The (Inter)National Book, Or, "We Are Doomed!"

[KevinG]

Then there will be no common source for morals, and there will be no morals. Every man will do what he feels best, but he will have no standard by which to make his judgements.

History, not fairy dust, helps us determine what works.

Lehi

The common source for truth is not found in a single book. It is found with God and God alone. We access truth by accessing God. Scriptures are a tool for recording and transmitting God's will but they are not sufficient without the Holy Spirit and Light of Christ.

[Loran Blood]

Ariarates, on 10 October 2011 - 08:56 AM, said:

Autocratic or mob rule is not the human norm. If you insist that it is, please provide some argumentation.

Autocratic, authoritarian to totalitarian control and/or majoritarian democracy (from Rousseau's fundamental concepts to the L.A. riots to white lynchings in the old South) are, indeed, the human norm. Representative, limited government, and human legislators strictly controlled and limited by the rule of law is both rare and fragile. That is simply the clear lesson of history.

Succinct maybe, in true pundit-style, but hardly a statement worth repeating in a serious discussion, imo.

Why? Sowell is a distinguished scholar and thinker who has spent his intellectual life studying social, cultural, and economic history. Why are his observations not worth repeating here?

That is, in effect, what I said: man is born with a conscience but it requires an ideology to direct it.

I would say moral philosophy and teaching (an ethics) but not an ideology, per se.

I think our conscience it is accurate enough. After all the BoM describes it as "a perfect knowledge" (Moroni 7). I have already agreed that a conscience can be overcome; you say by intellectual sophistry and human passions, I said by religious or secular ideology. I think we're saying the same thing here.

You didn't say it could be "overcome" in the sense I have articulated it. Here is what you were arguing:

They are difficult to obey because they go against your human instincts that they are wrong. You need an ideology to help you overcome that natural resistance. That ideology can be anything, religious or secular.

The implication here would appear to be that human beings are naturally good and in some sense innocent, until undone by books such as the Bible. They have "instincts" telling them that certain things are "wrong." and which are required to overcome their natural, inherent goodness such that they can accept things like, for example, the catastrophic end of Sodom and Gomorrah at the hands of God as a matter of divine judgement. This is quite different than what I and Dr. Sowell, for one example, have been arguing. The Church teaches that human beings are neither "naturally good" nor "desperately wicked" at birth, but that we come into the world with strong tendencies to both. Certain aspects come to predominate over others over time. Unlike your position, which appears to be that morality and ethics need not be taught, and that it is moral teaching through sources such as scriptures or other philosophical texts (the Analects, Tao De Ching, Bhagavad Gita etc.) that actually works a corrupting influence on the inherent characteristics.

As you say:

People don't need books to tell them what is right, they need books to tell them that what is wrong to them as human beings is right in the eyes of God.

This seems to be inconsistent with your other assertion that:

man is born with a conscience but it requires an ideology to direct it.

Either man does not need teachings, doctrines, customs, traditions, and moral philosophy to direct his conscience, which already knows the truth, in some sense, or he does. One would not seem to be able to have it both ways here.

Quote

Commenting on YouTube clips is not what I meant by discussing the scientific evidence for morality as a biological quality.

But would you comment on the question I posed, please, relative to those clips? Is the sadistic torture of the seal pups by the Orca's, preparatory to consumption, moral, immoral, or amoral? If morality can be grounded in biology, or, as you say, if morality "is a biological quality." it then follows that the natural world contains moral qualities from which could be extracted moral prescriptions. How would this work?

If morality is fundamentally biological, then biology itself must contain certain moral qualities. Nature, in other words, must have moral qualities, if moral qualities are, at their core, biological phenomena.

Edited October 11, 2011 by Loran Blood

[Loran Blood]

Why should there be any comon book of morals and mores? Are the good Presbyterians any less moral than the good Catholics? Is the good Buddhist less moral than the good Christian? How about the good Atheist, Hindu, Jew, Muslim, Sik, Zoroastrian? The list is practically endless of good moral people who don't subscribe to the Christian Bible in its many variants, let alone its many many different interpretations. Is the C&E only Christian more moral than the Ramadan only Muslim?

What ever happened to "If there is anything virtuous, lovely, of good report or praiseworthy we seek after these things"?

What all these people are responding to, in their various traditions, if and when those teachings produce good, virtuous, and moral people, are the principles of gospel truth common to all those traditions. It is the peppering of gospel truth throughout and within the various religions of the world that create any common ground among human beings despite other substantial theological/philosophical differences, the point being that morals and mores, to the degree they work and produce good fruit, are the result of their commonalities across religious and philosophical traditions, and hence, your argument breaks down here. They are, indeed common, and without them, society disintegrates and eventually becomes "ripe."

[LeSellers]

The common source for truth is not found in a single book. It is found with God and God alone. We access truth by accessing God. Scriptures are a tool for recording and transmitting God's will but they are not sufficient without the Holy Spirit and Light of Christ.

I did not say "The common source for truth is found in a single book." If you think I said that, you should go back and read what I actually wrote, not what you believe I said, or what someone else imagines I said.

This discussion (aside from the fact that the Bible, once the West's National Book, is scripture) is not about scripture, either.

It's about identifying a work (in the past, it's been a book, and Bloom used that word) that a people, in general, find useful enough to use as the basis for their individual morals, and, based on the fact that a significant fraction of them use the same work, there evolves a common set of norms the whole culture can rely on.

We, as a people, have abandoned our National Book, and have not replaced it , although many of the rising generation have substituted Pop Music for it. It is not a valid National Book, however, because it does not fill the role: the morals one derives from it are not useful over time: they are focused exclusively on the present, the feel-good for now approach to life. they do not carry beyond the actor's personal horizon.

Lehi

[LeSellers]

Why should there be any comon book of morals and mores?

So the whole of society can understand on what basis they will be judged (not politically) when they act. If htere are a thousand referents, no one can be sure his acts will be acceptable to his neighbors.

With a National Book, any act can be seen, in advance, as being acceptable or not. Without it, we are all left to act without that gauge.

Are the good Presbyterians any less moral than the good Catholics?

They both rely on the same National Book.

Is the good Buddhist less moral than the good Christian?

Possibly. .

Both rely on a similar National Book (each has his own). But, and this is important, so please think about it: the principles in each National Book are very nearly identicla. At the very least, they do not conflict with each other.

How about the good Atheist, Hindu, Jew, Muslim, Sik, Zoroastrian? The list is practically endless of good moral people who don't subscribe to the Christian Bible in its many variants, let alone its many many different interpretations. Is the C&E only Christian more moral than the Ramadan only Muslim?

I have no idea what the "C&E" is, so I can't answer that.

As long as the national Books of each group are not in conflict, there will be consistency in the ability to judge in advance if one's acts are acceptable. It is when there is no National Book or when the various National Books conflict that we have the kind of problems I'm talking about.

What history demonstrates is that when a people loses its common moral standard (a National Book), that culture disappears from its pages.

What ever happened to "If there is anything virtuous, lovely, of good report or praiseworthy we seek after these things"?

Nothing at all. It came from the same pen that wrote "I teach the people correct principles [via a National Book], and they govern themselves."

Lehi

Edited October 11, 2011 by LeSellers

[Loran Blood]

Even if so, so what? The point is whether or not the Bible should for the basis of modern social norms.

It already is, as the Founders intended and assumed it would be and centuries of Western common law and notions of individual rights as they developed over time instilled as core axioms in the Founding of the American experiment in self government and ordered liberty.

Percentage-wise, almost no one buys into the LDS notion of Priesthood authority. It is our society, where "our" includes all those many people who do not buy into the LDS notion of Priesthood authority (and its backward projection onto ancient Israel).

In any case, many people who cringe at the notion of "theocracy" have no problem in accepting the most invasive and all-encompassing secular statism. I find this fear of "theocracy" to be, in many cases, a rather disingenuous bogeyman.

Don't like the concept of voting then huh?

Yes, I love the concept of voting. What I don't like is a majority of hawks telling a minority of tasty lambs how they should vote, and what will happen to them if they don't.

I don't expect the ancients to have discovered and adhered to modern social norms. I do expect that we should not regress to those norms by somehow making the Bible "the book" for our modern society.

This assumes that much of what modern secular humanists call "progress" in moral/ethical terms has actually been that, and that many Biblical norms represent a "regression." If the history of modernity, and especially the 20th century, shows us anything, its that this modern secularist conceit has really been little more, in many cases, than a mask and pretext for the imposition and prosecution upon countless peoples of the will to power of self anointed ideological messiahs brandishing their own conceptions of "morality" that could not be accepted and imposed without first delegitimizing the older, Biblical moral framework.

Its not so much, as modernity is concerned, that Biblical ethics and modern ethics are in a relation of primitive to advanced, or progress/regress, but that the one is a deep impediment and barrier to the fulfillment of the other (Roe v Wade does not comport well with Biblical concepts of personal or social moral responsibility).

So what? You miss the point. Why make the Bible a standard for modern society?

Because the alternative, as we can already see, is the ultimate destruction of modern society.

[Tarski]

If morality is fundamentally biological, then biology itself must contain certain moral qualities. Nature, in other words, must have moral qualities, if moral qualities are, at their core, biological phenomena.

Fallacy of reification.

Morality is a social phenomenon. The social supervenes on the biological.

However, the question of the objectivity of morality is not thereby settled. Just as natural selection can come across objectively good designs as it meanders through design space, so it is possible that moral principles enjoy a kind of platonic existence and have been discovered by biological and social evolution (or human exploration and experience of you like). Of course, it is a given that morality is context dependent (at the very least we need a social context--there must be sentient beings) in an obvious sense but that does not undermine any and every notion of objectivity.

The whole thing is an open philosophical question.

Notice however, that positing a system of quasi-biological gods and super-gods does exactly nothing to settle the issue. The problem just gets pushed up one level. It is just defered in other words. This basic insight is at least as old as Plato's dialogue "Euthyphro".

[thesometimesaint]

Loran Blood:

I'm all for that which is good. What I find objectionable is that all this goodness has to be contained in one book or tradition. What I don't understand is if my Muslim friend, and his family, find peace and happiness along with the other good virtues in the Koran. Who the heck am I to insist that they must give up their Koran and follow my Bible? Why can't I just love them for the good people that they are, and support them in their good endevours, even if I don't agree with everything in their religion? Same with my Catholic friends who have slightly different Bible than I have?

It doesn't even have to be the Bible. Why should anyone(or group) be limited to just one "National(International) Book" for their morals and mores?

[LeSellers]

Loran Blood:

I'm all for that which is good. What I find objectionable is that all this goodness has to be contained in one book or tradition. What I don't understand is if my Muslim friend, and his family, find peace and happiness along with the other good virtues in the Koran. Who the heck am I to insist that they must give up their Koran and follow my Bible? Why can't I just love them for the good people that they are, and support them in their good endevours, even if I don't agree with everything in their religion? Same with my Catholic friends who have slightly different Bible than I have?

It doesn't even have to be the Bible. Why should anyone(or group) be limited to just one "National(International) Book" for their morals and mores?

That's not the point at all.

The National Book need not supplant all others, it need only be accepted by enough people that the personal mores they derive from it become the expected values for the whole of the culture.

Lehi

[thesometimesaint]

Lehi:

Why? If I respect your right to believe any silly thing you want, and you respect my right to believe any silly thing I want and we both follow the dictates of law. Who gives a flying fig what we believe? IE; If you believe that humans came from Alpha Proxima and I believe that women are from Venus, and men are from Mars. Whose business is it as long as we respect each others rights?

[LeSellers]

If I respect your right to believe any silly thing you want, and you respect my right to believe any silly thing I want and we both follow the dictates of law. Who gives a flying fig what we believe?

"Belief" isn't the question. It's morals, norms.

If people within a culture largely accept the same morals, there is peace. When norms differ markedly, there is conflict and war.

IE; If you believe that humans came from Alpha Proxima and I believe that women are from Venus, and men are from Mars. Whose business is it as long as we respect each others rights?

Neither of those positions has anything to do with mores.

Lehi

[Tarski]

If people within a culture largely accept the same morals, there is peace. When norms differ markedly, there is conflict and war.

And it may take some serious conflict to intitially force everyone onto the same page. But then there can be a long period of stability.

Franko was wise after all.

[thesometimesaint]

Lehi:

Ours morals, and mores are derived from what we believe. It doesn't have to be about religion, but what we believe about ourselves, and our society. Though religion has been used throughout history to enforce certain morals, and mores.

"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg".

Thomas Jefferson

Edited October 11, 2011 by thesometimesaint

[Ariarates]

Autocratic, authoritarian to totalitarian control and/or majoritarian democracy (from Rousseau's fundamental concepts to the L.A. riots to while lynchings in the old South) are, indeed, the human norm. Representative, limited government, and human legislators strictly controlled and limited by the rule of law is both rare and fragile. That is simply the clear lesson of history.

You have restated your position but I still don't see an argument. If mob rule is the norm, why don't we see more of it? Mind you, I'm not saying it doesn't happen but that doesn't mean it is the norm.

Human beings are like herd animals. A few assume leadership positions (by elections, force, bribery, divine descent, etc.) and the rest follows. Bread and games, that is the clear lesson of history, imo.

Why? Sowell is a distinguished scholar and thinker who has spent his intellectual life studying social, cultural, and economic history. Why are his observations not worth repeating here?

I doubt that Sowell intended his remark as a serious contribution to a serious discussion, that's why.

I would say moral philosophy and teaching (an ethics) but not an ideology, per se.

I agree.

Either man does not need teachings, doctrines, customs, traditions, and moral philosophy to direct his conscience, which already knows the truth, in some sense, or he does.

I think a conscience only needs to be reinforced. To go against one's conscience takes more effort.

But would you comment on the question I posed, please, relative to those clips? Is the sadistic torture of the seal pups by the Orca's, preparatory to consumption, moral, immoral, or amoral? If morality can be grounded in biology, or, as you say, if morality "is a biological quality." it then follows that the natural world contains moral qualities from which could be extracted moral prescriptions. How would this work?

It may be moral, immoral or amoral but it would not be a good idea to draw conclusions from an isolated example. When I say that I think that morality is a biological quality, that doesn't mean that I think that all things that happen in the biological world are necessarily moral. Even if this were an example of immorality, that would not mean that morality cannot be a biological phenomenon. You are setting up a straw man here.

[Tarski]

Because the alternative, as we can already see, is the ultimate destruction of modern society.

The sky sure is taking a long time to fall.

[LeSellers]

The sky sure is taking a long time to fall.

Not very long at all in historical terms.

Lehi

[thesometimesaint]

Lehi:

The ancient Babylonians complained about their children too. The sky hasn't fallen yet.

Ps. I'm sure A&E had a couple of complaints about their children too.

Edited October 11, 2011 by thesometimesaint

[LeSellers]

Lehi:

The ancient Babylonians complained about their children too. The sky hasn't fallen yet.

It sure did on Babylon.

And on Athens.

And on Rome.

And on Heliopolis,

And on Paris.

And on Berlin.

And on Moscow.

And on East Los Angeles.

And on Samaria.

And on Zerahemla.

And on Jerusalem (at least a half-dozen times).

And ... ...

Lehi

Edited October 11, 2011 by LeSellers

[thesometimesaint]

Lehi:

To be overly literal the sky can't fall on anything. But individual people, cities, and even civilizations do come to an end. It has little to nothing to do with parents complaints about their children. When my kids were little and misbehaved they might have thought the sky was falling in on them, but it wasn't. A Parents Curse "May your children be just like you".

The Paris of today in not the same Paris as it was under the Vichy government. Though many of the buildings are.

[Tarski]

It sure did on Babylon.

And on Athens.

And on Rome.

And on Heliopolis,

And on Paris.

And on Berlin.

And on Moscow.

And on East Los Angeles.

And on Samaria.

And on Zerahemla.

And on Jerusalem (at least a half-dozen times).

And ... ...

Lehi

Societies are unstable to varying degrees and their historical trajectories are massively contingient. History happens and causes and effects are complex beyond human comprehesion. Destabalizing factors can be both endemic internal conditions but are also often external (invasion from the outside for example). Mathematical models of complex systems far far simpler than human history show counter-intuitive behavior. All the more so then for history. That should humble us regarding our ability to assess the causes of dramatic social upheaval.

But, there will always be people who explain everything in terms of a failure to please the gods. This supposed abandonment of Biblical principles thing is a variation on that theme. It is a simple minded theme in my opinion. In a way, it is only slightly better than explaining Katrina in terms of homosexuality.

[thesometimesaint]

Tarski:

While I would not use homosexuality as a cause of Katrina. The resulting damage done was definitely the result of a lack of moral leadership.

Edited October 11, 2011 by thesometimesaint

[LeSellers]

The Paris of today in not the same Paris as it was under the Vichy government.

Completely off point.

However, the Paris of the Vichy government was not that of Rousseau, either, nor of Louis XIV. Yes, things change over time. But Parisians of any period were typically homogeneous as to their morals (however low they may have been in your eyes). They had a National Book (probably Hugo or Molière, etc.), but they lost it in the early-to-mid XX, found another and lost it in the 70s.

Every people I noted above lost their National Book before the collapse of their civilization. They became an empty people, one that served only themselves, that did not respect others' legitimate rights, and so self-serving that they viewed others as means to their personal ends. Louis XIV and his successors were prime examples. The French Revolution, however ill-planned and quickly distorted into a despotism (hence, Napoleon III), was the result of the royalty's loss of the Frnech National Book.

Lehi

[LeSellers]

Here's another Point of View on the matter.

The Necessity of the Classics, by Louise Cowan. It's nine pages in an academic journal, so most people won't take the time to to read her. Nonetheless, it's worth the effort for those with a bit of patience. She talks of the National Book of the Greeks (although she does not use that term). She explains why we modern USmerican need to read the Greeks.

Another book on the Greek classics is Climbing Parnassus: A New Apologia for Greek and Latin, by Tracy Lee Simons. It's another must read for people who want to understand how humanity has not changed in millennia, and that the great discoveries about humankind have been available since long before they were born.

Enjoy,

Lehi

[thesometimesaint]

Lehi:

Peoples have been losing out in history long before writing ever existed. It is the myths and stories we tell each other which define us as a people. Those myths and stories must of necessity change over time. However short/long that time interval may be. The myths and stories that Nephi told his children were not the same myths and stories told by Mormon to his son Moroni(There were of course commonalities), but those remaining few members were still one people.

We in this country have decided that our myths and stories would center around a people religiously diverse(Thomas Jefferson wasn't all that enamored with the religion of Patrick Henry), but they both wanted to be free from a militarily/economically much bigger country. We're now over 300 million and even more diverse, in more ways than just religion. But we are bound by that narrative of wanting to be free.

You asked me before what single book would I have as source code for morals amd mores of this country. If I am to be limited to just one. I would have none. I prefer than ideas, and ideals expressed in all the good books, and just wish I could read and ponder about more of them. But I'm 60 years old and even if I live another 30 like my mother. Time is not on my side.

[Loran Blood]

I'm all for that which is good. What I find objectionable is that all this goodness has to be contained in one book or tradition. What I don't understand is if my Muslim friend, and his family, find peace and happiness along with the other good virtues in the Koran. Who the heck am I to insist that they must give up their Koran and follow my Bible?

What about the Book of Mormon, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, and the restored gospel? As a Latter day Saint, do you not have a mandate - a command of Jesus Christ to all his disciples as a requirement of acceptance within his Kingdom - to "preach my gospel" and raise a "waring voice" (one would think atheists would be in particular need of such information)? Is the Koran scripture (that is, true scripture, authorized and sanctioned by God in the way the OT, NT, Book of Mormon and other standard works are understood to be? Are the Vedas?), and is the command of all to repent and "come unto Christ" waved, in some sense, for Muslims, or Buddhists, or Confucians or...atheists? Certainly the Koran contains elements of truth, as do most texts of the world's religions and religious philosophies, but are they "the word of God" as texts? If not, how can you refrain from offering the truths and promises of the words of Christ (contained in the scriptures) to those who have only fragments of them blended with falsehoods and misconceptions?

I discovered the Tao De Ching as a Latter day Saint, and I've never had to "give up" the truths and insights in contains. All I've ever had to do is sift the chaff from wheat therein, and absorb that which is valuable. If that was "my book," I would indeed have to give up those things within it that are not true, but not the book itself, as the book itself contains insights and perspectives relevant to gospel truths and contains them in a unique and penetrating form.

Why can't I just love them for the good people that they are, and support them in their good endevours, even if I don't agree with everything in their religion? Same with my Catholic friends who have slightly different Bible than I have?

I'm sorry but this is getting a bit confusing. Who is claiming that you can't?

It doesn't even have to be the Bible. Why should anyone(or group) be limited to just one "National(International) Book" for their morals and mores?

I don't think they have to be limited to just one. It could be several (we have, after all, four "standard works," do we not?), but in that case, the principles adhered to that formed the essential ethical framework of society would have to be compatible and harmonious across those books. Certain texts, as should be obvious, could not support that function as well as others. All religions, as all ideas, are not equal in value or efficacy.

Edited October 11, 2011 by Loran Blood