tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post8885171348611020078..comments2024-03-28T11:33:16.271-05:00Comments on Adventus: So much depends...Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-52172881195505108862014-04-08T12:17:14.159-05:002014-04-08T12:17:14.159-05:00It was that post at Salon that drove me to give up...It was that post at Salon that drove me to give up on comments at Salon (and almost anywhere else). There is a "will to power," but there is also a "will to ignorance." And that post brought it out in amounts measurable in tons.Rmjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811456254443706479noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-6735263742119137232014-04-08T12:12:09.175-05:002014-04-08T12:12:09.175-05:00Belief is the only thing I can see for where moral...Belief is the only thing I can see for where morality comes from. You choose to believe it. I used to not understand that belief is a choice and not just some felt emotion. You choose to accept a belief, there can be different motives for coming to your decision but in the end it is a choice. With me it was the realization that people had a status different than things, though it might have come for animals first. I used to believe that atheists were as moral as other people - and not because "other people" are all that great at being oral - but I am having to question that the more I'm exposed to hundreds and thousands of atheists online. I don't believe it's necessarily so anymore, though I've known atheists who I trust, I think they're more exceptions than typical. I think most atheists who aren't depraved are kept in check by indifference or figuring they can't get away with something. There being no penalty for lying your head off online, spreading the most racist and vicious lies (I read that post by Sana Saeed at Salon, and the comments) they know they can get away with it. The Thought Criminalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01381376556757084468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-81597588265175106242014-04-08T10:48:40.581-05:002014-04-08T10:48:40.581-05:00I remember an excerpt from "Nickel and Dimed&...I remember an excerpt from "Nickel and Dimed" where Ehrenreich confronted her peers who employed maids. They felt the sting of her opprobrium, but defended their choices. And her disdain was purely from personal experience, not, as I expected, from a moral perspective.<br /><br />I only realized that later, though, when I recognized she wasn't taking a moral stance, so much as an experiential one. And if her experience is not mine, then what do I care?<br /><br />This is what Dorothy Day warned against: the poor are not there for our edification or awaiting our instruction. Our morality must lead us to treat them as human beings who have their own integrity, or we are doing it wrong. But you don't gain that perspective without a morality that gives it to you. And whence comes that morality?Rmjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811456254443706479noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-39334475903424690742014-04-08T09:34:04.758-05:002014-04-08T09:34:04.758-05:00I hadn't realized until I read your comments h...I hadn't realized until I read your comments how bored I was as with the barroom atheist act as I am with the sci-ranger style of atheism. I've been hearing the same old lines since I was about 8, they never come up with anything new, they never address the discrepancies in their various holdings, they never hold other atheists up to the standards they demand of religious folk, they are just loud mouthed blowhards. <br /><br />I'll bet that even someone like Ehrenreich figures that because they've got the Sci on their side, they don't have to consider anything else. I'd like to know where in what she can see she finds a moral obligation for people who don't want to practice equality and economic justice if they simply choose to be selfish and unfair. Because I can show her a line of prominent atheists going back into antiquity who denied those were in any sense binding on people if not a delusion, and from the 19th century using evolutionary science as their reason for believing that. Even earlier using "enlightenment" philosophy, going back into the 17th century. All of them atheists. The Thought Criminalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01381376556757084468noreply@blogger.com