The whole truth
Posts: 1554
Joined: Jan. 2012
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| Quote (NoName @ Feb. 09 2015,06:31) | | Quote (Kantian Naturalist @ Feb. 09 2015,08:41) | | Quote (Soapy Sam @ Feb. 08 2015,15:56) | | He has grudging respect for nihilists, but not for sincere disbelievers who don't go down that path? Chuckle. I've said it before, but it bugs the hell out of these bozos that atheists aren't sinking into moral decay and despair like they should. I just found another reason to try to be 'a good person'. Not only is it rewarding in itself, it pisses Barry off! |
Arrington is presenting Nietzsche as an exemplar of someone who took naturalism and atheism seriously enough, and understood that atheism entails nihilism. Hence the need for a "re-evaluation of all values": the value of everything must be created anew. By contrast, the New Atheists believe that they can retain core Christian moral values -- the importance of kindness, or humility, or solidarity with the oppressed -- without the metaphysics in terms of which (Nietzsche thinks) those values make any sense to begin with. This inconsistency, Arrington points out, is one that Nietzsche himself found deeply repulsive among 19th-century humanists and free-thinkers.
There is, I think, a genuinely hard question here for humanists and naturalists about how to respond to Nietzsche's provocation. I think Arrington is deeply mistaken to think that we're being inconsistent by not being nihilists, but I also think that Nietzsche's challenge can't be brushed aside lightly. |
The fundamental error is to accept the absurd premise that only a Christian metaphysics provides support for moral values, or for the specific moral values of kindness, humility, solidarity with the oppressed or what-have-you.
It cannot, or at least ought not, to be presumed that Christianity has made the case that its metaphysics do, in fact, support those moral values.
It is demonstrably the case that a metaphysics that supports Abraham as any sort of moral exemplar supports a 'might makes right, do what I say or I'll oppress you' moral system and inherently and unavoidably fails to support solidarity with the oppressed or kindness in any of the usual senses of the term. The Abrahamic religions are all based on power worship and child abuse, inescapably.
Nietzsche's view is profoundly limited by his historical insights/knowledge and his cultural ignorance of the vast number of non-Christian cultures that include the allegedly Christian virtues as part and parcel of their belief system.
Nietzsche has some excuse; Arrington none other than his gross and overweening ignorance about all moral thought whatsoever. |
Well said.
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Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. - Jesus in Matthew 10:34
But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me. -Jesus in Luke 19:27
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