I don't think that this is accurate. Just because a philosophy or moral system or whatever
is not anchored by a deity but by some human construct doesn't necessarily mean that it
isn't anchored and that there's no value or moral judgment to be made.
But the premise that has been going around, that I think he was referring to, is that there is no absolute morality, only what any given society at any given time says is moral. By definition, almost, there is no anchor for such a "moral" system -- it floats in the breeze.
The issue, IMO, is not whether the anchor is based on deity or based on what the founders called "inalienable rights." The issue is whether there are any such inalienable rights at all, whether based on the sacred or the secular. Personally, I believe that there are such rights. But the argument that has been floated around here recently is that there are not -- that any system is moral if the society believes in it. (Under this construct, for example, the female genital mutilation practiced by some societies is perfectly moral if those societies believe it is.)
Personally, I don't buy it. And what's interesting to me is that generally most of the people who espouse it as a theory don't believe it either. They want our U.S. society to dictate morality to, say, Iraq, or Libya, or China. They support laws that prohibit child labor in developing countries, even when those societies support child labor. There is such a fundamental disconnect between principle and belief that IMO it simply proves the invalidity of the principle. |
