I've heard from religious people that no one can be moral without religion. They bristle at the idea of moral atheist. What the theists are missing are the very pillars upon which morality rests, and that is virtues. No one can obey 100% of the law 100% of the time. No one can know all the laws that come from government. Rules, regulations, laws, and especially not religion, do not bring about morality. It comes back to practicing virtues.
You've said that morality rests on virtues, but where do those virtues come from?
Without any absolute and independent standard for virtue (i.e. God), all we have are socially-constructed values which we impose on each other by force. The argument that morality rests on virtues, then, is mere semantics.
My comment in reply to the author's post speaks to this issue.
Just to prove your point that the truth is never simple: It's worth noting that Wilde's second trial, the one that ended in a mistrial, ended that way because the jury couldn't agree on whether he deserved to be punished. During the trial, he and Lord Alfred Douglas gave such impassioned speeches in defense of same-sex love that the courtroom erupted into applause. The jury wouldn't convict, so the justice system decided to try again with a jury that would convict.
So Victorian culture wasn't a monolith. And despite it being easier for upperclass men to "get away with" being gay, it was upperclass men creating and enforcing the laws.
This is brilliant! I think the biggest lesson we *could* learn from history, but never do, is that, as you said, it's complex, and the truth can almost never be stuffed completely into a "good" or "bad," "right" or "wrong" pigeon hole. We get caught up on deciding whether an actor from the past should be cast as hero or villain, instead of saying, "These people did this, they did that, and then this is what happened because of their actions. What was the impact, both immediate and far-reaching? What cautionary tale can we extract from this story, and use to learn to do better?"
Thank you for an excellent post. And -- yes -- Wilde might have lived far longer had he heeded the advice of friends and fled to the continent earlier. Sadly, there are battles that cannot be won even today, just as there were in 19th-century England.
If sin doesn't exist and is just a social construct, on what basis can you say that the treatment of Wilde was wrong? Or imply that it was wrong for Wilde to "[use] his wealth to purchase the bodies of boys in desperate circumstances"? How can we, as a society, learn what is just and moral if there is no independent and absolute standard of justice and morality?
In practice, we rebel against the concept of sin to justify ourselves and those we have sympathy for, but then we impose and enforce our own view of sin to condemn those we dislike.
We can't have it both ways. Either the world is randomness and power games all the way down (nothing is right or wrong) or there's an independent standard that we must submit to (like it or not).
Like the laws of physics, there is a real, provable and repeatable experiment that we humans are subjected to on a daily basis. We experience or witness the behaviour of others, behaviour which might be considered legal, moral and even ethical by society's constructed standards, but we know is wrong, and we know that to the core of our being. That is evidence for the existence of an independent standard and it's consistent with the Bible's claim that the law of God is written on our hearts (Roman 2:15).
Put another way, your article borrows the concepts of justice, compassion, equality and progress from Christianity and then uses them to condemn quasi-Christian morality (used against Wilde) as lacking justice, compassion, equality and progress. And you'd be right ... unless there is no such thing as justice, compassion, equality and progress.
I commend Glen Scrivener's book 'The Air We Breathe' to understand why we believe in justice, compassion, equality and progress. The Speak Life Podcast features talks by Glen on the same subject (episodes 470, 471 and 472).
The remark “Most history is guessing; the rest is prejudice.” also shows in Bierce's Devil's Dictionary. Nothing i find tells whether the Durants got it from Bierce or vice versa. And it may be noted that the French historian Jules Michelet said in 1843: "History is a resurrection of the past, and a judgment upon the present." Not quibbling, just interesting. Good essay!
(For the record, Google Bard helped me snoop around this remark.)
“Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn’t there, and finding it.”
~ Oscar Wilde
This quote works well with your newsletter from yesterday, as well.
James - This is a really good one and should be required reading for everyone right now. Today.
I've heard from religious people that no one can be moral without religion. They bristle at the idea of moral atheist. What the theists are missing are the very pillars upon which morality rests, and that is virtues. No one can obey 100% of the law 100% of the time. No one can know all the laws that come from government. Rules, regulations, laws, and especially not religion, do not bring about morality. It comes back to practicing virtues.
You've said that morality rests on virtues, but where do those virtues come from?
Without any absolute and independent standard for virtue (i.e. God), all we have are socially-constructed values which we impose on each other by force. The argument that morality rests on virtues, then, is mere semantics.
My comment in reply to the author's post speaks to this issue.
Mostly, I have hope that we can become better than what we are. But sometimes, I just want to live on a planet of cats.
Just to prove your point that the truth is never simple: It's worth noting that Wilde's second trial, the one that ended in a mistrial, ended that way because the jury couldn't agree on whether he deserved to be punished. During the trial, he and Lord Alfred Douglas gave such impassioned speeches in defense of same-sex love that the courtroom erupted into applause. The jury wouldn't convict, so the justice system decided to try again with a jury that would convict.
So Victorian culture wasn't a monolith. And despite it being easier for upperclass men to "get away with" being gay, it was upperclass men creating and enforcing the laws.
This is brilliant! I think the biggest lesson we *could* learn from history, but never do, is that, as you said, it's complex, and the truth can almost never be stuffed completely into a "good" or "bad," "right" or "wrong" pigeon hole. We get caught up on deciding whether an actor from the past should be cast as hero or villain, instead of saying, "These people did this, they did that, and then this is what happened because of their actions. What was the impact, both immediate and far-reaching? What cautionary tale can we extract from this story, and use to learn to do better?"
Finding I agree with you - to the extent of always.
Thank you for an excellent post. And -- yes -- Wilde might have lived far longer had he heeded the advice of friends and fled to the continent earlier. Sadly, there are battles that cannot be won even today, just as there were in 19th-century England.
If sin doesn't exist and is just a social construct, on what basis can you say that the treatment of Wilde was wrong? Or imply that it was wrong for Wilde to "[use] his wealth to purchase the bodies of boys in desperate circumstances"? How can we, as a society, learn what is just and moral if there is no independent and absolute standard of justice and morality?
In practice, we rebel against the concept of sin to justify ourselves and those we have sympathy for, but then we impose and enforce our own view of sin to condemn those we dislike.
We can't have it both ways. Either the world is randomness and power games all the way down (nothing is right or wrong) or there's an independent standard that we must submit to (like it or not).
Like the laws of physics, there is a real, provable and repeatable experiment that we humans are subjected to on a daily basis. We experience or witness the behaviour of others, behaviour which might be considered legal, moral and even ethical by society's constructed standards, but we know is wrong, and we know that to the core of our being. That is evidence for the existence of an independent standard and it's consistent with the Bible's claim that the law of God is written on our hearts (Roman 2:15).
Put another way, your article borrows the concepts of justice, compassion, equality and progress from Christianity and then uses them to condemn quasi-Christian morality (used against Wilde) as lacking justice, compassion, equality and progress. And you'd be right ... unless there is no such thing as justice, compassion, equality and progress.
I commend Glen Scrivener's book 'The Air We Breathe' to understand why we believe in justice, compassion, equality and progress. The Speak Life Podcast features talks by Glen on the same subject (episodes 470, 471 and 472).
The remark “Most history is guessing; the rest is prejudice.” also shows in Bierce's Devil's Dictionary. Nothing i find tells whether the Durants got it from Bierce or vice versa. And it may be noted that the French historian Jules Michelet said in 1843: "History is a resurrection of the past, and a judgment upon the present." Not quibbling, just interesting. Good essay!
(For the record, Google Bard helped me snoop around this remark.)