[90] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: LIVING WAGE SIT-IN AT HARVARD (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ray Jones)
Fri Apr 20 09:43:36 2001
To: <mit-talk@MIT.EDU>
From: Ray Jones <rjones@pobox.com>
In-Reply-To: "Josiah D. Seale"'s message of "Fri, 20 Apr 2001 04:43:24 -0400"
Date: 20 Apr 2001 09:42:12 -0400
Message-ID: <ppwelun7knf.fsf@PIXIE.MIT.EDU>
"Josiah D. Seale" <jdseale@MIT.EDU> writes:
> Without a higher being, there is no reason to follow morals beyond your own
> convenience.
This statement is unfalsifiable, and therefore prima facie a matter of
belief. The rest of your message, attempting to back up your belief,
is just building castles in the air. Almost anyone can construct
elaborate, interwoven chains of logic. The problem comes when you try
to attach them to reality.
Even extreme counterexamples, such as an atheist sacrificing
themselves to save the life of a random, can be explained away as some
sort of fame-seeking or insanity (acting in a self-detrimental way
without reason).
Now, if you were more careful, and phrased your thesis as something
like, "belief in a higher being is more likely to result in moral
behavior," we could approach that as something to be tested. Of
course, we'd have to define 'moral' without reference to a higher
power, which you might not think is possible. Maybe we could agree
that behavior in line with the golden rule is "moral".
At that point, we start tallying up moral vs immoral events from
history, and putting them in column A (religion) and column B
(atheism). A gets the inquisition, the nazis, early persecution of
christians, and a whole slew of religious wars and genocides. The
atheists get a few communist countries and that time I punched that
kid for no reason. The atheists win! The crowd goes wild! Nietzche
does a victory lap around the stadium, blowing kisses to his fans!
Ray Jones
