Thursday, July 31, 2008
SILLY!!!!!!!
Jonah Goldberg on The Corner links to a Reason Magazine piece:
Morality requires some sort of foundation that is other than apparently arbitrary mutual agreement or chaos and silliness come into play. This is an example of that. If one has no creation story that somehow creates a "pecking order" amongst life forms, what are you going to do? This nonsense is actually logical in a purely secular society. And yet, the fairly liberal and secular Reason Magazine ridicules the decision. What truly happens in a secular society is not reason, but taste - and that is oppressive - think about it.
But also at the heart of this is a governmental body that ran out of things to do - so they kept working at nothing to justify their existence.
I remember exercises in school where we were supposed to sit around and decide ethical rules for new science. Heck - even figuring out how to frame the discussion, especially in a fully secular manner, can be an extraordinary exercise in pure silliness.
There is one more observation form this - it is reflective of a desire to have only the personal as a perspective. Note how this is based on trying to assume the perspective of the plant - as if a plant could have a perspective. My point is this - we as people tend to want to approach things as defending our perspective, and what we perceive as our best interest.
Aside from the logical fallacies I have pointed out here, perhaps the greatest value to religion is that it asks us to take the perspective of the other and it gives us a more objective perspective. So in this instance, they ask what is best for the plant instead of what is best for the nation, the ecosystem, the whatever of which the plant is an individual part.
Not that anyone is, but if someone were to ask me what was the greatest problem facing our culture today it would be our inability and our unwillingness to approach things with an objective perspective and a heart and eye for the other. In some ways this is testament to our success. We have so conquered the fundamentals of existence that we are rarely confronted with situations which force us into an objective viewpoint.
Which raises the truly interesting point that the more we progress, the more we need God, not the less. It may be the greatest evidence of sin to date that increased success has created increased selfishness.
Technorati Tags:vegetable rights, ethics, sin, need, success
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"Nature News" is reporting that the Swiss government's ethics committee on non-human biotechnology has issued guidelines instructing researchers how to avoid offending the dignity of plants. If their projects are ruled as affronts to plants, their funding will be pulled.And no, this is not parody. What you see in this amazing bit of utter silliness is an incredible combination of godlessness and bureaucracy run amok.
Morality requires some sort of foundation that is other than apparently arbitrary mutual agreement or chaos and silliness come into play. This is an example of that. If one has no creation story that somehow creates a "pecking order" amongst life forms, what are you going to do? This nonsense is actually logical in a purely secular society. And yet, the fairly liberal and secular Reason Magazine ridicules the decision. What truly happens in a secular society is not reason, but taste - and that is oppressive - think about it.
But also at the heart of this is a governmental body that ran out of things to do - so they kept working at nothing to justify their existence.
I remember exercises in school where we were supposed to sit around and decide ethical rules for new science. Heck - even figuring out how to frame the discussion, especially in a fully secular manner, can be an extraordinary exercise in pure silliness.
There is one more observation form this - it is reflective of a desire to have only the personal as a perspective. Note how this is based on trying to assume the perspective of the plant - as if a plant could have a perspective. My point is this - we as people tend to want to approach things as defending our perspective, and what we perceive as our best interest.
Aside from the logical fallacies I have pointed out here, perhaps the greatest value to religion is that it asks us to take the perspective of the other and it gives us a more objective perspective. So in this instance, they ask what is best for the plant instead of what is best for the nation, the ecosystem, the whatever of which the plant is an individual part.
Not that anyone is, but if someone were to ask me what was the greatest problem facing our culture today it would be our inability and our unwillingness to approach things with an objective perspective and a heart and eye for the other. In some ways this is testament to our success. We have so conquered the fundamentals of existence that we are rarely confronted with situations which force us into an objective viewpoint.
Which raises the truly interesting point that the more we progress, the more we need God, not the less. It may be the greatest evidence of sin to date that increased success has created increased selfishness.
Technorati Tags:vegetable rights, ethics, sin, need, success
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