This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
No, but game theory at least posits what the best option is under a series of conditions. The fact that distributed social behaviors match that somewhat is an indicator there might be some truth to it. If the same outcome is derived different ways that is evidence of a sort. Given that the same when applied to morality results in a huge different swathes of moral codes, including exceptions that might be an indicator that if there is any sort of objective morality it is very, very narrow, or almost impossible to discover.
And as to what I should answer, in general I am not answering the question why do I think other people think it is wrong or right. I was asked why do I think it is wrong. I wasn't asked whether it could be right for other people. Every post I make here I could go into more detail, but usually there is a trade off. So unless I have the time to expand I think I will stick with "Because I do". It's punchy and accurate. Why I think that is not usually germane to the discussion at hand. In this instance why I think murder is wrong doesn't really have any relevance to deciding whether Christian nationalism is likely to rekindle problems between Catholics and Protestants which is where we started this. Even if religious murder is not morally wrong, Catholics and Protestants murdering each other over religion in the US is not likely to be practically positive. How that impinges on the morality of murder is at best an (interesting) diversion.
Do they? There's a whole field of behavioral economics that shows alllll sorts of situations where people tend not to do the "rational" thing. Some settings have more or less adherence. I don't see what conclusions follow.
RE: What you should answer. If the question is concerning morality of religiously-motivated killing, and you are not religious, then your answer that you think is completely confined to only applying to your non-religious particular self would be utterly vacuous. It would be like saying, "I don't think lions should eat people," and hiding the fact that you really mean, "I don't think that I should eat people, but I am not a lion, and I don't actually have anything relevant to say about what lions should/shouldn't do." It violates the norms of discourse to play this slight of hand. Vastly better to speak plainly and state what your actual position is. However, if you find brevity to be too valuable to you, in the future, I can try to endeavor to chime in with the appropriate caveats as I find time. I think it will save a lot of people much confusion.
Recall I did state that you might be able to work out what other peoples morality was? I am familiar enough with Christianity that I think it is true that most Christians think murder is wrong, you'll note, I only answered what I believe when I was asked, my initial response as to why violence between Christians was immoral was to point out that:
"You think violent terrorism between Catholics and Protestants who both ostensibly worship the same God, and have the same holy book is moral? I'm pretty sure that God is not very convinced murdering children is moral."
Here I am suggesting it is immoral by THEIR world view. Because that is the one that is important. It was only when I was pressed for my own view that we went off into this tangent. So my response was more "I don't think lions should eat people, because the tenets of their God Lion-O say it is wrong". Then when I am pressed for what I think, I say "I don't think lions should eat people because I think eating people is wrong". There is no sleight of hand there. I give an answer based upon my understanding of the group in questions morality, then I give an answer based on my morality.
What I am saying is that the answer based on my morality is not really relevant, because I understand they do not share my morality overall (though our answer in this case is the same, roughly). Hence why I didn't even mention that initially.
I mean, you're missing alllll sorts of qualifiers that would be needed in order to accommodate your meta-ethical position. Like, you could have easily said, "You think that Catholics and Protestants think that violent terrorism between Catholics and Protestants...." But you didn't. Because you wanted to heavily imply that there was a generic moral truth of the matter. It is only after pressed that you revealed that this was a slight of hand.
Moreover, when SlowBoy clarified that he didn't believe in god, it would be a clear indicator that he was not asking for an answer of the type that your meta-ethical position would allow without specific qualification. Again, I think you just shrugged this aside in order to be able to imply that you were speaking about a generic moral truth of the matter... just playing hide-and-seek, violating the norms of discourse. I just ask that you be on the lookout for this conflation in the future and be more precise to avoid confusion. I'll try to help keep an eye out.
Again I think you are misreading, SlowBoy is pointing out that I don't believe in God (which he knows because I do not hide it and as I mentioned earlier in the thread, not that HE didn't believe in God). You have to look at the conversation as a whole. Given I am an admitted atheist which I talked about earlier, clearly I can't have been attempting a rhetorical trick, as there is no point in attempting the trick you think I was aiming for, when I have an open history and do not delete my past posts to hide my positions. I make no secret of the fact and have mentioned multiple places here that I don't believe in an objective morality. If I were going to attempt such a trick I would assuredly do it better!
You are reading something into my intentions which is not there. If you want to say that I could be clearer then sure, but I can categorically say you are wrong about my motivations. If you think I am violating the norms of discourse, report me to the moderators.
Oh wow, I did actually somehow read SlowBoy wrong. I went back and checked and everything. Whoops.
In any event, I'm not claiming that hiding your atheism is the rhetorical trick you're using. I think it's that your meta-ethical position shouldn't allow you to respond in ways that heavily imply that you're speaking about a generic moral truth of the matter. In response to a now-corrected-reading of SlowBoy's comment, you could have said something like, "According to my meta-ethical position, the moral truth of whether murdering people for religious reasons is wrong for me is irrelevant. Instead, I'm only pointing out that I think it would be wrong by THEIR worldview," which is the position that you have now spent pages more word count getting around to saying. Does this at least correctly portray your position? That would be significantly more clear and not require all this follow-up. The only downside is that it wouldn't allow you to imply that you think that "religiously-motivated killing is wrong" is a generic moral truth.
I probably didn't have much of a sense of what you were actually meaning to say, given your meta-ethical position, until much much later. In fact, rereading now, I see a shred here, where you say:
But this leads to still the same confusion, which is probably why I spent so much time getting you to say that you really really really just committed yourself to the meta-ethical position that you're claiming. Statements like this are damn near impossible to parse, given your meta-ethical position. You don't have to agree that they are "correct"? "Correct" about what? What truth-value is in question here? Certainly not the truth value of, "Religiously-motivated killing is wrong," because you have expressly declined the possibility of such statements. The truth value of, "Religiously-motivated killing is wrong to them"? I mean, you just said that their experiences and values and community and stuff means that this statement is false. Like, full stop. What is there for you to think is "incorrect"? Incorrect about the truth value of their moral statement? I don't think so. Incorrect about something concerning Christianity? Very weird, and would require a very different type of argument than what I see anywhere. Incorrect about how the results would look from the perspective of others? Seems irrelevant. At the very least, I think this is not a paragon of clarity.
But just because I understand they think their beliefs are moral does not mean I have to agree they are correct (as I obviously think my moral view is "better" than theirs otherwise I would hold their moral views, not the ones I currently do).
What I am saying is that the default when we speak and say I think this is immoral, is that we are making such statements from our own point of view, and if not we specify (as I did when I said I don't think God would find that moral).
In other words I think you are getting a little too bogged down in details which don't actually matter to the argument in question. If Christians believe religiously motivated murder is wrong and I think religiously motivated murder is wrong and therefore if Christian Nationalism led to more such murders we both agree that would be bad, it doesn't actually matter why we both believe what we do for the argument. The whole conversation about whether such murders are bad is basically a distraction because regardless of how we arrive at it, most people seem to agree with it.
...but you were specifically trying to consider the opposite of that. This is why it is so confusing. This is the bit
before the "[I do not] have to agree they are correct" bit. Specifically that they don't believe that religiously motivated murder is wrong. So, you think that they are not correct about what?!
Or now, when you say:
What does "better" have to do with "correct"? What truth value... or what thing... or where is the concept that you are talking about?
Remember we are talking about a subset of Christians in Northern Ireland vs Christians in the current US where sectarian conflict between Christian denomination is currently not a real live issue.
So my point is that if you make that a live issue, then there is a chance that the divisions will re-occur. So MOST Christians do not approve of murder, but if you change the conditions that can change as it did in Northern Ireland, and did in the 30 years war.
I think my point stands that you keep trying to zoom into small sections of the conversation. Without going through each section and seeing what my replies are in response to. In one place we are talking about most Christians in the context of the US in another we are talking about a sub set of Christians in Northern Ireland. Those sections won't make sense outside of the context of the specific point in the conversation they happen in.
When I say better or more correct without giving you a comparator the only thing I can be comparing it to is my own beliefs. That is the default, that I think you are not quite getting.
In order to hold my moral beliefs, it must be true that I think those beliefs are somehow "better" than others. It doesn't matter on what axis "better" means in this context, just that if I didn't think that I would not hold my current beliefs but the other set of beliefs that I felt were "better". It is axiomatic that we each feel the beliefs we hold and believe are "better" or "superior" or "truer" than all the others, because if we didn't we would be holding those other beliefs instead. How we each make that determination is largely illegible both to us and the outside world because it isn't.... all together now...rational. So when I say, "just because I understand they think their beliefs are moral, I do not have to agree they are correct (compared to my own beliefs). Whether they think murder is right or wrong I do not have to agree with them just because I understand they think they are being moral. This is a general point, that applies to murder, child mutilation, or kidnap, and whatever side of the fence the person or group I am comparing against falls.
All you need to take away is that I am not making implications about there being some standard morality I comparing to, I am either comparing it to my own morality (if I don't specify) or to some specific set of moral beliefs I think some other group holds, which I will specify. You don't need to make assumptions, outside of the one where when someone says something they are saying it on behalf of themselves unless they tell you otherwise. If I say I think France is better than Poland, that is on my own criteria, if I say the French think France is better than Poland, then I am telling you what I think someone else thinks. You don't have to try and read into that, that I am trying to smuggle in some kind of objective truth that France is better than Poland, for I am not. I have no access to objective truth and I do not claim to have such.
So all you have to do when you read my posts, is avoid drawing an implication that you think is there but does not exist.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link