Atloggerheads

Have you ever heard of the 19th Century French Economist Frederic Bastiat^W? If you haven’t I would recommend his writings to you. Specifically his brilliant short work The Law in which he talks about the purpose of law and the effects of its perversion by people. He describes the Law as follows

What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.

and i’m not sure it could possibly be better than that.

If you haven’t read Bastiat then check him out, he is worth your time.

A great video I saw on @ToplessRobot

I noticed recently that my friend @zipzink on Twitter posted a tweet that included a reference to the idea that someone could be “Good without God^W“. I have heard the phrase before but it had me reflecting on it a bit and I find such a notion to be odd and probably incoherent. Now before you jump up and down, I would have no problem with a statement like “Good without a belief in God” but that is not the statement that was made.

What would it mean to be “Good without God”? The question I would have would be, “What does Good mean without God”? I am not sure the word means anything. Can any sense be made of concepts like Good and Evil^W. It seems there are only two possible ways a person could mean the term “good”. The first is by appealing to some external objective standard that they expect other people to recognize. This is what people usually mean when they say good. The second is that they could be referring to some subjective personal standard that they invent for themselves when they say good.

If a person means the second then the word “good” doesn’t really mean anything. Whatever a person decides is “good” is “good for them”. By such a standard a person who thinks raping babies is “good” is a “good person” because they are using their own standard. Since all standards are personal the concept of “good” looses all meaning.

Now I doubt the person who says “good without god” is doing this. If they are, well so what. By such a light Jeffrey Dahmer^W was good and he ate people.

But this presents a problem. What is this external standard they are appealing too? Where does this external universal conception of “good” come from that they are adhering too? In a universe with a God there is no problem with grounding this idea. The idea has a long pedigree and is known as Natural Law^W. But the idea of Natural Law is going to be very difficult to square with the sort of Metaphysical naturalism^W that the person who says that sort of thing normally espouses.

Maybe someone can help me with that. How can someone who claims to be “good without god” ground a conception of “good” that means something beyond an appeal to some subjective preference?

I always enjoy News Busters. Always fun.

I thought I would start a blog that contained various ramblings from me on things I thought were interesting. Maybe it will of interest to you as well?