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Trevor Blake: Rescuing Values from Christianity [LINK-ZUM]

The mainstream media is making the claim that exit polls demonstrated that 'moral values' were the deciding factor in yesterday's elections. But what does that mean? To find out, let's examine what that doesn't mean. These moral values were not secular humanist moral values, nor were they objectivist moral values, nor atheist moral values. We can conclude that these were religious moral values.

What sort of religious moral values? Was it the moral value to aid the poor that is one of the five pillars of Islam? Was it the moral value of buddhism to refrain from harming others? We can conclude, by answering in the negative to these questions, that these were Christian moral values. What sort of Christian moral values? Was it the moral value to abstain from politics, as practiced by the Jehovah's Witnesses? Was it the moral value to seek consensus, as practiced by Quakers? We can conclude, by answering in the negative to these questions, that these were a specific kind of Christian moral values. Namely, what has come to be called 'evangelical' or 'fundamentalist' or 'conservative' or 'right-wing' Christianity.

These Christians have re-named their Christianity as 'moral values' to make it easier to sell to the public. Everyone has moral values, the argument goes. It just so happens that the moral values that won yesterday are not shared by everyone. But they'll get busy changing that soon, rest assured. If it was 'moral values' (evangelical Christianity) that won Governor Bush his first Presidential election, then I ask you - isn't that what we should be calling into question first and foremost?

We can start with a reminder that whatever a person holds as a moral value, they hold it because it is true. And truth is distinguished from falsehood and confusion by reason and logic. So reason and logic are neccessary for moral values. Faith, the opposite and opponent of reason and logic, is the desctructive agent to reason and logic. With reason and logic, some things are possible. With faith, all things are possible - as long as by 'possible' one means 'anything that happens will be just what I said was going to happen, evidence be damned.'

We can start with Euthyphro dilemma, which points out that if values are something God knows of and tells us, then values exist outside of God and we don't need God for values - while if values come from God, then anything God says is 'good' is 'good' by default, meaning (for example) flying airplanes into buildings or burning witches or killing children is 'good.' What is more, if values come from God then obedience is all that matters: choice, which must be a part of morals, never enters the picture.

We can start with asking why the oh-so-19th-Century anarchist movement is seen as young and angry while the oh-so-19th Century atheist movement is seen as old and grumpy.

We can start in many places. But aim at the source, not the symptoms. The problem is Christianity. The solution is atheism.

[American Samizdat, November 3 2004. - Trevor Blake]

Labels: christianity, philosophy, theocracy

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