If there’s one thing I learned from life, it is to never assume that you know everything.
To give equal opportunity for other arguments to make its case.
But most of all, to view each argument through the lens of moral virtues.
However when it comes to morality, ethics and values what are the ones that should be used as a standard?
Does an absolute moral standard exist?
What makes a value valid?
How do people come about with their values and what they value?
What are the values that stood the test of time and moved civilizations forward?
What values prevented our own annihilation and preserved our culture while empowering the individual?
What values promotes human dignity, extend compassion and encourages human rights?
What are the opposite of these values, and how does it affect societies as a whole?
What values made us demean and dehumanize each other?
How do we know what values are detrimental to ourselves?
Do values ever truly matter and if so who should people listen to?
It is self evident that there are laws governing the universe.
Akin to the laws of logic, of mathematics, of abstract concepts.
And these laws also encompasses human values.
There are values that make or break human potential.
And yes these values are absolute.
They can never be created, instead they can only be discovered, studied and improved upon although the opportunities to do so can only be finite.
There are laws seen and unseen in human nature that is touched upon by the stories we tell and the books we read and write
We affirm these values by validating them, from the myths and folk tales and sacred texts that stood the test of time and survived for thousands of years.
We judge their wisdom by the spirit they possess and by the truths they manifest.
To brush everything off by stating that one can be moral without religion is by itself a paradox, because being a truth claim it demands that it be logically proven based on something that one considers as non-existent.
The statement having nothing to based upon metaphysically
Does not hold water, nor should even be considered an argument.
Because religion is the synthesis of human values and the only language that could explain what is good and evil.
Heed the words of Nietzsche, Dostoevsky and Piaget.
They all say the same thing.
Humans can never rationalize their way to their own values and morality.
Doing so has been scientifically proven as disastrous, violent and malevolent.
One can only look at the 20th century and witness its horrors.
Dostoevsky puts it bluntly:
“If God does not exist, everything is permitted.”-
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
With that being said.
Happy Easter everyone!