Confidence, courage, and convictions
Please consider something with me: Do you suppose that the stench that is ISIS, or Al-qaeda, or any Islamic terrorist group for that matter, would have had the same level of success in conquest and murder that they are achieving in our day if they rose up during the 1940s…in the age of “the greatest generation” … an era in which morality was a little less tenuous than it is today? I submit that they would not.
And here’s why. Right and wrong were more sure and reliably fixed then. They had an objective standard which was largely recognized, and which engendered confidence in fighting for the right against the wrong. That standard and foundation is and has always been God, and back in the days of World War II few Americans questioned that. I believe that confidence would have given us the courage to do whatever it took to destroy terrorism. And further, that it would have and probably did deter the Islamic quest for world domination.
We used to hear that someone had the “courage of his convictions.” Not so much anymore. When our convictions are weak, so is our resolve. What we have today is an increasingly secular society progressively weakening the connection between right and wrong and the existence of God. So that even though most would still affirm the reality of objective morality, it rests on a shaky foundation, if it has one at all, if it’s not resting on him. And that leads to hesitation and debate instead of determination and action.
I am not saying we don’t have agreement that captured innocents being beheaded or burned alive is wrong. What I am saying is that without a more widely-shared belief in a God-centered morality, we are a weaker nation than we used to be and less emboldened and equipped to do something about it. When what’s true for me may not be true for you, morals are merely socio-biological adaptations, and evil is so prominent and fictionalized in the entertainment media that its connection to reality becomes blurred…we are close to toast.
I believe Islamic terrorists well recognize that the United States is not the same strong, God-fearing, resolute nation that led the fight against Nazi terrorism and Japanese imperialism…and won. And that has given them confidence. Unfortunately, they do have the courage of their convictions. Their convictions are wrong…objectively wrong…but nowadays you risk being branded as intolerant and bigoted for pointing that out. When pluralism leads to relativism, it leads also to indecision and weakness.
If we cannot confidently affirm that God is on our side, we’re fighting alone. We cannot be victorious against evil if we are not certain that we are aligned with the good. And if the good is something other than God, it’s subjective, relative, and an unreliable foundation on which to stand. Which means if we don’t shore it back up, eventually we will fall.
Research the history of Islamic presence in the Mediterranean.
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Our parts of being function through conditioning, through a faculty or a habit that is narrow. Shedding the habit, overcoming the faculty, they can function from their entire capacity of fullness. For humans to express God’s will, such an opening is necessary.
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What does that even mean, Ken?
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It means that our experience of God’s will and the actions we undertake to carry out God’s will can be colored/distorted by our attitudes, ego states, habits and biases. In order to be a clear channel or instrument we must study how our life long conditioning operates and limits us and thus become fully open to divine inspiration. This process is variously called awakening, self-realization, self-surrender. Jesus made the blind to see and the unseen seen.
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Well, I can certainly agree with the surrender part. I do believe that it is when we submit and surrender to God that he opens our eyes to understanding. But I’m not clear on what point you’re making in regard to this post…
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I see you’ve ignored my offer to look up Islam in the Mediterranean areas. It will somewhat challenge the opening premise that pre-1940 Islamic terrorism didn’t exist.
I am curious, though: what are the actual tenets of this “objective morality” from God? American land is stolen from the Native Americans, and your economic strength was from profiteering off the World Wars. The Americans nor the Europeans stopped the early spread of Islam across the Med (perhaps because no one knew whether to love or kill the encroaching Islamic militia…)
In all practical senses, Christian “objective morality” seems to be at the very subjective whims of interpretation of a rather ambiguous anthology of collated and censored books (not that Islam gets morality any better).
Secular morality seems to be far superior (and not necessarily relative… which you know!).
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I never said that Muslims weren’t terrorizing prior to the 1940s, Rhys. They have been since the beginning of the Islamic religion. But what we’re seeing in this century is a real ramping up of violence and terror, the likes of which we did not see in the last.
The actual “content” of the moral law is not what we’re discussing here. The foundation for that law or code is. And I think I’ve made a good case that “secular morality” is, on the contrary, far inferior to a morality that is grounded in God and his character.
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How can you argue that if no one can even say what God’s character is?
If we don’t know God’s character, we end with a lot of people thinking they’re acting according to God’s character when, in fact, they are making it up as they go along. With that in mind, by what benchmark are you considering God-grounded morality superior?
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We can know a lot about God’s character…from the very definition of God, Creation, conscience, and his personal revelation to the Jews and in Jesus Christ. But again, that’s a different topic.
I believe you are just looking for an argument, Rhys, and I’m not interested in one. We’ve been back and forth about this quite a bit, and I think I’ve made my case. Discussing it any further with you would not be productive.
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What definition of God are you using? Because if you’re using the Ontological Argument, that tells you nothing. You have to make the judgement of what is maximally moral and then apply it to God (or else appeal to an external arbiter of morality — which undoes the very idea of it being God based).
If you’re using a Biblical definition… well, you know the things that would be compatible with (as you say, we’ve discussed it many times before).
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God’s will has been invoked over the ages (however well-intentioned) to justify horrific acts by the heads of different religions. The relevance to the post is that discerning God’s will as a moral imperative may require much contemplation, prayer and self-inquiry. The strife in the Middle East has always been extremely complicated, morally and otherwise, and God is not giving us easy answers.
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I see, and I can agree with that. Nevertheless, though discerning what God’s will is in a particular situation is not as easy as calling him up and asking him (would that we could do that), knowing that there truly is an objective right and wrong, no matter who, when, or where you are, provides the foundation from which to act. Which we do not have apart from the reality of God’s existence.
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It’s decent of you to admit the difficulty in benchmarking God-based morality because of it’s amiguity. A lot of people aren’t willing to. I really appreciate that. I consider that a fatal weakness in God-based morality, and it a large part of why I believe secular morality to be superior.
Are you arguing that God-based morality is superior because, in principle, it is founded in something external to us? If so, I don’t understand why that should be considered a strength. You could take the content of what you think of when one says “evil” (even if you’re subjective defining it [which I’m not]) and that could turn out to be the content of God-based morality, and you’d be arguing that it is superior to secular morality (even though it is evil).
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