Comment by mbork_pl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mbork_pl | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> For good reasons

I wouldn't be so sure...

> just with a lot of unforeseen consequences.

Exactly, a classical case of Chesterton's fence.

> The laws we're passing are a consequence of belief systems too.

Some of them are (and you're making a very good point here!), but some of them may be just pragmatic.

> For people who see the world that way, these beliefs are unfalsifiable

Again, very true.

> just like the belief in an adultery-hating god.

As a Catholic, I think I can tell you that it might be more nuanced. I believe that ethical norms are not some arbitrary rules, but are a bit like the part of a manual for some device that says under what conditions the device works properly and under what conditions it may break, only for humans. As in "if you commit adultery, you will end up unhappy; you have been warned". (Cf. 1 Corinthians 12, 6 – https://bible.usccb.org/bible/1corinthians/6#54006012) Although IANTP ("I am not the pope";-)), of course, and neither am I a theologian, so take this with a grain of salt.

> As a Catholic, I think I can tell you that it might be more nuanced. I believe that ethical norms are not some arbitrary rules, but are a bit like the part of a manual for some device that says under what conditions the device works properly and under what conditions it may break, only for humans. As in "if you commit adultery, you will end up unhappy; you have been warned".

Forewords: I was raised in a Catholic family, in a Catholic environment and I was a practicing Catholic up to almost 18yo. Then, I changed my mind through reading and experiencing the world as a young adult, and now I 'm probably biased the other way round (just like smoke quitters). No offenses intended, don't feel attacked.

I really struggle to understand how nowadays we are still somehow blind to the fact that religions were always basically a way to pass ethical behaviors to the population, playing the "almighty divine being" card.

Just like you would tell a child that Santa Claus is bringing their gifts and he and his assistants are watching you all the time, and know if you are good or naughty, and bring presents accordingly. Our society has - or should have - grown up by now, and we should be able to teach a shared ethical background without the need to use the God device. There is no need for a God that will give you his love Heaven or Hell to treat someone that is just like you, the same way you would like to be treated.

You could make a similar argument about capitalism. We _should_ have grown past it by now, but we haven't, and every time we try to invent a replacement system we end up making things worse.

You can see the ethical decay unfolding in real-time as societies turn replaced the old, rigorously tested system of religion with shiny new secular ethics.

> You can see the ethical decay unfolding...

The Nordic countries are all among the least religious countries in the world, yet they seem to have some of the most ethical societies on the planet if you consider human rights, democracy and low violence to be the result of an ethical society.

The most religious countries in the world are all at the very bottom of rankings taking into consideration any of those factors.

I think your example is not a good one. Nordic countries have the concept of Jante law. If you can verbalize such a concept and also recognize that it exists in your society, by definition it makes your society more intolerant than a culture that has no such concept (such as the USA).

In fact, I would argue the open-ness and tolerance of nordic culture is specifically exploitative of the cultural expectation that you do not raise concern or object and are expected to be in agreeance with everyone else that "this here is a tolerant society". It's a valid theory that the fastest culture to adopt any philosophy will be the one that has the population with the greatest number of people who don't disagree.

I think a case could be made (although I'm struggling to do so myself) that the growth of mercantilism, and then capitalism, could be understood as direct challenges to Abrahamic-religion-based ethics, especially as capitalism directly discourages altruism.

I think this is a thesis I need to do some work on to either reject it or let it mature, but I think this is an interesting starting place. It is worth noting that the early Christians frequently practiced collectivism and rejected the concept of individual property rights, although that was ~2000 years ago, the faith has evolved sine then.

All of this to say, I do not believe its that secular ethics per se are the cause of the decay, but rather that the religions of the world have not made a compelling enough case to sway people away from rejecting altruism in the name of personal enrichment. The situation is made considerably worse by the fact that a fair number of the global religions see the spoils of personal enrichment as evidence of righteousness, and altruism as at least adjacent to sin.

Not everyone is as smart as someone that thinks of the golden rule "on their own", therefor religious ethics has its place.

Also, we grew up in a society that already had this in place, essentially you could have grown up on this planet instead: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_Lines_(episode), and you would probably grab a gun, shoot someone because they had something you wanted rather than thinking of the golden rule at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com