RE: Objective morality as a proper basic belief
July 10, 2017 at 5:32 pm
(This post was last modified: July 10, 2017 at 5:33 pm by mordant.)
(July 10, 2017 at 4:54 pm)Khemikal Wrote: The weakest form of a secular objective morality seeks only to reduce harm, but leaves out any compulsion to increase wellbeing.Seems to me like the two go hand-in-hand. Overlooking increased wellbeing contemplates only the absence of negatives. Fortunately, in some cases reducing or removing harms inherently involves substituting a boon of some kind. Reduce disease, you get more health whether you want it or not. That's not true of everything of course; take a poor man, make his lame leg whole, and send him back into penury and want to eke out an existence in some violent urban dystopia and he'll probably die about as quickly and be about as miserable, just for different reasons.
Of course Christianity has (to put it kindly) a ... complex relationship with pleasure. We mustn't enjoy life TOO much. That would make us all into profligates. Even just simple ease or contentment are suspect to some Christians. Life is supposed to be a STRUGGLE against the forces of evil and your flesh, and if they're not, something is Just Not Right. Not least, they envy someone who has it easier than them.
