"without immortality, everything is permitted."
here is a reality that few acknowledge and millions more would deny with infantile reasoning and wasted breath. it constitutes an abyss, a jagged hole in the mind of man. for how else can we examine even the prospect of absolute anarchy?
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say there is no God. or say that there is a God but He cares not in the slightest how we live towards Him or each other.
then there is no standard or absolute code of living.
"yes, yes, of course" the half-aware, half-educated mind chides. "we know all that already." ai, but you don't! if you understood more than the words you wouldn't be able to chide; such nonsense would fracture in your mouth and your tongue would cease to move. fear and insanity; these are the only true and honest responses to this hell.
and thus dialogue ensues within three archetypes.
response 1: the social contract theorist.
"while this statement of immortality and permission may be a truism of sorts, it's rather meaningless. after all, what is more important is what a person actually chooses rather than what is merely possible. as though anything became possible before recognizing this statement! anyway, you've fogged up the whole matter. self-interest with respect to cultural norms, that's the object you should focus on. to be more clear, yes, a person can choose to commit horrible acts against others, but in any reasonable society this will come at a horrible cost to himself. thus we stave off the anarchy that you are concerned with and maintain all-necessary order."
but of course this is just a red herring. the issue really isn't the maintainence of order, but rather the saving of man from destruction before such a perilous truth.
with enough power in the hands of the offender, social checks and punishment cease and the abyss you think you've cleverly avoided is staring you right in the face. for you desparately want to avoid it! that desire taints your reasoning at every step. you still want to see Hitler as objectively evil despite the fact that your social contract only condemns Hitler when society is more powerful than him and doesn't agree with him. for the abyss you look into here is deeper than a lack of condemnation and the force of restraint. you rely on whatever words you can employ to remove the obvious, that even the most gut-wrenching act you can think of can only be condemned insofar as it doesn't fit into culturally accepted norms. and what sort of vacuous condemnation is that?
for what happens when norms break or the power of society falters? here the abyss is revealed clearly, but it did not magically appear. it was there always and you simply chose to hum words of encouragement to yourself and cover your eyes while telling yourself how progressive you were for your clear understanding of anthropology.
despicable, contemptible idiocy.
response 2: denial.
perhaps I'll write more on this later. not much more to say other than to call this denial out for the mindlessness-posing-as-meaning it is.
response 3: nietzche (my take anyway).
nietzche's response is sufficiently unique and honest that it deserves to be described. he simultaneously embraced this truth (to some extent realized in the idealization of the ubermensch) and was driven insane by it, as its reality was so discordant with his conscience that he could not reconcile the two.
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observations:
1. any notion of true Good can only be rooted in the Absolute. any other notion can only be conscience and mere human sentiment. what I, on my own, define as good is therefore only that which I perceive as good - not what is Absolutely good!
1.a. and so how can I legitimately rebel against God for anything? if my conscience tells me to rebel, that telling can only be Good if it is originated in the same Absolute I would rebel against! otherwise, no matter how noble the feeling or rhetoric, my rebellion is only an expression of preference.
2. it's interesting that the denial of God (and therefore of any Absolute means to assess conduct) in the West is shortly followed with sudden and severe self-righteousness. memo to folks in the West: you can only be morally indignant when you believe in morality! we're not talking about difficult things here. so, for example, if you deny absolute morality but say that those who judge things/people to be evil are acting unjustly/hellishly, you're a pitiable fool.
2.a. more interesting is how this indignation is almost always on behalf of actual evil. see chomsky. there's the whole spectrum: denial of absolute morality, condemnation of his fellow citizens, and expulcation of guilt for mass murder (the khmer rouge incident of course being the most prolific; intellectual justification for the murder of jews via justification for palestinian terrorism is another one).
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"everything is permitted."
there is an abyss. it cannot be avoided. if you reject it, then
you should examine yourself to see if your rejection of God is as
complete as you might think.
1 comment:
I have another argument to add to those posited above, although I feel that the refutations you have given fail to fully discredit the positions you are speaking against. But that is beside the point of which I wish to argue.
The foundation of your argument is built on an assumption of, firstly, the existence of God, and secondly, that morality cannot exist without God. Restricting my argument to the latter for obvious reasons, I would argue that this is not the case; rather that morality is innate in us as a species. Solidarity works as an evolutionary trait - the species which works together has a greater chance of survival. It is absurd to suggest that humanity was unaware of basic morality until the Ten Commandments were revealed to the Jews at Mount Sinai, that we did not realise murder, theft and the rest were detrimental to both society and the individual. Humanity would not have survived without developing a moral code; this can be seen throughout all human society, regardless of religion, and so can be argued independently of God or the 'absolute', if such a thing exists.
I also have to disagree with some of the observations given toward the end of the article. You demean us all with the expression 'mere human sentiment', as you demean us in your view that without immortality, or no one 'in charge', we would be without ethics. Rather to the contrary, as Hitchens has said, when you see a good person acting in a wicked manner, it is very often because they believe they are under divine order to do so. Your argument of 'justification' for Palestinian terrorism is telling - you have overlooked the vital point that the young men and women who decide to blow themselves up in crowded marketplaces and in front of orphanages do so not because they believe it is a moral act, but because their religion, their Mullahs, tell them it is. As Stephen Weinberg puts it, "Left to themselves, good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things -- that takes religion."
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