Metanarratives

Metanarratives

Many who read this probably do not know what a metanarrative is, that does not matter you will have one.  The word really means ‘the big picture’ but we often use it in terms of a ‘world view’.  “What’s that?” you might ask, well even though we don’t think about it often we all have one. And the thing about ‘world views’ because it’s the way we think, ultimately it will affect the way we live, our actions and all that we seek to do or not as the case might be.

There are lots of world views out there Christianity has its world view, its big picture if you will the start and the end, Communism has a world view, Atheism has a world view, Hinduism has a world view as does Buddhism.

Very often we do not think about our ‘world view’ but we are nevertheless living by them and when a lot of people adopt a particular world view it has an effect on our country, our culture, our laws in fact everything.

There is a great move in the UK and in fact many western countries to push us into a materialistic world view, that world view will ultimately change lots of things if more of us accept that, even subconsciously accept it, even though we may never have sat down and analysed ‘our world view’ even though we have maybe never thought about ‘world views' until you read what I am saying now.

I had a small discussion on TV with Richard Dawkins he got somewhat upset with me when I said that he was a good evangelist for his religion, i.e. Atheism, he of course does not see it as a religion. I do, and certainly that religious view will, in its tail give us a world view, that if we accept will lead us in certain directions.

Another funny thing happened while we were making the particularly slot in the TV programme, I am not sure why that particular part of that discussion arose but Richard said to me “I am more Moral than you are” I of course asked “and how is that so” to which Richard responded “well I don’t pillage or rape and I don’t need a god to stop me doing so, you on the other hand would argue that its God that gives you a moral base and so stops you from doing those things."

I responded by saying “bully for you, maybe you should watch the news more” my implication being that there is an awful lot of pillage and raping and other nasty things that people do to each other with their own justification. Maybe I should have asked, what is your morality and how does it work.  However just recently I have been able to see some of the argument more clearly from Richard’s perspective.

I don’t know if you ever saw the TV series of Faulty Towers, where Basil’s car breaks down, first Basil shouts at the car and then beats it with a stick because it won’t start Richard Dawkins uses this skit to explain his ‘moral’ position, and show us how we should act if we hold his world view / metanarrative.  Here is what he says:

Let's all stop beating Basil's car

Retribution as a moral principle is incompatible with a scientific view of human behaviour. As scientists, we believe that human brains, though they may not work in the same way as man-made computers, are as surely governed by the laws of physics. When a computer malfunctions, we do not punish it. We track down the problem and fix it, usually by replacing a damaged component, either in hardware or software. 

Basil Fawlty, British television's hotelier from hell created by the immortal John Cleese, was at the end of his tether when his car broke down and wouldn't start. He gave it fair warning, counted to three, gave it one more chance, and then acted. "Right! I warned you. You've had this coming to you!" He got out of the car, seized a tree branch and set about thrashing the car within an inch of its life. Of course we laugh at his irrationality. Instead of beating the car, we would investigate the problem. Is the carburettor flooded? Are the sparking plugs or distributor points damp? Has it simply run out of gas?

Why do we not react in the same way to a defective man: a murderer, say, or a rapist? Why don't we laugh at a judge who punishes a criminal, just as heartily as we laugh at Basil Fawlty? Or at King Xerxes who, in 480 BC, sentenced the rough sea to 300 lashes for wrecking his bridge of ships? Isn't the murderer or the rapist just a machine with a defective component? Or a defective upbringing? Defective education? Defective genes? 

Concepts like blame and responsibility are bandied about freely where human wrongdoers are concerned. When a child robs an old lady, should we blame the child himself or his parents? Or his school? Negligent social workers? In a court of law, feeble-mindedness is an accepted defence, as is insanity. Diminished responsibility is argued by the defence lawyer, who may also try to absolve his client of blame by pointing to his unhappy childhood, abuse by his father, or even unpropitious genes (not, so far as I am aware, unpropitious planetary conjunctions, though it wouldn't surprise me). 

But doesn't a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused's physiology, heredity and environment. Don't judicial hearings to decide questions of blame or diminished responsibility make as little sense for a faulty man as for a Fawlty car? 

Why is it that we humans find it almost impossible to accept such conclusions? Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing?

Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution. Assigning blame and responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction of intentional agents that we construct in our brains as a means of short-cutting a truer analysis of what is going on in the world in which we have to live.

My dangerous idea is that we shall eventually grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it, just as we laugh at Basil Fawlty when he beats his car. But I fear it is unlikely that I shall ever reach that level of enlightenment.'

So now I see the moral perspective that the atheist would have us come from, that is the world view. No responsibility, no blame, a mechanistic world view no less.

Let’s just fix them or replace them (does that mean we just kill them?)  I do think that ‘following Jesus’ gives us a much more enlightened metanarrative world view.  What do you think?

Adrian Hawkes

Blogspot.com

W.1203

Edited Gena Areola

Morals and Conscience - Do we have them? Where do they come from?

Morals and Conscience – Do we have them? Where do they come from?

This is the third time I have written about this subject from which you will gather that I think it’s important, especially in the light of some the recent events in the UK, such as the riots.  However I believe they are only a symptom of something deeper.

Politicians, of all shades, including the prime ministers are discussing this subject and it is playing central stage on many TV and Radio Programmes.  Perhaps, then, it really is important. There is also deep concern about our schools and our young people – how, the politicians and TV pundits ask, can we install morals into young people so that they do not smash up our streets and destroy our society?

Many responses to my blogs can be summed up as follows, ‘Morals don’t need to come from the Bible, The Koran, or from a god, they surely can come from within ourselves?’ to which I answer, ‘yes of course they can but what sort of moral guide would that be?’

We need to go one step back and ask, why we need to have morals at all, and what is it that propels us to even ask these questions?  My answer encompasses the whole issue of conscience.

What is conscience? What is our conscience?  My argument would be that conscience is a part of us that we are all born with.  Some people disagree with this concept and say that we don’t have a conscience, but I strongly believe that we do. We each have our own individual conscience, unique to us personally. That means that it only works for us, it doesn’t work for anyone else.  What it instils in us is the general sense of right and wrong.  In a nutshell, right and wrong for you might be different to the right and wrong for me, but there will, most definitely, be a personal right and wrong. This concept is far beyond the idea that we do things because they are convenient or inconvenient or because we know we can ‘get away with it’.

How does conscience work, well for the individual, and I do stress the individual in any given situation it will say to the person, ‘yes that is right do it,’ or, ‘No, that is wrong! You should not do it.’  You conscience does not impel you, it does not force you in any direction, it will only hint at the decision you should make, the final decision that decides the action  is the result of your decision making process,  which I would call the will. When you have carried out an act, you know if it is wrong without anyone telling you, you will feel uncomfortable and disturbed; the pendulum of your conscience has swung into the negative zone.  For many people when they obey their consciences and do what they feel is right they often say they feel good, when they disobey their conscience they feel bad, or despondent, but the feeling does not prevent them from disobeying.

Interestingly the Bible does have some comments on this.  John 1:9 is obviously talking about Jesus the Christ, but also the implication is that there is a ‘light’, or the word I use, conscience that is there in every person, and Romans 2:14 says this, “for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves.”  In other words we all have it, and we use it, our conscience, personally. 

This means that we will have different views of right or wrong according first of all to us, and then as we grow and develop, according to what we learn from our family and surrounding culture and education. The problem is that we all break our own rules, and go against our own conscience.

Conscience can of course be educated and that is where the moral discussion enters the stage.  Who will define that moral code, will it be just me, will it be my culture, or will it be God?  It is possible for our conscience to be developed and refined by all sorts of external things, including education.

But who should define the moral code, which one will we adopt?  We need to understand that the moral code that Jesus defines is quite amazing in that it is contrary to all other moral codes that I know anything about, but please tell me if you know something different.  Think about some of those moral imperatives and how counter-culture they are; ‘love your enemies, do good to those who do bad to you,’ for starters. What sort of Moral code do you want young people to follow?  What moral code is required for our culture to follow and for you personally?

Adrian Hawkes

www.adrianhawkes.blogspot.com

W. 821

Edited: Technicolour text

Riots

RIOTS

Now that the riots have calmed, and the papers and newscasters have left the subject behind, I have some questions about it all.

I have listened to the Prime Minister and various Politicians all talking about the fact that this was just gang culture, it is robbery, and that is it.  I did hear a couple of people asking what the causes are of what is going on.  But not a lot of comments were coming back on that score. Some have cited cuts and closures but I would like to ask some other questions and I think my questions just might touch on causes.

The last government spent a large amount of money on trying to cut down underage and very young age pregnancies.  They failed, the figures went up.

 Question one:  How many of our rioters come from very young mothers who really are possibly only children themselves?

We have terrible figures for marriage breakdowns, I note that the prime minister said, lots of the rioters have come from dysfunctional families, maybe, and if so…

 Question two: What make those families dysfunctional?

I noted that the Education Minister was saying that it isn’t education that is to blame.

Question Three:  If you are taught that you are just a machine, or a collection of genes that all arrived by accident, is there really any need to take responsibility for my actions?  Just asking.

Question Four:  Jim Wallis in his book  Why the American Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get it - states that a budget is a moral document, is he right?

Question Five:  And talking of Morals, where do they come from? Are they truly there, and if so can we talk about them? Is there a law giver and ultimate judge?  Can I make my own mind up as to what is right and wrong?  And if I should decide that looting is right who is to say I am wrong?

One young lady with a tee shirt covering her face when asked by a reporter,”How do you feel about robbery, do you feel good about what you have just done?” Replied, I’m only getting some of my taxes back!”

Question Six:  Many have said, these rioters have nothing to lose, maybe they haven’t if they are just machines in an accidental universe, which is what they have been ‘educated’ to believe.  Are they right?

Just in case you think I live in an ivory tower, I actually live in Wood Green, many of my family live in Tottenham, I am white, but personal friends who are black had to take their small child and run from their flat just above the first carpet shop that went up in flames in Tottenham!

Also I am involved in trying to help NEET young people (Not in Education Employment or Training) and its true that many of them have given up on themselves, do not know where they fit in, or feel they do have not stake in society and nothing to contribute.  Not knowing that God loves them and regards them as highly valuable, and has purpose for their lives.

Question Seven:  All the politicians and police have talked about the fact that this is gang related.  I meet some of the gang youngsters who are afraid to go out of their post code in case they get attacked because they are in the wrong place.  Our training centre is in the wrong place for some of them and we have had to give them rides to and fro so they can improve their education. But here is the question, why are they in those gangs? Is it because their family is dysfunctional and family life is not there and so they need to belong, they need a family even if that family is a gang?

Question Eight:  Is it my imagination or am I right in thinking that if you talk about right and wrong, or dare I say Evil and Good, or worse still Sin, then the PC crowd and government is  on it like a ton of bricks, telling you, ‘No its just behavioural; and you should not talk in those terms!’

Question Nine:  Dr Donald Howard an American Educationalist said that discipline is not something you do TO someone; it is actually something you do FOR someone. Am I right in thinking that this is now out of fashion, discipline that is, and very un PC?

Question Ten:  Do we need to find a purpose in life, do we need to look for a lawgiver, is it possible that even though our families are dysfunctional there is a family that wants to include us, and bring us into responsible relationship?

I look forward to your comments.

Adrian Hawkes

For Blogspot.com

Edit: Technicolour Text

11^th August 2011

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Morals,Where Do They Come From?

Morals, where do they come from?

Looking up something recently on Wikipedia I discovered lots of comments about myself in discussion with Richard Dawkins.  Many of the comments following on from the discussion are statements like, ‘how ridiculous to think that morals come from any kind of God’.

Usually, in this kind of debate, there is a tendency to ridicule things that I have said, well that’s fine, I guess it goes with getting involved and not being afraid of what I  believe and understand and being sure that it holds water and can stand up to cross-examination.

I suppose I do get somewhat irritated in debates when people tell me what I believe and then tell me how ridiculous it is to believe it and attempt prove how stupid I am.  But all the time I am thinking, ‘I never believed that in the first place, and you have not given me space to say what I really do believe, or think.’  It’s what I call destroying straw men, you put up an argument and then knock it down, but if it was no argument in the first place what is that?

In TV debates, especially those that are not live, there is the possibility that what was said is on the cutting room floor.  I remember in one debate with Richard Dawkins, he said to me that he was more moral than me because he did not rape or pillage and he did not need a God to stop him doing those things whereas I did.  My reply, which I think must be on the cutting room floor was, ‘bully for you, you ought to watch the news more often.’

If you watch the news you can see that there is an awful lot of inhumanity and suffering in the world, I live in one of those areas where young people can be stabbed or shot just because they happened to have strayed into the wrong post code area.  My questions are; Why are we so awful to each other?  And what has happened to a moral basis?  I would argue that as we move away from an understanding of a God, who ultimately will judge and question our life responses, then we become more selfish and less inclined to care for each other or have any basis for moral decisions, our moral compass deteriorates.

The humanist argues that our morals come from the fact that we are simply human, and it develops out of our selfishness and survival needs, or as Richard Dawkins would argue the selfish gene is simply protecting itself by being moral towards others.

I often ask the question why do we have right and wrong, where do we get such concepts.  The arguments on Wikipedia, in answer to what I said about morals, seem to conclude that it’s just because we are human, I’m sorry, but that just will not do.  If doing wrong gives me an advantage and I can avoid getting caught why not go ahead and do it.  Morals like that don’t seem to me to be moral at all.

In a discussion on morality, Richard Dawkins was asked: "If we do not acknowledge some sort of external [standard], what is to prevent us from saying that the Muslim [extremists] aren’t right?” 

Dawkins replied, "What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right?  I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question, but whatever [defines morality], it’s not the Bible. If it was, we’d be stoning people for breaking the Sabbath.” 

The interviewer wrote in response, "I was stupefied.  He had readily conceded that his own philosophical position did not offer a rational basis for moral judgments. His intellectual honesty was refreshing, if somewhat disturbing on this point."

Richard Dawkins' commentary on Adolf Hitler 

 Essay: Richard Dawkins' comment concerning Adolf Hitler  http://conservapedia.com/Richard_Dawkins

 Richard Dawkins, atheist atrocities, and historical revisionism

It brings us back to the question, who is the law giver?  If there is no ultimate lawgiver, or God, then morals become irrelevant; we are left with anarchy. If we can get away with it then why not?  Whatever it is right and wrong are just words with no meaning.  What is right for you might be wrong for me, but so what!  

Dr. Bahnsen says that, “if the God of the bible does not exist, all principled or moral complaint about what Hitler did to the Jews is irrelevant.  In a godless universe, what one “animal” does to other “animals” is ethically irrelevant.  There is no basis for indignation or outrage.  What happens happens: period. We are left with others feelings and desires versus the feelings and desires of Hitler – with neither having any more “right” than the other.”

If we support liberal freedom, then in a true atheist worldview we should defend Hitler’s freedom to do as he desired!

Dr. Bahnsen sets forth a rational, objective case for the existence of the Christian God, a case which fully takes into account the crucial function of one’s worldview in his reasoning.  He is quoted in the tabloid for the Tabash debate as saying: “Pursued to their consistent end, the pre-suppositions of unbelief render man’s reasoning vacuous and his experience unintelligible; in short, they lead to the destruction of knowledge, the dead end of epistemological futility, and to utter foolishness.”  http://www.tabash.com/

I question here the argument that atheists and humanists do as much good in the world as the likes of Robert Raikes, Wilberforce, Shaftsbury, Cadburys, Fry’s, Rowntree and the  reality is that the Christian ethic, the moral bias of serving a living God gives us great reason to  care  for His world and the people created in His image.  Interestingly Dinesh D'Souza took Richard Dawkins to task for engaging in historical revisionism when it comes to the atrocities of atheist regimes and declared Dawkins, "reveals a complete ignorance of history".

In a recent interview D'Souza declared:

“Richard Dawkins argues that at least the atheist regimes didn't kill people in the name of atheism. Isn't it time for this biologist to get out of the lab and read a little history? Marxism and Communism were atheist ideologies. Stalin and Mao weren't dictators who happened to be atheist; atheism was part of their official doctrine. It was no accident, as the Marxists liked to say, that they shut down the churches and persecuted the clergy...

”

Dinesh D'Souza stated in another interview:

	“As one writer put it, “Leaders such as Stalin and Mao persecuted religious groups, not in a bid to expand atheism, but as a way of focusing people’s hatred on those groups to consolidate their own power.” Of course I agree that murderous regimes, whether Christian or atheist, are generally seeking to strengthen their position. But if Christian regimes are held responsible for their crimes committed in the name of Christianity, then atheist regimes should be held accountable for their crimes committed in the name of atheism. And who can deny that Stalin and Mao, not to mention Pol Pot and a host of others, all committed atrocities in the name of a Communist ideology that was explicitly atheistic? Who can dispute that they did their bloody deeds by claiming to be establishing a “new man” and a religion-free utopia? These were mass murders performed with atheism as a central part of their ideological inspiration, they were not mass murders done by people who simply happened to be atheist.” Joseph Stalin's atheistic regime killed tens of millions of people. The thing that I noted most as I looked through Wikipedia and other web sites and the arguments against my moral perspective was that no one seemed to talk about ‘conscience’, that strange inner-voice with which we are all born.  No one asked, “where does that come from?” The Bible says in John chapter 1 that there is, “…a light that lights every man.” John is talking about Jesus in his Gospel, however there is also that ‘conscience’ light that every person has, and why would that be a surprise?  If, as I believe, we are made in the image of God, why would it be strange that there is that a part of us that is God-like, telling us about good and bad, right and wrong?  Conscience is a strange thing, it tells us these things but does not make us do the right thing or stop us from doing wrong.  Dinesh D’ Souza says it much better than me:
		The Surprising Fact of Morality Evolutionists have some ingenious explanations for morality.  But do they work?  Morality is both a universal and a surprising fact about human nature. When I say that morality is universal I am not referring to this or that moral code. In fact, I am not referring to an external moral code at all. Rather, I am referring to morality as the voice within, the interior source that Adam Smith called the “impartial spectator.” Morality in this sense is an uncoercive but authoritative judge. It has no power to compel us, but it speaks with unquestioned authority. Of course we can and frequently do reject what morality commands, but when we do so we cannot avoid guilt or regret. It is because of our capacity for self-impeachment and remorse that Aristotle famously called man “the beast with the red cheeks.” Aristotle’s description holds up very well more than 2,000 years later. Even people who most flagrantly repudiate morality — say, a chronic liar or a rapacious thief — nearly always respond to detection with excuses and rationalizations. They say, “Yes, I lied, but I had no alternative under the circumstances,” or “Yes, I stole, but I did so to support my family.” Hardly anyone says, “Of course I am a liar and a thief, and I don’t see anything wrong with that.” What this means is that morality supplies a universal criterion or standard even though this standard is almost universally violated.  Morality is a surprising feature of humanity because it seems to defy the laws of evolution.  Evolution is descriptive: It says how we do behave. Morality is prescriptive: It says how we should behave. And beyond this, evolutionary behaviour appears to run in the opposite direction from moral behaviour. Evolution implies that we are selfish creatures who seek to survive and reproduce in the world. Indeed we are, but we are also unselfish creatures who seek the welfare of others, sometimes in preference to our own. We are participants in the fame of life, understandably partial to our own welfare, while morality stands aloof, taking the impartial, or “God’s eye,” view, directing us to act in a manner conducive to the good of others. In sum, while evolution provides a descriptive account of human self-interest, morality provides a standard of human behaviour that frequently operates against self-interest. So if we are mere evolutionary primates, how to account for morality as a central and universal feature of our nature? Why would morality develop among creatures obsessively bent on survival and reproduction? Darwin himself recognized the problem. In The Descent of Man, Darwin argued that “although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe, yet . . . an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another.”  Darwin’s point is that a tribe of virtuous patriots, with each of its members willing to make sacrifices for the group, would prove more successful and thus be favoured by natural selection over a tribe of self-serving individuals. This is the group-selection argument, and for many decades it was considered an acceptable way to reconcile evolution with morality. But as biologists now recognize, the argument has a fatal flaw. The question we have to ask is how a tribe of individuals would become self-sacrificing in the first place. Imagine a tribe where, for instance, many people shared their food with others or volunteered to defend the tribe from external attack. Now what would be the fate of individual cheaters who benefited from this arrangement but hoarded their own food and themselves refused to volunteer to fight? Clearly these scoundrels would have the best deal of all. In other words, cheaters could easily become free riders, benefiting from the sacrifices of others but making no sacrifices themselves, and they would be more likely to survive than their more altruistic fellow tribesmen. So do I still think morality or conscience is something that comes from the ‘God who is there,’ after reading all that is said about my opinions in the various discussions, Wikipedia and otherwise?  Even more so! Adrian Hawkes For: adrianhawkes.blogspot.com W. 2133 Editor: Technicolour Text

Morality

Morality.

The subject I observe presents such problems.

I was part of a government think tank looking at OFSTEAD inspections of schools; one of the things they look at is the moral part of the schools ethos.  My problem is how does one obtain morals?  In my small discussion group there where Moslems, Catholics, Jews, Evangelicals, and humanists; all of us apart from the humanist agreed that morals have to come from some kind of Law giver, and actually in all of our thinking that must be God, apart, that is, from the humanist, who said there isn’t a God so morals must come from somewhere else.

I went on to argue that in terms of generosity, in such things as tsunamis, famines and the like the UK is actually quite generous in its giving, I put this down to the Judeo Christian influence in the background of the nation. The humanist said, “now don’t be silly, its due to the fact that we were once great colonists.”   To which I responded, “I thought that was about greed, trade, and getting lots of things for ourselves?”

I was one of those interviewed by Richard Dawkins for his ‘Religion is the root of all evil’ programmes. After which I found stuff all over the internet, usually from many of the so called ‘learned’ atheists poking fun at my opinions.  Funnily enough I have read Richard’s book, The God delusion, and one of the things that struck me is how often the base of whom we are and where we are comes down to ‘luck’, at least according to that book.  God seems a better thesis to me.

And of course both in the programme, on the net, and definitely in Wikipedia comes the discussion of mortality.  I am amused that in at least one article, the fact that we live in a moral universe and one ‘without God’ according to the ‘atheists’ is argued from the fact that some fish have a symbiotic relationship with ‘cleaner’ fish, the action of the one fish on the other fish actually protects them; therefore arguing that we don’t go around on our streets killing each other because it’s wiser not too.  One of the things that Richard Dawkins said to me in the interview for his programme, (which I have not seen on the programme or the Utube repeats, so I guess it’s on the cutting room floor), was, Richard said “I am more righteous than you. “ I of course said, “Oh and how is that?” to which he replied, “I don’t go around pillaging and raping, and I don’t need a God to stop me, you need one to stop you.” To which I answered, “bully for you, you maybe ought to watch the news!”

One Swallow does not a summer make.

 Richard Dawkins often says that being an atheist is not one with a depressing philosophy, actually he say it makes one appreciate life more and love life.  Again I say, ‘bully for you’, the problem is that you don’t have to travel very far to find people who are starving, people who have been enslaved, people who have every reason not to love life, if you now want them to believe that this atheism is the truth, and not be depressed by such a philosophy all I can say is HELP!  It’s the most depressing view of life that I can imagine; 

So where does morality come from, I note that even some of the comments on what I think that are listed in Wikipedia note that I am saying that we live in a moral universe, and there is a base line for morality and that comes from somewhere, God I would say.  Yes that is what I am saying, morality without a giver is craziness, it is not morality; as Charles Finny would have put it: “Opposed to this is willing self-gratification; a practical treating of self as if the gratification of our own desires, appetites, etc., were of supreme importance. Now in this ultimate choice of the good of universal being, or of self-gratification as an ultimate end, moral character must reside. Primarily, surely, it can reside nowhere else. It is this ultimate choice that gives direction and character to all the subordinate actions of the will; that gives direction to the volitions, the actions, and the omissions of all our voluntary lives. This ultimate choice is the root or fountain from which all volition and all moral action spring.”

 I guess even Richard would agree with some of that, as the basic premise is that morality only comes from our own selfishness to survive or not be killed that is why we don’t have mayhem on the streets.  Although I wonder if we perhaps do, I live in an area where we have postcode crime, knife and gun crime, so the morality is you don’t live in my postcode area, you are there so you need killing. That seems a great morality!

Going back to that statement I made earlier, ‘bully for you’, seems to take no note of the Hitler’s, Pol Pots, and Stalin’s of this world, which again makes me think if morality is only up to our moving to a value system that selfishly benefits us only, and we can get around it, then why not? If it is to my benefit to circumvent the law? If there is not ultimate sanction or moral law giver?

It has always interested me that the Bible talks about giving ‘light’ to every person who comes into the world. What is that light? Personally I have always seen that light as being that conscience that dwells in each and every person.  We can obey it or disobey it, it is, if you like, a little bit of God in us, if we obey it we feel good, if we disobey it we feel bad, but it does not force us either way, we have the freewill, we have choice.  Again to quote Finny on conscience, he talks about moral insanity:

“Moral insanity, on the other hand, is will-madness. The man retains his intellectual powers unimpaired, but he sets his heart fully to evil. He refuses to yield to the demands of his conscience. He practically discards the obligations of moral responsibility. He has the powers of free moral agency, but persistently abuses them. He has a reason which affirms obligation, but he refuses obedience to its affirmations”.

So where do I think morality comes from? I think it comes from the law giver - God, he has created, and designed a moral universe, a universe that ultimately works towards the best good for all, the created order, us, and God too.  We can pretend it is not there, we can work against it, we can listen to our conscience, we can ignore it, but none of those things make it not there.

Adrian Hawkes

For Wikipedia

For Adrian’s Blog

Edited by: Technicolour text

W. 1175.