“I do wonder how much weight you intend to give the document itself. Is it purely a thought exercise, and the resulting document has no meaning”

I intend it to be more or less a vision statement. I do not intend to be dogmatic. As if I can keep half those ideals myself!

“For example: Children under the constitution are, ‘To be forgiven of all trespasses.’ I have no doubt that you know, to great depths, exactly what this rule means. But if your teen-aged daughter were to invoke it avoid being grounded, would you feel it’s specific enough?’

Hrm. Looks like I need a Judicial branch to interpret these laws.

I think you’re right. On its face it is not specific enough. I have this opinion that two types of social/relational debt can be incurred between two parties. The first is the kind that can be paid back. The second, and most common, is the kind that cannot.

If a drunk driver plows into a family and kills a child, the drunk driver has 2 debts to pay. First he has his debt to society. If justice is served, he will pay it. This is the type that can be paid. Second, he has incurred a debt to the child, and to the child’s family. This is the debt that he couldn’t pay back even if he wanted to. The family in question will either cancel the debt (forgive) or the account will remain open. Period.

So when I say that all trespasses will be forgiven, I don’t mean that no consequences will ever be delivered. What I mean is that in those cases where an un-repayable debt exists between us and them, we will choose to forgive.

I think I may need to work on the wording for this one. Thank you.

http://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_A1Sec9.html

This is a fascinating exercise. Thank you for sharing it.

I do wonder how much weight you intend to give the document itself. Is it purely a thought exercise, and the resulting document has no meaning? Is it a list of notes to yourself to help keep you headed in the direction you’ve chosen? Is it meant to be a real document, shared and studied among your family, to give guidance on how to live? Or is it truly meant to be a contract, by which the choices of your family members are judged?

I ask because there are a few observations that I might make, that are ridiculously pedantic if the constitution is meant as a collection of guidelines, but potentially important if it’s meant as the law.

For example: Children under the constitution are, “To be forgiven of all trespasses.” I have no doubt that you know, to great depths, exactly what this rule means. But if your teen-aged daughter were to invoke it avoid being grounded, would you feel it’s specific enough?

So when you say “Sam Harris argues persuasively that (in a nutshell) issues of right and wrong can be thought of as an attempt to minimize suffering” what you’re really saying is that Sam made up the idea that minimizing suffering is good and moral. So I say, prove it. Where in some absolute sense is minimizing suffering demonstrably good, or is minimizing suffering simply what you and Sam Harris prefer?

The bacteria argument is intriguing. I like it. Note this: “simple bacteria perform altruistic acts to protect their cohorts from danger, and this ultimately serves to protect their close relatives and thus maximally extend the reach of progeny and their genes.” You’re adding morality to something that may have no moral component at all since I sincerely doubt that bacteria have either awareness or meaningful free will. You have to prove a few things in order to get to the “altruistic acts” part:

1) that the bacteria is aware of the threat;

2) that the bacteria realizes that sacrificing itself would help protect its bacterial buddies;

3) that the bacteria weighs its options of survival vs. sacrificing itself for the good of bacteriahood;

4) and that the bacteria then intentionally chooses to act in a manner that put its own survival at risk for the purpose of protecting bacteriahood.

Until you prove those points, I’m going to say that it was an entirely instinctive response programmed my millions of years of evolution. Higher life forms probably do the same. The thinking life forms take this behavior and call it “moral” but I say it’s about survival, not morality. Parents protect their genetic seed for survival, not because of some greater good. Societies protect their “way of life” for survival. It all boils down to survival.

Funny thing about the Bible – and I’m talking New Testament here – Jesus didn’t teach in absolutes very much, he taught by example. Even if he was not divine he expected people to think and figure things out on their own. He set enough examples and told enough stories that while reasonable people might disagree on some particulars there is quite a foundation on which to build. Jesus never said “hey, I’ve answered every single question of humanity here.”

Ultimately, if you don’t have an absolute foundation any morality is ad hoc.

Zero

And bloggers (that’s me) love comments (that’s you). We’re fairly indiscriminate about them.

Since this is so far off Dewde’s original topic, I’d vote that this is my last post on this thread. I’d be happy to continue elsewhere, though. I don’t want to appear snippy or arrogant here either… I really would prefer to understand what people consider as good reasons to do things for or because of God. I just haven’t found any of those reasons all that compelling myself, but it’s fascinating to talk about, particularly when beer is involved.

Anyway, to your points… I disagree that removing God from the moral structure necessitates just “making one up.” This is a common criticism of the atheist view, but I think it’s an invalid one. Sam Harris argues persuasively that (in a nutshell) issues of right and wrong can be thought of as an attempt to minimize suffering. The simple rule doesn’t mean things aren’t often very confusing, since minimizing the short term can exacerbate a problem in the long term, or fixing something locally can cause harm globally, etc. There are also good evolutionary arguments made for this point of view.

Also, in general, people who profess godlessness are indistinguishable moral judges from religious people. For example, the work of Peter Singer and Marc Hauser has shown that there’s no statistically significant difference between the choices made in a moral dilemma between atheists and religious people, nor between people of various religions. Morality really seems to be innate.

And if atheists are just bad people because they don’t believe in God, then you’d think that the prisons might be enriched in atheists. They are not.

Finally, I think you have a flawed view of the “survival” thing. It seems like you’re implying that evolution would tend to favor individual self-preservation actions over any other motivating factor. This just isn’t so, and evolutionary biology has recognized this for decades. Even simple bacteria perform altruistic acts to protect their cohorts from danger, and this ultimately serves to protect their close relatives and thus maximally extend the reach of progeny and their genes. I hesitate to bring up the Selfish Gene because the mention of Richard Dawkins often causes people to roll their eyes and dismiss the rest of the conversation… but, his Selfish Gene book from long ago describes good reasons why these observations make sense. All sorts of plants and animals carry out these kinds of altruistic behaviors. When humans do that, you might call it “moral.” Nothing wrong with calling it moral, but I think it’s a bit disingenuous to assert that the motivation to be moral comes strictly from God when real evidence to the contrary is available.

And this is unrelated to morality, but is related to your “absolute” morality that comes from God. Even assuming for the moment that the Christian God exists and the Bible version of your choice is 100% literally true, I think this foundation is not really absolute at all. The Bible cannot possibly contain every imaginable moral conundrum. Dewde couldn’t look for Paul’s letter to the Social Workers to find the absolute best way to handle his sidewalk interaction he posted about. If not every answer is scripturally available, then there’s some gray area. In this gray area, individuals are on their own to try to do the right thing. You might think this means an appeal to God is required for guidance, but I think you’ll see that I’m going to go back to my reasoning from the previous paragraphs.

So, I’d be interested to hear whether you refute these claims, or whether you assert that morality is demonstrated by something that’s outside of the realm of these facts. What is it about a religious sense of morality that you think goes beyond a natural explanation, and what evidence exists for it?

P.S. That was a funny P.S.

Without some kind of underpinning how does one really know what good is? Without absolutes, good is just whatever someone makes up.

By founding a morality on the Christian God Dewde has a structure upon which he can build, instead of just making one up. Skip the mythology if you like – Jesus was at minimum an excellent example of goodness in a human being.

It’s been my experience nature is a brutal, nasty, cut-throat state; terribly cruel and violent. I don’t think you can logically substitute “features of nature” for God. Nature has only one moral – survival at all costs.

Zero

P.S., I’d never take a swipe at you intentionally. Ultimately it’s beyond my control.