> Is it not possible to conceive that a moral principle can
> exist apart from a church? And, if it can, is it not possible
> that we might want to think about how we want to organize our
> lives around such a principle?
>
-- snip
> But people don't act morally because they follow laws.
> Most people have no clue what the law allows them or forbids
> them to do.
> People act the way they act largely due to the culture in which they
> have been raised
> and because of the way in which they have been raised.
> They also act morally because of the extent to which they are
> capable of
> love.
I think your second passage answers your first one, and the answer is negative because morality is based on particular informal experience. How then could we decide whose morality is to guide the law?
The law is a codified system that defines the standards of conduct and sets penalties for transgressions. It is not a moral compass, it does not tell you what is right and what is wrong - but a conventionally accepted set of rules telling people what they cannot do and what will happen if they do it. The only requirement is that it is sanctioned by a legitimate authority and that the rules it sets are enforceable. The legitimating authority maybe elected - which is dear to our hearts and minds - but it does not have to - it could be a hereditary monarchy or a theocracy. All that matters is that it is genuinely legitimate in a given society.
It is easy to imagine that in any heterogeneous society, especially the US, it is not humanly possible to have a conventionally accepted set of rules based on the morality of a particular group. Aside the fact that such morality would most likely be xtian in this country - what would be accomplished by grounding law in morality? Would it increase legitimacy or enforceability? Certainly not! Au contraire, it would increase partisan bickering and bring enforcement to a standstill. Not to mention the fact that it would almost certainly create more inequality by giving a privileged position to those whose morality happen to "sanction" the law. That would certainly make the current system much worse off.
A conventionally accepted legal system, while certainly imperfect, is the closest thing to universal norms that can be humanly achieved - albeit it does not mean that all legal system achieve that universality to the same degree. Why jettisoning it for something with the known track record of producing partisan bickering and discord?
> How can that possibly be the only thing that matters?
> And why do you insist that only a church or a theocracy could
> articulate
> moral law?
There is no such a thing as "moral law" - it is like guinea pig - neither from Guinea nor a pig. We can only have moral norms OR laws - they may but do not have to overlap, but they are grounded in two very different principles - voluntary adherence to a norm (either shared with the community or not) vs. the enforceable obligation to follow a rule established by a legitimate authority.
I can understand that an attempt to create the hybrid "moral law" is tantalizing for those who would want to replace external authority with voluntary adherence - such "moral law" would be the mechanism ascertaining orderly resolution of inevitable conflicts. I am afraid, however, that this is not possible for number of reasons - chief of them described in situationist conceptions of social relations - and we are stuck with external authority and its laws, whereas moral norms are limited to our private choices. In fact, I am not aware of any human society or even a complex group organized totally on the principle of voluntary adherence to shared norms that survived more than one generation of the original founders.
Wojtek _______________________ DISCLAIMER: Opinions posted by this writer to this forum are solely forms of literary criticism exercised as the First Amendment right, and do not necessarily reflect the author's views or attitudes toward real-life people, including other writers posting to this forum, groups of people, institutions, or events to which the critiqued texts may refer, either explicitly or implicitly. Any statement asserting or implying such views or attitudes on the basis of this writer's opinions posted to this forum is thus unfounded, and may be libelous. ________________________