George,
Taylor’s stand-alone sentence, “High Standards need strong sources” (Sources of the Self 516).”, is a generic statement applying to any ruling moral or ethical law. High standards--religious or secular benevolence--must be vested in a real value, and not some arbitrary dictum, which Nietzsche saw as stifling: “Only if there is such a thing as agape, or one of the secular claimants to its succession, is Nietzsche wrong” (516).
The point of my post, admittedly a little confused, was my own take on what constitutes a compelling ethical injunction: that whichever lawgiver “‘adhere steadfastly” to the spirit of what is otherwise mere rhetoric. Only then is the citizen rationally or religiously compelled.
Taylor is for divine law, but I argue that it is no more universally compelling than Man’s ethics; moreover that the Christian principles proclaimed by the church are just as roundly abused by the respective prelates and the actions of the church as ethics are by governments. My semi-solution is that the secular or religious "authority" be bound hand and foot to the humanitarian principles professed. Christ was a humanitarian, was he not?
I added, however, that “no ontology or ethic will nurture a race of paragons ... but [that] poor behaviour would at least be unexampled”.
I was talking up my assertion of the reality of self-determination, in spite of aphoristic or dry judicial sermonising—which flies in the face of Derrida et al.
Thus, my final incoherent comments were decrying both religious and scientistic efforts to find homogenous social laws, or any “world ethos” that would reign-in the spontaneous core of the self. A world ethos, at the administrative level, would no doubt, however, nurture better compliance, as well as the longevity of ours and other species.
I'm not for postmodernism, subscribing more to Jameson's version than Lyotard's
At the risk of incurring the worldly wrath of the Blue Cross, I think most of the contributors have made this an interesting thread.
Oliver, you make perfect sense as always. You should perhaps change your handle to “Spoc” though? :-)

“Faith Bushbasher... FAITH!” Indeed... I certainly did not want to upset your faith (“complete trust or confidence in someone or something” in my dictionary) though I apparently did, for which I apologise. So feel free to interpret my understanding of “virgin birth” or any other event reported in the bible in whichever way that makes you happy. Remember, it was you who brought this up with your “george doesn't actually state his world-view”. So I stated it, answered your question, and tried to explain, as best as I could, my position, though I apparently failed.

Similarly, I wouldn’t want to upset runner’s faith but if he addressed me with a remark or question I would try to answer it as honestly as I could, without wanting to force anything on him or express myself condescendingly or with “religious sophistry and intellectualising” (Fractelle). The same with you, and I apologise again if I gave you that impression.

However, I do not apologise to you (and Blue Cross and Fractelle) for not becoming an atheist. Neither do I think I should apologise if my world-view does not fit into simplistic pre-conceived boxes.

Oliver,
As I already stated I believe you can learn a lot by studying comparative religion, but I don’t believe you will find therein the answer to your question which one of them is the “strongest construct” or “closest to truth”, since the understanding of “truth” and its “constructs” that religion is after intrinsically depend on the culture that mediates this understanding.

>>In the case of Sells ... there is a methodological predisposition to accept the Christian Trinitarian Godhead, a priori <<
And in the case of this OLO there is a “predisposition to accept” English as the language in which we communicate, which does not imply linguistics, or foreign language studies, do not have their merits. Probably Sells does not want to write about comparative religion, because he thinks he does not know enough about that, so he restricts himself to his exposition of the Christian approach. (ctd)

(ctd)
>>religions having common components, could be found to be not as distinct, as their priests claim<<
I agree, except that the priest’s task is not to lecture on comparative religion but mostly to uphold - in the moral, but often more in the therapeutic meaning of the world - the position of the Church he/she serves.

Perhaps what you say is not that much different from what I once wrote: “You can look at many fingers pointing to the sky and they might look very different. However, if you lift your sight to the sky you are going to see that they all point to the same moon”. (I hope you are not shocked by this mathematician’s attempt at poetry).

You obviously misunderstood my likening of the cultural evolution of religions to the biological evolution. Nevertheless, I am thankful to you for pointing to examples that would indicate a cross-cultural relevance of some myths (models of the Divine).

Squeers,
Thanks for your comments which I again find neither “little confused” nor “incoherent”. May I ask if you have professional philosophical qualifications (I don’t)?

My favourite joke used to be that “I can understand Bertrand Russel (his atheism) but I do not agree with him, whereas I agree with Alfred Whitehead but I do not understand him”. I’ll have to look more closely at Charles Taylor but I am afraid I might have to replace Whitehead with him in that joke.

However, if I understand you properly, the quote and your comment concern only ethics not explicitly ontology (the structure of reality), although Taylor uses the term “moral ontology”, apparently related to the Catholic teaching about “moral truths” (meaning an absolute norm of conduct). However, to me “moral truth” sounds like “beauty of an equation”: both truth and beauty are primarily about something else.

I have to admit I know practically nothing about Frederic Jameson and the difference between his and Lyotard’s postmodernism, although as far as I can understand Lyotard, he is not my cup of tea... Sorry, I can continue only in 24 hours.

Squeers,

“no ontology or ethic will nurture a race of paragons..” In our self-determination, as you might suggest, we all form our own ideals. Implied also,by this subjectivity,is the injunction we do this,“without the aid of any moral authority outside that of our own.”

You mention Derrida, he’s interesting–his writing is strange and difficult because it has to be: to test the limits of what can be thought is to test the limits of what can be articulated. Derrida made the observation that with globalisation, there is no identifiable enemy in the form of a“state”or territory with whom one would wage what could still be called a“war”,even if when we might use the bandied phrase,“war on international terrorism”.Instead, “a new violence is being prepared and in truth has been unleashed for some time now, in a way that is more visibly suicidal or auto-immune than ever. This violence no longer has to do with world war or even with war,even less with some right to wage war. And this is hardly re-assuring–indeed, quite the contrary.”

Today, the number of“enemies”is potentially unlimited. Every‘other’is wholly ‘other’(The Politics of Friendship)and so every single‘other’needs to be rejected by our‘immune system’.This threat can no longer be contained when it comes neither from an already constituted state nor even from a potential state that might be treated as a rogue state(Rogues, p. 105).What Derrida is saying here is that the worst is possible, here and now,more possible than ever.

Some here presume moral indignation at another’s ideas, opinion or belief(faith); they surely need to get over it. The Greek etymology of the word“horizon”suggests both the opening and limit that defines an infinite progress or a period of waiting. Justice, however, although abstract in its truth, does not wait. A just decision is always required immediately. It cannot furnish itself with unlimited knowledge. The moment of decision itself remains a finite moment of urgency and precipitation. The instant of decision is then the moment of madness, acting in the night of non-knowledge and non-rule. What guides our Justice, however, ultimately decides for us, our action.

George,
I have little to recommend myself (apart from being well-read) in terms of qualifications; I’m doing a PhD in English Literature (which nowadays can mean anything) but my focus is philosophical.
Taylor is concerned with the perennial philosophical question, ‘how should we live’; to what premise or authority do we defer, en masse, and on what grounds? The context is assuredly ontological; which world view is to hold sway?
Jameson sees postmodernism as a late-capitalist pathology. Lyotard sees it as the positive development of ontological decenteredness whose aesthetic is the “unpresentable real”; all “reality” is mapped by what Lacan calls the ‘symbolic order’, ergo the real is occluded by the worldly accoutrements of consciousness.
Relda,
Derrida’s deconstruction posits something similar: that all our “reality” is text—soiled representation. He began studying Husserl’s phenomenology but came to see, via the linguistic turn, that all phenomena is pre-conceived, that is pre-textualised. Neither Lacan nor Derrida deny that there is phenomena outside the text, but it is not ‘directly’ accessible, only via representation--that is ‘translation’ into common parlance.
I agree with Derrida’s gloomy prognostication, without presuming to know his mind. I suspect he was polemicising against the drive toward global (ontological?) homogeneity; in such a world the self, robbed of cultural distinctiveness (and mores), is isolated from the herd and driven back to primal distinctiveness.
Interestingly, a few years before he died, Derrida confessed to a deeply religious sensibility. Even Foucault, before he died, resiled into a kind of aestheticism of the self. Such is the compelling nature of the sense of self.
I'd be interested to know what makes the trinity, or any doctrine, compelling on a deep-seated level?

>> However, I do not apologise to you (and Blue Cross and Fractelle) for not becoming an atheist.

no, but you might apologize for a cheap play of the victim card.

>> Neither do I think I should apologise if my world-view does not fit into simplistic pre-conceived boxes.

nope, no need to apologize.

however, your world-view can't seem to cope with the simple proposition "either mary was a virgin or she wasn't". thus, i won't apologise for concluding your still hidden world-view ceases to be of any interest to me.

quoth spindoc's raven, "Evermore".