09.05.11

Religion, morality, Kant and the real birth of moral reasoning

Posted in General at 1:22 pm by nemo

Religion, morality, Kant and the real birth of moral reasoning
Morality Is Absolute — and Evolving

This is a typically incoherent, though interesting, take on morality at the Huffpost zone. I think that the question of morality, and evolution, have defeated all parties, religious and scientific.

It might help to see the context of evolution the emergence of religion in terms of the eonic effect (and the Axial Age): the term ‘evolution’ is not used correctly by either side.
We see in the eonic effect that the ‘macrosequence’ is driving religion formation, but without determining the details. That might help Xtians (and Jews, who I consider a subset of Xtians for the sake of argument) free themselves from the infantile tale of Moses and Sinai, even as one can see the stupendous backdrop of the Axial period. Xtians fail to see that they don’t really have an ethical position. Small wonder the scientism cadre is getting ‘restless’.
It might help to see, if you use the eonic model, that the next successor to the Axial Age, modernity, shows the spectrum of the enlightenment as the stage of recreating/moving beyond religion. There the works of Kant show indeed that ethical issues are evolving, via his own innovations. His brilliant take on the subject is actually the real birth of moral reasoning/science after the long ages of humanity’s childhood. The point here is that we talk about religion’s take on morality looking backward to the past. But religion doesn’t really have an morality! The whole thing is being born for the first time in the modern era. Kant is a good example, and in terms of evolution we are stuck with a deep question we can’t answer: his ‘common ordinary morality’ is something we can’t even specify, let alone explain in terms of evolution.
Stand back and try to understand human ethical behaviorism: it is very difficult to understand.

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