Morality

Man in a Shed had a number of 'spirited' discussions over the Easter holidays with old University friends. the one that came closest to getting out of control was over the assertion of Humanism by some of my good friends.

Firstly my Humanist friends said they were tolerant of all religions, but that only came up after they had told us of how they had insisted there young daughter stopped singing a song about Jesus - I spotted the contradiction and pointed it out.

But then the conversation took a more dangerous turn about morality. My point was that morality needed a basis and that without Christianity (for the sake of argument) everything was up for negotiation and hence morality was variable and thus rudderless. MiaS was warned not to accuse his friends of being amoral. MiaS suspects it is nearly impossible to be moral without a moral basis, but perhaps needs to think this through further. ( We often find ways to justify things we wanted to do anyway - see Tony Blair's last 10 years for examples. Just at Lunch time I heard Labour party trolls explaining why signing away more of the UK's sovereignty didn't require a referendum after all [MiaS believes as they know they would lose it])

Well I wish I read Cranmer post and quote of Bruce Anderson's article in the Independent here before hand.

There is a really aggressive secularism trying to take hold of society at the moment, and those of us who see the danger need to rehearse our arguments or else Britain will be left rudderless and at the mercy of other extremist certainties.

I particularly liked this quote from the then Prime minister Lord Salisbury:

"Anyone who expected the Christian ethic to survive Christian theology by more than two or three generations was deluded."

Quite. ( Hat tip to Cranmer here and Bruce Anderson).