Can religion or a state ever be ethical ?
- detail
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Can religion or a state ever be ethical ?
My country is the world,
and my religion is to do good.
Is there not undoubtable a direct connection of religios and state moral with supression ?
Can anybody judge against a moderate nihilism , asserting others as well as oneself the
right to live?
We all know that ethics tries to evoke moral values for the society, how can anybody assure
that this doesn't end up in submission to psychological terror?
- LuckyR
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Re: Can religion or a state ever be ethical ?
- fati
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Re: Can religion or a state ever be ethical ?
- Mark1955
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Re: Can religion or a state ever be ethical ?
I’d suggest that any ethical ‘standard’ involves some repression or coercion to require you to follow the standard. Depending on how far your ethical values differ from the standard so the degree of psychological terror required to make you conform will vary. A sociopath will thus find unacceptable what you and I regard as simply polite behaviour and a higher functioning sociopath might try and use ‘rights’ legislation to assert that imposing your ethical standards on him is unacceptable and a form of psychological terror.
- Todd Scull
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Re: Can religion or a state ever be ethical ?
Organizations “act” through a dynamic that involves making decisions, implementing those decisions, and those not making or implementing decisions but choosing to be a member. Each of these three groups, I argue, are operating under a different set of ethical obligations (though they may share certain obligations in common). Another layer of complexity is the way in which decisions are made and executed. For example, in an organization whose power is centralized in a single unelected individual, the ethical dynamics are different than in an organization whose power is more distributed among its members, and so on.
Given this, I would argue that yes, a “religion” or “state” can be ethical acting in accordance to a set of norms that are considered ethical. Perhaps those acts must be deemed ethical in accordance with those norms consistently such that they constitute a clear majority of those actions of the organization.
What I find most interesting, though, is determining the nature of the various ethical duties of individuals within different types of organizations, and what would be the criteria for determining an organization’s identity as being ethical.
- Pantagruel
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Re: Can religion or a state ever be ethical ?
Huxley distinguishes between collectives which function as groups and those which function as crowds, the former being characteristically much smaller in size. I'd say that very large organizations (church/state) are managed by groups whose objectives are not always in the best interests of the whole of the organization and its individual members (i.e. are not universalizable within that organization). So inevitably the espoused ethic of the organization diverges from the dominant ethic of the presiding group. This lack of ethical foundation creates a state of disconnection for the individual members, who can either fall back into a primitive "crowd" mentality of militant enthusiasm, or suffer from a debilitating state of ennui (as described by Durkheim).
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