Blogs: Pandammonia 
The world that revolves around Caity Ross.
Kindness
On reading this comment on a blog post on Language Log collating posts about languages not having words for this that and the other, I realised there were two meanings one could take from it. Here is the comment:
There isn’t any word in English equivalent to the Hebrew “mitzvah,” “Mitzvah” is sometimes translated as “good deed,” or “righteous action,” and sometimes as “commandment.” In American Jewish circles, it is used to mean “action that conforms to God’s commandment that we do good deeds for others.” This is one of the very few Hebrew words that American Jews who don’t speak Hebrew use regularly, bvecause [sic] there is no equivalent. The absence of such a word in English demonstrates that acts of kindness are alien to the cultures of the English speaking peoples.
The first meaning, which I presume is the intended one, is tongue-in-cheek about how horrible all English speaking peoples are because we don’t have a (single) word for ‘good deed’ (although we can easily say ‘good deed’ with no great hardship).
The second meaning I get is that we don’t need a word for ‘action that conforms to God’s commandment that we do good deeds for others’ because we can do good deeds without being commanded to by a deity.
Automagically-generated possibly related posts:
Phill at Sunday 1st February, 2009 @ 11.11pm GMT Europe/London
Everyone stand back, I’m going to try HTML again!
Of course, it could be argued that without any kind of deity there is no moral right or wrong, making the concept of a ‘good deed’ invalid. Which would validate what the commenter was saying, although I don’t think it’s what they actually meant.
I agree with you on the first point though – saying that “acts of kindness are alien to the cultures of the English speaking peoples” because of the lack of a specific word for it seems bizarre in the extreme.
Pandammonium at Monday 2nd February, 2009 @ 12.09pm GMT Europe/London
Why can’t morality exist without a deity? As intelligent self-aware, empathetic beings, I think humans generally have the nous to determine right and wrong for themselves.
To get where the commenter is coming from, you have to be familiar with the whole ‘language X has no word for Y’ saga (see the post to which the comment I quoted belongs). People suggest that because a language doesn’t have a single word for something, that that thing, action, concept, whatever can’t exist in those cultures speaking that language. This is nonsense, of course. Even if there isn’t a single word translation, there is a phrase or some such for it.
Phill at Monday 2nd February, 2009 @ 2.10pm GMT Europe/London
If there is no God, there can be no objective morality. To take an example, suppose you decide that it’s wrong (to use a stupid example) to wear blue shirts. I do not believe that it is wrong. There’s no objectivity at all, you have absolutely no right to make me obey your moral ‘law’.
As C.S. Lewis observed about WWII, we would still have had to fight Hitler if there were no absolute morality – but there would be nothing making us right and him wrong. They are simply relative terms which don’t really mean anything.
Pandammonium at Monday 2nd February, 2009 @ 4.16pm GMT Europe/London
So who’s ‘right’ in the Islam versus The West war, then? Some Muslims are killing innocent people in the west, right? Their god, which is the same one as yours, incidentally, is apparently telling them to kill people in the west. But, if you watch Christianity: a history on Channel 4 (which I admit I didn’t watch all of myself), you’ll see that they’re simply continuing the Crusades, in which Western Christians terrorised Muslims (Eastern Christians didn’t go the whole hog). George W Bush himself exacerbated the problem by declaring that there would be a crusade against terrorism.
Are you saying all this is moral? We’re talking about war in the name of religion, which is really about power and greed. It’s disgusting.
Phill at Monday 2nd February, 2009 @ 4.59pm GMT Europe/London
If you can provide me a basis for your deep indignation at the actions of certain religious groups I will answer your question.
Seriously, all I am trying to say is that atheists have no basis for such righteous indignation because there is no real universal moral standard. How can you brand such acts ‘disgusting’ when really they’re just different?
Phill at Monday 2nd February, 2009 @ 5.01pm GMT Europe/London
(ooops, meant to say, I share your righteous indignation with those acts. I was just making the point that to an atheist, such acts could only be different from their own moral code, and not universally bad. I wasn’t trying to condone it in any way, shape or form!)
Pandammonium at Wednesday 4th February, 2009 @ 12.22am GMT Europe/London
My sense of right and wrong is the basis for it. I don’t understand why you need the concept of a “real universal moral standard”: there are grey areas in morality, such as in the classic philosophical dilemma of whether it’s wrong for the man to steal the drugs from the chemist shop that he can’t afford to buy for his dying wife.
Furthermore, I’m not quite sure why you would want biblical morals: they are not good (I’m glad to say I got zero in the linked quiz). But if one believes one can pick and choose which bits of the bible to believe, I think Penn and Teller put forward a nice point.
Phill at Wednesday 4th February, 2009 @ 9.36am GMT Europe/London
Doesn’t answer the question. Where does your sense of right and wrong come from? What if it’s different in someone else – as it clearly is with those suicide bombers you mentioned? What makes you ‘right’ and them ‘wrong’ as that’s what you clearly seem to think? – I take it that you wouldn’t call murder a “grey area”… and yet people clearly have different views about when it is acceptable to murder. There’s no real reason to value any one moral code over another.
I don’t cherry pick bits of the Bible. I just think the quiz that you mentioned has got its theology severely wrong, which is probably why atheists shouldn’t write snarky quizzes about Biblical morality. Seriously – each and every question stems from a pretty deep misunderstanding of the text. Can’t watch the Penn & Teller thing at work unfortunately (don’t have speakers) but will have a look later.
Pandammonium at Wednesday 4th February, 2009 @ 10.46am GMT Europe/London
You wanted a “a basis for your deep indignation at the actions of certain religious groups”. I gave you one. However, I think you’re actually expecting the answer to the follow-up question, which is where does my sense of right and wrong come from. I don’t know. Perhaps it stems from empathy. I believe various philosophers have looked into where morality comes from. Maybe you could give them a whirl. And maybe answer my question.
But I don’t need an emissary from a deity to tell me to love my neighbour and do onto others as I would have done onto me.
Murder: if man A takes man B’s wife and their five young children captive and A tells B that unless B kills man C, then A will kill B’s family. What should B do?
It’s just struck me. People feel guilty about the slightest thing, whether it’s their fault or not. If morality was divine, then surely we’d only feel bad about doing the things that the god said were bad. Where does all this extra guilt come from? Doesn’t that show that we can feel bad and guilty all on our ownsome?
Can you explain what the theology behind each question is – maybe do a blog post about it? Notice the site that linked to it is written by someone who used to be an evangelist Christian.
Let me know when you’ve watched the Penn and Teller clip.
Phill at Wednesday 4th February, 2009 @ 12.10pm GMT Europe/London
Sorry, I did mean the follow-up question. I’m getting confused in my old age.
I’m just saying that there’s nothing inherently right or wrong about that particular philosophy, and I’ve never found a satisfactory answer to the question “where do morals come from” other than God. I mean, you can cobble together your own system of morals and the like, but ultimately you cannot hold anyone else to them, even if you personally feel what they are doing is shockingly bad.
Not sure about the feeling guilty thing… yes, we can feel guilty about anything, but in my experience my sense of guilt usually tallies with what the Bible says about morality.
I think I will do a blog post about that quiz, it’s probably a bit too long to do here
Pandammonium at Wednesday 4th February, 2009 @ 1.43pm GMT Europe/London
But surely you’re going for what Dawkins calls the god of gaps approach? You don’t know where it comes from, so it must be from God.
(I should point out that here Dawkins only provided a name for something I had already thought of: I discussed this with Phil long before I read anything by Dawkins.)
Surely we can’t hold anyone else to God’s morals either, though. Surely only God can do that? And as stated before, God’s morals are horrendous: the Crusades and Jihads, to use my earlier example. The same god is pitting his own people against each other.
(I should also apologise if my tone comes across as harsh or snide or some such; it’s not meant to be.)
I shall look forward to reading your post
Phill at Wednesday 4th February, 2009 @ 1.55pm GMT Europe/London
Just written my post, but be warned – it’s long
(Well, over 1000 words, which is long for a blog post).
If morals were something physical I’d agree with this. But I’m not so sure you can apply that to morals, which are metaphysical in nature.
Um, well, that depends by what you mean ‘hold anyone else to them’. What I mean is, you can’t justifiably say, as an atheist, that someone else’s actions are morally wrong – other than from within your own moral value system. They are not universally wrong.
I’m not talking about enforcing a moral standard here, I’m just talking about declaring this or that action morally right or wrong.
The reason I didn’t respond to this before is because it’s very much a matter of opinion. And yes, before you say anything, I don’t agree with the crusades… I just believe they were motivated by politics and greed rather than any Biblical mandate. Same with Jihadists (although of course, I don’t think that the Islamic God is the same God of Christianity, so I can’t really defend them).
Don’t worry, it’s fine – and I must say the same for me as well. It’s difficult when discussing these kind of issues and I’ve had some heated discussions before!
Pandammonium at Wednesday 4th February, 2009 @ 2.46pm GMT Europe/London
I’d like you to rethink your statement “of course, I don’t think that the Islamic God is the same God of Christianity”. They really are the same god, as this answer to the question shows.
Now I’d better get on with some work and I’ll get back to this and your post later.
Phill at Wednesday 4th February, 2009 @ 10.49pm GMT Europe/London
Well… it’s a difficult question. Muslims believe that there is one God, and they believe very similar things to God as Christians. However, as that answer even admits, there are differences – fundamental ones – between the way Christians and Muslims view God. The trinity is one difference, the deity of Christ is another.
Another key difference is that of grace and the self-sacrifice of God. This taken from the CofE communion service:
This is a concept which doesn’t exist in any other religion on earth, including Islam: there, salvation must be earned. It is not given.
So, this all begs the question: at what point can we say that two religions worship a different God? I think that the view of God which Islam has is so far removed from what most Christians believe that we must conclude they worship a different God.
This is a tangent, but what the heck… Christianity, Judaism and Islam are often lumped together as ‘Abrahamic faiths’. This is incorrect. Hebrews 11:9-10 says, “By faith he [Abraham] made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” Notice that last bit… the “city with foundations” is talking about the fulfilment of the covenant promise to Abraham, i.e. Jesus. So Abraham’s faith was actually a forward-looking one, looking ahead to Jesus. So actually Judaism and Islam do not share Abraham’s faith
Just an interesting aside, well, interesting for me anyway!
Pandammonium at Thursday 5th February, 2009 @ 5.17pm GMT Europe/London
I don’t know about Muslims, but the Jews are still awaiting their Messiah. The fundamental difference between Judaism and Christianity is that Christians think that Jesus was the Messiah, but the Jews didn’t. Therefore, they are forward-looking. What I do know about Islam is that Muslims believe that Jesus existed, but was a prophet, not a Messiah. I think they probably are waiting for one. Something for you to research!
But what makes you think the “city with foundations” is Jesus? If it were Jesus, why isn’t he mentioned by name? After all, God would have known what Jesus was going to be called, being omniscient and getting the angel Gabriel to tell Mary what he was going to be called and everything. Wouldn’t that have been more straightforward? Then the Jews (and Muslims) would know that he was at least a contender because he had the right name. A lot less confusing.
With respect to this statement:
you have previously said:
Isn’t doing all that earning salvation?
Phill at Thursday 5th February, 2009 @ 11.01pm GMT Europe/London
Yes, indeed. I actually don’t know what Islam thinks about the concept of a Messiah. I know that they value Jesus as a prophet, but I can’t quite understand that. It seems pretty clear to me that Jesus saw himself as the Messiah, and indeed claimed to be God. The Islamic argument basically goes “well… Jesus was probably wrong. Or the texts were messed with.” The unfortunate thing is there’s no evidence for either of those two things – I mean, you can dispute the Bible’s accuracy – but that would surely then undermine the whole ‘Jesus being a prophet’ thing. Strange.
Ah – you could write a whole book on that! It fits in with the theology of the Old Testament, for example the promise of God to Moses in Genesis 12:1-3 to bless ‘all nations’ through him. I think the prophets of the Old Testament saw through a glass darkly (to use a New Testament phrase)… but if you look at the prophecies of Jesus’ life and death they were pretty accurate.
Incidentally, the name Jesus is the same as Joshua, and there are many parallels between the life of Joshua and the life of Jesus. I remember reading about that before but can’t remember how it all fits together off the top of my head.
Well, as I also said before, “Good works are a consequence of salvation, not a prerequisite for”. We are not saved because we do those things. We do those things because we are saved.
It’s a subtle distinction, but I think it’s what Christianity is all about: realising that we can’t earn our own salvation, but that God grants it to us freely.
I haven’t come across another religion in the world which has the same message.