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nor findeth burdens burdensome.
i come for hope that springeth green,
and burneth steadfast like a star;
for faith that pierceth through the seen
to things eternal, things that are.
Jeff: This seems like a good place to see if I can get some convergence with D on the nature of "reward."
That which is absolutely not burdensome is not a burden at all. Thus, in that sense, the phrase "nor findeth burdens burdensome" would be non-sensical. All it can sensibly mean is that hope renders burdens less burdensome. This is the whole NT teaching on how joy and hope and suffering are related.
But hope is not reward, on the other hand. Hope actually conditions the very possibility of reward. IOW, if we didn't have the hope of age-abiding life, we could not experience a reward during that "age."
But back to the main point. What I hear D arguing against is the idea of being motivated by reward. And here is the sense in which I agree with that:
Porter says, rightly IMO, that the very ground of a rational, moral order is that it must be the case that any volitional action taken unto one's highest natural good must be conducive to and consistent with the highest natural good of the rest of the community. So, in that sense, moral deliberation can not even get off the ground, rationally, without that intuitive belief.
Thus, as far as I can tell, if I am morally deliberating rationally at all, I'm necessarily assuming that there is a moral order of the kind described above. So, do I need God to spell out specific rewards for me to be motivated by? Not at all, if I'm being rational.
What I do need to believe, though, for the golden rule to be the criteria of communal love of my fellow humans is that there are post-mortem consequences. Unless, i.e., the very act of right-relating necessarily produces my greatest satisfaction even in this life.
Let's say the latter is true. What is the conceivable evidence for it? The fact that a handful of people claim they are choosing aright at all times and know they are experiencing the greatest possible satisfaction for themselves, thereby?
I would say that could be evidence. The problem is, it's very weak evidence. In the meanwhile, the scriptures don't even hint at such a thing except equivocally in a handful of passages. Taken as a whole, the scriptures seem to clearly indicate that even Christ was motivated by post-mortem sentient states, much more that we creatures are to stay steadfastly unmoved from our "other-worldly" hope, etc.
So let's assume that the moral order works with a criteria of the golden rule only because there are post-mortem consequences of our volitional actions. Then, it still doesn't follow that I need a specific reward to motivate me to choose according to the golden rule. For the ground of the moral order already implies that choosing, thus, will be to my greatest good in the long run no matter what it costs me now, whether or not I know specifically what those consequences will be.
Thus, if God does reveal specific rewards for specific volitional sacrifices, it is probably to provide evidence for the prophetic office of the one speaking in God's behalf. But once it is revealed, being motivated by the now specifically revealed consequence can not be irrational. It just becomes a specifically known instance of how the ground of the moral order plays out specifically in time. But some specifics had to be already entailed in the ground of the moral order regardless, if post-mortem consequences are what renders the moral order rational, ultimately.
So the question is, what good evidence is there for believing that acting aright, in this life alone, renders the golden rule rational? Especially if that very "rule" can ground the propriety of dying for another. IOW, the minute you assume that the golden rule can ground the propriety of extinguishing one's own conscious experience, we've abandoned consequentialism altogether. And once we do that, what are we actually deliberating about?
IOW, why is the golden rule articulated as loving as we love ourselves? Don't we deliberate consequentially precisely because we love ourselves naturally? The golden rule does not say don't love ourselves. But how can you love yourself by extinguishing your own consciousness with no hope of regaining consciousness?
It is not a coincidence that virtually all religions posit post-mortem consequences. And it doesn't seem to be because a human is known to be a necessarily conscious entity. First of all, that would imply that even God can't extinguish human consciousness. Second of all, there are good reasons to infer that we already are virtually unconscious at times in this life.
Post Edited (Similitude) : 12/4/2010 11:14:23 AM (GMT-6) |