>Johannes, according to St. Augustine, evil is a deficiency of being, and although God has arbitrary power in one sense, in another, since His will reflects the fullness of His glory, He is "bound" to be good. Therefore, morality is rooted in the nature of things....<
The conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises. Many argue morality is not necessarily rooted in the nature of things, but that the nature of things is imperfectly rooted in morality. Nature as we perceive it is not necessarily “good” merely because it emanated from God. I am a fan of Augustine, Aquinas and Kant, but these men were merely speculating, and in many cases their speculations were seriously flawed. What is beyond speculation is the fact that Might Makes Right. (grin – okay okay)
I do not here focus unduly upon God's sovereignty such that my views are dangerous to anyone, and my views are not merely the product of a Calvinistic bent. I have even argued here that fundamental morality exists in nature and can be discerned by the thinking man. You have the thing quite backwards.
I merely comment on what I think is a component of morality that many seem to ignore or segregate. Morality is not purely a code of behaviour to be discovered in nature or in God because likely in every instance of existence some entities will perceive it differently, and oftentimes the differences will be radical. The point of morality is to normalise humanity, indeed all of nature; and to do this it must not merely inform as to what must be done, it must overcome all misperceptions and weaknesses of nature so that all things become moral. If it does the former and not the latter, it is meaningless.
Natural Law may indicate the Deficiency of Being extant in a certain entity, but Law itself is meaningless if it is unaccompanied by Authority. And this is the crux of the thing. If Law makes a claim and yet has not Authority to implement its claim, and if another claim is made based not on Law, and if the latter claim musters enough Might such that it overpowers the logical claims of the Law, then the latter claim is for all intents and purposes Right. Surely we may claim logic always makes its claim and that logic never changes, but unfortunately logic is hardly objectively discernible. What is? Might is! It is always objectively discernible, and this is why I say that regardless of Nature, Might is the Great Normaliser – It is always Right.
We may debate the nature of morality for centuries, and this we have done, but we are no closer to morality than Aquinas was to the nature of God. In truth the mere fact that we debate morality proves my point. God can contradict the law of “non-contradiction” because He is reality itself. All else is dead, even though it is animated, and because God is reality, all else by definition must utterly perish. (At least this is where I have placed my bet.)
I have seen the movie “Contact”, by the way. It was a bunch of unimaginative crap, with poor science and even poorer religion. It featured a bunch of hyperfundamentalist Christian terrorists and a hip fornicating Roman Catholic “theologian” as our happy religious representatives, and a bunch of hip freeloading but hardworking "intellectual" scientist types as our representatives of truth. It had all the predictable boilerplate garbage in it-- the talented dedicated hip scientist whose career is dreadfully close to collapsing, but who after countless hours of trying to make that one great discovery in the history of man dozes off only to be awakened by a BIG RED FLASHING SIGN on a computer that basically says - "HEY! THIS IS THE BIG ONE, GIRL! Wake up and run around! Get on the phone and yell out some scientific sounding junk." You know the routine.
The philosophical dialogue was sophomoric, to put it euphemistically. ‘If there is a God where is the proof?' the protagonist demands. ‘Do you love your father?' asks her fornicating theologian lover. ‘Yes,' she replies. ‘Prove it,' the theologian lover demands, and the atheist is left blubbering like an idiot. Never mind the consummate illogic of both demands, it makes for great video, for silly children that is.
The movie had no depth, and it did not have even great effects. The acting was just stupid. Everyone was acting and no one really lived. I was not offended by the fundamentalist terrorists. If someone wants to portray Christians in this manner, it really is fine by me; but I would have liked to see all the characters, including the terrorists, portrayed in a manner that gave them flesh. They were all stick-figures – posing and speaking to the camera without looking into it. Dumb.
Philosophically the thing was weak all around. Nevertheless even the thrust of the philosophy was weak. The movie did not seriously challenge the validity of God at all. It got into no one's head, aimed for no foundations of thought. It merely engaged in teen-age chatter about “metaphysics and stuff.” If you are going to question the validity of God, then dangit question it! Hammer at it, better yet, try and see if we can get along without God. Which brings me to the point most salient in my mind, and which is amongst the ultimate reasons of my Might Makes Right campaign. Cut God out of the picture completely, and then consider my point. |
