavior is somehow free-floating with respect to biology. But, if that’s the case, then I don’t see how it follows, even as a possibility, that homosexuality can be “hardwired.” More importantly, I don’t see how it would any longer be possible to deny that anything goes sexually.

The position I’m staking out neither ignores biology nor lets reductionism have the final say in determining what biology is and means. In other words: the body, as we ordinarily experience it, remains the basic reference-point, the basic unity, and, on that level, the very structure of the body itself contains norms of normal and abnormal.

Someone told me this last night: a talk-show host, arguing against homosexuality, draws an analogy to the effect that, even though it’s physically possible to drink by sticking a straw up one’s nose and inhaling, doing so goes contrary to what the nose—and the mouth—are for. My point all along has been that there is a “what it’s for” built into the body, and that this “what it’s for” is a bodily, natural phenomenon, but that it’s so basic that it can’t be explained exhaustively in terms of genes, etc.

Cordially,

A.

Prager’s article was fantastic. If you haven’t read it Adrian, it certainly states my beliefs better than I could ever articulate, backed up with some great facts and perspective that are new to me.

“we’ve got to wrest the body away from the reductionists and restore ordinary experience to its rights.”

I concur. That does not mean that reductionism can not lead to insite. Properly, science is the process of theory derived through reductionism, and tested against experiential reality. To throw out the testing, as many in the “reality based community” have, is to throw out the value of science. Reading Prager’s article, I felt I could successfully reduce parts of it on top of social evolutionary theory. Whether the resulting reduction could be used for anything constructive is debatable.

“Is there any compelling evidence that those other factors have anything to do with what’s called genetic or biological “hardwiring”?”

No, but see my thought experiment below. Even the actual rat experiment I mentioned had nothing to do with genetics. It was actually the ENVIRONMENT of the developing fetus that was altered. Brains are extremely plastic organs. However, the experiment does suggest that genetic factors could cause similar affects (effects?).
Like Prager , I do suspect that a minority of homosexuals are hardwired.

Let me leave you with a simple thought experiment.

In lower mammals sexual behavior is not very variable. Homosexual behavior is rare and presumeably selected against.
Lower mammals have sexually dimorphic physical parts that are used for breeding. It is fair to consider the physical parts “genetically hardwired” for breeding. Because the parts are never used in homosexual acts, it is reasonable to conclude that lower mammals have “hardwired” sexual behavior. Sexual behavior CAN be hardwired.

In humans, we still see the hardwired physical parts, but we also see homosexual behavior. I believe it is fair to conclude that sexual behavior in humans has been decoupled to some unknown extent from the physical parts. It is no longer fully hardwired. To what degree is unknown and most likely variable.

It does not follow as a necessity, but as a possibility, that homosexual behavior may be hardwired in some individuals. There is no conclusive evidence of this.

Thank you La Shawn for the thread. Thank you again Renee. Prager’s article has been added to my library.

Ok, how about Walter Williams? I guess not. But these people give me hope. That’s why I’m “annoyed” and not “angry” anymore.