David : Not sure why I'm not getting across. Two replies to your question : ( 1 ) Yes, morality is associated with religious faith. The point is that morality has real world effects. This is one reason why a variety of social science research findings all say approximately the same thing --if you follow most religion-inspired value systems you will be healthier ( on average ) than people who do not follow a religion-inspired value system. You will also live longer, usually by several years. This is to speak about averages so there can be exceptions, but generally --let's say 3/4ths of the time-- this will be true. There are also happiness studies. These are contested because not everyone can agree on what happiness consists of, but its the same kind of result for the most part, live a Christian life ( or good Jewish life, or Buddhist life ) and you will feel better, be more satisfied, etc. There is empirical data about this kind of phenomenon. The whole point is that in the political realm it is not useful to talk about morality by reference to your religious beliefs --because not everyone shares those beliefs. What you can do is talk about effects of morality, like less crime, less mental health problems, less single parenthood, etc. Never said that morality is not connected to religion. What I did say was that if --in politics-- you say that such and such is wrong because my church says so, or "this I believe," you will lose the argument every time. ( 2 ) There are, in fact, some non-religion-inspired moralities. These can be philosophical or based on a political ideology. However, for all practical purposes, these moralities, mostly ( not always, mostly ) are very similar to religious moralities. Anyway, you can test out the particulars of these "other" moralities and find empirical data about how objectively good they are, or not. In politics --and you know this perfectly well-- you've got to talk about this world, not the unseen world of the Spirit. There is a lot of stuff about effects in the real world of morality. If defending your values matters to you it shouldn't be all that much of a problem to dig up the information. You went to a really good university, I'd bet anything that you did your share of research while at College Station. And that you remember what it takes to put together a decent research study. Why Christians ( or others, for that matter ) hardly ever use the facts on their own behalf is a question I can't answer for now, but this is obvious. The Religious Right has forfeited all social science to the Left and the Left cherry picks what it likes and ignores the rest, and the result is that the Left sounds reasonable and scientific and the Right sounds like a population of religious fanatics. Reason # 41 about why I became a Radical Centrist and did not become a "conservative." The Right is stuck in another time in history. Billy ---------------------- Billy,
=-O What else can morality be based on besides religion? Conscience? Better use that of Gandhi than that of Hitler. What else have we got?? David -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
