So breaking points had a video today where they had some Christian dude on talking about we're becoming a post Christian society and how this is dangerous because we would lose our moral way. And how we might return to slavery and get rid of the idea of universal human rights or something if we don't maintain our Christian views.
And...this is bullcrap. Look, Christianity is NOT what makes society good. And Christians need to stop claiming liberalism, a secular ideology that, if anything, comes from a deistic set of ideas, NOT a primarily Christian set of ideas, as their own. In a lot of cases, modern liberalism stands against Christianity. It supports things like separation of church and state and opposing the encroachment of religion into politics, because when religion meets politics, it often ends badly and leads to oppression.
What makes the idea of "human rights" good is basically the fact that they're good ideas with good consequences. They're positive social constructs that regardless of where they came from, lead to results that are worth supporting and keeping. And yes, I know the original believers in "natural rights" seemed to appeal to divine command theory for their justification, but this is lazy. And if you argue based on these terms, you lost the argument.
But that's why Christians fear a post Christian society. They believe in objective morality that is underpinned by some version of divine command theory. Their views basically come down to "God said so." And that's lazy. And it's not justified.
You can come to legal structures like that through secularism. Heck, I WOULD argue for similar ones through secularism. The goal of morality is human well being, this involves longer life, and subjectively better quality of life, as defined by an absence of suffering and pain, freedom to do what you want, pursuit of happiness, etc. Heck, freedom is the default state of humanity. The point of the social contract, the thoery we engage in secularly to shift away from a hobbesian socially darwinistic nightmare to what we call "civilization", is to basically say, hey, let's give up A LITTLE of our freedom, so we can enjoy the rest in security. And from that, everything else comes with it. Life is the first order priority of morality, and it's balanced with liberty. Liberty itself is a good thing, unless it infringes on life. So we should strive to maximize liberty, only ceding the argument in the name of harm reduction. And of course, the pursuit of happiness arises from liberty. We need to be free, so we can pursue what makes us happy. Happiness is an inherent good, but what makes us happy is subjective and authoritarians cant necessarily decide what does and doesnt make us happy, and thus shouldnt infringe on our lives more than necessary, we should be free to live as we want and do what makes us happy, assuming we dont violate another person's life, or their liberty.
See? Those "god given" rights explained secularly. As for property, which isn't mentioned here but some consider a natural right. The original iteration of the idea actually included property. Well, I don't value property as highly. I view property as a social convention that is useful, but I do think there are pragmatic limits, as treating it as an absolute violates peoples' life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Heck, much of my economic ideology is about placing limits on property and being for taxation, so we can reach a more equitable distribution of property, so that we can pursue those higher order rights more easily.
Poverty is a threat to life, as an inability to meet one's material needs threatens their well being and makes them miserable. Poverty is a threat to liberty because it forces people to depend on others to meet their needs, enslaving them to others. And it is a threat to peoples' pursuit of happiness since how can they pursue happiness if they are in a state of material lack that threatens their life, and their liberty? They can't. And that's why, if property is considered a right at all, it's a much lower order right that should have a lot more restrictions on it in order to allow people to pursue their higher order rights without interference. An unchecked right on property is actually dangerous and threatens all of these other rights in my views.
And why do we support this system of rights at all? Do they come from god? No. I just think that they're inherent goods. Like, if we're going to have a system of morality and a system of rules outside of the state of nature, and that this is a good thing for people, these are the goals that such morals should be trying to achieve. If we don't make these are north stars for any system of morality that we have, then I have to ask, what is the point? Without that, we just have some dude implementing their views via force.
And that's all those old pagan views were discussed in that video were. Just some dude imposing their crappy systems through force. But it wasn't god or christianity that made us able to think better, it was the enlightenment, which actually often quite opposed the church and the christian way of doing things.
And as we've discussed quite recently, with the work ethic and blah blah blah, Christianity morality actually kinda fricking sucks, and isnt actually aligned with these moral goals. Often times christian morality is more about building individual virtue. Often times, christian morality is about imposing moral codes on people "for their own good" and grossly infringing on their freedom and pursuit of happiness in the process.
Hell, let's go further. Christian morality sucks, because Yahweh basically represented the ethos of your typical bronze age strong man. That's where this system came from. God was seen as the ultimate strong men above strong men by virtue of being immortal and all powerful and all knowing, and we just have to cede to his ways of doing things, no matter how unreasonable or arbitrary we are. Heck, the original sin of Christianity was actually humans daring to know good and evil for themselves. Seriously, the tree of knowledge and good and evil, if you eat it, you become like god, you shouldnt eat it. Basically, the moral lesson is that we should all just STFU and listen to god.
And honestly, here's the thing. Christian morality is based on divine command theory, where morality isnt good because it has good results, but because it comes from god. Either by command, or "by his nature" to bypass the typical christian counterargument to that.
And that's what this guy fears we will lose entering a post christian era. But you know what? We'll be fine. Because these morals arent good because god commanded them. They're good because they produce good results. And this is why, even as someone who outright argues and advocates for a secular basis of morality, I am still so hardcore on liberal democracy.
Hell, that's actually why I've taken the turn i have recently with foreign policy where im more fiercely western. It isn't because western culture is "Christian" because it is good. It's because it has a set of ideals at its core that are worth preserving, and that if we lose those ideals, we risk falling into the pattern of the rest of the world, where morality is just based on force, or alternatively religious fiat.
But keep in mind, it's not christianity, or the idea of "god" that makes these views good. It's their results. It's the fact that they logically lead to good outcomes, and the absence of them leads to bad outcomes. That's the only reason we need such things. And that's why I'm a liberal and opposing the rising tide of authoritarianism that I see both on the left AND the right. I support liberal democracy, I support the rule of law, I support the system of constitutional rights, separation of powers, etc. It's not because they came from god that i support them, I dont believe they did, although we could argue some lazy thinkers justified them with god. I support them because their results are positive.
Rights can be just as easily justified within a system of rule utilitarianism as opposed to natural rights, which is based in divine command theory. And we should base such views on a more secular basis of morality.
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