You posed your question honestly and Salon full of zeal was ready to paddle off into the sunset
Your caviling might make YOU feel invisible; but your tirade is only too obvious and manifest: it entirely (and intentionally) evades the point. The illustration was meant to buttress Karen's text about a non religious society being morally viable. I took it a step further in order to demonstrate the contrast between reason/morality and irrationality/religion/immorality. As soon as the gods are let in--GOOD people begin to die. The "Chosen People" of Jehovah were not the first to evince the concept. The "Chosen People" of Hitler were not the last to expose the conection. And who even remembers Socrates?
Morals are conceived by men. If you wish to follow the commandments of men blindly, simply because they attribute their claims to God--then you will get what you deserve. You will not critique the commandments; you will simply obey them. But please stop pretending to miss the point.
Hitler was not a rational man. He was a superstitious, emotionally disturbed individual who embraced the supernatural and the occult. Although he well demonstates the horror of supernatural belief in a Master People--neither Karen nor I introduced him to this discussion of what was a simple question of morality--YOU DID--in your left-handed and furtive way. In doing so, you perfectly made my point about the results of blind obedience to "moral" codes which are based on the supernatural: "moral" codes which have no support of reason--but, rather--which appeal to the insensate and the brutish.
And you're all pissed at a simple vignette to demonstate a point that reasonable people could be happy without crosses, crucifixes, and burning faggots?! How horrible to suggest that morals deriving from reasonable people (such as those who wrote the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights) MUST be inferior to those springing from the minds of savages wielding power with MAGIC, and maintaining it with torture, terror, and clubs--or, indeed...of savages wielding it with torture, terror and TANKS. |
