Grayling and the new humanist capitalist priesthood.

Grayling, claims moral superiority
That people who use scientific rational thought thought to inform the choices they make are morally superior to those people who do not. They are morally superior to people who are merely guided by their conscience or by shared cultural values, religion and other "unsupported" belief systems. In other words that Grayling himself is, personally, morally superior to religious people.
When I challenged Grayling on his personal morality his response was was very interesting. He produced a long litany of his "good deeds". Now what this tells me is that he, and Dawkins and others like them, are, in reality, aspiring to be the new priesthood.
Increasingly they are linking scientific thought and rationalism with morality. They offer themselves as our guides. Isn't this the story of all priesthoods since time began. More and more the humanists - atheists have the support of the capitalist establishment, increasingly irritated with religious minded people as they "irrationally and scientifically" get in the way of turning humans into completely exploitable commodities.

The implications of Grayling's position are reprehensible and disturbing.
1) Only experts should be allowed to decide what is right and wrong.
This idea is profoundly elitist and undemocratic and in direct contradiction to the values of the enlightenment of "Liberte, egalite verite" that people like Grayling purport to espouse. But, of course, Grayling's ideas are representative of the way Britain has been run for the last 110 years since the French revolution - Britain has been run by "an enlightened" elite desperate to keep one step ahead of the the British people.
2) Morality is the subject matter, the poor little squeaking Guinea pig, of scientific method.
The premature ejaculations in scientific journals by neurologists and evolutionary biologists, with their highly speculative accounts of human behaviour are presented as explanations of human morality. At first tentatively and now increasingly stridently. We don't have the scientific Madison Grant, but we have his heirs.
From brain scans and analogies drawn from biology pseudo-scientists explain that there is no such thing as "morality" Instead what there is is selfishness and self interest disguised as morality. What you think is moral is not, so let us tell you what is really moral.
3) Morality can be deconstructed into moral "atoms." In other words social and religious morality doesn't actually determine what is really moral. It shouldn't have a say in what should or shouldn't happen, it is only a cultural skein that can be unwoven by a bit of science.
So ones moral rejection, for example, of experiments on embryos or embryo screening, to late abortions or euthanasia, can't really be taken seriously and at face value. It is not moral or rational at all, according to Greyling, Dawkins and their scientific - philosophical acolytes.
According to Grayling and the humanist priesthood, these visceral rejections at what seem to be morally reprehensible acts are completely deluded.
Because to them, these are not moral issues at all. They can be deconstructed into their constituent parts by experts and then played with by rational utilitarians to produce optimum moral outcomes.
New utilitarian ideologies of control arise, new ideologies for technocratic elites to browbeat the foolish people into accepting GM crops for example.
To parody Baroness Warnock:

"There is nothing wrong with people being convinced or convincing themselves to die, if there is a rational utility to it."

In opposing euthanasia the church is being anti-utilitarian and irrational, according to the new technocratic priesthood. Ultimately, the implication is that all life is commodity. Any moral reaction you may have must first be mediated by an expert priest of scientism like Grayling, and calculated before it can really be "moral". This crowd want to mediate our morality, just as all priesthoods have since time began, in the interests of the elite.
Grayling's sermons are insidious. They are part of a new ideology, an ideology with the aim of concentrating moral power in the hands of technocratic elites and and with the purpose of allowing the establishment to do whatever it wants in the pursuit of profit so long as - in the long run, the establishment can give a convincing utilitarian account of its manipulations.
The priesthood is dead, long live the new priesthood.

3p4 said...

if ever there are castles made of sand then surely one of them is called respect,,its easily washed away by invective and hyperbole
by rancour and insult,,

your posts to Mr A.C.Grayling with an "a"are a tidal rip.
you sound drunk.arrogant,,and violent..i have no respect after reading them

and i am pleased to be the uneducated peasant if formal education and a lifetime of erudition result in the kind of tone that you project at ACG,,thread after thread,,

Phil Hall said...

Really 3potato4? Am I reallyguilty of post-modern blasphemy? Heaven forfend.