Here it is again:

I’ll definitely have a listen to the seminar and give my thoughts. But I just thought of an interesting comparison between our two ways of thinking.

Brad:

God is above all things, including compassion.

Che:

Compassion is above all things, including God.

That seems like an interesting way of putting it – but I don’t want to run the risk of trivializing your view on God, so I’m happy to be corrected.

That’s pretty brief, but I hope it explains some of my position. Also, I hope you check out this John Lennox seminar I posted above. I plan on listening to it in the next week and I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Firstly, I think that there’s an assumption in the question that it must be one or the other. I think that any system of morality that relies exclusively on either subjectivity or objectivity is bound to be a flawed one. There needs to be a bit of both.

Subectivity is needed, because compassion is based on our subjective understanding of what it is to suffer. So you can’t rule it out. On the other hand, the mechanics behind our subjective experiences are, by neccesity, opaque to our subjective experience. So we can’t just trust them outright either.

That’s where objectivity comes in. We need an objective view such that we can examine what’s going on in the foggy space behind our subjective understanding of the world – but not to the total exclusion of our innate understanding for what suffering feels like.

So to put it in more simply, I think that subjectivity is the important bit – but it must be temered with objective analysis.

So the first question: Where does it come from?

If you go back to my metaphor of lifting weights at the gym, I think you’ll see where I’m coming from.

There’s two great things about being a human. Firstly, we can be compassionate. Secondly, we can recognize that compassion is a good thing and strive to develop it.

That’s all you need to devise a system of morality. You can work out a system that you think will lead to compassion, and then try it out. The bits that lead to compassion get validated. The bits that don’t lead to compassion get dropped or revised.

It’s kind of like how a person can read up a bunch of books on how to excercise and try them out. The person can run with the excercises that lead to better pyhsical fitness, and leave the ones that don’t work behind. He can also pick and choose between the excercises he enjoys and the ones he doesn’t such that he still meets his end goal of improving his physical fitness.

Just substitute ‘potency of compassion’ for ‘physical fitness’ and you can sort of see where I’m coming from.

If I may be so bold as to switch gears, I can even give a Christian interpretation of this kind of process.

God is not merely compassionate. He is compassion. So when God ‘made man in His own image’ that really means he made man such that we could become compassionate creatures, and spread compassion across the globe.

So if compassion urges us to overturn a ‘law’ from the Bible, then that is God’s way of sharing His will with us.

I’m not sure how you’ll take that idea. It’s a concept I thought up in high-school a little bit before I turned away from theism altogether. I found the two worldviews to be too incompatible, and compassion won over law. Then from the outside, religion looked so different than it had looked from the inside.

But anyway, I’m rambling. My writing’s normally so much more focused than this.

Looking forward to your response.

I agree that compassion crosses the barrier between the self and the other person so as to alleviate the suffering, pain, etc. Furher, I agree that if morality does not lead to compassion, then there is a flaw in the system.

But I suppose my question still remains, where does this morality come from? That is, you say that “morality is a system of guidlines that act as an aide to get us to act in a compassionate way.” But from where do we receive this morality? And should we all have the same system, or guidelines? You’ve acknowledged that there is an aide in a system of principles, but how do we access those? So, after that, would it be subjective (up to me to decide what morality is for myself), or objective (a set of morality that stands to be true on its own grounds)?

Thanks again for your thoughts.

As far as I can tell, the whole purpose of morality is that we should act out of compassion. So a moral act is an act that is performed because the mind of the performer is in a compassionate state.

But that then rolls over to the question, what is compassion.

Once again, as far as I can tell compassion is very simple. It’s reacting to the suffering of someone else as if that suffering were your own. Bear in mind that when I say react here, I mean it on a very deep level – you would actually respond to the suffering in a very deep, emotional, visceral way, such that you actually feel the suffering you percieve.

As a qualifier, taking pride from doing good things isn’t neccesarily a bad thing – but compassion doesn’t concern itself with pride.

Also, I don’t mean compassion in such a way as to deprecate the self – that would be masochistic. The idea is that, when it comes to suffering, you dissolve the seperation between yourself and those around you. In this sense, it’s not possible to be masochistic.

Note that I think that the same thing can work with happiness – that’s affection. I like to think of love as being the combination of affection and compassion… But compassion is the more important of the two. Without compassion, affection is somewhat hollow.

So to get back to the original point. To me, morality is just a system of guidelines that act as an aide to get us to act in a compassionate way. It’s like if you’re going to the gym. Compassion here is the act of lifting weights. Morality is knowing which excercises to do and how to do them.

So to my mind, if a system of morality exists that doesn’t lead a person to compassionate action – or worse, leads a person towards sadistic violence – then that system of morals is a failure of its own purpose.

How’s all that sounding? Looking forward to your thoughts.

First, thanks for your clarification. It’s greatly appreciated

You’re right that I do seek compassion and tolerance (although I do have to qualify this and say that I believe Christianity is the exclusive truth… otherwise, why believe it, right?).
Further, I appreciate you not attacking; that’s very respectable. Those who come to a conversation to fight are never looking for “dialogue.”
I would disagree with humans possessing the innate quality of compassion. I think there’s something to be said in favor of it, and it seems to have some merit. However, I would say that this compassion (however present it may be from one person to the next) is tainted by a fallen nature that we all possess. That is I believe all are born as sinners. I’ll have to leave it at that for now. Going any further would take far too long.

I’ll leave with one question, and I’m interested in your response. How do we determine what “morality” is, in your opinion? In other words, how do I know I’m performing a moral act? Is it subjective or objective… or a little of both?

1. Morals are codified guidlines deisgned to support living a compassionate life
2. Compassion is an innate quality of many living things, particularly humans
3. From 1 and 2, morality is a human invention
4. From 3, we do not get our morality from religion

Although, I’m not quite sure what you mean by undermining the cause of the new atheism.

I’ll elaborate a little on this, but I want to emphasise that I’m not interested in a confrontational argument on this topic. I’m just clarifying a little on what I meant.

Essentially, the new atheism makes two arguments. Firstly, that God does not exist. Secondly, that religion is bad for us.

It’s much easier for us to make the second argument when we’re confronted by hysterical and irrational fundamentalists. It’s much harder for us when we’re confronted by someone as reasonable as yourself. That’s why I said it was undermining to my cause – but undermining for all the right reasons. I’m happy to be undermined in this fashion.

And you’re correct; there’s still room for mutual respect. I look forward to hearing your response.

You’re welcome.

Before I get into this, I’d like to say that it seems to me that underneath the religious nature of your original post, you’re arguing strongly in favor of tolerance and compassion – two things of which I’m very much in favor.

The main point that I have when embracing the idea that religion is bad for us goes something like this:
Morals are codified guidlines deisgned to support living a compassionate lifeCompassion is an innate quality of many living things, particularly humansFrom 1 and 2, morality is a human inventionFrom 3, we do not get our morality from religion

It would follow from this is that by trusting in religion to give us our morality, we’re actually neglecting the practice of compassion which should be the focus of a moral life.

The idea is that people who succesfully live a compassionate life under religion are commendably doing so in spite of their religion’s attempt to steal the focus away from compassion. It is the people who fail to maintain their focus of their morality on compassion and allow it to shift completely to religion that wind up doing all the bad stuff.

Once again – I’m not trying to attack you on this topic. You were very respectful in your original post. I’m not approaching you as an enemy here.

Although, I’m not quite sure what you mean by undermining the cause of the new atheism.

I’ll elaborate a little on this, but I want to emphasise that I’m not interested in a confrontational argument on this topic. I’m just clarifying a little on what I meant.

Essentially, the new atheism makes two arguments. Firstly, that God does not exist. Secondly, that religion is bad for us.

It’s much easier for us to make the second argument when we’re confronted by hysterical and irrational fundamentalists. It’s much harder for us when we’re confronted by someone as reasonable as yourself. That’s why I said it was undermining to my cause – but undermining for all the right reasons. I’m happy to be undermined in this fashion.

And you’re correct; there’s still room for mutual respect. I look forward to hearing your response.

You’re welcome.

Before I get into this, I’d like to say that it seems to me that underneath the religious nature of your original post, you’re arguing strongly in favor of tolerance and compassion – two things of which I’m very much in favor.

The main point that I have when embracing the idea that religion is bad for us goes something like this:
Morals are codified guidlines deisgned to support living a compassionate lifeCompassion is an innate quality of many living things, particularly humansFrom 1 and 2, morality is a human inventionFrom 3, we do not get our morality from religion

It would follow from this is that by trusting in religion to give us our morality, we’re actually neglecting the practice of compassion which should be the focus of a moral life.

The idea is that people who succesfully live a compassionate life under religion are commendably doing so in spite of their religion’s attempt to steal the focus away from compassion. It is the people who fail to maintain their focus of their morality on compassion and allow it to shift completely to religion that wind up doing all the bad stuff.

Once again – I’m not trying to attack you on this topic. You were very respectful in your original post. I’m not approaching you as an enemy here.

@Mike, that’s not the case… at all. Harri’s arguments are seriously flawed. As for your question, I doubt any answer I give would be taken seriously. Instead, I suppose, it would be criticized in whatever way, especially since my above post is not in any way an attack or assessment of atheism. Rather, it’s a personal post about my own responses to disagreement.
Thanks for reading.