Maybe, maybe not. You sound awfully sure for someone who doesn’t know one way or another but is merely speculating. At least, I admit that I’m merely speculating.

“And when it does, we will live like the pleasure-maximizing, self-interested, amoral animals recognizing only the exercise of power that one would expect from materialist philosophy”

Maybe, maybe not. Some of the materialist philosophers you disdain supported raw exercises of power, but others haven’t. Some of the postmodernists that are routinely mocked on sites like this are vocal supporters of human rights. You keep telling them that they’re being contradictory, but they keep right on fighting for human rights just the same.

“furthermore, I would add that your viewpoint reflects obtuseness to such a degree that it hovers near intellectual dishonesty”

Well, if my intellectual dishonesty is leading to such obtuseness, then I might as well just shut up. I will remember your hospitality, however, and your interest in thoughtful, civil discussion.

I agree with fred: you’re being remarkably shortsighted. furthermore, I would add that your viewpoint reflects obtuseness to such a degree that it hovers near intellectual dishonesty.

rather than talking about “hypothetical blood and misery,” let’s talk about the historical fact. in the absence of a common moral foundation, how would you, michael, address and condemn the holocaust? I contend that the only intellectually consistent argument you can offer (in the absence of such a common foundation) is isomorphic to “well, I certainly wouldn’t do things that way.”

and of course we could go on. what’s fundamentally wrong with the gulag? with genocide? with rape? or less intensely, with discrimination? with racism?

this is not some hypothetical word game. how many millions of people have been slaughtered, relocated, or unjustly imprisoned in the past century alone? do you think there is a fundamental benefit to being western that makes our culture impervious to being swept away in the madness that so recently engulfed germany? russia? cambodia? china? angola?

this (in the absence of a common moral foundation, the very definition of “rights”, “good”, and the like is a matter of choice and therefore subject to the decisions of the strong) has been well understood for hundreds of years. it’s one of the few points of agreement between intellectually honest atheists (see fred’s reference to nietzche above) as well as Christians, perhaps most efficiently summarized in the mouth of ivan karamazov, “without immortality, everything is permitted.”

My inclination is to side with Fred, that our “inertia” as he puts it, is about to run out, but history being my own area of interest, I’ll leave the prognostications to the prophets.

You might see a philosophical problem with a lack of some common moral foundation, but it seems increasingly that we don’t need one. You are speculating some hypothetical blood and misery that doesn’t exist and might never exist for the reasons you suppose it will.

the problem is that, in the absence of a moral foundation, what we regard as human rights and dignity are simply a matter of strength and will. which usually bodes well for blood and misery.

best,
kristan

Perhaps the real question is why we thought we needed religion or philosophy.