Blasphemy Day International is a campaign seeking to establish September 30th as a day to promote free speech and stand up in a show of solidarity for the freedom to challenge, criticize, and satirize religion without fear of murder, litigation, and reprisal. Blasphemy Day takes place September 30th to commemorate the publishing of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons. The purpose of Blasphemy Day is not to promote hate or violence; it is to support free speech, support the right to criticize and satirize religion, and to oppose any resolutions or laws, binding or otherwise, that discourage or inhibit free speech of any kind. While many perceive blasphemy as insulting and offensive, this event is not about getting enjoyment out of ridiculing and insulting others; rather, it was created as a reaction against those who would seek to take away the right to satirize and criticize a particular set of beliefs given a privileged status over other beliefs. Criticism and dissent towards opposing views is the only way in which any nation with any modicum of freedom can exist. Without this essential liberty, those in power are those best able to manipulate others will suppress and silence dissent by labeling it "defamation" or "blasphemy" or whatever other bogey words they can use to stifle opposition by turning popular sentiment against it. Please, do not let them do this.Well done.
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As a US citizen, I prize the freedom of speech above all other rights (as it short circuits the denial of the other rights), so I won't begrudge anyones ability to offend others, including myself.
We are among friends here though, so a little politeness doesn't hurt.
1. The only morally admissible epistemologies comprise a subset of all those that require propositions to be empirically testable in principle for them to be believed. This is because our senses are how we come about all of our knowledge of the outside world that isn't the result of deductions--that is to say, it is, in one sense, basic. Or at the very least, everyone with a normally functioning brain knows that every other such person can gather knowledge via the senses, at the very least.
2. Out of these epistemologies, the only morally admissible ones are those for which the following is true: belief is warranted only in cases where the preponderance of evidence is in favor of the proposition to be believed, where evidence would be any real-world consequence of some possible explanations being true, but not others. And of course, this is extended to deductions of factual premises.
3. It is morally INadmissible (that is to say, immoral) to treat people poorly as a consequence of a morally inadmissible epistemology.
4. It is irresponsible (and immoral) to not test one's epistemology, at least initially, to make sure that it truly is morally admissible.
I think that given these, a case could be made that, when there is access to scientific knowledge, methods, and reasoning; when there is access to philosophy on the subject; and when a person can think logically with first-order logic, we find that most, if not all, religions and sets of theistic beliefs (as well as things like belief in the supernatural) are immoral.
Angry_Beaver said:1. The only morally admissible epistemologies comprise a subset of all those that require propositions to be empirically testable in principle for them to be believed.
Morality is not necessarily dependent on truth, but benefit. Morality also does not depend on correctness, but intent. If I intend to do something positive, but fail, perhaps it was irresponsible, but not immoral.
So this point, strictly in the blanket assertion, I reject as it needs to be established. The problem with setting a strict definition or rules for morality as it in fact isn't about factuality and is much more personal.
Where the aspect of empiricism comes into play is objective benefit. If we're looking at making the world a better place and establishing how that is best to happen as a whole, you'll be best served to have reason to believe it.
And before you take that paragraph as an opportunity to suggest that morality is about "making the world a better place", so long as the genuine intent is there, the means are not the question.
I do accept that it is irresponsible and harmful to act on irrationality.
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Tell me to get back to rewriting this site so it's not horrible on mobileI don't think that morality is dependent upon benefit, unless the term "benefit" is construed so as to include detriment and neutrality. If we are to subdivide actions into detrimental, neutral, and beneficial ones, the only ones I see as definitely immoral, in all cases in which the set of possible actions isn't restricted to detrimental ones, are the detrimental ones.
What I'm attempting to do here is to state what is not moral--what is moral or what is neutral is left up for grabs by other arguments that I'm not attempting to make here (I'm not currently convinced by any explicit moral philosophy right now, anyway, so I couldn't advocate for one).
I also don't claim that an action's moral status depends upon correctness--correct premises, assuming you meant that. There are epistemologies not ruled out by the reasoning in my previous post where a detrimental action can be the result of incorrect premises or reasoning and yet not be immoral (where we're using a moral/immoral/neither trichotomy). What would be immoral there would be negligence, assuming the truth could be known by the actor and the consequences were important. This is why I state, in so many words, that non-axiomatic statements must be falsifiable, and that therefore the actor must subscribe to an epistemology that admits of only statements of that sort if all parts of their epistemology influence social interaction.
I also don't think that the moral status of an action depends on intent, as you can still be rightly accused of things such as negligence even with the intent of doing something non-detrimental. Conservative Christians want to save people from Hell and they thus try to enact legislation banning things like same-sex marriage, but I would still consider that immoral--they neglected to inspect their beliefs with the aid of some morally admissible epistemology.
I agree with your last statement, and I believe it encapsulates the reasoning I've been using here.
In short, what I'm saying is that any detrimental action committed (no matter the intent) based on unquestioned reasoning from an epistemology that admits unfalsifiable statements about non-axioms is immoral. If you can't test something and you base your beliefs on it, or if the balance of evidence isn't in its favor and yet you still base your beliefs on it, then any detrimental action committed based on it is immoral. Any epistemology that necessarily leads to the commission of said actions is immoral to hold. Now, I'm not 100% sure of this, but maybe you'd like to critique this compact formulation of what I was trying to convey.
All of that essentially says that treating people badly as a consequence of irrational epistemological systems is immoral.
/confusing musings
BTW, do you post to the Atheist Experience blog? I just saw a comment on there by a "Zurahn".
Angry_Beaver said:BTW, do you post to the Atheist Experience blog? I just saw a comment on there by a "Zurahn".
That's me. And we're pretty close on all of this, it's more a matter of semantics than anything. We'd both consider it wrong to act based on ignorance and uncritical thinking, it's a matter of what we call that.
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Listen to Iced Earth and play Doom
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Tell me to get back to rewriting this site so it's not horrible on mobile^How dumb can a society be.
The good news is that by reading that I found a good Bjork quote. I'm in full agreement with her.
“The Buddhists say we come back as animals and they refer to them as lesser beings. Well, animals aren’t lesser beings, they’re just like us. So I say fuck the Buddhists.”
aspro said:^How dumb can a society be.
The good news is that by reading that I found a good Bjork quote. I'm in full agreement with her.
“The Buddhists say we come back as animals and they refer to them as lesser beings. Well, animals aren’t lesser beings, they’re just like us. So I say fuck the Buddhists.”
Yeah, it relates to the misconception of evolution working as a ladder. There's no end-goal, only adaptation. Cockroaches could be considered the most advanced species on Earth by a measure of survival, whales by size, cheetah by size, albatross by mobility. The issue I'd have with Buddhism would be the view of life as inherently meaningless. Oh, and we aren't "just like" animals, we are animals, classified as part of the hominidae family of great apes.
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Tell me to get back to rewriting this site so it's not horrible on mobileScientists say dolphins should be treated as 'non-human persons'
"“The neuroanatomy suggests psychological continuity between humans and dolphins and has profound implications for the ethics of human-dolphin interactions,” she added."
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Tell me to get back to rewriting this site so it's not horrible on mobile
We have another one
Kuwait’s parliament approved a law imposing the death penalty on any Muslim who insults God, his prophets, messengers, Prophet Mohammad’s wives or the Koran, in any form of expression, if they don’t repent.
The bill, which adds articles to Kuwait’s penal code, was passed today by 40 lawmakers, including all Cabinet ministers present, and rejected by five Shiite Muslims as well as one liberal lawmaker.
“Islam is a religion of tolerance, peace and acceptance, but that doesn’t mean it should be stepped on,” lawmaker Ali al-Deqbasi told the house before the vote. AbdulHamid Dashti, who voted against the bill, said the law “should be broadened to criminalize those who insult all beliefs and faiths.”
According to the law, judges must give defendants the option of repenting, which, if taken, reduces the sentence to at least five years in prison and a fine of 10,000 dinars ($36,000). Non-Muslims will be sentenced to 10 years in prison if convicted of violating the law, which will take effect after signed by the emir and then published in the Official Gazette within a month of parliamentary approval.
I'm blatantly anti-religion, as my contributions suggested. I actually logged in today to remove a couple images, as I thought they went a little too far, but you reminded me why I even saved those images in the first place.
Listen to Iced Earth and play Doom