Thursday, July 11, 2013
Moral Gray Areas
The following is a slightly modified definition of morality: "Honoring the equal rights of all sentient adults to life, liberty, property and self-defense, to be free from violation through force or fraud". And as has already been said here, all else is subjective and can be labeled as virtue--which is fair game for social pressure, but morality is the ONLY thing that should be legislated. This in no way changes the fact that subjective morality for adults does not exist.
However, there are a gray transition areas which, while limited, can be shown to need carefully considered legislation as well, all having to do with when rights are acquired. Specifically, I'm referring to cases such as the differing degrees of humane treatment given to animals, when does an embryo acquire the right to life, and when do children/adolescents or the mentally handicapped come to possess their rights to liberty, property and self defense. All of these gray areas deal with the degree of consciousness, intelligence, self-awareness or potential sentience possessed by a given subject; and they're gray because there is rarely a specific time, or stage of evolution between point A when they don't have a particular right, to point B when they do. For example, children acquire the right to liberty gradually, yet we use a specific age when they're suddenly no longer considered a minor and have full legal rights as adults. The point is to recognize that picking a specific, arbitrary point for legal purposes can obviously have negative consequences. How can we allow for extenuating circumstances yet maintain equal protection under the law? Should, say, an arbitrary first trimester limit on abortion be lengthened if, for instance, the fetus has developmental problems? When does the right to life of a fetus override the right to liberty of the mother? For animals, is humane treatment for a dog the sames as for a chicken, or a lizard or cockroach? It isn't immoral to put (lock up) a child in playpen, restrict an adolescent from selling his TV, drinking alcohol, or making them do chores, and you don't give a child a gun to handle bullies, etc., but when do they acquire those liberties?
When we look at the extremes, 1 day old vs. 9 mo. old fetus, dog vs. cockroach, we have little trouble making judgements. This isn't an argument against arbitrary limits, but the transition can be very problematic for deciding what's moral, and how we should deal with these issues legally. Sometimes we just don't have the information we need to make an informed judgement, and the first step is to recognize that. Some fundamentalists believe that the right to life begins at conception, but that's strictly a matter of arbitrary faith. Should a 13 year-old girl who is one day pregnant as the result of being raped by her father be forced to carry the baby to term? Others believe we can abort a healthy baby even when it's in the process of being born, but that's just as much a matter of blind faith, and that example should actually be considered murder.
These gray areas are gray because we don't have definitive answers for them, and the point is we need to recognize them for what they are and deal with them calmly as much as we can in our laws. All we know for sure is if a crime can have no victims, it isn't a crime. All certain immorality stems from an adult sentient establishing a moral double standard for himself or his family, group, race, religion or country.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
The Problems with Paul: His Roman Citizenship
As has been mentioned before, this site is very much anti-Paul. The surviving version of Christianity, which was originally a Jewish
sect led by Jesus' brother James, should rightly be called Paulism.
Much has been discovered about his influence in the last 50, and
especially the last 15, years. The most enlightening sources on the
subject are The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity, by Hyam Maccoby; Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity, by James D. Tabor; and James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, by Robert Eisenman, which is a summary and update of his earlier exhaustive work, James the Brother of Jesus, published 14 years earlier.
As implied in the title, this post focuses on one aspect of the many problems with Paul. While this is no way an apologetic for Judaism or early Jewish Christianity, it's theology being revelatory as well, the self-serving nature of Paul's overhaul of the movement founded by John the Baptizer, Jesus and James, sets Paulism apart as the biggest yet still subterranean sham in history. Could a simple tent-maker from Tarsus have had the obvious pull he displays, even in the wholly unlikely circumstance that a tent-maker became a Pharisee who studied under the storied sage, Gamaliel as Paul's acolyte, the author of Luke, has Paul claiming in Acts (22:3). Would a Pharisee be a thug enforcer, persecuting the Jewish Christians (likely responsible for the death of Stephen and possibly James) who had been defended by Gamaliel (Acts 5:34-39), at the bidding of the Roman appointed high priest? No, but a Herodian with Roman citizenship would certainly fit.
It has been my previous position that Paul was not a Roman citizen by birth as he claimed, but likely purchased it from funds skimmed from what he'd collected to bring to Jerusalem. The main reason to believe it was Acts (22:25), which has Paul revealing his Roman citizenship in order to avoid a flogging. Yet on previous occasions he claims he was whipped five times, beaten with rods three times (a Roman punishment), stoned once but never sought refuge in his citizenship (II Cor 11:24-25). Incredibly, on another occasion (Acts 16: 22/37-38), he was beaten by Roman authorities, yet doesn't reveal his citizenship until afterwards!
All this smacks heavily of fabrication, and poorly done at that, which means it is more likely that Paul was indeed born a Roman citizen. But Jews with Roman citizenship were almost unheard of, making the part about the authorities' surprise at his citizenship genuine. However, there was one group of quasi-Jews who did have Roman citizenship which had be awarded to "the offspring of Antipater and his son Herod for conspicuous service to Rome", namely, assisting in the Roman conquest of Palestine. Eisenman, using several sources in his book (above), especially the historian who was Paul's contemporary, Josephus, shows that Paul almost certainly was such a Herodian (p. 189-193).
But Acts, probably written no earlier than 80 CE and possibly even into the second century, was bent on emphasizing Paul's Roman citizenship as a selling point to it's gentile audience; while Paul himself, working with gentiles and Jews in Asia Minor in the 40s & 50s would have been reluctant to proclaim that citizenship himself, wanting to exploit his Jewish connection while knowing, before the fall of Jerusalem, the prevelance of hatred by Jews for the Roman occupation of Palestine. In fact, he never mentions his Roman citizenship in any of his own writings.
In Paul's own words (Rom. 16:10-11), he sends greetings to the house of Aristobulus (King of Lesser Armenia and son of Herod of Calacis), and to "Herodion, my kinsman". Salome, the one who danced for the head of John the Baptist, was the wife of Aristobulus and was Herodion's mother.
As implied in the title, this post focuses on one aspect of the many problems with Paul. While this is no way an apologetic for Judaism or early Jewish Christianity, it's theology being revelatory as well, the self-serving nature of Paul's overhaul of the movement founded by John the Baptizer, Jesus and James, sets Paulism apart as the biggest yet still subterranean sham in history. Could a simple tent-maker from Tarsus have had the obvious pull he displays, even in the wholly unlikely circumstance that a tent-maker became a Pharisee who studied under the storied sage, Gamaliel as Paul's acolyte, the author of Luke, has Paul claiming in Acts (22:3). Would a Pharisee be a thug enforcer, persecuting the Jewish Christians (likely responsible for the death of Stephen and possibly James) who had been defended by Gamaliel (Acts 5:34-39), at the bidding of the Roman appointed high priest? No, but a Herodian with Roman citizenship would certainly fit.
It has been my previous position that Paul was not a Roman citizen by birth as he claimed, but likely purchased it from funds skimmed from what he'd collected to bring to Jerusalem. The main reason to believe it was Acts (22:25), which has Paul revealing his Roman citizenship in order to avoid a flogging. Yet on previous occasions he claims he was whipped five times, beaten with rods three times (a Roman punishment), stoned once but never sought refuge in his citizenship (II Cor 11:24-25). Incredibly, on another occasion (Acts 16: 22/37-38), he was beaten by Roman authorities, yet doesn't reveal his citizenship until afterwards!
All this smacks heavily of fabrication, and poorly done at that, which means it is more likely that Paul was indeed born a Roman citizen. But Jews with Roman citizenship were almost unheard of, making the part about the authorities' surprise at his citizenship genuine. However, there was one group of quasi-Jews who did have Roman citizenship which had be awarded to "the offspring of Antipater and his son Herod for conspicuous service to Rome", namely, assisting in the Roman conquest of Palestine. Eisenman, using several sources in his book (above), especially the historian who was Paul's contemporary, Josephus, shows that Paul almost certainly was such a Herodian (p. 189-193).
But Acts, probably written no earlier than 80 CE and possibly even into the second century, was bent on emphasizing Paul's Roman citizenship as a selling point to it's gentile audience; while Paul himself, working with gentiles and Jews in Asia Minor in the 40s & 50s would have been reluctant to proclaim that citizenship himself, wanting to exploit his Jewish connection while knowing, before the fall of Jerusalem, the prevelance of hatred by Jews for the Roman occupation of Palestine. In fact, he never mentions his Roman citizenship in any of his own writings.
In Paul's own words (Rom. 16:10-11), he sends greetings to the house of Aristobulus (King of Lesser Armenia and son of Herod of Calacis), and to "Herodion, my kinsman". Salome, the one who danced for the head of John the Baptist, was the wife of Aristobulus and was Herodion's mother.
Sunday, June 23, 2013
The Redistribution of Beauty
Thought Experiment:
I look around and wonder, if there is any reasonable argument for the redistribution of wealth in the pursuit of some sort of ideal fairness in this life, what happens in an ideal world or in the afterlife if there is one. Take physical attractiveness for instance. Would we all look the same or at least possess the same degree of attractiveness? Or would we possess a spiritual attractiveness we developed in life? Would physical health be replaced with varying degrees of spiritual health? And what about athletic/physical prowess, creativity or especially, intelligence? Would all those be spread out and evenly redistributed, or would there still need to be ugliness to accentuate the beautiful? Would there be the wild desert to accentuate the lush, groomed Eden? The hunchback to set off the Adonis.
I guess I'm asking a couple of somewhat separate questions: 1) What is fair, how is it determined and by who? 2) How do we judge spiritual qualities etc., when our hormones are screaming "reproduce"?
I look around and wonder, if there is any reasonable argument for the redistribution of wealth in the pursuit of some sort of ideal fairness in this life, what happens in an ideal world or in the afterlife if there is one. Take physical attractiveness for instance. Would we all look the same or at least possess the same degree of attractiveness? Or would we possess a spiritual attractiveness we developed in life? Would physical health be replaced with varying degrees of spiritual health? And what about athletic/physical prowess, creativity or especially, intelligence? Would all those be spread out and evenly redistributed, or would there still need to be ugliness to accentuate the beautiful? Would there be the wild desert to accentuate the lush, groomed Eden? The hunchback to set off the Adonis.
I guess I'm asking a couple of somewhat separate questions: 1) What is fair, how is it determined and by who? 2) How do we judge spiritual qualities etc., when our hormones are screaming "reproduce"?
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
When Do We Acquire Our Four Natural Rights?
Yes, four rights. The moral code given in these posts in the past referred to "Honoring the equal rights of all to their life, liberty and property, to be free from violation through force or fraud". It was brought to my attention lately that self-defense was an exception to the universality of the code, to which I replied that it was part of the code, which is true, it just hadn't been included as it should be. So:
Morality is honoring the equal rights of all to their life, liberty, property and self-defense, to be free from violation through force or fraud.
Self-defense is a right which should be included with the other three--life, liberty and property. I'm surprised Locke, Jefferson and Paine didn't include it way back then, or that it took so long here. When someone breaks the absolute moral code by violating the rights of another, he nullifies any protection of his rights.
It is that simple, but that doesn't mean there aren't any special cases (exceptions?) that put the code to the test on that given issue. There is one such issue like that which I can think of and that's abortion, because it deals with the rights of two individuals and when it is that we acquire our rights. That extends to the question of when children, after they're born, acquire their rights. Certainly a child doesn't have the right to liberty and property at birth. And when does an embryo acquire the right to life?
The issue of rights acquisition is problematic and doesn't have universally pat answers, but these questions still don't apply to the overarching and vast universality of the rights of adults. I think we can see why we can't veer off into this every time the subject of rights comes up. It's a relatively small portion of rights issues, and, except for abortion, we're in overwhelming agreement. If we weren't we'd be having people claiming that children have the right to go play in traffic, or that we're immorally locking babies up when we put them in a playpen.
Morality is honoring the equal rights of all to their life, liberty, property and self-defense, to be free from violation through force or fraud.
Self-defense is a right which should be included with the other three--life, liberty and property. I'm surprised Locke, Jefferson and Paine didn't include it way back then, or that it took so long here. When someone breaks the absolute moral code by violating the rights of another, he nullifies any protection of his rights.
It is that simple, but that doesn't mean there aren't any special cases (exceptions?) that put the code to the test on that given issue. There is one such issue like that which I can think of and that's abortion, because it deals with the rights of two individuals and when it is that we acquire our rights. That extends to the question of when children, after they're born, acquire their rights. Certainly a child doesn't have the right to liberty and property at birth. And when does an embryo acquire the right to life?
The issue of rights acquisition is problematic and doesn't have universally pat answers, but these questions still don't apply to the overarching and vast universality of the rights of adults. I think we can see why we can't veer off into this every time the subject of rights comes up. It's a relatively small portion of rights issues, and, except for abortion, we're in overwhelming agreement. If we weren't we'd be having people claiming that children have the right to go play in traffic, or that we're immorally locking babies up when we put them in a playpen.
Sunday, June 16, 2013
The Innate Superiority of Full Sentients
All animal life (essentially) subsists on plant life or other animals that do. What makes animal life superior? The absence of pain in plants or lack of some form of consciousness? But animals subsist, at least, by taking the lives of plants, the right to life being the ultimate right of any living thing that is said to have rights. The only distinguishing characteristic of many forms of lower animal life from plants is the ability to move around. Does that make them morally superior?
Morality is what we're talking about here. When does it become immoral to take the life of another living thing? Is it anything but a grey area?
As we move up the food chain, intelligence increases, particularly with mammals, some displaying primitive forms of self-awareness in higher primates, cetaceans, elephants, maybe dogs, and cats--well, dogs anyway--and maybe even some birds. Many cultures bestow informal rights on these higher animals to better treatment, especially to those most valued in this category, our children, who do not achieve full self-awareness for several years.
So what is full self-awareness, and does it give those who have it, or the potential for it, superior rights over the rest? Even animals who have learned a language, such as Koko the gorilla, and who recognize themselves in mirrors, struggle with the concept of "I", "me", "mine", "them" and "theirs". And while they may grieve the death of a "loved" one, we are apparently the only ones that understand the universality and inevitability of mortality--and that's what makes us fully aware. That and self-awareness itself enable us to understand what it means to kill another, giving birth to innate morality.
I think some take that too far and attempt to give equal rights to (some/all?) animals. Does our superior self-awareness make us immoral if we eat other animals, but not the many predators in the animal kingdom lower down on the food/intelligence/self-awareness chain that do? Why?
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Is Freedom Worth It?
The question comes up from time to time, is freedom really worth it? Why is it so important? The easiest answer is to point to genocide, slavery or any of a near infinite number of examples of man being inhumane to man. The worst such examples are when an elite group has the power of government/military to impose it's will, sometimes via the law, on another group. Freedom is when a man or a nation is limited from exercising such power over others. Freedom is also following our desires in how we make our livelihoods, who we marry, or hitting the open roads or hiking trails. Freedom has also been defined here as the ability for someone to be as dumb as they want--on their own dime.
Freedom can have its costs, in humiliation, money, time and even our lives; but those from countries where there is a despotic government never question the value of freedom, only the lack of its defense. But some in modern western society tend to take it for granted, allowing government every greater power, often in exchange for government provided security--thinking for some reason that their government would never abuse its power. That is government's basic purpose after all, providing security via the police, military and court system; and while most people are familiar with the concept of the corrupting influence of power, we tend not to recognize the problem in our own back yard. We corrupt our government by bestowing too much power on it, and ourselves by shirking our responsibilities to remain informed and to always champion liberty.
Benjamin Franklin has been famously paraphrased many times from this original quote in Poor Richard's Almanac in 1738, "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power." Here is another slight variation of the many paraphrases: Only liberty guarantees whatever security we have, and if you trade too much of it away, you will loose both. How much is too much? When the only way to get it back is revolution--a point which is seldom recognized until it is passed.
Freedom can have its costs, in humiliation, money, time and even our lives; but those from countries where there is a despotic government never question the value of freedom, only the lack of its defense. But some in modern western society tend to take it for granted, allowing government every greater power, often in exchange for government provided security--thinking for some reason that their government would never abuse its power. That is government's basic purpose after all, providing security via the police, military and court system; and while most people are familiar with the concept of the corrupting influence of power, we tend not to recognize the problem in our own back yard. We corrupt our government by bestowing too much power on it, and ourselves by shirking our responsibilities to remain informed and to always champion liberty.
Benjamin Franklin has been famously paraphrased many times from this original quote in Poor Richard's Almanac in 1738, "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power." Here is another slight variation of the many paraphrases: Only liberty guarantees whatever security we have, and if you trade too much of it away, you will loose both. How much is too much? When the only way to get it back is revolution--a point which is seldom recognized until it is passed.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
A Reasoned Attitude Toward God--In Movies
There are precious few movies, reasonably well made and in English anyway, which fit the category. There are many, particularly older titles which deal with religious faith, but such faith is inevitably blind since faith is held up as its own justification. There are only 6 titles given here. It isn't surprising that there are so few, and one of those is musical. As science progresses, presenting us with natural answers and evidence to questions that had previously been deemed to be the realm of religious faith, we tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater when we reject God along with religion. We rush to judgement, so if God doesn't intervene, He/It must not exist. But science has yet to come up with the first bit of evidence that addresses the origin of the universe, pro- or no God. The least favorite thing for us as a species to do is to admit that we're clueless.
A model or theory that answers this conundrum has been given in previous posts here, but this is only one tiny voice squeaking in the ethereal wilderness So if there are movies which have a wider appeal while promoting reason and reasonable questions in this area of inquiry, we may draw benefit from their messages, and we may support those messages by bringing them up in our social interactions.
Inherit the Wind (1960)--The first and in many ways the most courageous, it's thinly fictional look at the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925 brought teaching religion and suppressing science in the classroom to the forefront again. A classic with some outstanding performances.
Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)--Another classic, this first major rock opera (based on the 1971 Broadway production, which itself followed the music album in 1970) uses an outstanding Webber-Rice score telling the story of the Passion of Jesus, based on the gospels but without the supernatural elements. The lyrics of the title song at the end ask the questions we've been asking, often in hiding, ever since.
The Devil's Advocate (1997)--It's important to remember that most of the film is a dream sequence, with the Devil being, for the protagonist (as he is for us all), a symbol for temptation. As he declares at the end, "Vanity is definitely my favorite sin", but on introspection we realize that it's the justification for all sin.
Doubt (2008)--The specific problems that are a consequence of the abuse of power of an authoritarian church, lead the parochial school principle/nun to question the divine source of that authority. Those questions, given her commitment to that divine authority, lead to her soul crushing doubt.
Creation (2009)--Well made but little known independent film about the events surrounding Darwin's publication of On the Origin of the Species. He struggles with it due to his wife, Emma, being very religious and insists that she agree to its publication (profound speculation?). The death of their sweet, favorite daughter, due possibly to their being close cousins, points to natural selection, while there's no explanation for God's non-intervention in any case.
The Tree of Life (2011)-- The opening quote sets the stage, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Job 38:4,7". In other words, it isn't your concern, which is the only answer any revealed religion can give to man's continual question, Why? (See post by that title below.)
A model or theory that answers this conundrum has been given in previous posts here, but this is only one tiny voice squeaking in the ethereal wilderness So if there are movies which have a wider appeal while promoting reason and reasonable questions in this area of inquiry, we may draw benefit from their messages, and we may support those messages by bringing them up in our social interactions.
Inherit the Wind (1960)--The first and in many ways the most courageous, it's thinly fictional look at the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925 brought teaching religion and suppressing science in the classroom to the forefront again. A classic with some outstanding performances.
Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)--Another classic, this first major rock opera (based on the 1971 Broadway production, which itself followed the music album in 1970) uses an outstanding Webber-Rice score telling the story of the Passion of Jesus, based on the gospels but without the supernatural elements. The lyrics of the title song at the end ask the questions we've been asking, often in hiding, ever since.
The Devil's Advocate (1997)--It's important to remember that most of the film is a dream sequence, with the Devil being, for the protagonist (as he is for us all), a symbol for temptation. As he declares at the end, "Vanity is definitely my favorite sin", but on introspection we realize that it's the justification for all sin.
Doubt (2008)--The specific problems that are a consequence of the abuse of power of an authoritarian church, lead the parochial school principle/nun to question the divine source of that authority. Those questions, given her commitment to that divine authority, lead to her soul crushing doubt.
Creation (2009)--Well made but little known independent film about the events surrounding Darwin's publication of On the Origin of the Species. He struggles with it due to his wife, Emma, being very religious and insists that she agree to its publication (profound speculation?). The death of their sweet, favorite daughter, due possibly to their being close cousins, points to natural selection, while there's no explanation for God's non-intervention in any case.
The Tree of Life (2011)-- The opening quote sets the stage, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Job 38:4,7". In other words, it isn't your concern, which is the only answer any revealed religion can give to man's continual question, Why? (See post by that title below.)
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