VG,
No, you are. Yes, the reality is that both groups can have “an aesthetic preference for a moral value that does not lead them to kill others”, but it’s also the reality that only one of those groups can also have moral certainties that do lead them to kill people who don’t agree.
Again: no Mozart fan will kill another for saying the Mozart was rubbish; routinely though we see religious people killing others for blaspheming about their gods.
Why do you suppose that is?
We've done this argument so many times before and my response is the same as all the previous times. Religion is open to interpretation, so disagree that anyone can have moral certainty. The evidence is that religious people routinely disagree on what is moral, as do non-religious people. Both groups have some members who are prepared to kill to enforce their moral interpretations, so you will have to examine the context of the political, social and economic environment, their cultural and family background, their personal circumstances and the individual's ability to regulate their emotions in order to find an answer to why a particular person killed someone, while other members of the group did not.
The example about musical preferences was to show the similar basis on which people choose their moral preferences - i.e. they have an emotional reaction to the sensory input though they would probably also be influenced by their technical reasoned analysis before they make a choice.
The Quran does not say to kill or punish someone for blasphemy or who says Islam, Allah or Mohammed are rubbish. When people do so, they must therefore be influenced by their own instincts, preferences and interpretations based on their nature/ nurture.
No it isn’t irrelevant. Can you think of an example of a blasphemer being beaten to death or executed in the name of beliefs that aren’t thought to be objective facts?
No, nor can I. Why do you suppose that is?
You probably can't because you have a very simplistic way of looking at a complex issue, and this is a reflection of your bias. There isn't one simple, single reason why people are killed. People are usually killed as a means to an end.
Assuming "blasphemer" means anyone who goes against the current official orthodoxy or dogmatic belief, I would say many people who were killed in the name of Communism or Capitalism are
not being killed based on beliefs that are thought to be objective fact. They are being killed as a means to an end e.g. revolutionary necessity in order to secure and defend the revolution, or to counter threats to the establishment. The ideas behind the revolution or opposers of revolution e.g. "fairness" of distribution of wealth or the labour theory of value or the right to private ownership are beliefs that are not thought to be objective facts. However, it is too simplistic to say the people who are being killed are being killed in defence of a belief.
Are climate activists killed by governments or private corporations killed in the name of beliefs about objective facts or are they killed due to the greed of a few individuals? The Hungarian scientist, Ignaz Semmelweis, was shunned by other scientists for going against the miasma theory of disease transmission in relation to puerperal fever. He was dismissed from his position at Vienna hospital and harassed by the medical community in Vienna, and eventually committed to an asylum by his colleagues where he was beaten and died. He wasn't vindicated until later when the germ theory of disease was developed. But I would not categorise it as simplistically as being punished in the name of science or a belief about objective facts. Nor would I suggest that science should be abandoned because of the reaction of a few individual scientists in Vienna.
No, still wrong. Someone being killed for, say, exposing corruption isn’t being killed by someone who thinks he has the moral high ground (based on moral certainties written in “holy” texts) at all. You can point out if you like that people are murdered for all sorts of wicked reasons so it’s no big deal that people do it for religiously good ones too, but that’s to miss the point. Religions arrogate to themselves privileged status in many societies – and the more fundamentalist they are, the more privileged they typically become as theocracies – and so often people in their thrall will think themselves to be morally good for beating to death a blasphemer in the street. After all, they’re just doing what their god would want right?
And they know this how? That’s right – because it’s written in a morally unimpeachable book.
Except it isn't written in the book that they should punish blasphemers - so I suggest you at least get your facts right before you try to make a bad argument.
And you have been corrected on this point about moral certainty and religion many times before - books and words including holy texts are open to interpretation, especially in relation to morals and ethics. Hence, despite laws contained in statutes, we have courts and judges and juries, and processes of appeal and decisions being over-ruled. So there is no moral certainty as rules in holy books are subject to change and reinterpretation, depending on context.
And yet, brought up in different circumstances there’s no particular reason that I know of to think those same people would be driven to kill because they’d then have turned out to be as morally bankrupt as the local gangster or street thug. That’s the point here – religious certainties can give people reasons to behave appallingly in ways they would never do otherwise, and all the while cloaking themselves in moral virtue too.
Any feelings of certainty about any issue including religion are the responsibility of the person whose brain generated those feelings, based on their nature/nurture.
By “comforting” I was summarising your “I tend to be happy with thinking that some words I read in the Quran seemed to convey that the author of those words seemed to know me and my thoughts/ desires that I barely realised or had admitted to myself” etc, but if you prefer another term for being made happy by that then so be it.
I was using "happy" here as meaning "satisfied" with a belief I had reached rather than using "happy" to mean a feeling of comfort, joy or pleasure.
If you need that belief to behave well that’s also a matter for you. Some of us don’t though, let alone a belief in a celestial Kim Jong Un (“you are constantly under scrutiny and judgement and being held accountable for your actions”).
Sure, you're entitled to your assessment or belief that you behave as well with your lack of belief as you would if you believed in a higher power. That's a matter for you though others may hold a different opinion about your behaviour or theirs.
In any case though this seems all backwards to me – “I behave better than I otherwise would for having a belief, therefore the belief is true”. Surely the epistemology of the belief should stand or fall on its own terms shouldn’t it regardless of how it would make you behave it was true?
The belief that it is true exists and is the starting point. My opinion /observation is that I behave better as a result of the belief. I think this is due to my nature/nurture when I interpret the beliefs. This reinforces the belief but is not the cause of it.
“We” weren’t, you were. In any case though, “sacred”, “reverence” etc are themselves at least quasi-religious terms. (Non-religious) moral philosophers for example on the other had develop and argue their positions on their merits, not because they “revere” them or think them to be “sacred”.
That’s rather the point in fact.
Yes I know there are such people. There are also though people who rely on the moral certainties of their various faiths precisely to justify killing people.
Can you think of any? I can think of lots of reasons for non-religious people to kill, but moral ones?
See above for the reasons why people kill - they think killing is morally justified as a means to an end or in defence of the greater good. This applies to religious and non-religious people. Both can see an idea or a cause as sacred and worth dying for or killing for.
Er, yes. And if the “thought process” leads you to think that a morally perfect “holy” text tells you not only that you can kill people but that you should kill them for, say, blasphemy how does that sit with you sharing the same conviction that there is a god who is morally perfect?
As I said, you have been corrected on this many times before. I suggest you firstly get your facts straight about what is said in the book, and secondly revisit the response you have been given many times before that words are interpreted by people and their interpretations often differ due to nature/ nurture.
