VG,
I see you’ve just ignored the rebuttals I gave you. Ah well..
If by rebuttals you mean your repetition of your reasons for asserting your opinion that there is an important difference between claims by a cleric and claims by a politician, I did not see the point of us endlessly going round and round in circles. But if you still want a response, ok.
In the context of Outrider’s claim- that religion has a special distinction of not looking at evidence for its beliefs in comparison to non-religious moral objections that also do not look at evidence for its beliefs - you have not demonstrated an important difference between religious and non-religious moral beliefs. You just keep asserting there is one but that just seems to be wishful thinking on your part. Yes of course, politicians can be held accountable by voters but how are voters held accountable for their non-religious beliefs that led to their vote?
The comparison I made to Outrider was between people who hold religious v non-religious beliefs, not between people who put themselves up for election and those who don’t.
If you want a response specifically about your cleric example, negative claims about homosexuality - or any morality claims about sexual acts e.g. sex outside marriage - are usually framed in the context of the preservation of a particular way of family life as an important building block for preservation of a particular type of society. This is very similar to your claim about Netanyahu and the security of Israel, since security for Israel is preservation of the Jewish state by not letting too many Arabs live there, hence in 1948 Israelis ethnically cleansed Arab inhabitants that lived near the borders of their Jewish state and will not let those Arabs or their descendants return to their privately-owned homes and land that the Arabs own the deeds to. The Israelis could have offered to buy the Arabs' land from them (they had bought land from Arabs many times in the past) but that would take too long so killing Arab residents of Israel and forcing the Arabs out at gunpoint was to the Israelis a more efficient and cheaper option in the short-term - and either the Israelis did not anticipate that there would be violent repercussions from the Palestinians against Israeli civilians for stealing privately-owned Palestinian land, or the Israelis are willing to sacrifice their civilian population for land. Clearly, sometimes people want to achieve a goal regardless of how many people they hurt in the process whether it is preserving Jewish states or preserving a particular form of society where certain sexual acts are illegal/ condemned.
So clerics who assert beliefs about sexual practices do so in the context that they cite various problems in society caused by certain sexual behaviours. Clerics/ politicians/ voters who decide they want to discourage those problems in society may be prepared to hurt people to try to eliminate those problems for society. They think there is a moral justification for hurting people to achieve the goal because they think the goal they want to achieve (e.g. preservation of a particular way of family life or security for Israel) is good for society.
People who act on moral beliefs by advocating restrictions on individual freedoms go on to claim that certain personal freedoms (which ones depends on the taste of the person making the claim) can undermine such abstract unevidenced notions as personal duty and responsibility and morality, which they claim has a negative impact on other people in society and on what people (religious and non-religious) call the “collective good” or "greater good". Because of the problems that e.g. some sexual freedoms cause, they claim it is better for the collective good of society to not promote certain sexual freedoms. The religious may frame "the greater good" in religious terms e.g. God's instructions to society to achieve a better society, while the non-religious people may just refer to it as "the greater good" or "morally right" or "morally just" etc to achieve a better society - all similarly abstract concepts.
Balancing the costs and benefits of abstract ideas such as individual freedoms with individual duties and responsibilities to others is a large part of any society’s discussions about morality – whether that is expressed in political terms or with some religious language thrown in. There is no objective metric about how much freedom a person should sacrifice and how much restriction society should implement – the answer varies depending on the importance that each individual assigns to tradition, cultural homogeneity, predictability, risk and their own personal gratification, and is also affected by the huge diversity in taste and intensity about what individuals find personally gratifying and fulfilling
e.g. I might like guns but I don’t love them nor do I feel so under threat that it really matters to me that I can’t have one to protect my loved ones, even though I know that criminals are operating in London and are killing defenceless people like me or my family, which would have a devastating personal impact on me if that happened. Someone else might feel differently about that level of threat and/or might love guns more than me so feel society is imposing an unfair restriction on them by restricting their freedom to own guns. Hence, despite evidence such as metrics on the number of deaths involving guns, the US government does not impose stricter gun controls. Because people make decisions based on beliefs – and those beliefs aren’t changed by the evidence.
As for what you did say instead:
Outy can answer for himself perfectly well, but you’re still not getting it – when a cleric says “God wants you to do X” that’s the beginning and the end of it. The same cleric or subsequent generations of clerics can keep making the same assertion over and over again with no consequences because there’s no attendant accountability. By contrast, when a politician says, say, “killing Gazan Palestinians indiscriminately will ensure the future security of Israel”, demonstrably either the future security of Israel will happen or it won’t. (Note that I’m not suggesting that it’s a morally good action, regardless of its consequences – just that that’s the real world claim.) Over time when real world policies fail they can be rejected and others tried instead; over time when clerics make the same assertions about, say, homosexuality, nothing changes. That’s the difference, and it’s a big one: the former enables progress; the later doesn’t.
As I mentioned before, I got it. What you’re not getting is that I don’t agree with it because you have been unable to demonstrate the important difference between non-religious and religious moral beliefs in relation to your example about security for Israel.
The point about beliefs is that humans evolved to have beliefs as part of our ability to survive and function, especially in society. Humans use beliefs to create common ties and bonds. Evidence shows that the way beliefs work is that regardless of whether the beliefs are religious or non-religious beliefs, people invest a huge amount of their time, money, career, way of life, identity, self-image or sense of self, community ties, politics etc based on their belief and are therefore extremely reluctant to change their beliefs, even when presented with evidence to undermine their belief or even where there is a lack of evidence to support that belief.
You claim that Netanyahu’s actions are not based on unevidenced beliefs but are based on evidence - even if it is speculation - that Israel will be more secure if he murders over 40,000 Palestinians (with the biggest group dead being women and children). This would only make sense if there is evidence that people can be illegally occupied, have their land violently stolen and be violently subjugated this way and it not result in motivation to commit violence against those who stole your land from you. If the government that is stealing land and oppressing and bombing civilians does not differentiate between civilian and militant, there is also plenty of evidence that militants will also not distinguish between civilian and soldier, especially when outgunned by their enemy.
Is there evidence that people can be bombed into subjugation and have their land taken away from them and they not react violently against the civilians of the group that is doing the bombing and stealing?
It is a bit like the argument for the death penalty – is there evidence that the death penalty results in a reduction in violent crime? Apparently not, yet people still support the death penalty and vote for politicians who support the death penalty based on their belief that it acts as a deterrent, regardless of the evidence. Why? Because that is the nature of human beings and how we evolved to operate for our survival – we act based on beliefs - and a belief in the effectiveness of the death penalty is probably related to a belief in the morality of retribution.
You mentioned political accountability. If the government of a country is supported by its voters in executing a policy of killing or oppressing thousands of civilians in another land, those voters will only be persuaded to hold their government accountable for this policy if the voters themselves face either violent repercussions (e.g. terrorism) or the voters pay financial reparations or face criminal prosecution as a result of their government’s actions. Given it is unlikely that voters, who support their government’s violent acquisition of land by bombing defenceless civilians, will have to pay financial reparations or face criminal prosecution, that leaves terrorism as the instant gratification response for militants in response to violent government/ voter action.
None of the above sounds like a path to security for Israel. In the past Israel swapped land for security, which resulted in peace deals between Israel and Egypt and Israel and Jordan. When Israel gave back land that they had conquered, that also included giving back autonomy – i.e. Israel’s return of the Sinai to Egypt included not just the land but returning control to Egypt of its air space, waters, electricity. And afterwards Israel did not arbitrarily keep going into Egypt and kidnapping and detaining thousands of Egyptians when they felt like it or demolishing Egyptian houses, which is what happens to Palestinians in Gaza etc etc. You have not presented any evidence for your belief that Netanyahu’s actions in Gaza are motivated by a desire to improve Israel’s security as opposed to keeping himself in power and to delay facing corruption charges. Yet apparently you persist in holding that belief.
I make no claims about deciding on moral positions by counting or measuring real world evidence..
In other words moral positions are made based on beliefs that aren’t supported by counting or measuring real world evidence. So what is the difference between that and religious beliefs also not supported by counting or measuring real world evidence?
Whoosh! It was actually a small thought experiment – whether or not the slaughter of the Canaanites actually happened isn’t the point.
Whoosh! You’re still missing the point that your “thought experiment” is irrelevant to the Outrider’s unevidenced belief that only religions have this problem of unevidenced beliefs leading to negative real world consequences.
The point rather was that even if it’s just a story it illustrates the difference: “slaughter the Canaanites because God wants it” has no testable consequence; “slaughter Gazan Palestinians because it will make Israel secure” on the other hand can be tested against its actual results (again, note that I make no comment about the morality of the latter even if it does make Israel secure. Netanyahu presumably thinks Israel's security is the highest moral good, but that’s a different matter)..
The point you keep missing is that using a story about a fictitious slaughter to illustrate your point about real world consequences makes your point irrelevant to Outrider’s claims about the uniqueness of religious beliefs and their real world consequences.
Whether or not a repeat of the Oct 7th murders occurs would be one measure.
See above. .
It will obviously take some time for militants to regroup and build up their weapons but given there is no evidence that people who are oppressed and denied freedom just give up and meekly accept their lot in life, only an idiot ignoring evidence and engaging in wishful thinking will believe that Oct 7th murders won’t happen again or that Israeli “mowing the grass” bombing of civilians as part of it’s ethnic cleansing strategy won’t happen again.
Again, the belief that God gave certain land to the Jews is the underlying moral justification for the Israeli government sanctioning the building of settlements on it. The point is that there’s nothing to test about that – it’s just a faith claim.
The point is it doesn’t matter if the moral justification is based on a belief about God or on non-religious beliefs e.g believing territorial conquest and killing civilians is morally justified to maintain the power of your dynasty or tribe or your colonial or strategic interests or your national identity (once the belief in carving out new nation states and ending colonialism became more entrenched). The point is that neither the religious nor the non-religious moral justification belief can be supported by counting or measuring and both have similar negative real-world consequences.
