Blogging’s great, bar bullshit.
Tonight Deaglán de Bréadún posted the following to the Irish Times politics blog:
Looking at the boyish face of that noble young Garda killed in Co Donegal brings home how far into the abyss this country has gone. It also reinforces my point about the decline and semi-disgrace of the Church not being good news as it leaves this society without a moral compass. I am not a religious person but I recognise the value of people whose role is to set out standards of behaviour. Unfortunately, with regard to the child abuse scandal, those standards were flouted by some of the standard-bearers themselves. Resign the lot of you and let us start again like the Twelve Apostles did way back when.
I left the following comment. It may not get published.
This is singularly the worst piece of writing I have ever seen from the Irish Times. You might as well invoke the Seven Dwarfs.
You’re not a religious person Deaglán. Well then perhaps you should stop looking to a church for a societal moral compass. The greatest lie we were ever told was that a self-appointed cabal has the right to shape an irrelevant morality in Ireland.
Stop idealising figureheads. There is no connection between the death of a young Guard and the decline of Irish civilisation. That is wishful thinking. It conveniently avoids the notion that the Republic of Ireland is corrupt from the bottom up and we’re merely experiencing the result of that corruption. A healthy democracy adheres to the tenets it was constructed on and punishes transgressions against its sovereign people. In Ireland the sovereign people reward corruption in the ballot box and collection basket and where that corruption exists in the civil service merely shrugs its shoulders; ach, it’s the way things are.
Ireland still isn’t a republic. It simply services the oligarchies of its political parties, and the dog-collared infections of an obviously decadent church.A good poultice Deaglán, for a start, would be honesty.
Very good. Am going to invoke the seven dwarves from now on. Things can only get better.
His original post did jar with me as well but simply because he made the leap from the death of a Garda to the collapse of civilisation itself. I think Deaglan’s been at the office party and decided to put the world to rights before retiring to bed.
His response to you though is apt: morality comes from somewhere and when that gets institutionalised, it can lead to a calcification and corruption of the original intent. I’m sure Deaglan looks to himself first for his own sense of what is right and wrong and then from elsewhere. Belief in a god is not the same as belief in the Seven Dwarves; to argue on the basis of such a category error is fast becoming a new Godwin’s Law, an association fallacy.
This ‘republic’ is made up of people. Flawed, emotionally scarred, messed up, arrogant, self-serving, joyfully engaged people like you and me. Technocracy, predictability, control are all ‘things’ that are outside of human experience. Any conception of a what this ‘republic’ might be in a putative golden age ‘free of the control of the Catholic Church’ must take all of this and so much more into account.
By Grumpy, Sleepy and Dozy above in Disney, that morality ‘comes from somewhere’ is really no cause to lament the decline of the Catholic church. What have the religious origins of some of our shared moral beliefs got to do with the murder of a Garda in Donegal being, at best, linked with and, at worst, attributed to the decline of the Catholic church? Nothing, that’s what.
Dealgán, in his second reply to Allan, says:
‘Mabye it’s intellectual vanity, but I like to think I don’t need the Church to tell me what’s right and wrong. However, judging from the state of our country there are still a lot of people out there who do.’
The intellectual vanity bit made me giggle a bit, but that aside, let’s break down the logic of the above statement:
1) Dealgán knows right from wrong. He does not need the Church to tell him what to do.
2) Lots of people do not know right from wrong. They need the church to tell them what to do.
What’s wrong with this argument? The supposition that a religious institution is needed to tell people the difference between right and wrong.
This supposition leads Dealgán to make a link between the death of a young garda and the decline of the Catholic church, where in actuality there is no link. Correlation does not imply causation. You might as well infer that every murder that happened when the church was powerful was linked to the predominance of the Catholic church. Silliness.
“I think Deaglan’s been at the office party and decided to put the world to rights before retiring to bed. ”
Heh.
As for the category error, all eight of them come from Imaginationland, and have equal influence on how humans conduct themselves: none. And invoking Godwin’s Law to describe things other than the chances of Nazis being mentioned in extended online discussions approaching 1 is fast becoming a new Godwin’s Law.
I’m not suggesting that the eradication of Catholic influence in this State would usher in some secular golden age. I would argue that a moral/legislative framework of a republic needs to be measured on a human scale, and not on a gauge of toothfairies on the heads of pins.
Allan: on the use of Godwin’s Law – that’s a fair call. Perhaps leaving it at just a category error would have sufficed.
As for tooth fairies, again with the category error!? A moral framework for a republic depends on irrational, over-reaching and flawed human action. That’s a long way before we get to even the boundaries of a discussion about the non/existence of a God.
The Catholic Church is in deep trouble and unless the Pope makes some drastic decisions regarding bishops and female priests, the church is going into deeper trouble.