drethelin comments on A funny argument for traditional morality - Less Wrong

15 Post author: cousin_it 12 July 2011 09:25PM

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Comment author: drethelin 12 July 2011 10:01:31PM 1 point [-]

once you can pick and choose between various churches you open yourself up to exactly the same sort of drift this is designed to avoid

Comment author: Vladimir_M 12 July 2011 10:22:12PM 6 points [-]

Well, yes, clearly. But the original argument makes sense only assuming a unique and stable tradition that has determined the values you were brought up with. If this happens to be the tradition of some realistic Christian church (or Jewish denomination), chances are that the text of the Bible is only one element of this tradition -- it definitely doesn't imply the whole content of the tradition by itself, and it may well even contradict parts of it, or at least be harmonized only with strained interpretations. (All this even if an opposite pretense is maintained.)

To evaluate the argument from the original article accurately, it is necessary to have a realistic picture of what the tradition in question exactly consists of. It is mistaken to assume that the answer to that question is simply the text of the Bible.