"AFP - Polish Nobel peace laureate Lech Walesa on Monday called for a new "secular Ten Commandments" to underpin universal values, addressing a summit of Nobel Peace Prize winners in Warsaw.
'We need to agree on common values for all religions as soon as possible, a kind of secular Ten Commandments on which we will build the world of tomorrow,' he said in an opening speech kicking off the three-day summit.
Walesa won the Nobel 30 years ago for leading Poland's Solidarity trade union, which negotiated a peaceful end to communism in Poland in 1989."
Atheists have no concept of moral authority, how it is derived and how it is applied. Many seem to think that morals are just temporary conventions which are merely culturally acceptable ways of behaving. That is what Walesa probably thinks, too. So for them, the dominant cultural icons could get together and dictate behavior codes for the rest of us.
But that is not what morals or moral authority amount to. Morals are principles which dictate behaviors which are acceptable/unacceptable regardless of cultural norms or celebrity opinions. Moral authority belongs to the ultimate arbiter of judgment regarding the success or failure of an individual's lifetime of adherence to the moral code.
Certainly there are competing moral codes, most notably those of Christianity vs. Islam vs. Atheism (which has many temporary and volatile individual codes).
And there are competing moral authorities, again those of the Christian Jehova vs Islam's Allah/Muhammed vs. every single Atheist.
So what is Walesa saying? For a secular moral code, both Jehova and Allah/Muhammed must be dumped as moral authorities, and the remaining Atheists must coalesce their opinions into a single, coherent set of moral principles. This is absurd on the face of it; every Atheist is his own moral authority who creates his own moral environment. Atheism is not based on any moral dictates from anyone else, certainly no one other than the personal dictates of the individual Atheist. So if there are a billion Atheists, then there are also a billion moral codes and a billion moral authorities who are beholden to no one else other than themselves. Even more of an obstruction is the fact that many of the secular codes are not actually fixed moral principles, they are situational, with different "moral" decisions for each situation. So even many single individuals do not have a single moral code.
Walesa is adrift in a sea of secular non-coherence, the fact of which he doesn't seem to comprehend.
5 comments:
Evil loves to mock God. Lech Walesa is attempting to play god by doing away with the original Ten Commandments, authored by God Himself, and writing up his own secular version (which I would never obey), thus institutionalizing moral relativism, pronouncing his word to be equal to God's. Indeed, commandment implies authority, something which this Lech guy doesn't have over anyone.
"We need to agree on common values for all religions as soon as possible, a kind of secular Ten Commandments"
So he wants secular 10 commandments for religions? Maybe he should add the word diametrical to his vocabulary. I assume (and I could be wrong) he isn't opposed to thou shalt not kill or steal, what is going to replace the big three?
Thou shalt subvert thine own god imagery to the will of the state.
Thou shall make unto thyself a graven image in the likeness of the highest state official. Thou shalt bow down and worship it.
Thou shalt not speak ill of the party, the state, or the state's representatives
Thou shalt suffer none to bear false witness against the state, and thou shalt report immediately to the nearest state official any person who takes the state's name in vain.
You shalt give false testimony about the state's enemies.
You shalt not covet what the state apparatchiks have. Thou shalt be content with the state's rationing of your care, your food, and your home.
Thou shalt gladly lay down thine life for the good of the state.
Rikalonius,
That's only seven but I'll bet that they'd be good with that as a start.
Oh I see, you addressed the first three; so that's fourteen - even better.
Yes, it is a start. Still, it's like Animal Farm. The commandments on the side of the barn just get lined out one by one until the only one left has been modified to read:
All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
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