Hello AJ Phillips,

My posting was not based around any basis in getting upset upon any persons disdain for religion.

At present around 2-5% of Australians are vegetarians. If majority societies (percentage wise) were to decide a social construct (in any form), people (of any type) face the reality of other people (imposing personal values onto others). So this could involve myself forcing a person to become vegetarian, or someone forcing myself to eat meat.

What a person chooses to do with their life, personally within their own scope, should only be of that person's choosing, not of a societies choosing, nor of that societies development or what a society has decided upon within a social construct.

To develop social constructs in itself is extremely difficult, and I am talking about social constructs that actually work. So why some want to continue with this approach now, rather than live as an individual and respect the personal scope of individuals is what I question. Social constructs are dangerous. Firstly having to use man made items, like a pen (you can hurt someone physically with a pen) or with a sword (you can chop someone's head off) with that.

Further as you did list some other examples of developing a social construct, a person can develop a very long, time consuming list of ideas on how to develop a social construct (and how it would work) or accept reality and see that humans only have so much time on planet Earth and that developing time consuming, complex social constructs is of limited value.

There is more than one society on planet Earth, in fact multiple. To expect these to all co-exist very quickly (through the use of pen or a sword for example or parliamentary wordings (known as legislation) is not realistic. Living within a personal scope, that sees another's personal scope as important to keep (and that means respecting all people), rather than taking a high moral and ethical stance, can be a better way to live with others.

Graham Y

'You wouldn't have the sense this was wrong, because human rights as we understand them are mostly a Christian invention.'

That's highly debatable. To give one example, the Brehon Laws of Ireland are believed to have originated around 1000 BCE and continued in Ireland up until the British outlawed it. It's an extremely sophisticated system that was based on everyone having an 'honour price', which was based on their importance within society. Obviously, people of a higher class had a higher honour price, but all members of society had rights, especially women. The laws were heavily intertwined with their spiritual beliefs that invested everything and everyone with its own spiritual importance. And incidentally, there was no capital or even corporal punishment under the Brehon Laws.

There are equivalents right across the pre-Christian and non-Christian world. As those tribal societies became more hierarchical or were overtaken by more aggressive powers, so too did their egalitarian religions become subsumed into a canon of beliefs based on domination and obedience.

It's a matter of what came first - the chicken or the egg. Does a set of religious principles create a society or does a society create a set of religious principles? For the most part, those who reject the concept of an omniscient 'sky god' lean to the latter.

And finally, I think you are doing people here a disservice in referring to 'how few scholars there are on this forum'. Both sides have shown scholarly arguments in addition to deeply intuitive ones. I for one have read extensively about Christian history and Paganism. Also, rejecting the Bible is not the same as 'hating' it. Many people reject both the Bible and Christianity, not because they 'hate' it but because it simply does not work for them.

The Christian ethic exudes equality in a true sense. The true sense of it recognises the need for a hierarchy in a balanced society.

Not everyone can be the boss: not everyone should be the boss.

It recognises a natural position for gender in society, and supports those in their allotted position with advice and guidance through its teachings.

So it's adventurous and risky in terms of individual survival, (thus also for a stable society), to step from the well-worn path, offering untried experimental transpositions of gender roles as its alternative.

Those offering nueva-Godless alternate paths, have in fact nothing to offer that is as proved as the old way. Overthrowing established norms of gender positioning brings great harm and risk of collapse, to a Christian-defined society.

This can be resisted by dismantling single parent pensions; by limiting abortions to a narrower group, defined to urgent medical necessity. Removing no-fault divorce. Mandating marriage between male and female. Eliminating legal protections for de facto relationships.
Restricting adoptions to married couples. Censoring anti-Christian bias of the ABC broadcaster.
Encouraging leasing of the public school system to religious institutions, (inclusive of Muslim populations). Ban alcohol advertising. Introduce corporal punishment for drug dealers. Etc.

diver dan

'Killarney...your very sensitive to the subject of domination. But domination is not what the Bible implies when it specifies a patriarchal family unit.'

Whether or not I am personally 'sensitive' is not the issue. I reject domination, because I've seen over and over again that it's destructive and counter-productive. Judicious leadership of the family - applied in partnership by the mother and father, and with welcome input from the children - is highly workable.

And I would think that the quotes I gave (a selective list - there are many, many others) very much imply that dominance and submission of the woman (and children) to the man are the dictatorial bible template for the family norm.

'Obviously you chose your men unwisely I would suggest. Very unfortunate for you!'

As I've been happily married for almost thirty years, I'm still waiting to see whether or not I chose my man unwisely.

Dear Jardine,

“you cannot argue that you cannot argue”

Sure I can! My argument would then be incorrect, but nothing stops me from arguing. This reminds me something really funny about Australians: they keep saying "I can't do this-and-that" when what they really mean is that doing so would be illegal. I have to keep reminding them, often a number of times until they get it, that: "You CAN do it. You may be afraid of the law alright, but it doesn't mean that you cannot!".

When it comes to ethics, I believe that the only possibilities are conscious irrationality and unconscious irrationality. Yes, it is possible, common and rational to draw complex conclusions from simple axioms, but the axioms are still irrational.

«Argumentation presupposes that the issue you’re trying to resolve can be resolved by argumentation»

Not necessarily, although it's common for one or both sides to believe and hope that there is at least some positive chance to resolve the argument by argumentation. It's just that... people are not rational beings!

«otherwise there’d be no point in arguing»

And indeed, this is often the case.

«Therefore I think an axiom can be rational.»

All you need then is to present just ONE such axiom.

«Therefore I think an axiom can be rational.»

Conclusions can be rational, but not axioms. For example, “I want to reach God“ is an axiom; “I have faith in Patanjali that violence is the foremost obstacle on that path“ is an axiom, but “I should refrain from violence“ is a rational conclusion of the two.

«in which case one proves one’s objection wrong because irrational.»

Irrational does not imply wrong - only a contradiction can prove something wrong. Gödel proved that most statements are irrational, in the sense that neither them nor their opposite can ever be proved.

«From this I propose to submit for your, and others’ consideration a rational ethic that does not rely on God-stories, arbitrary postulates, or mere blind faith.»

Undoubtedly ethics can exist without God-stories, but then they would still rely in blind-faith on some other axiom(s).

Graham,

>>Although the idea that somehow it was an invention of the Roman Empire, or the Church fathers, demonstrates how few scholars there are on this forum.<<

Unfortunately, there are many other “ideas” that demonstrate this finding of yours. At least where the topic involves religion in some form. However, I do not think it was always so: I remember many posts in the past from atheists, or other non-Christians, that I learned from.

Even now, those Christians (or others) here, who are interested in learning from atheist scholars, can be grateful to the author of this article for reminding them of Habermas’ (see my earlier post) recent interest in religion. The quote given in the article is preceded by (for those who can understand):

" From the sociological point of view, the modern forms of consciousness encompassing abstract right, modern science, and autonomous art could never have developed apart from the organizational forms of Hellenized Christianity and the Roman Catholic Church, without the universities, monasteries, and cathedrals. This is especially true for the emergence of mental structures.

In contrast with archaic mythic narratives, the idea of God - the idea of the single, invisible God the Creator and Redeemer - already signified a breakthrough to an entirely new perspective. With this idea, the finite human mind … achieved a standpoint that transcends everything this-worldly. But only with the transition to modernity does the knowing and morally judging subject assimilate the divine standpoint in such a way that it accomplishes two momentous idealizations. On the one hand, it objectifies external nature as the totality of states of affairs and events which are connected in a law-like manner and, on the other, it expands the familiar social world into an unbounded community of all responsible agents. In this way, the door is opened for reason to penetrate the opaque world in both dimensions, in the form of the cognitive rationalization of a fully objectified nature and of the social-cognitive rationalization of the totality of morally regulated interpresonal relations."