Maybe there's a Right, but I can't see how I'd find it or demonstrate it to everyone else. It'd be interesting if human brains were all such that there were a universal solvent, something which would convince humans, but how do we even know that's Right? And how would we convince the Pebblesorters when they pass through our solar system and want to convert Earth into a heap of pebbles (this isn't quite the point of the Pebblesorters, which is to illustrate Yudkowsky's belief that morality is a big computation we don't understand but implement anyway, but they're a multi-purpose metaphor).
We might hope that God will tell us what's Right, but he's not so talkative these days. If he's there at all, he doesn't look like any of the major theistic religions envisage. In particular, he's not that bothered about telling us about Right, and he's not that bothered about enforcing Right either, which is another problem with the idea: we might manage to be Right, but that won't stop us being turned into pebbles.
So, I'm not convinced that Right is an interesting thing. Morality will ultimately come down to what you can convince people of. As someone else has pointed out, that doesn't mean it necessarily comes from the barrel of a gun (though it might, if we ever face the Pebblesorters), it means winning the argument. Because of stuff humans share (whether by genes or culture), it seems there are arguments and meta-arguments which a lot of people will respond to (you've mentioned some). If you think you know what's right, you'd better be convincing. That's what I think morality is about, although I acknowledge a debt to people like Yudkowsky and Ken Macleod (it's not clear Macleod agrees with his own "True Knowledge", of course: maybe he intended the whole thing as a parody). You are, in fact, in a universe where you might lose to people you regard as evil. That's a scary thing, but it's better to know it, I think.
I'm not sure why an ethical society is crying out for religion. Sufficiently enlightened self-interest might do the trick instead. It's tempting to push a religion as a handy shortcut for convincing the people who aren't sufficiently enlightened, I suppose (see Plato, as told by Russell), but I'm (morally) against telling people stuff that isn't true to make them behave better. Something like Buddhism might be OK, I suppose, but I'm not sure how effective it'd be: it seems the more you want to influence people, the bigger the lies you have to tell (looking at which religions are growing, it's not the nice liberal ones).
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We might hope that God will tell us what's Right, but he's not so talkative these days. If he's there at all, he doesn't look like any of the major theistic religions envisage. In particular, he's not that bothered about telling us about Right, and he's not that bothered about enforcing Right either, which is another problem with the idea: we might manage to be Right, but that won't stop us being turned into pebbles.
So, I'm not convinced that Right is an interesting thing. Morality will ultimately come down to what you can convince people of. As someone else has pointed out, that doesn't mean it necessarily comes from the barrel of a gun (though it might, if we ever face the Pebblesorters), it means winning the argument. Because of stuff humans share (whether by genes or culture), it seems there are arguments and meta-arguments which a lot of people will respond to (you've mentioned some). If you think you know what's right, you'd better be convincing. That's what I think morality is about, although I acknowledge a debt to people like Yudkowsky and Ken Macleod (it's not clear Macleod agrees with his own "True Knowledge", of course: maybe he intended the whole thing as a parody). You are, in fact, in a universe where you might lose to people you regard as evil. That's a scary thing, but it's better to know it, I think.
I'm not sure why an ethical society is crying out for religion. Sufficiently enlightened self-interest might do the trick instead. It's tempting to push a religion as a handy shortcut for convincing the people who aren't sufficiently enlightened, I suppose (see Plato, as told by Russell), but I'm (morally) against telling people stuff that isn't true to make them behave better. Something like Buddhism might be OK, I suppose, but I'm not sure how effective it'd be: it seems the more you want to influence people, the bigger the lies you have to tell (looking at which religions are growing, it's not the nice liberal ones).