Moral imperatives to obey your creators
Feb. 22nd, 2006 03:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackMany people think morality should derive from your creator (A). I generally come across it on message boards where an intense religious debate would be off topic so I've never really explored it. It's probably obvious that I don't see it like that. Does anyone wish to correct me?
The idea of relying solely on my instincts for good and bad do terrify me -- some people are very wrong, why not me? (I do resolve to always pay attention and give utmost scrutiny to any majority view.) Yet handing over my judgement to someone else only terrifies me more.
Uranus supposedly came from Chaos, and imprisoned all his children, except Cronus, who escaped, and castrated him. Of course, Cronus did, well, almost exactly the same thing to Zeus. But, despite his later sins and the barbaric mannar of it, would A let overthrowing his father/creator be justified? Does it make a difference if the essentially primal god Uranus "created" him, or was only his father? Would the question be considered unaskable? Or does that fact that he did it suggest it's ok?
I don't think there's necessarily a universal good-and-bad we could define/discover, but I don't see why my sense of it should be constrained by my (hypothetical) creator's sense. Of course, most cerators might design their creations so they do do the right thing, by their definition. (Like the laws of robotics.) But if by mistake, or because they want something like free will, or for whatever other reason, it doesn't, shouldn't I use my sense?
Of course, I think my sense of right and wrong is a product of my evolution and upbringing. So? I drink if I'm thirsty. I help someone if I think it's right. When this innate sense has problems and I seek to extend it by my reason, what should I extrapolate from? Some people say, either seriously, or to demonstrate the undesirability of what they consider the only alternative to their god-derived or universal morality, "[I think] we are shaped by evolution. Hence my morals are an aspect of the perpetuation of my genes, so I should do everything I can to perpetuate my genes."
I don't have a logical reason for rejecting that choice, but I hate it. I extrapolate what I think is the good stuff. Why do I like pets? Probably my feelings are a relic of feelings that made ape(like) troops work together, and so survive. But then so are lots of things, and I accept them, quite apart from the futility of not knowing exactly which. So I go the other way. We shouldn't kill our children -- that makes sense evolutionarily. I say we extend that, we shouldn't kill our species, nor any other if we don't have to. Of course, a lot of the time we *do* have to, fine, we know that; and I'd put my species far first, but still minimise inter-special death and pain.
The idea of relying solely on my instincts for good and bad do terrify me -- some people are very wrong, why not me? (I do resolve to always pay attention and give utmost scrutiny to any majority view.) Yet handing over my judgement to someone else only terrifies me more.
Uranus supposedly came from Chaos, and imprisoned all his children, except Cronus, who escaped, and castrated him. Of course, Cronus did, well, almost exactly the same thing to Zeus. But, despite his later sins and the barbaric mannar of it, would A let overthrowing his father/creator be justified? Does it make a difference if the essentially primal god Uranus "created" him, or was only his father? Would the question be considered unaskable? Or does that fact that he did it suggest it's ok?
I don't think there's necessarily a universal good-and-bad we could define/discover, but I don't see why my sense of it should be constrained by my (hypothetical) creator's sense. Of course, most cerators might design their creations so they do do the right thing, by their definition. (Like the laws of robotics.) But if by mistake, or because they want something like free will, or for whatever other reason, it doesn't, shouldn't I use my sense?
Of course, I think my sense of right and wrong is a product of my evolution and upbringing. So? I drink if I'm thirsty. I help someone if I think it's right. When this innate sense has problems and I seek to extend it by my reason, what should I extrapolate from? Some people say, either seriously, or to demonstrate the undesirability of what they consider the only alternative to their god-derived or universal morality, "[I think] we are shaped by evolution. Hence my morals are an aspect of the perpetuation of my genes, so I should do everything I can to perpetuate my genes."
I don't have a logical reason for rejecting that choice, but I hate it. I extrapolate what I think is the good stuff. Why do I like pets? Probably my feelings are a relic of feelings that made ape(like) troops work together, and so survive. But then so are lots of things, and I accept them, quite apart from the futility of not knowing exactly which. So I go the other way. We shouldn't kill our children -- that makes sense evolutionarily. I say we extend that, we shouldn't kill our species, nor any other if we don't have to. Of course, a lot of the time we *do* have to, fine, we know that; and I'd put my species far first, but still minimise inter-special death and pain.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-22 05:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-22 05:41 pm (UTC)Well, I'd learn *something* from his *existance*. I think I wasn't so much thinking of buying it, as in, if that's the worst he'll do, I'll learn despite him :) Or maybe, I'll learn from him if floor-eating is somehow necessary, not just because he says so. Though I don't know how I would tell.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-22 06:08 pm (UTC)In fact a lot of religious dogma has sound hygiene grounds; pork can incubate tapeworms beneath the skin, mixed wool/linen garments are impossible to clean properly, and shaving off all your body hair is a sensible thing to do if you're a desert tribe that rarely sees enough water to bathe in. But eating off the floor has the opposite. If god ordered you to eat off the floor if you wanted divine wisdom, then either he has a specific grudge against you and thinks it's funny to humiliate you, or all the other hygiene orders were written by humans and he never cared in the first place.