RE: Serious question about thoughts on theists
May 17, 2023 at 9:57 pm
(This post was last modified: May 17, 2023 at 9:58 pm by Belacqua.)
(May 17, 2023 at 4:51 pm)Kingpin Wrote: You find and define your own morality and own hope. Gives no basis to judge anything else except that it's not your personal preference.
This I think is a fantasy people tell themselves.
We may claim that we are independent thinkers and islands of rational thought, but we aren't. All of us get our standards from the society we live in. Someone who has given up the standards they learned in Sunday School has adopted new standards, from an alternative set offered by our culture. There's nothing wrong with this, as long as we're aware of it.
When religious standards are no longer in play, then we have to ask where exactly our new standards come from. "Humanism" is a very vague term, with about three different definitions. It sounds good, but it doesn't offer specifics, or allow strong standards for choosing among many different issues. People who call themselves "humanists" may disagree on lots of important things.
Sad to say, I think that modern US values come largely from capitalism and bourgeois neoliberalism. We are propagandized through every news broadcast, TV show, movie, and pop-culture book to want and value certain things. No one is immune to this. But it's so much the water that we fish swim in that we may be unaware of it.
