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Originally Posted by EnderD_503
There are more efficient and better defensible ways to assure that the common person is treated as an equal in a society run by bankers and politicians. I still maintain that morality is not the way to attain that goal, even though one's first reaction is to think that it is a matter of morality. If it came down to my own ethics, then yes I would feel that these people who oppress need to adopt a similar idea of equality and basic respect as myself. But it's very difficult to make any change or make an air-tight argument using a term that is subjectively defined. And I still maintain that if we want long term progress for society, we need to step away from immutable ideologies/morality, and take a step forward into a more analytical age where our "beliefs" are constantly mutating.
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You know it’s not so much that I don’t agree with you to a point. It’s more that the majority of people will not, and might even misunderstand what you are saying. And when people don’t understand something or if it seems too different they stop listening. When you are trying to stimulate change I think it is important to have people listen to you. Morality is a language that people understand. It’s not like the danger inherent in that is lost on me. I just think it might be easier to wrest morality from the claws of religion than to ignore the importance of it to a large percentage of the population.
If I want someone to hear me I will speak in a language they understand. If I want someone to understand what I am doing I will use tools with which they are familiar. Morality is important to most people. Statistics show that 70% of the US population wants a president who is moral. Until we can separate morality from religion, in the eyes of most people, moral also means religious. Religious morality is like the bizarro superman of morality. This kind of thing can’t just be ignored (as much as I wish it could.) It needs to be addressed in some acceptable way.
Secular morality is based on logic and reason rather than supernatural revelation. So clearly I’m not saying that logic and education are wrong answers. I’m just saying they are both as open to perversion as morality, especially since in many ways they are the same thing as secular morality. Logic can easily be perverted to meet the needs of fanatics. Education, as important and as useful as it is, will not change the minds of the average religious zealot. We can’t even get them to accept, regardless of all the evidence to the contrary, that the earth is older than 6,000 years. There are some, a great many in fact, who, despite all the scientific proof available showing just the opposite, believe that evolution is wrong. No amount of logic or education is going to change that. But for the sake of the rest of that 70% who believe morals are a measure of a leader we cannot leave morality in the hands of people who refute logic and pervert reason.
As far as equality I don’t think I said anything about equality. I said equity. Equity is the quality of being fair and impartial: "equity of treatment". Which is different from equality which is correspondence in quantity, degree, value, rank, or ability. There are some ways in which I believe we need to be treated equally of course. But equal in only some ways and to a certain degree because surely logic clearly supports the reality that we certainly are not all equal in all ways.
However, we all deserve equity of treatment. I think that is a moral measure that is not subjective. I believe we need to judge the morality of a belief, a choice, a decision, or a law by how well it adheres to the principles of justice and equity for every individual. You said you believed that “people like Breivik did not need to be incarcerated to the maximum because of morality but because they are a danger to the progress of society which they inhabit.” I think being dangerous to the progress of society is a moral issue. I believe acting in such a way as to be a danger to the progress of society is not a sound moral decision. It is adversely affecting the moral principles of justice and equity for every individual. There are consequences to taking an action that infringes on the rights of another. There are social contracts and you are right there are consequences for breaking them that end in less dignity and less respect for individuals who do engage in actions that are dangerous to the progress of the society they inhabit. But even in this there needs to be a social contract that is humane.
Morality based on equity of treatment for all would not be subjective. Hopefully it would negate any need to define words like dignity, respect and reverence for humanity. It is just an equity of treatment that everyone would like for themselves. If this kind of secular morality were reality then every decision would be reached based on equity and every decision, every choice you make or you support would be one you would be comfortable having done to you and your loved ones.
I doubt the majority of people are comfortable leaving morality out of the conversation when talking about social change. If we, who want to drive change in the direction of logic and reason, the direction of long term progress for society, leave morality out of our discourse, if we concede morality is the language of the opposition, then it will appear to others it is because we do not understand the language. That I believe is doing ourselves a deeply disturbing and dangerous disservice. We do understand the language of morality. We just don’t care for the way it is being spoken at this time. We could help change that.