Morals Shmorals.

So theres some CBC wish contest and pro-lifers are at the top of the wish list. They will get what, air time or something to talk about their wish. anyways. so i wrote this:

Debates about DNA.Debates about the soul. What makes a person. When we become people.

BORING.

There's this great book out there called "Why I am not a secularist" by william connolly. He lays out everything that these debates centre on: the primacy of God and his universe, or the primacy of rights and a secular universe.

In short, that the god-talk and the rights-talk mirror each other in terms of authority, but cannot talk to each other on equal footing because of the internal logic of either.

God talk has a long tradition but gets modified in these debates only slightly. While there is a new reliance of god-talkers on science to prove when god has created a new person, it is still about the god before the science in the first place. They are just using science to outreach to secular minds, but then have to appeal to god in the end, so secularists shrug off the aim of their science. The god-talkers are offended that their science doesn't count. They call secularists hypocrites and morally bankrupt. So it goes.

Secularists have a newer tradition that is imbued in a second order logic that requires god talk in the first place. Emmanuel Kant took god-talk's golden rule and based it on rational capacities, and not just the pre-eminence of god.

ie. God talk: Do unto others as you would have done to you, er something.
rights talk: Act in a way that you would universalize and will to become
law over yourself. Rational reciprocity.

same deal. same logic. same moralizing nonsense that gets controversial people nowhere but in a knot.

Rights talk is has no bearing on god talk. Except for the god-talkers right to exercise free speech and religion, which is at least to me, a pretty funny slip up. Relying on the same kind of logic that you are condemning is a pretty awful way to think out your morals onto society. You dont like rights, you can't rely on them to dismiss them. Sorray.

But all this moralizing, all this will to power and want of the highest universal is empty, is boring, is the same thing over and over again. While it is interesting to watch both sides encroach on each other's logic, it does not mean it helps either side make a point.

In god talk, god the metaphysical is the highest source of moral authority.
In rights talk, individualism/rationality is the metaphysic that produces the highest souce of moral authority.

That's why god talkers think secularists are morally bankrupt, and that's why secularists think they are so rational and not superstitious witch hunters.

Meanwhile, the god talkers should take note that relying on an abstract concept like rationality is in fact the metaphysical logic of rights talk. And the secularists should take note that they can't be morally bankrupt because they do, in fact, rely on a metaphysical view that is morally imbued.

See why it is so boring?

They are so close, they rely on each other so much, only to stay at permanent odds with each other.

You can cite passages from the bible, studies in the sciences of when-sperm-meets-egg, you can be sarcastic, imaginative, and rely on the viceral while never acknowledging it. If it takes jokes and sarcasm to say a point, the point isnt the point, the point is a joke.

I suppose I too am not a secularist. I'm certainly not capital R Religious. Spiritual. But generally rights are good too. Caught in between two answers that fail to remember what the question was in the first place.

Go on howling away. In the end I'd side with pro-choice. Not out of rights talk per se, but a bit of the ole consequentialism. They are close cousins.

If abortion becomes illegal, all the rights talk of the religious wont stop it from happening. While they are trying to use rights against secularists in making it illegal, a big part of the consequences of this debate is still downloaded on women.

Can't get a safe abortion? Get an unsafe one. Making it against secular law AND against God talk still won't stop it from happening, you just make them criminals and sinners. That's ultimately what both sides of this debate cannot forget. Consequences, real, bleeding-to-death consequences.

And besides, isn't suicide, even if it is accidental still a sin? Why should women risk another sin because the first sin bothered society so? Let her choose which sin to commit, for the love of god.

Augustine's political theology recognized the importance of the will in good and evil. If gods universe is wholly deterministic, then nobody can go to hell because god willed everything as such and He is perfect. We have to have the chance, even in the god talk, to choose our sins. Choice for Augustine is what saves god talk from itself; when you do something bad, it is your will and so you can be judged for it.

Even in god talk, women must be permitted the choice of sinning. God talk itself does not accept forcing someone to be good, per se, since one must choose the right path and not be forced to take it.

So to conclude, you can't be anti choice as a christian. Choice is what leads you to heaven and God and being good. It is just as fundamental in god talk as it is in rights talk.

If abortion is wrong in the eyes of God then He is the only one who can and will judge you. If anything, legal abortion makes God's job easier to sort out the sinners from the rest of them. Okay now im being bombastic, im done. It would be nice to hear a reply from either side.