LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Nehmet talks about the madness of the theocrats in this post:

I've been feeling bad lately; I do all my blogging at my other journal and rarely post anything at all here (since I can't access LJ at work anymore). Ergo, I think I'll start reposting stuff here when I think it might be of interest. Starting with this, on the subject of "moral relativism:"

An excellent view of this lately overused catchphrase comes from Maxspeak, by way of Swami Uptown:

Moral relativism outside of the Church, like political correctness, is 85 percent myth. Liberals and secularists are full of morals. Wiccans have morals. Trotsky had morals. You might not like what they are, but to claim morals are absent is bigotry. It's saying you've got the wrong religion. From there, someone versed in theology could get into the matter of how the Church or indeed any faith regards alternative religious creeds. From the little I know, the only tolerant ones in this regard are Buddhists.


When I was first becoming aware of the madness of the theocrats, as a teenager back in the 80s, the hot label for us heretics and infidels was "secular humanist." I have yet to figure out what that means, precisely, beyond "anyone who doesn't agree with what we say." It's one of those things that's meant as an insult, but doesn't really sound offensive--and if you break it into its components and apply a bit of logic, you find it's not offensive at all but rather sort of nice. Look:

Secular - Not relating to a religion or religious body; worldly.

Humanist - One who is concerned with the interests and welfare of humans.

(Definitions from Dictionary.com.)

Put them all together and what's that spell? A person who is more concerned with the welfare of their human brethren than with religion or its sanctions. Sounds good to me. But what the hell do I know? I'm a hell-bound infidel whose spiritual practises might loosely be called something like Celto-Kemetic Zen Thelemic Agnosticism. What's that smell? Why, it's roasting flesh--MINE!

So now let's look at "moral relativist."

Moral - Of or concerned with the judgment of the goodness or badness of human action and character.

Relativist - A practitioner of the philosophy of relativism, i.e. the theory that conceptions of truth and moral values are not absolute but are relative to the persons or groups holding them.

So, a moral relativist, aside from being redundant, is one who recognises that there are no moral aboslutes that apply across the board without regard to the individuals holding those precepts. Again, sounds good to me. Oww, who's poking me in the ass with a flaming pitchfork?!

What must it be like to live in a black-and-white, rigidly defined world? It must be soothing to some. To me it would seem a prison.

Discuss. (And those of you living outside the US, give thanks that you haven't got to deal with this kind of horseshit.)

[Crossposted with permission- I didn't know that Nehmet was also a member here!]