You'd think so, right? Unfortunately, I think it has something to do with a somewhat... skewed distribution of those resources within society.
That's part of it. There's actually a Catholic economic theory from G. K. Chesterton called Distributism.
The secular perspective would truly be missing something spectacular about reality if the theist perspective turned out to be correct. But in practice, when it comes to forming ethical guidelines, I don't see enough difference between the two to really fuss about.
I'd say it's hard to separate the wheat from the tares in this situation. Lots of our policies are based on Christian thinking, even if they don't quote scripture. Only if we could cleanly separate the two could we see the differences.
I have a number of issues with the concept of infinite value, but we can sidestep those for now to work within your structure.
Well I do too, but that is probably best left for another day.
I don't think it's necessarily untenable to believe in "infinite value" via differing rational pathways,
How so? I don't think infinity admits of pathways. Either you have it or you don't. There is no additive procedure to arrive at infinity.
...but I don't think it's even necessary for both of us to get there in the first place. You can start from a position that states human beings are infinitely valuable, and that position would have its own set of implications, including perhaps the Categorical Imperative. I, on the other hand, can start from a position that states humans ought to strive for a society in which we can all reasonably co-exist, and that would have its own implications, which might also include the Categorical Imperative. In this way, we both find that the CI is a useful tool for creating moral guidelines -- lofty ones, even -- even if we don't agree on the basis of morality itself.
Right... I'm just going to quote myself since I'm having a similar conversation with Silmarien privately:
Zippy said:
I grant that there is merit in using the Categorical Imperative to "aim for the moon and land among the stars," so to speak. It has helped the secular world in that way. The problem, which Aristotle saw so clearly, is that if you can't see the moon clearly you may end up in the wrong galaxy. In that way Kant had too much deduction and not enough induction, which Hume pointed out starkly. Aristotle is much more subtle.
The Categorical Imperative does not handle diversity elegantly, to say the least. It breaks down when it is applied to use of any scarce resource, even if not everyone is interested in using that resource, for example.
Although it has been awhile since I studied political philosophy, your approach is seemingly Lockean. Coexistence and social contract is the name of the game in modern political philosophy. The problem with coexistence as an axiom is that it fails to see natural unity (spouse, family, clan, tribe, state, nation, world, cosmos, etc.). For Aristotle and the ancients, man was by nature a social animal, meant to live in union with other human beings and in harmony with nature. Christians elevate that binding force to the theological virtue
par excellence and the stuff out of which God's own life is made: love. "The love that moves the sun and the other stars."
Build one house on love and another on coexistence, and see if you can tell the difference.
That is indeed more or less my move, so we'll have to get into why you don't think it works.
I mean, do you think there is a big difference between valuing highly and valuing infinitely?
An important anthropological aspect to introduce here is the soul (which, as your thread makes clear, is a difficult reality to pin down). What seems common to most understandings of the soul, though, is that it is something that transcends the finitude of the material world. This means we can "love someone beyond death." We can love them regardless of their situation. We can love them even if we cannot help them and they cannot help us. We can love them even if we are both dying of thirst [enter Mother Teresa]. We can
pray for people. We can will their good without limit and without circumspection. We can pray that our enemies will be aided by grace even in the very moment when they strike us on the cheek.
I think lofty moral goals are more accessible to secular humanists than you give them credit for.
I don't find them to be overly inaccessible. I would say that if the secularist achieved their goal they would be surprised to find themselves still unsatisfied. If the ancients achieved theirs I think a sort of natural beatitude would arise.
