Gabriella,
No idea what you are trying to say here about equivalence. My point was the Quran contains moral principles that are interpreted by people who also add a lot more detail based on what they think the purpose of the moral is and based on traditional stories as well as their own reasoning to create laws in some countries. In the absence of these interpreted and fleshed out laws being binding, people just use some of the moral principles they interpret from the Quran and Hadith as a guide for their morality and if they want more detailed information to make a moral decision they look for interpretations from scholars or other sources of interpretation or explanation in books or on-line or from speaking to people. So a lot of the time they accept that there may be differing opinions on the morality.
What I was saying was that pointing out that all texts require interpretation (albeit to varying degrees) doesn’t give you an equivalence in the way they’re treated and acted on.
Specifically, ether you think that these “moral principles” have been handed down by an omniscient god or you don’t. If you don’t, all you have is (early and relatively crude) moral philosophy and no appeal therefore to inerrancy. If you do though, then presumably you think too that somehow the basic sense of them will transcend any amount of interpretation that gives you “a lot more detail” on top, and so you’ll behave accordingly.
Some individuals are certain their personal morality is right and therefore justify breaking the law. Many other individuals are certain their personal morality is right but try to change the law through the acceptable processes of lobbying Parliament. Some / many people are not certain but stick with their morality until they buy into a something they think works better.
No doubt, but this is about what happens when people think that
a god’s morality (
not their personal morality) is inerrantly right, and moreover that they think they know what it is.
Statutes are also interpreted differently by different people - hence there are court cases and case law and a judge to decide which interpretation will prevail and the law is binding . So far so fine. Whatever problem you have with those statements will have to remain a mystery.
Only if you’re incapable of grasping the point that interpretation doesn’t give you an equivalence between the way the two types of document are acted on.
At least you seem to have finally understood that a person can believe in an inerrant god and also believe that words in religious texts are interpreted differently by different people.
If only I could say that you’d finally understood the significance of thinking there to be divine and therefore inerrant moral rules and a sure fire way to know what they are, even at just a “basic principle” level to use your phrase.
No idea what you are asking.
Why not? It’s simple enough. You said, “As we already established faith can exist without people thinking their faith is a reliable guide.” I merely ask what you think this “faith” does if you don’t think it’s a reliable guide to what’s true.
Are you wanting to call the process of formulating personal morality "just guessing"?
No, I’m asking you what “faith” has to do with that. I’ve formulated personal morality, but there’s no faith involved. What then do you think is missing from my morality that yours (or theists’ in general) has?
I think most religious people estimate levels of harm in society or in their family caused by certain actions and draw a moral line based on their personal tolerance of that risk of harm. FOr example, not drinking alcohol seems like a way of avoiding harm - is that what you are referring to as guessing?
No doubt, but where does “faith” come into it then?
I don't know what you mean by a reliable guide.
Better than guessing.
I live my life on the basis of this belief because doing so gives me better outcomes than if I don't hold this belief. So it's a reliable guide to me getting generally positive outcomes in my daily life.
Which is fine, and no-one’s business but your own. You find utilitarian value in believing something to be true. This doesn’t though presumably entail you claiming that it is true because your faith tells you so, so the faith bit seems to be redundant here.
Actually it's a very useful analogy about individuals being responsible only for their own behaviour rather than the behaviour of other people who have constructed different interpretations of concepts such as masculinity or morality and whose personalities might compel them to behave in a way that adheres to their particular interpretation of those concepts.
That’s missing it (yet) again. Where does “faith” fit into someone self-identifying his/her gender. On the other hand, if you said, “I don’t drink because that’s my faith” and someone else said, “I throw gay people off building because that’s my faith” you have very different outcomes but the same the same rationale for them. How then would you propose to argue to the other person that faith is a very bad reason for acting according to where it happens to lead?
Your use of it is a fallacy - given that religions are interpretations that are subject to variation, and also given that certainty is down to the individual personality regardless of whether they are religious or not, so religion can't be held responsible for an individual's propensity to certainty about their moral actions.
Are you being deliberately obtuse about this? I can see why you’d want to get faith as an epistemic method off the hook because it puts you in an uncomfortable place, but it doesn’t wash. As you’ve been unable to suggest a middle ground position (rightly as there isn’t one) either you think that faith itself is a rationale for identifying truths or it’s just guessing. And if you do think it’s the former, that’s not about “the individual’s propensity” at all – it’s about the rationale you share for finding truths.
No idea what your point is here.
Again – why not? It’s simple enough I’d have thought.
The evidence is that there are lots of religious people arriving at their particular interpretations of morality while also being law-abiding citizens. Presumably they have done so by applying the brakes of reason in order to arrive at their personal morality - so there isn't a problem. There is only a problem if their reasoning leads to their personal morality being at odds with the current morality enshrined in laws in their society.
Presumably they have. The problem though comes when those who haven’t applied those brakes share their rationale for not doing so with those who have the same rationale but have managed to compartmentalised it.
I'm just pointing out that the issue is the individual, not religion, for the reasons given above.
You’re not “pointing out”, you’re asserting – and wrongly so for the reasons I’ve explained. Individual morality etc is fine, but not when those individuals are convinced that their faith (or the faith of clerics they take seriously) takes them to unquestionable moral positions.
