But these do not change objective truth. If a thing is "valuable" in that sense, it is "valuable" whether anybody knows it is or not. It is valued by God, so it ought to be valued by us, even if we don't.Belinda wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2019 5:27 pm Circumstances do indeed alter values.
Circumstances include the moral consciousness(or conscience) of the individual, the individual's ambient culture, and contingencies of nature. The individual consciousness (or conscience) may change when the individual is traumatised or when he has learned what he did not previously know.
Like your rights. If they're dependent on circumstances, then your claim, "I have a right to be respected" means precisely zero. It's just a petulant but unjustifiable demand, one that nobody needs to take more seriously than the angry squalling of an irate infant. In both cases, what is said has no objective authority, then.
I would think that any Feminist (supposing you have any sympathy with such) would be absolutely adamant that women deserved rights, whether or not anybody else thought so. And if that's true, they're calling on an objective standard, one that has to be higher than the contingent fact of "the men that may happen to rule society."
Or you could wait around for things just to come your way by chance, I suppose. But they might not.
Well, we certainly would if God told us what they were. The question then becomes, "Has he?"If there be eternal values it's not given to us to know them.
Only in an Atheist world. But in that world, nothing is "tragic," because "tragic" implies (as Aristotle said) the undeserved decline of the worthy. Under Atheism, you're not tragic, because you can't be "worthy," and your fate cannot be "undeserved". It just is what it is.This is the tragedy of the human.
It's our responsibility to make our own values.
Not true. There can be no "responsibility" in that world. And if you make your own "values," then only you have to care that you did. Everybody else can say, "Well, I know you think you ought to be allowed to value your freedom, but we want you in jail." And there's no recourse after that.
Well, we cannot be "forced" to "make" what it is impossible for us to make. You wanting something doesn't make it in the least valuable to anyone else. So that's just self-contradiction.That we are forced to make our own values is not an occasion for rejoicing , on the contrary it makes us anxious and sometimes we want big Daddy to come and tell us what to do and what to believe.
Absolutely. That is a very real danger. We ought not to do that.The danger is confusing God with politicians and priests.
Not me. You're thinking of somebody else...or perhaps you badly misunderstood something I wrote. I can't tell which....in a previous post, wrote to the effect that learning is repeating what others have said.
But if you quote what you're thinking of verbatim, maybe I can clear up the misunderstanding for you.