{"id":3472,"date":"2017-11-06T14:47:54","date_gmt":"2017-11-06T11:47:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/?p=3472"},"modified":"2017-11-06T14:47:54","modified_gmt":"2017-11-06T11:47:54","slug":"natural-law-and-divine-law-the-objective-foundations-of-morality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/3472\/natural-law-and-divine-law-the-objective-foundations-of-morality\/","title":{"rendered":"Natural Law And Divine Law: The Objective Foundations Of Morality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dinesh D Souza, The Greatness of Christianity: Table of Contents<\/a><\/p>\n

Cf. Dinesh D’souza, What’s So Great About Christianity<\/a>, at Amazon<\/p>\n

“When Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts.” <\/em>\u2014St. Paul, Letter to the Romans, 2:14<\/p>\n

R<\/strong>ELIGION AND MORALITY SEEM TO BE TWO SEPARATE THINGS, <\/strong>and yet many people’s objections to Christianity seem to derive mainly from their resistance to Christian morality. To many, this morality seems arbitrary, authoritarian, and even cruel. Richard Dawkins puts it this way: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it, a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” Gone is the measured scientific tone, and Dawkins shows that he doesn’t just disbelieve in the Christian God, he detests Him. Is morality, then, the universal set of rules issued by a divine scarecrow with a long beard and a wagging finger? Or is morality better understood in natural and secular terms, as adaptable rules that we make up as we go along in order to serve human objectives like peace and coexistence?<\/p>\n

In this chapter I will show that this is a false choice. Morality is both natural and universal. It is discoverable without religion, yet its source is ultimately divine. Darwinist attempts to give a purely secular explanation of morality are a failure, and each of us knows\u2014however disingenuously we deny it\u2014that there are absolute standards of right and wrong, and these are precisely the standards we use to judge how other people treat us. It is not Christian morality that is the obstacle to our moral freedom; it is conscience itself, the judge within.<\/p>\n

Leading atheists fault religion\u2014and specifically Christianity\u2014for imposing stern morality on people and thus constraining their freedom. Typical is Christopher Hitchens, whocondemns Christianity as a “creepy movement to impose orthodoxy on a free and pluralist and secular republic.” At the same time Hitchens and other atheists insist they are not against morality. They assure us that they are as moral, if not more so, than religious people, and that morality is quite possible without the presumption of God or religion. Daniel Dennett observes that “there are many wise, engaged, morally committed atheists and agnostics” and that unbelievers don’t seem to act any better or worse than Christians. Richard Dawkins writes that it “requires quite a low self-regard to think that, should belief in God suddenly vanish from the world, we would all become callous and selfish hedonists, with no kindness, no charity, no generosity, nothing that would deserve the name of goodness.” The atheist objection is not to morality but to absolute morality. Rather than deriving morality from an external code of divine commandments, atheists think of morality as manmade, something forged through individual and group experience.
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\nI think there is a lot to what the atheists are saying here, but in the end I’m afraid they miss the point. For starters, I am not sure how to assess Dawkins’s argument for the morality of atheism, because a religious society suddenly deprived of God would presumably still retain many Christian ways of thinking and acting. Even so, I have known quite a few atheists, and I am happy to testify that they can be good and admirable people. Both Hume and Darwin were famous for their decency and moral rectitude, and I believe E. 0. Wilson when he writes that although he is not a Christian, he shares most of the Christian virtues. I have also known a few religious believers who could match any atheist in breaking the commandments. Novelist Evelyn Waugh once responded to the question, “How can a Catholic like you be so debauched and spiteful?” with the classic rejoinder, “Think how much worse I would be if I were not a Catholic!”<\/p>\n

There are three central issues here: Is there a universal or objective morality? Does it have a religious foundation? How can it be known? We are accustomed to speaking of the scientific laws of nature. It’s worth asking if there are moral laws of human nature. Many of us are the unwitting heirs to a philosophy that denies objective morality. We hold that science is objective, but values are subjective. We believe we can know scientific things but morality is a matter of mere opinion. On this basis we say things like “don’t impose your beliefs on me” while it would never occur to us to say “don’t impose your algebra on me.” Yet have we considered the possibility that there are moral laws in nature that are no less reliable and comprehensible than scientific laws?<\/p>\n

Humans are unique in many ways, but mostly in the fact that we are moral beings. More than language, more than rationality, it is our moral nature that distinguishes humanity from even our closest animal relatives. Primatologist Frans de Waal, who studies chimpanzees and has done much to emphasize their close kinship with humans, admits that morality is something chimps don’t have. “It is hard to believe that animals weigh their own interests against the rights of others, that they develop a vision of the greater good of society, or that they feel lifelong guilt about something that they should not have done.” We can say to Bonzo, “You shouldn’t have done that” and “Bad chimpanzee!” but those are our own ways of speaking. We have no grounds to believe that chimps feel that way.<\/p>\n

This distinction between chimps and humans points to a deeper chasm that separates human beings from the rest of the universe. All other objects, living and nonliving, function according to physical or scientific laws. Dangle a meaty bone in front of a dog and, no matter how much it has just eaten, it goes for the bone. Its response is a product ofseemingly uncontrollable instinct. Place a large stone on a slanted hillside, and it will automatically roll down. It has no choice in the matter. It is simply obeying physical laws.<\/p>\n

But human beings are not like this. Human beings live in two worlds, the physical domain and the moral domain. If a person insults your mother, you respond, “You shouldn’t have done that.” When a friend tells you he deceived his business partners or family, you tell him he shouldn’t have lied. These normative statements are fundamentally different from physical laws. It makes no sense to say that the earth ought to revolve around the sun or that it would be unfair if it didn’t. A law of nature may be true or false, but it cannot be broken. As Carl Sagan puts it, “Nature … arranges things so that its prohibitions are impossible to transgress.”
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\nThere are parts of our human nature that operate according to these descriptive natural laws. If you tickle me, I will laugh. If either of us eats contaminated food, it will upset our stomachs. If we are dropped from a tall tower, we will plummet to the ground. These are the laws of physics and chemistry working on us, and we have no choice in the matter. On the other hand, there is a part of our human nature that is not descriptive but prescriptive. The simple proof of this is that moral norms and precepts, unlike natural laws, can be violated.<\/p>\n

Honor thy father and mother. Thou shalt not murder. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods. <\/em>None of these commandments would make any sense if we had no option. But there is more. When we humans invoke the language of morals\u2014praising and blaming, approving and disapproving, applauding and scorning\u2014we appeal to a shared standard of judgment external to ourselves. Let us call this standard the natural law or the moral law. It differs from the scientific laws of nature in that it tells us not what we do but what we ought to do. Consequently we are free to break these laws in a way that we are not free to violate the laws of gravity.<\/p>\n

By their very nature, moral laws are both universal and objective. This may not seem obvious upon first consideration. Don’t the moral practices of the different cultures of the world vary widely? Isn’t there moral diversity within our own society? It seems there is no universal, objective morality. Such a conclusion, however, arises from an error of fact and an error of logic. It is certainly true that the moral behavior of the world’s cultures shows enormous variation. Carl Sagan writes that there are cultures like the Ik of Uganda, “where all the Ten Commandments seem to be systematically, institutionally ignored.” My own anthropological work on the Ik is incomplete, so I cannot say whether he is right. But let’s assume that he is. What does this show? That the Ik are radically different from us? But we too live in a culture where the Ten Commandments are systematically and institutionally ignored. Sagan’s example seems to establish not diversity but unity of practice.<\/p>\n

But even better examples fail to establish Sagan’s point. Let’s say that anthropological investigation reveals that the Ik routinely beat their wives. Would this prove that beating your wife is the right thing to do? Of course not. The presence of moral disagreement does not indicate the absence of universal morality. How can the fact of behavior, however eccentric and diverse, invalidate the norm of what is right?<\/p>\n

It would be interesting to conduct a global survey to see if all the cultures of the world accept the heliocentric theory. Let’s say that such a study shows there are people in South America and Southeast Asia who, even when shown the reasoning of Copernicus, supplemented by photographs taken by modern spacecraft, emphatically reject the idea thatthe earth goes around the sun. These people are delighted to discover that a fellow named Ptolemy held a rival view, and they decide to go with Ptolemy. Would anyone conclude from this that the heliocentric theory had been refuted? The suggestion is absurd. I am highly confident that there are many cultures in the world, even today, that would emphatically reject Darwin’s theory of evolution and Einstein’s theory of relativity. None of this would show that scientific laws are relative, only that the people who reject them happen to be wrong. Thus the testimony of a hundred quarreling tribes and widespread differences of opinion about morality do nothing to undermine the notion of universal morality.
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\nOver the last several decades, anthropologists have been comparing the norms and practices of the various cultures of the world. Two of their findings are relevant for our purpose. First, morality is universal.<\/p>\n

Scholars know of no culture, past or present, that does not have a system of morality. Even though moral standards may vary from one culture to another, or even within a particular culture, every culture distinguishes “what is” from “what ought to be.” It is impossible for a culture either to rise above morality or to get out from under it.<\/p>\n

Second, the moral diversity we have all heard so much about is in fact vastly exaggerated. In particular, the major religions of the world, which represent the vast majority of humans on the planet, disagree quite a bit about God but agree quite a bit about morality. All the major religions have some form of the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them to do unto you. In 1993 theologian Hans Ming assembled a “parliament” of leading representatives of the world’s religions, including Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. The group issued a declaration of common beliefs, including a wide range of moral values that are held across religious boundaries.<\/p>\n

This moral unanimity is not confined to monotheistic or even religious cultures. The Greeks and Romans shared many of the moral teachings of Judaism and Christianity, even though Athens and Rome were once polytheistic empires. Confucius in his Analects <\/em>articulates precepts of the same kind, even though his was a moral code devoid of any substantial theology. Anthropologists have discovered many of the same moral principles even among cultures that are animistic or have no formal religious beliefs at all. In the early twentieth century, scholars like Margaret Mead and others went to faraway places and breathlessly reported, “Gee, they don’t do things the same way over here.” But this scholarship has been substantially revised in the light of later, more careful studies.<\/p>\n

Yes, there is diversity of moral practice, but there is much less diversity of moral standards. One group may permit one wife and another group four or more wives, but all groups agree on the indispensability of the family and its moral obligation to provide for the young. James Q. Wilson’s book The Moral Sense <\/em>makes the case for a universal grammar of morality rooted in our human instincts. Donald Brown’s study Human Universals <\/em>reveals more than three hundred unvarying patterns of behavior, including a host of moral beliefs that are shared by all known cultures.” To take two of his examples, various cultures may specify situations in which it is morally permissible to lie or act in a cowardly manner, but in no culture are dishonesty and cowardice upheld as virtues.<\/p>\n

What, then, are we to make of relativism\u2014the influential doctrine that says that morality is relative? I agree that relativism has something going for it, in that people even within our own society disagree about the content of morality. There are also debates about the priority of one moral principle over another. Different individuals and even societies disagree over how a moral principle should be applied in a given situation. But on the existence of moralstandards there is no disagreement. Consequently relativism of moral belief and practice in no way invalidates the claim that morality is absolute. Indeed I submit that not only is morality absolute, but everyone, including self-proclaimed relativists, knows that it is absolute. Relativism in its pure sense simply does not exist.
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\nIf you are confronted by a relativist who insists that all morality is relative, go ahead and punch him in the face. If he does not respond, punch him again. At some point he will protest, “That’s not right. You shouldn’t have done that.” Then you can explain to him that your actions were purely educational. You were simply demonstrating to him that even he does not believe his relativist doctrine. His objection was not “I don’t like being punched” but rather “you should not have done it.” He was appealing to an unwavering standard, which he expected you to share, that what you did was wrong.<\/p>\n

Another way to make the point, when you hear people solemnize about the relativism of values, is to find a value they cherish and excoriate it. This is a useful approach because most of the time, when people deny absolute morality, they are engaging in a rhetorical strategy in order to undermine some particular moral belief you hold and they don’t. Social liberals, for example, often discuss topics like drugs, pornography, and prostitution by saying, “How can you impose your beliefs on me? Who is to say what’s right?” They seem to be denying absolute morality. If they are not self-aware, they might even believe this.<\/p>\n

So the way to call their bluff and expose their relativism as purely tactical is to insult the moral values they cherish. For example, you could say, “I don’t know why we have laws outlawing racial discrimination and gay-bashing. How can people presume to legislate morality?” Or “I am surprised people object so strongly to the Confederate flag. I don’t have a strong view one way or the other, but since morality is relative, can anyone really say that the South’s cause was wrong?” Or how about “What’s the big deal about the environment? Why should I preserve the planet for the sake of future generations? What have future generations ever done for me?” Say these things as if you believe them, even if you don’t.<\/p>\n

Before you are finished, I think you will find your relativist up in arms, insisting that prejudice and racism are immoral and unjust, and that we ought to have laws restricting them and protecting the environment. The person who affirms these doctrines is not saying that his views on bigotry and environmentalism are simply a matter of personal preference. He is implying that everyone should feel this way, and no decent person should behave in a manner contrary to his principles. He may ignore the moral law in the way he acts toward you, but he is quick to invoke it as a standard for how he expects you to act toward him. In short, his actions confess that despite his loud denials, he too espouses morality as an absolute.<\/p>\n

The concept of absolute morality fits very well with religion because the afterlife becomes the venue in which rewards and punishments are finally handed out. Without heaven and hell, life on earth becomes very unjust. Many people violate the moral law and prosper, and many who abide by the moral law come to grief. Is this really the end of the story? In Hinduism you get your comeuppance through reincarnation. If you act badly in this life, you may be a cockroach in the next one. In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam there is no reincarnation but there is a Last Judgment in which all earthly accounts are settled and cosmic justice is achieved. Within the religious framework, violations of the universal moral law are also held to be violations of God’s law, and they are given a new name: sin.Not only are moral laws easily integrated into a religious scheme, but the existence of a universal, absolute morality is also a powerful argument for the existence of God. If there are moral laws that operate beyond the realm of natural laws, where do these laws come from? Moral laws presume a moral lawgiver. In other words, God is the ultimate standard of good. He is responsible for the distinction between good and evil that we universally- perceive as binding on human action. The fact that these standards are distinctive to human beings implies that there is something special about us, and that God has a special interest in how we live.
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\nSo the existence of absolute morality poses a supreme challenge for atheism. Leading Darwinians like Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, and Richard Dawkins have sought to meet this challenge. They do so by attempting to explain morality as a product of evolution and natural selection. Human beings do good and act altruistically, and on the face of it, this altruism seems counter to the evolutionary principle that creatures act self- interestedly to survive and reproduce. Dennett and Dawkins draw on the work of evolutionary pioneers like R. A. Fisher, W. D. Hamilton, and Robert Trivers to show that what appears to be altruism is actually a long-term strategy of survival and reproduction that has been programmed into our genes.<\/p>\n

Two terms are critical here: “kin selection” and “reciprocal altruism:’ Kin selection means self-help by way of natural selection. But in this paradigm natural selection operates not at the level of individuals but at the level of genes. It is the genes that are programmed to perpetuate themselves, even if we\u2014their survival machines\u2014perish in the process. Richard Dawkins masterfully develops this argument in his book The Selfish Gene.<\/em><\/p>\n

By this logic, a mother who dives into a burning car to save her two children trapped inside is not acting out of pure altruism. Her children share her genes, and her actions are best explained as an effort to ensure that her genes make it into the next generation. Even if she dies, her genes live on through her children. The power of “kin selection” is that it helps to explain why we take big risks and make big sacrifices for our immediate family: they are genetically closest to us. We take smaller risks and make smaller sacrifices for cousins and other relatives: they too are genetically tied to us, but more distantly. Biologist J. B. S. Haldane once quipped that he would be willing to sacrifice his life for “two brothers or eight cousins.”<\/p>\n

What about strangers? Darwinian theory says we should be indifferent to them because they are genetically alien to us. Even so, we do trade with strangers and coexist with them and generally treat them decently and fairly. The Darwinians explain this as a consequence of “reciprocal altruism,” which is the moral equivalent of “I’ll be nice to you, so that you will be nice to me.” This strategy can take various forms\u2014”first be nice to me, and then I’ll be nice to you” or “I’ll continue to be nice to you as long as you are nice to me”\u2014but the general idea is that morality is a strategy we employ for our own long-term benefit. Darwinians go to elaborate lengths to establish these strategies, resorting to game theory and obscure analogies from the behavior of ants and vampire bats, but I don’t need to reproduce those arguments; the underlying logic is clear and persuasive enough.<\/p>\n

The problem is that this entire framework of Darwinian analysis does not even come close to explaining morality. It confines itself to explaining altruism, but it only succeeds in explaining what may be termed “low altruism.” But humans also engage in “highaltruism: which may be defined as behavior that confers no reciprocal or genetic advantage. A man stands up to give his seat on a bus to an old lady. She is nothing to him, and he is certainly not thinking that there may be a future occasion when she or someone else will give him a seat. He gives up his seat because he is a nice guy. There is no Darwinian rationale that can account for his behavior.
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\nRichard Dawkins concedes that the Darwinian thesis cannot explain why people give blood, a fact that he puts down to “pure disinterested altruism” that confers no benefit to the genes. Nor can the Darwinian model account for Christ’s maxim “love your enemies.” Or for Patrick Henry’s cri de coeur, <\/em>“Give me liberty or give me death!” Or for Mother Teresa’s lifelong dedication to the sick and dying on the streets of Calcutta. Or for the biblical story of the Good Samaritan who went out of his way to assist a stranger from a reviled community.<\/p>\n

Some time ago, I read the true account of a Catholic priest, Maximilian Kolbe, who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp for his anti-Nazi activities. Each day the Nazis would choose one person from the group for execution. One of the first persons they selected was a man who pleaded for his life, saying he had a wife and children who were dependent on him and he needed to live in order to look after them. Just as the Nazis were about to drag him from the room, the priest stood up and said, “Take me in his place.” The Nazis were uncomprehending and refused, but the priest insisted. The man was equally uncomprehending, so the priest told him, “I don’t have a family. I am old, and won’t be missed like you will.” The Nazis finally agreed, and the priest went to his death. The man whose place he took survived the war and returned to his family.<\/p>\n

Now where is the Darwinian explanation for Kolbe’s sacrifice? It does not exist. Ernst Mayr, a leading evolutionary biologist, admits that “altruism toward strangers is a behavior not supported by natural selection.” I have great respect for the work of Fisher, Trivers, and others in their field, and I do think that in time the evolutionists will produce more satisfactory accounts of human cultural and moral behavior. But I predict their project to comprehensively account for morality in Darwinian terms will fail. The Darwinian project is necessarily confined to the domain of self-interest, and it is the essence of morality to operate against self-interest. The whole point of morality is that you are doing what you ought to do, not what you are inclined to do or what is in your interest to do. Morality is described in the language of duty, and duty is something that we are obliged to do whether we want to or not, whether it benefits us or not.<\/p>\n

C. S. Lewis demonstrates this point with a beautiful example that I am modifying for my own purpose. You are walking on the river bank, and you hear the screams of someone who is drowning. You are a very poor swimmer and the fellow is nothing to you. If two of your brothers were drowning you might jump in, because each of them has half your genes. If a bunch of your relatives were in a boat that was sinking you might jump in, because this might be a reasonable strategy for your genes to live on through your aunts, uncles, and cousins. In this case, however, the drowning man is unrelated to you. Kin selec- tion is not involved, and neither is reciprocal altruism, as there is no reason to think that there will be an occasion when he will risk his life to save yours. And yet, Lewis points out, there is a little voice in your head that says you should jump into the water and try to save the man’s life. Darwinian thinkers like Dawkins realize that this cannot be explained as “acting for the good of society” because why should self-interested people care what’s good for society except when it benefits them? For you to worry about the good of society, youhave to be unselfish in the first place, and this is what we are trying to explain.
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\nA better answer is that human beings have a “herd instinct” or an instinctive natural sympathy for members of our own species, and perhaps this can account for rival inclinations: one saying “go ahead and help,” the other saying “leave and don’t help.” Lewis notes that even when there are competing inclinations like this, a third voice, distinct from the other two, enters the picture. This is the voice that says you ought to help. Speaking gently but with unmistakable firmness, the voice urges you to listen to the good inclination that says “help” and ignore the selfish inclination that says “don’t help.” That is the hidden call of conscience.<\/p>\n

Many people think of conscience as a mere feeling or inclination. But conscience is not itself an inclination but rather an arbiter of inclinations, what Adam Smith once called the “impartial spectator” that gives us our highest sense of ourselves. When there is a strong inclination like the instinct for survival and a weak inclination like the instinct to help a stranger, conscience typically intervenes on the side of the weaker instinct. Except in pathological people, its voice is clear and incontrovertible. It uses no compulsion in urging us to follow its edicts, yet it exercises both a critical and even a kind of judicial authority: you are obliged to do this, no matter how you feel about it.<\/p>\n

There is no other voice in our experience that speaks to us in this way. Conscience is our perennial guide and personal moral tutor. It seemingly requires nothing besides itself, and it provides individualized instruction tailored to each specific situation. Conscience is unconcerned with convenience or reputation, and it seems to operate most strongly when no one is looking. We can, of course, reject the appeal of conscience, but if we do, we cannot help but pass judgment on ourselves using the very criteria supplied by conscience. Conscience has the ability to impose self-reproach, remorse, and shame, and at the same time to make us feel that such consequences are deserved. It is truly one of the most mysterious and powerful aspects of our humanity.<\/p>\n

For Kant, conscience is a kind of noumenal voice that speaks to us directly from within ourselves, giving us a certainty that is unavailable to us from outer or phenomenal experience. This is a philosophical way to describe morality, but Lewis puts it more simply: conscience is nothing other than the voice of God within our souls. It is the bridge that links the creature to the creator. Even the atheist hears this internal clarion call because even the atheist has morality at the core of his being, and while the atheist may have rejected God, God has not rejected him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dinesh D Souza, The Greatness of Christianity: Table of Contents Cf. Dinesh D’souza, What’s So Great About Christianity, at Amazon “When Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts.” \u2014St. Paul, Letter to the Romans, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_disable_autopaging":false},"categories":[6702,6707],"tags":[1722,7470,7471,7472,7284,5720,7473,3134,7474,7475,7476,4902,7477],"class_list":["post-3472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thechrist","category-studies-thechristcontents","tag-atheists","tag-christian-god","tag-christian-morality","tag-coexistence","tag-dinesh-d-souza","tag-divine-law","tag-gentiles","tag-god-of-the-old-testament","tag-human-objectives","tag-misogynistic","tag-moral-freedom","tag-richard-dawkins","tag-secular-terms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}