So, I've seen lots of accusations of moral relativism lately. The latest I wandered onto was a years-old blog post here: http://haemtza.blogspot.com/2009/03/is-npr-anti-semitic.html
I don't support Israel because I'm "misguided", I don't see the morally objective viewpoint, I'm blinded by moral relativism and can't see "the light", is what this blog post is saying.
Well, you know what? My moral compass DOES lead me to support an oppressed people, no matter who is doing the oppression, and no matter what god they subscribe to.
Really, this is so much evidence for what Carl Sagan said... my problem with this idea of God is that it's such a small-minded god, such a jealous god -- a ruler that rules by bullying, that plays favorites with his own "chosen people", and sets them out to kill, burn, and massacre all they can to gain land for themselves. This is the god that promotes stoning, killing, and division in his own name -- that can only compete with other religions by burning alive their worshippers, or otherwise killing them in some gruesome way.
Is this is the god of our universe? Its creator, its founder? The creator of billions of galaxies, wherein Earth is but a single mote in a sunbeam? How can such a powerful, creative force that has put into place all the laws that would lead into the orbiting of planets, the creation of stars, the many beautiful and elegant pieces of the universe, be only focused on a small group, of a small planet, in a small galaxy? How does this fall in line with how much of the universe lies outside of our grasp without technical aid -- a whole spectra of light, only a small portion of which we can see? Sound, of which only a certain amount we can hear? Chemicals, of which we need complex understanding and instrumentation to dissect?
Why create all this wonder, if he's just going to act like a petty dictator that cares about your personal life -- that cares about the threads in your clothing, what food you eat, who you have sex with in your own spare time? Why analyze the thread of every single person's life on this blue ball, punishing some in horrendous ways?
Even if this small-minded god could exist, never could I see him as the Creator of the universe, the Prime Mover, the First Cause. I don't even think there has to be such a thing in the first place, but if there was, this small-minded god couldn't even come close.
You know the problem with the idea of the Bible being the objective morality that we all should follow? It's that it doesn't stand up to reality. It doesn't even come close. It's a book written by a people that put in the morality and understandings of the universe at their time... and how small, how pathetic it compares to what we actually observe. How small it seems, how narrow-minded, how bigoted... and how arrogant.
How arrogant that some think that the universe watches them, cares about them, moves itself for them, and devotes itself to them -- or punishes them, dictates to them, cares about their little lives on their little planet.
Imagine, in your mind's eye, the vast cosmos. Here, let me help you:http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/NatSci102/NatSci102/images/hdfwf3.gif
Imagine all of this, and then imagine that you zoom in on any one of those galaxies, zoom in on any one of its solar systems, zoom in on one of its tiny planets -- would you consider them the all-important race of the cosmos? Much less a small smidgeon of that race, selected for their ethnicity?
This post might be considered anti-semitic. I prefer to think of it as pro-reality. I think it was great that we spent money, resources, and even human lives protecting the Jews and other ethnicities (gypsies, polish, etc.) from the Nazis -- said without sarcasm. That was a terrible time, and the US eventually did the right thing. But that doesn't mean that I should support the subjugation of another culture because of that horror.
Anyways, rant over. I had to get that out of my system.
Hello from Deviantart. you already know me, and I have to commend you on a job well done.
ReplyDeleteI did read that link you sent me and your own rebuttle. I utterly agree with you.
A brutal, petty small minded dictator that kills people for tiny things is not the kind of person I'd peg to create the whole damn universe.
and the problem with that guy's accusations of moral relativism is that yes, we are morally relativistic to a point. We don't see the world as black and white, no middle. Because the world is messy, it's unfair, unclean and terribly complex. To say Israel Good, Palestine bad, would be grossly oversimplistic. Even Palestine Good, Israel bad would be horrible.
I too support the opressed, and the fact is that Israel has suffered far lighter casualties than Palestine in their war, and furthermore I'm disgusted by the Israeli support crowd's playing fast and loose with facts.
But that's just it, their opinions are all based on emotion, on blind, unthinking instinct, the kind of people who would be swayed by a three thousand year old book for no other reason than it's their religion.
and I agree, it would be horrible to have a god who plays favorites.
Hello! Thank you for your response, my blog was feeling lonely. :)
DeleteWhat you describe here is precisely the problem. And yes, you're quite correct; Palestine isn't perfect.
The real problem here, I feel, is that we have this whole tangled web that the West is only partially aware of. I mean, a lot of the terrorism we see against the U.S. is actually part of a result of it (not that I'm support said terrorism), yet many in the U.S. think it's because "they hate our freedoms."
Really, the whole issue of Israel vs. Palestine is a big issue in a lot of Islamic countries -- surveys showed that people in the Middle East, or even Muslims in general, thought that the issue of Israel was a very important one. Not only that, but one of Israel's major backers is the United States; the vast majority of our foreign aid goes to Israel, and we supply them with the latest in military equipment and hardware.
If you couple this with the gradual growing of size of Israel, the picture is one of colonialism. They're evicting Muslims from their homes, growing in size and power, and are getting support from this large and powerful foreign government. It doesn't equate to good things.
Now, while it's true that radical Muslims do hate the U.S. for bikini-clad women, and have many dislikes over the general culture of the U.S., I think that one of the big reasons for wanting to attack the U.S. is the idea that they want to SPREAD those ideals to other countries indirectly, creating more land for Western society through indirect colonialism.
To add gasoline to the fire, you have George Bush, in the Iraq War, using the word "crusade" casually, when to Islamic culture, the crusades are not a far-off time period, but something well-taught and understood.
Wanting to bomb Iran and invading Afghanistan aren't making us look any more innocent of this, and in fact our every action makes us look more and more warlike.
Which isn't to say it's all one-sided here. But doing all of this and then saying stuff like, "Why can't people realize that the U.S. is out to make people free?" seems kind of... myopic to me.
Man, I went on a bit there. This might make it into a new blog post. :D