[Vision2020] Nate, You Don't Get It!

[Ted Moffett]

Nate and All:

This was an enjoyable post, heartfelt and thoughtful, yet it does not 
address some of the well reasoned arguments presented on V2020 that take 
issue with your insistence on the absolute truth of your spiritual 
worldview, and the absolute necessity you assert that other absolute 
religious views which disagree with you must be wrong.  I can easily say 
without contradiction that one absolute viewpoint may be correct, but I see 
no convincing evidence that any one of the competing absolute viewpoints has 
made a good case it must be the true and only one.

To throw your hands in the air, and with dismay complain that all moral 
values will collapse if we do not all agree, like humble subjects before an 
intellectual spiritual dictator, that belief in one and only one view of God 
and spirit is the only basis for a social structure that can save us, is to 
advocate an undefendable extreme conformism of spiritual thought, that 
ironically will guarantee strife and hatred!

I speak in this writing as a journalist of the spirit, observing the claims 
and counter-claims of those asserting their way is the one and only.  
Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Muslims, Mormons and Baha'is etc. all 
defend their way of viewing spirituality, and thus morality, as the 
absolute.

You are arguing against an easy target when you attack "moral relativists."  
What about the above named absolutist religious viewpoints which do disagree 
in fundamental ways with each other on critical moral issues?  If you take 
issue with them, you will then be forced to argue not against moral 
relativists, but against others who disagree with you on fundamental moral 
issues, derived from a source they also claim is absolute.

Why should I, as a spiritual journalist, believe you rather than any other 
religious absolutist viewpoint?  Who says you have THE PERFECT KNOWLEDGE OF 
GOD that makes your views the only way?  Maybe you are making a mistake.   
Maybe you have been deceived.  Maybe the limits and imperfections of human 
thought should prompt a reasonable person to humbly admit that indeed 
knowledge of the infinite and God is a difficult endeavor fraught with 
perplexing problems that renders dogmatic dismissal of other differing 
spiritual views a divisive and narrow position.

Also, to suggest we need charts or graphs to measure the intelligence or 
lack of it of anyone on V2020 is snobbish arrogance.  Intelligence is no 
guarantee of moral truth in action, or of an honest seeking after truth.  In 
fact, many brilliant people in history have been monsters of the highest 
order who followed great untruths believed absolutely.  I prefer the company 
of the kind and gentle of modest intelligence to the greatest genius who is 
cynical and cruel.  So you can take your grand intelligence and lecture 
others more impressed with pie charts about your superior moral authority.

Ted

Nate wrote:

>But before those of you who want to giggle snicker too much, let's move on 
>to the relativist (secular orthodoxy) paradigm. This, if I say so myself, 
>is one dumb worldview. There can be no absolutes in this world. Absolutes 
>are against the rules. All of them. Absolutely all absolutes are 
>fallacious. But I digress already. People who are moral relativists are in 
>a bind. Murdering homosexuals is bad. Killing your English teacher, 
>shooting classmates, etc. These are all off limits. But here's the kicker. 
>. . why? Is it because anyone in authority said so? Or is your morality 
>based on nothing more than what you personally are comfortable with? Ah, 
>society has spoken has it? You want to go with Kant and the old greatest 
>good for the greatest number bit? That's the ethics of gang rape, and all 
>the picking on minorities that filled our yesteryears. If you can't say why 
>a thing is wrong, then you have no right to say anything more than "I don't 
>personally like it," and the rapist can say "Who the hell are you?" 
>Epistemological foundations are necessary. As depressing as that might be.
>

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