An interesting post on Quora re: the invasion/kidnapping in Venezuela

[thewayne]

The question, to paraphrase, was that if Obama or Biden had invaded Venezuela and kidnapped Maduro, that liberals would be fine with it.

The respondent said, in essence, 'Nope, we wouldn't. Because we have a moral compass. You don't.'

And since it's a fairly short response, I'm going to quote most of it whole:
"You lack an internal moral compass. Your sense of right and wrong depends on what the authority you personally submit to says it is.

People without an inner moral compass literally cannot understand what it feels like to have one. Your sense of morality comes from outside authority, so you believe everyone feels that way.

You like Trump, so you think what Trump does is good. You imagine that people who like Obama think that whatever Obama does is good.

Nope.

Overthrowing a sovereign government to take their stuff is wrong. It was wrong when Trump did it, and it would still be wrong if Obama did it. The fact you struggle to imagine that is a you problem, not a liberal problem."

This is an argument that I need to remember if I ever get into a "discussion" with a Trumper.

I also see a lot of Religious Zealot vs Atheist posts on Quora, and several of them devolve into 'You can't have ethics without religion'. While you can define some ethical guidelines from religion, you can also define some really, really twisted ones from religion. I think I'll take my ethics and morality from logic and observation and readings. Yeah, I may be selectively cutting and pasting to make my personal honor code, but so many religions do the same thing that I don't see much of a difference.

https://qr.ae/pCZFf8

Comments

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

It's also what happens when I try to describe what it's like having a sense of self-worth. I don't need other people to tell me I'm a good person or approve of me. And most people can't imagine what it's like to generate their own worth, instead of getting it from others around them.

Re: Yes ...

[mtbc]

Thanks both, those are both interesting points!

[conuly]

It's the same sort of weird argument they make whenever they start off with "Margaret Singer believed this awful thing" or "Charles Darwin did something terrible/recanted" - like, so what? My beliefs about abortion and evolution have absolutely nothing to do with those people, and why would they?

But they fundamentally can't conceive of not tying their thoughts and feelings to An Authority Figure.

[disneydream06]

The UltraConservatives have cherry picked the Bible to within an inch of it's existence. :o :o :o
Hugs, Jon

[kaishin108]

I think also think ethics would be better without religion as many of them justify such crap.

[arlie]

Sadly, some quantity of left wing people appear to get their ethics the same way - and even more commonly, to get their understanding of truth by believing what authorities they "respect" have told them.

Also, to be fair, some quantity of right wing people appear to have a moral compass of their own. It includes rules most left wing people despise, but the same is true in reverse. As an example, I offer Mike Pence, who didn't support Trump's attempt to retain power, presumably because he believed in keeping his oaths, and not breaking laws, rather than because someone else told him not to support Trump.

FWIW, we can recognize the (previously) left wing ethical (sic) followers by their turn around when they find right wing people in power.

I think/hope there's more of this on the right than on the left, but mostly because I'd rather not have too many of "my" people draw my contempt. One thing for sure, though - the more the powers-that-be persecute a group for its beliefs, the fewer mere followers it's likely to retain.

[thewayne]

When I attended church with my parents, there were two preachers whom I liked, John and Jim (their actual first names).  They built persuasive logical arguments, weren't necessarily 'fire and brimstone' preachers.  John had an affair with a congregant, that pretty well blew his career as a preacher out of the water, I understand the family moved to San Diego and he became an attorney.  Jim, I understand his wife had an affair and he stopped preaching.  I saw him a few times socially after and spoke with him briefly, he seemed largely the same person.  I don't mind people being religious, but so many lack consistency and are just using religion as a cover, the proverbial 'Sunday Suit'.  Pence did not.  I may not agree with the precepts that he followed, but I can certainly respect his seeming consistency.

.02 cents worth.

[ranunculus]

My sister was a person who wanted, or needed or was brainwashed into thinking she needed someone to tell her what to do. She hung onto that belief until she died from it when her church told her she could not have a blood transfusion.
I've never quite understood her need to be told what to do. It makes me wonder if it wasn't closely connected with a extremely poor sense of self worth. She married a man who physically abused her and stayed with him until he died. I suspect she did have a moral compass, but it was so buried in the morass of feeling of worthlessness that she couldn't use it.

Re: .02 cents worth.

[thewayne]

I've learned a lot about my brother since his death. Talking to people while I was in that fuzzy stage between his death and burial, a lot of people agreed with me that he may have had a learning disability which may have interfered with his reasoning. And he exhibited some of these characteristics.

He was a staunch conservative and Fox guy, pre-Trump, but eventually my dad got rid of cable TV and thus access to Fox. His tone shifted a bit after this, but he continued a subscription to hard right-wing newsletters. This week I gained access to two email accounts of his that I could identify, and when I unsubscribed from three of them, they all had identical unsubscribe pages. I found that interesting. And all of the emails looked exactly alike in appearance.

My dad listened to Rush Limburger when he was on the air, I always thought that if they had both just turned off those news sources and simply read the newspaper for a couple of months and turned off email that they might have started thinking for themselves more.

Re: .02 cents worth.

[ranunculus]

I do not see people calling the whole right wing, and especially the Trump circus, a cult. Which is a shame. In my mind that is exactly what it is. Certainly people who follow Trump are in a cult.
Jim Jones had his church up in Redwood Valley, the next town north of Ukiah. The group did all kinds of good things for the community. Lots of people were sad to see him go when he moved to Guyana. His enforced mass suicide took a lot of people here by surprise. That has made me very leery of cults, or really any group who sees only black and white and won't admit there are infinite shades of grey.

[garote]

Oh that old evergreen apologist statement…

Saying that you can’t have ethics without religion is exactly backwards. It’s like saying you can’t have music without the phonograph.

Maybe if your mind had been stunted by living in a culture that only ever listened to recordings made by long dead people and never sang and never played any instruments, you’d think that’s all there is to music, and the phonograph is central. But you’d be both wrong and pathetic.

JUST SO with people who make that claim about ethics.