New thread: On Morality, Design, and Humanization.
A summary of Alasdair MacIntyre’s “master argument” in After Virtue:
Imagine trying to hammer a nail with a wristwatch and finding that the watch just breaks apart. Should you call it a ‘bad’ watch? 1/8
A summary of Alasdair MacIntyre’s “master argument” in After Virtue:
Imagine trying to hammer a nail with a wristwatch and finding that the watch just breaks apart. Should you call it a ‘bad’ watch? 1/8
No-because its purpose is not to hammer nails but to tell time. Unless we know the “telos” or purpose of something, we have no way of evaluating it as good or bad. So how will we know if a human is bad or good? Such terms are meaningless unless we know what human life is for. 2/8
Why were we made? Why are we here? The Enlightenment Project was to “bracket God out" and seek a morality without reference to a telos for which humans were created. This project has failed—thus the fragmenting of western society over what is a good human life. 3/8
(See Hunter and Nedelisky, Science and the Good). amzn.to/3ts827b If you do not believe that people were created for any purposes, then there is no way to evaluate any human behavior as good or bad. You are reduced to ‘emotivism’—4/8
-the view that moral values are ultimately just feelings within us. While secularism offers explanations of moral feelings (evolution or culture) it has no basis for moral obligation. You may feel “X” is wrong. 5/8
But how can you say: “You ought not to do X, even if you feel it is ok”? Why should your feelings about X overrule theirs? The only way to get from feelings to obligation is to appeal to some moral norm outside of both of us that validates or revises our internal intuitions. 6/8
Every culture until ours has had such a moral source outside the self. But our society does not. Modern secular society does not have the moral sources to support its moral ideals. But the Bible says God created the world with a structure to it. We were designed to love-7/8
so hate dehumanizes and sets up strains in our nature- relational breakdown, etc. “Sin…sets up strains in the structure of life which can only end in breakdown.” (D. Kidner)-physically, relationally, psychologically. When we don't follow our design, it leads to breakdown. 8/8
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