Monthly Archives: March 2020

Religious Dimension of COVID-19 War

Religious morality

This post presents a suggestion for forming hypotheses about human religiosity as a significant causal factor in the social phenomena of the Spring 2020 global war on the COVID-19 virus. There is no suggestion that the global response is primarily religious. Primary causes are to be sought in fear of sickness and death coupled with past experience of infectious disease.

I wish insightful students of religiosity such as Emil Durkheim,( The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, 1912, William James(The Varieties of Religious Experience 1902) or Mary Douglas (Purity and Danger, 1966 were alive to formulate such hypotheses.

Of course, there is a null hypothesis that religiosity is an insignificant factor. But there is no need to make suggestions for formulating a null hypothesis.

My suggestion is based on the fact that similar measures are being taken by provincial and municipal officials throughout the entire world. The uniformity and haste is surprising. Usually when international experts gather in forums to discuss global problems nothing happens quickly.

Globalization and the internet forced on us a sense of being a single community although a dysfunctional community. A community forms a Durkheimian religion by representing itself as some object or situation. That object or situation becomes its totem. The totem is sacred or holy. Various rituals developed to protect or honor its totem provide a sense of protecting or honoring the community. That which damages or threatens the totem is taboo, unclean and unholy. Threats to the totem provide an opportunity for its community to feel strength and solidarity by protecting its totem.

The COVID-19 pandemic provides an opportunity for the new global community to express itself and feel solidarity. My suggestion is that human religiosity uses the pandemic as an occasion for expressing itself. Religiosity does not create the pandemic. It transforms health into a totem.

Perhaps in the convoluted ways of religious representation health may be represented by the face mask and, then, the face mask becomes the totem.

The threat is COVID-19. COVID-19 is unholy -the taboo. The taboo is everywhere. It may be on anyone of us without our knowing about it. Heavy economic sacrifices and ritual behavior such as social distancing can be taken as ways of protecting the totem by purifying us from the taboo.

I stop now commenting on the COVID-19 crisis because I am not a sociologist. But if anyone ever reads my blog posts, this suggestion might be worth considering.

Our Global War Against Coronavirus Pandemic Is Sacrificial Worship to An Idol

On the Nature of Satan, Philosophical Theology

We commit idolatry when we take a finite thing as a supreme being. In the global war against the covid-19 virus we have taken health as the supreme being. Health is our idol. Suppression of liberties, creation of poverty, destruction of civil society and locking places of worship are all supposedly justified by simply saying “this is to protect health.” Leaders all over the globe believe health is requiring them to require uncalculated great sacrifices, especially from the less fortunate, for an indefinite time.

Health offers us nothing of lasting value. With death we all lose health. With health as god, there is nothing after death. That is nihilism.

The global war against the coronavirus pandemic is a battle to make nihilism the religion of the world. Who, or what, is leading the forces in this battle? It is world-wide. We cannot specify any person, agency or government. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that something which wills the destruction of all that is good, which is to will there be nothing at all, is deceiving the hearts and minds of leaders, by means of apparently good intentions, to mislead everyone to worship it. Satan is that which wills there be nothing at all – total death.

More than fearing the flu, we should be living with fear and trembling that Satan will win by establishing nihilism as the dominant world religion with health as its idol through whom we worship him.

Why the Modest Goal of Moral Apologetics?

Against moral neutrality of sexuality, Book promotion, Moral philosophy

In my previous post I wrote the following about the purpose of making a case making a case for a moral principle commanding what could accurately be labeled “Traditional Catholic Sexual Morality.

“We seek assent, even if grudgingly granted to our rationality and decency along with assenting to the claim that the principle we are defending is not irrational. Seeking that type of assent for a moral principle can properly be called moral apologetics.”

Why do I take such a humble stance? I satisfy myself with moral apologetics because of the community I hope to reach. I a addressing the secular, or de facto secular, community of progressive and dominant opinion on sexual morality in the early twenty first century.

This dominant opinion forming community accepts, explicitly or implicitly, the moral neutrality of sexuality. Those who hold this view hold that in principle no sexual act is morally wrong. Immoral sexual acts, if any, are determined by the circumstances in which the act is performed, the intentions of the actors and the consequences of the act.

Amongst progressives the moral neutrality of sexuality is regarded as almost self-evident. I have set myself the task of confronting the dominant view on sexual morality with arguments to dislodge any assumption of self evidence and prerogative of moral decency for the moral neutrality of sexuality.

In my book I made clear that my goal was moral apologetics to contemporary secular society. Unfortunately, my book has probably never been read; let alone reviewed.

My book Confronting Sexual Nihilism: Traditional Sexual Morality as an Antidote to Nihilism was released by Tate Publishing on March 11, 2014. See Book Web Page for information about the book. See Ch. I in which I explicitly acknowledge that my goal is moral apologetics. Free copies can be obtained here by credit card by paying $3.75 for shipping and handling.





To receive a free book, send check of $3.75 for shipping and handling per copy. Send to:
Charles F. Kielkopf
45 W. Kenworth Rd.

Moral Apologetics

Book promotion, Moral philosophy

I have browsed in a little bit of John Henry Newman’s reflections on proving principles. Back in January in Why Justify a Moral Principle I noted that I needed to look at some of what Newman wrote about giving arguments for principles. He puts well what I think about the effectiveness of arguments for principles as a way of getting people to assent to the principle. I agree that arguments are not the way to get the assent of most, if any body’s. Probably the more rigorous the argument, the less effective it is for obtaining assent at the time of presentation.

However, I should have realized from logical considerations alone that even the best argument for a moral principle- a proof- cannot establish a moral principle as a command a person internalizes as an obligation. A proof of a moral principle establishes a fact about the moral principle! A proof establishes at best: It IS the case that one OUGHT to X. From what IS the case there is a logical gap between “This IS an obligation” and “I OUGHT to obey.”

But deeper than the logical gap is the psychological gap reflected linguistically by a linguistic mood change from indicative mood to imperative mood. A proof allows one to say in the indicative mood “You ought to do X.” is proved. An additional thought and sentiment is required to accept an obligation to do X by dropping “is proved” and accepting the imperative to me “You ought to do X!

This subtle point can be made in another way by distinguishing the assent to a principle as true and assenting to an imperative as coming from a valid authority. Assent to the command of an authority is not obtained by any proof that the authority gave the command but by receiving the command from the authority.

Nonetheless proving, or making a good case, that a command comes from the moral authority – or whatever the source of morality may be is important for clear thinking about morality.

So the purpose of developing an argument for a moral principle is to place in public reasoning, viz., somehow publish, defenses against claims that assent to the principle is irrational. In making a case for traditional sexual morality, the assent we seek is assent that our arguments are logically correct i.e. free from formal and informal fallacies and based on plausible assumptions. We seek assent, even if grudgingly granted to our rationality and decency along with assenting to the claim that the principle we are defending is not irrational. Seeking that type of assent for a moral principle can properly be called moral apologetics.

So, at the risk of seeming conceited, I can write that the approach in my book to defend a fundamental principle for male sexuality was correct. Chapter IV focused on an argument for the principle whose gist I will state one more time.

A man may intentionally seek an orgasm only in coitus open to conception with a woman to whom he has a lifelong commitment to care for her and any children resulting from their intercourse.

I imagined an academic setting – a philosophy seminar- as the context in which the argument is given. Assuming an academic context made clear that there was no intention of getting popular assent. I intended only moral apologetics.

To avoid the criticisms placed against stereotypic natural law arguments, I made an empirical case for selecting our reproductive systems as needing moral control. Sexuality, as opposed to other systems, can be perverted. Then I, more or less, used traditional “perverted faculty” considerations.

I should have used considerations from “New Natural Law” theory to point out the basic human good protected by obedience to the principle. And I probably should not have introduced my idiosyncratic interpretation of Kant to provide a Kantian justification.

My book Confronting Sexual Nihilism: Traditional Sexual Morality as an Antidote to Nihilism was released by Tate Publishing on March 11, 2014. See Book Web Page for information about the book. See Ch. IV for my justification. Free copies can be obtained here by credit card by paying $3.75 for shipping and handling.





To receive a free book, send check of $3.75 for shipping and handling per copy. Send to:
Charles F. Kielkopf
45 W. Kenworth Rd.