Either this claim, that "there are no absolute and inviolate standards" is a true statement or it is not.
I can see from this that you don't get it, but I don't know that I have a better way of explaining it. One can stand on a soapbox in the park and shout that one is in possession of God's absolute truth and proceed to proclaim it. What is the alternative to that? You seem to think that the only alternative is to stand on another soapbox and proclaim that there is no absolute truth. That's not the position I'm taking although I can see how it might appear that way. My perspective is to get away from all the soapboxes and out of the park entirely to a secular place. There is a difference between promoting or denying religious beliefs and being indifferent to, apart from, or oblivious to them. Like being religious, unreligious, or areligious. My island, as I intended it, is not hostile to religion, it is just apart from religion.
The truth is that you and X and Solon are all only selective relativists.
X uses the relativist label. I don't recall whether Solon has spoken to that or not. I do not consider myself a relativist, although that may be a relative term. I have very definite ideas about right and wrong. There are two key differences between me and a fundamentalist in this regard, best I can tell.
One is that I don't get my rights and wrongs from a supernatural source. That means that I decide them myself in collaboration with society. It also means that mine are complex so they may, at times, come into conflict with one another.
The second difference is that I am quite libertarian. That means that I don't have rules for everything, just the big stuff. I have boundaries, but they're quite a ways out there and there's lots of latitude within the boundaries. Greg, I grew up in the 50's when there was right and wrong in everything. It was wrong to wear bright colors. It was wrong to have sexual contact outside of marriage. It was wrong to shop on Sunday. It was wrong to date someone of another race. I think it was as recently as about twenty years ago when Ann Landers was preaching that there was a right and wrong way to hang a roll of toilet paper--the end had to roll down the back against the wall rather than over the top. Well, I think that over regulation is both silly and unproductive. And, when it comes as an absolute truth from a deity rather than just an advice columnist, it can be downright dangerous.
You think I'm wrong and your right.
All I've ever been doing here is to try to increase our mutual understanding.
Karen |
