Claiming Moral Authority

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
241

[quote]BrianHanson wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]BrianHanson wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]BrianHanson wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]pittbulll wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]pittbulll wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]pittbulll wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]pittbulll wrote:

[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:
^

Lol, if you’re anything like what you post, I don’t doubt it. I guess what I meant is that I don’t know where you think good and bad comes from and if you think there are some acts that are bad no matter who, what, or when. [/quote]

OK:) I do not think bad comes from any where . I think bad is the opposite of good :)[/quote]

And what’s “good?” What you say is good?[/quote]

the opposite of bad ?

[/quote]

And what’s “bad?” What you say is bad?[/quote]

IMO the definitions of good and bad are the largest two categories that encompass reality besides the grey areas :slight_smile:
[/quote]

And who defines the definitions of “good” and “bad?” You?[/quote]

No I let Satan , where the fuck you get these questions your 2 year old kid ?
[/quote]

The sure sign of a floundering argument without hope are comments like this. Pitt, you’ve painted yourself into a corner. No need to get all ugly about it. You’re the one who started with the ridiculous relative morality crap. You’re called and you have no answer, it’s that simple. Either that, or prove your claim.[/quote]

moral relativism is a tough argument to win or lose. 1500 years ago slavery and human sacrifice were the norm in the bulk of the world, 150 years ago our own super evolved nation had slavery. Right now in parts of the world “honor killings” are accepted and believed to be the will of god.

Morals are not constant, good and bad (or evil if you prefer) will be different 100 years from now, trying to develop a permanent moral code is a waste of time. We develop laws for safety (don’t steal, kill, assault, rape etc) but telling people what to feel or think is ridiculous. [/quote]

Not it’s not a tough argument to lose, it’s a losing argument. The point is as in your example, slavery and human sacrifice were still immoral even if accepted. Can you logically make an argument that these practices were morally good simply because they were accepted?

Moral relativism has been debunked for centuries. At least the last two. The act, being moral or immoral is NOT based on acceptance.

This is very amateurish reasoning. Well people did it, so it must have been good at the time? Really? Ask the slaves what they thought? The problem with relativism is it disregards the victim. The victim is irrelevant when the moral system is relative. so you technically have to make the case that some people’s personal values are more important than another’s. Good luck with that one, because in the end you’ff find yourself justify the most evil of actions.

The third Reich with the support of the German people thought it was a damn good idea to rid themselves of Jews, Gays, Catholic and various assortment of undesirables. In a morally reltive system, this is ok. It is morally just.

Let’s see you make that argument. Go on, this ought to be good.

For crying out loud I wish people would think sometimes.
The only impetus I can see for advocating a case for moral relativism is so that one can justify their own abominations. You don’t have to be a better person, you can just will your own evil to be right. Simple but wrong.[/quote]

You make an excellent point, I just don’t think it is the one you are trying to make. yes Hitler was evil, what he was doing was wrong, was our victory over the third reich moral? if we use your example and exclude moral relativism, our defeat of the Nazis’ (by killing lots of soldiers and civilians) is morally flawed, but to let the Nazis’ kill everyone in their path is equally flawed (it can’t be more flawed or less flawed because there is no such thing as moral relativism), if you cannot accept that the morality of a time, place or culture is independent of your own personal morality then you have to accept all actions as equal. You cannot say that killing in self defense is okay when we are sending boys 5000 miles away from home to fight in “self defense” in someone elses country. If you want to make it simple, we are descendants of more efficient murderers anyway, cro-magnon v neanderthal, revolutionaries v british, north v south, it’s silly to think that the moral code we have today will be the same one we have in 100 years.

Maybe I am misunderstanding your response to me, but I know for a fact you are misunderstanding my stance. Morality is a man made construct, as such it has no set immutable law. when you say “Ask the slaves if they thought slavery was good or moral” the answer is no, they would say it isn’t. By the same token the slave owners would say “yes it is”. Now go ask a soldier in WWII if killing Nazis’ is moral, he would say “Yes” as well, now go ask the Nazi if he thinks the actions of the allied soldiers who killed his friends and family are moral, what do you think he would say.

Morality, like history is the province of the victors.[/quote]

As scattered as your brain is, I wonder how resolve anything. I am going to go out on a limb and say you were really bad at math, after all, all those numbers shouldn’t really have more value than other numbers, that’s just mean.

Anyways, to look at morality, you have to drill down on single acts. You cannot throw 5000 different things in the mix and think you can discern the morality of all of it simultaneously. You can look at slavery, OR, the holocaust, OR war, or killing, etc and look at each action. The war, POWs, economic distress, etc. has no bearing on whether or not slavery was evil.

The number two reason moral relativity fails is it disregards the victims.
Slavery was an accepted institution at one time. Saying that because it was accepted and therefore moral, totally disregards and therefore devalues the experience of the slaves and the slaves themselves. However, slavery was accepted, the slaves weren’t down with it. They were the recipients of socially accepted evil, that’s all.[/quote]

Pat,

After reading your post I would like to ask how you can call morality a constant and then say to define the morality of an action it has to be viewed as an individual act, rather than as the exact same as any other of the same act. You my friend are espousing moral relativism. Morality is not a hard and fast law, it needs to be viewed in context. On earth gravity is a law morality is a suggestion. If I grow up in a tribe where we believe in human sacrifice and cannibalism, and nobody shows us anything different, and we are all okay with it how are you able to prove that it is morally wrong? The bible itself plays out quite a few “immoral” acts, many of them perpetrated by God himself, Moral relativism at its finest. I am not saying murder isn’t something that we should condemn, what I am saying is that morality is a lot more grey than you would play it out to be.[/quote]

Awareness of morality does not make something more or less moral. It may have some effect on culpability, but it has no berring on the morality of the action.
Basically, if you have a victim, you tend to have a immoral act.
That’s what I mean about discounting the victim. Sure everybody in a tribe may have grown up with human sacrifice, fat load of good it does the sacrificee. That person still suffers, that person’s family still suffers. The act is still immoral.

242

[quote]kamui wrote:

[quote]BrianHanson wrote:
Kamui,

Doesn’t it make more sense that we wrote these laws down to keep the peace and protect our property/family for the very reason that they are not laws at all but merely good guidelines for surviving in a group?[/quote]

No. These laws are not just the opinion of their authors. They are more than good ideas or guidelines to protect property and family.
They are formal and logical. And that’s why they are morally legal so to speak

“Always lick the boots of the oppressor”
“Don’t forget the ammo”
“Do not rape your slave too often, or they might revolt”
“dress modestly if you wanna walk in Gomorrha’s suburbs at night”
“Don’t do drugs”
“Sane, Safe, Consensual”

those are “guidelines”

“Don’t fix what isn’t broke”
“Keep it simple stupid”
“Check your back, bro”

Those are a bit more abstract, and a bit better

“Carpe Diem”
“live your life as if you were to die tomorrow”

Those are even more abstract. We entered the philosophical realm of Ethics.

“do not do unto others what you do not want others to do unto you”

Now that’s an imperative, and a “principle”. A formal, universal rule. And we are in the realm of Morality.
[/quote]

This is an interesting hierarchy of legal/ethical/moral maxims, but it does not preclude the quoted notion that “we wrote these laws down to keep the peace and protect our property/family.” The semantic application of the word “morality” does not prove that the so-called Golden Rule is anything more than an incredibly effective man-made lubricant for the social machine.

Incidentally, neither does the fact that variations of the Rule are ubiquitous in ancient law.

243

[quote]hungry4more wrote:

[quote]BrianHanson wrote:

Pat,

After reading your post I would like to ask how you can call morality a constant and then say to define the morality of an action it has to be viewed as an individual act, rather than as the exact same as any other of the same act. You my friend are espousing moral relativism. Morality is not a hard and fast law, it needs to be viewed in context. On earth gravity is a law morality is a suggestion. If I grow up in a tribe where we believe in human sacrifice and cannibalism, and nobody shows us anything different, and we are all okay with it how are you able to prove that it is morally wrong? The bible itself plays out quite a few “immoral” acts, many of them perpetrated by God himself, Moral relativism at its finest. I am not saying murder isn’t something that we should condemn, what I am saying is that morality is a lot more grey than you would play it out to be.[/quote]

Viewing things in context =/= moral relativism. It simply means that there are certain factors that must be taken into account before one can determine whether or not an action (or inaction) was morally right or wrong.

For example, I could say “Murder is wrong”.

This does not mean that killing is always wrong, it means that killing someone who has not committed an equal or greater offense is not justified. I say “or greater”, because some people consider things like rape as worse than murder, and I can understand where they are coming from. The murder victim is arguably no longer in pain (of course this depends on religious beliefs and such, too much to get into here), while the rape victim has to live with that pain for the rest of their lives. I’m getting sidetracked.

So is “Murder is wrong” compromised as a moral law by taking prior/present circumstances and the actions of other people into account? Absolutely not.

This reminds me…the subject of only humans being subject to morality, and that stuff; When a human has sex with an animal, we consider it a pretty heinous crime (and rightfully so, I say). Why is that? As far as I am aware, animals aren’t traumatized by a human forcing himself upon them. It is because of what the human is doing (sex with another species), not what is being done to the animal, that it is wrong. We don’t consider it evil when a dog humps a cat, do we? Again, sorry for getting sidetracked. It came to mind from previous discussions, so yeah. [/quote]

That’s why intent and choice is key to an action being moral or immoral. If your intent is to kill maliciously, than that act is always immoral. If you are trying to protect yourself or others, that act is likely morally neutral, in that doing what you have to do, is not the same as doing what you want to do.
When you have a choice, that act is moral or immoral. If you do not have a choice, the act is amoral. Technically, you always have a choice but intense circumstances can void culpability.

The components of a moral act:
-intent
-choice
-freewill
-action

Action is the main component as an action will always have positive or negative consequences, but the absence of the others affects culpability.

244

[quote]Neuromancer wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Neuromancer wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Neuromancer wrote:

[quote]kamui wrote:

[quote]bigflamer wrote:
With regards to the moral absolutists in this thread, a couple of questions:

  1. Is lying always wrong? Is telling the truth ALWAYS the right thing to do?

  2. Is taking another human life always wrong?

  3. Do you think that you may find yourself in a situation someday that will require you to disregards some of your normally held values?[/quote]

Is lying always wrong ? No, but it’s always bad.
Is taking another human life always wrong ? no, but it’s always bad.
I may find myself in a situaion that will require me to disobeye some of my moral |i]principles[/i] but i will never find myself in a situation that will require me to disREGARDS some of my moral VALUES.

I’m a moral absolutist but i do not believe in a omnibenevolent, omnipotent and omniscient God, so this is “easier” for me.
Because this allow me to say “evil is sometimes necessary, but even when it is, it’s still evil”.

Believers can not say that because this would open the door to some embarassing paradoxes and internal contradictions.
Since God is good and omnipotent there need to be a good, sinless way to act, everytime, in any given situation.
That, or He is not that good, or not that omnipotent.

And to keep this idea, they always end up making convoluted, fragile (and morally dangerous) distinctions in order to explain the “exceptions” : “taking an human live =/= murder” “righteous war =/= murder”, etc.

[/quote]

Good post. So what framework does your moral absolutism hang from? Is it a purely personal absolutism, or existent outside of yourself?
[/quote]

That which makes an action good or bad, is a self existent entity. The only thing that is relative is our awareness of it.[/quote]

So if there are no humans, good and evil exist independently , regardless. I understand the argument …I’m just not sure I agree with the result.[/quote]

A ‘tool’ can exist, without ever being used. It’s also not to say that humans are the only creatures in the universe who are subject to morality.[/quote]

I get that. And I am also well aware of the breakdown ,at the edges, of moral relativism…it still doesn’t lead to the existence of metaphysical morality existing outside of human existence. Of course there could be other worlds where sentient beings exist and they may well be also subject to metaphysical moral ‘laws’, but in the world we live in, as of now, morality APPEARS to be a human construct, because outside of us I see no other species where we can reliably infer that a sense of morality exists, beyond a shadow of a doubt and without resorting to some serious anthromorphism.
[/quote]
You don’t really need to compile reams of evidence for it’s existence. We know there is good and there is evil and an infinite scale in between the two extreme maxims. Once act, being moral or immoral is sufficient to establish it’s existence.
Since a key component of morality is freewill, then I wouldn’t expect to see it in anything that does not posses it. If you cannot haven chosen otherwise, the action is morally neutral.

[quote]

I get that in a religious persons world view, god is the framework off which the metaphysical existence of a non relativist morality is given life. I just don’t see it for an atheist/agnostic. It can be believed , for sure , but not proved. I think you NEED a god /gods
to make it fly.[/quote]

No you don’t. The problem is that relativism fails as I have explained several times. It breaks down at the extremes, and it devalues the recipient of an action making the causer of the action supreme, where there is no evidence that someone who does an action, has more intrinsic value than a victim. Because the value system of the actor is taken over the recipient.

That does not mean you cannot deduce an absolute moral authority from the position of morality, this is what Kant does, but you don’t have to talk about God automatically when talking about morality.

If you are feeling you have to force yourself to believe an untenable failed argument to support an agnostic/ atheistic paradigm there is a problem with your logic and you may need to rethink things.
In other words, if you have to force yourself to believe in logically impossible positions to maintain a belief, then your belief if probably false.

Moral relativism has been dead for centuries. It’s an unsupportable position that fails logically. Even atheist philosophers know that. I really don’t know where or why it got resurrected in neo-atheism. If I were an atheist, I wouldn’t even bother to try to make this case. You don’t have to be a moral relativist to be an atheist. You can believe in morality and not God. Morality is it’s own thing.
Even atheists believe in evil, they try to point out how ‘evil’ Christians are all the time. If they are relativists at the same time, they have no argument at all.

245

[quote]BrianHanson wrote:
Kamui,

Doesn’t it make more sense that we wrote these laws down to keep the peace and protect our property/family for the very reason that they are not laws at all but merely good guidelines for surviving in a group?[/quote]

Morality is not necessarily ‘good for the group’. That’s called unversalism.

246

[quote]
This is an interesting hierarchy of legal/ethical/moral maxims, but it does not preclude the quoted notion that “we wrote these laws down to keep the peace and protect our property/family.” The semantic application of the word “morality” does not prove that the so-called Golden Rule is anything more than an incredibly effective man-made lubricant for the social machine.[/quote]

They are a bit more than that.
Something like an internal and intrinsical law of (inter)action.

We did’t wrote them down to achieve a specific goal.
We found them “as is”. Inside us, or more accurately in the “logic” of our relationship to the world.

Also, the above hierarchy is not based on an analysis of the semantic application of the word morality.
It is based on an analysis of the nature of axiologic judgements. (the fact, because it’s a fact, that some things can not meaningfully be considered as “values”, etc) which in turn explain the semantic application of the word.

In absolute terms, it would still be true if we weren’t able to talk about morality at all. If we didn’t have a word for it.

Tnink transcendantal phenomenology. Not analytic philosophy of ordinary language.

247

Seems to me that moral absolutists are just one personal situation away from being a situational ethicist. Is there really such a thing as ABSOLUTE morality?

248

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Neuromancer wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Neuromancer wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]Neuromancer wrote:

[quote]kamui wrote:

[quote]bigflamer wrote:
With regards to the moral absolutists in this thread, a couple of questions:

  1. Is lying always wrong? Is telling the truth ALWAYS the right thing to do?

  2. Is taking another human life always wrong?

  3. Do you think that you may find yourself in a situation someday that will require you to disregards some of your normally held values?[/quote]

Is lying always wrong ? No, but it’s always bad.
Is taking another human life always wrong ? no, but it’s always bad.
I may find myself in a situaion that will require me to disobeye some of my moral |i]principles[/i] but i will never find myself in a situation that will require me to disREGARDS some of my moral VALUES.

I’m a moral absolutist but i do not believe in a omnibenevolent, omnipotent and omniscient God, so this is “easier” for me.
Because this allow me to say “evil is sometimes necessary, but even when it is, it’s still evil”.

Believers can not say that because this would open the door to some embarassing paradoxes and internal contradictions.
Since God is good and omnipotent there need to be a good, sinless way to act, everytime, in any given situation.
That, or He is not that good, or not that omnipotent.

And to keep this idea, they always end up making convoluted, fragile (and morally dangerous) distinctions in order to explain the “exceptions” : “taking an human live =/= murder” “righteous war =/= murder”, etc.

[/quote]

Good post. So what framework does your moral absolutism hang from? Is it a purely personal absolutism, or existent outside of yourself?
[/quote]

That which makes an action good or bad, is a self existent entity. The only thing that is relative is our awareness of it.[/quote]

So if there are no humans, good and evil exist independently , regardless. I understand the argument …I’m just not sure I agree with the result.[/quote]

A ‘tool’ can exist, without ever being used. It’s also not to say that humans are the only creatures in the universe who are subject to morality.[/quote]

I get that. And I am also well aware of the breakdown ,at the edges, of moral relativism…it still doesn’t lead to the existence of metaphysical morality existing outside of human existence. Of course there could be other worlds where sentient beings exist and they may well be also subject to metaphysical moral ‘laws’, but in the world we live in, as of now, morality APPEARS to be a human construct, because outside of us I see no other species where we can reliably infer that a sense of morality exists, beyond a shadow of a doubt and without resorting to some serious anthromorphism.
[/quote]
You don’t really need to compile reams of evidence for it’s existence. We know there is good and there is evil and an infinite scale in between the two extreme maxims. Once act, being moral or immoral is sufficient to establish it’s existence.
Since a key component of morality is freewill, then I wouldn’t expect to see it in anything that does not posses it. If you cannot haven chosen otherwise, the action is morally neutral.

[quote]

I get that in a religious persons world view, god is the framework off which the metaphysical existence of a non relativist morality is given life. I just don’t see it for an atheist/agnostic. It can be believed , for sure , but not proved. I think you NEED a god /gods
to make it fly.[/quote]

No you don’t. The problem is that relativism fails as I have explained several times. It breaks down at the extremes, and it devalues the recipient of an action making the causer of the action supreme, where there is no evidence that someone who does an action, has more intrinsic value than a victim. Because the value system of the actor is taken over the recipient.

That does not mean you cannot deduce an absolute moral authority from the position of morality, this is what Kant does, but you don’t have to talk about God automatically when talking about morality.

If you are feeling you have to force yourself to believe an untenable failed argument to support an agnostic/ atheistic paradigm there is a problem with your logic and you may need to rethink things.
In other words, if you have to force yourself to believe in logically impossible positions to maintain a belief, then your belief if probably false.

Moral relativism has been dead for centuries. It’s an unsupportable position that fails logically. Even atheist philosophers know that. I really don’t know where or why it got resurrected in neo-atheism. If I were an atheist, I wouldn’t even bother to try to make this case. You don’t have to be a moral relativist to be an atheist. You can believe in morality and not God. Morality is it’s own thing.
Even atheists believe in evil, they try to point out how ‘evil’ Christians are all the time. If they are relativists at the same time, they have no argument at all.[/quote]

I understand that you think Kant is the last word on this argument. I happen to disagree. Of course you CAN lead your life as if morality was a self standing universal entity, and most of us do. But that does not make it so. I’m not making a case for moral relativism as a viable or desirable way to lead your life, what I am saying is that wanting it (moral absolutism) to be so does not necessarily make it so. I have no position to defend on this matter that makes me or breaks me as an individual member of society. I just don’t believe that a transcendent moral law or force exists independent of human beings. How we live our lives is a separate issue in my mind. If that makes sense…and yes, I bristle when the ‘evil’ tag gets bandied about towards religious people, or vice versa. It just serves to devalue the argument being had and helps nothing.

249

Pat,

If you are trying to make that point that morality is something other than a man made apparatus designed to create guilt (another man made apparatus) then you should never bring religion into the conversation.

I am sure Hitler thought he was moral (if indeed these thoughts crossed his mind at all) but he was also I believe, a Christian of some sort (he associated atheism publicly with communism) while I am not sure any particular sect would like to claim him, and for all I know he was full of shit regarding his religious views (which seems likely) he did profess to being somewhat religious.

Belief in God does not make someone good or bad, morality is relative in the sense that a bunch of believers in Germany were pretty sure that they were going to heaven even though they were slaughtering millions of men, women and children. This is no different than the people that strap bombs to themselves on school buses, or the ones that kill their daughters for kissing a boy, or the ones that tortured Jews and other non-believers during the Inquistion, no different than crusades, no different than the founders of our nation that owned slaves, no different than the ministers that organized and led “Night Riders” after the Civil War, no different than the people that protested against integration or the ones that fought against interracial marriage, gay marriage etc.

If an immoral act has a victim, then you could make the case that telling gays they can’t get married is immoral right? Abortion would certainly be immoral in the eyes of people that see a fetus as a person, and completely moral (or morally neutral) in the eyes of people that see a fetus as a lump of non-sentient flesh.

If you look at morality as a set of beliefs that everyone should agree to if they had the same basic understanding then you have to get everyone to accept that YOUR moral views are the ones to be followed, now since you and I both live in the same culture, probably have a number of similarities beyond culture (age, race, education, economic status etc.) it would stand to reason that our morals should line up and thus be ready to distribute meaningfully to the rest of the unenlightened world, but the problem is our morals don’t line up do they?

I am sure we agree on some big ones, don’t murder, don’t steal, but we can’t agree on what those mean can we? I am pro-choice, you, if I am correct, believe abortion is murder.
I am against the death penalty, you might be for it.
I think we should tax the rich more than the middle class and poor (>%) you may very well view that as stealing.

There are a number of things that we would all disagree on regarding moral certainty. so if we all disagree how can it be called one thing or the other? How can we force these beliefs on others? Killing is bad, because we are all at risk from killers roaming the streets, we lock them up for the collective safety of the populace.

Stealing is bad because shit isn’t free, people (sometimes) work very hard for their stuff, anarchy would ensue if people did not have their stuff protected by the government, people stay calm when they feel safe, they flip over cars when their team loses (or wins) in the NCAA tournament, imagine what they would do if they came home to all their stuff missing and the police saying “Too bad”. This was a lot longer than I thought it would be, sorry.

250

[quote]kamui wrote:

This is your interpretation and I respect it as such but I see no compelling reason for me or anyone else to adopt it. You having said that we found these maxims “as is” does not make it so.

I say that our ancestors came up with sensible guidelines in order to allow for social cooperation. The rules under which we’ve come to live were determined over millenia by biology and evolutionary imperative. You say otherwise. Neither of us can prove the other wrong. That is the problem with this particular dialectic.

251

[quote]bigflamer wrote:
Seems to me that moral absolutists are just one personal situation away from being a situational ethicist. Is there really such a thing as ABSOLUTE morality? [/quote]

Yes.

252

[quote]bigflamer wrote:
Seems to me that moral absolutists are just one personal situation away from being a situational ethicist. Is there really such a thing as ABSOLUTE morality? [/quote]

no

253

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]bigflamer wrote:
Seems to me that moral absolutists are just one personal situation away from being a situational ethicist. Is there really such a thing as ABSOLUTE morality? [/quote]

Yes.[/quote]

Then tell me, what are these absolute values?

254

[quote]BrianHanson wrote:

[quote]bigflamer wrote:
Seems to me that moral absolutists are just one personal situation away from being a situational ethicist. Is there really such a thing as ABSOLUTE morality? [/quote]

no[/quote]

I agree. As I’ve said before, deontological ethicists are just ONE personal situation from being a situational ethicist.

255

[quote]BrianHanson wrote:
Pat,

If you are trying to make that point that morality is something other than a man made apparatus designed to create guilt (another man made apparatus) then you should never bring religion into the conversation.
[/quote]
I never said it was designed to create guilt. You cannot ‘create’ guilt, you can only experience it, secondly, and I never brought religion into the conversation. If anything I avoided it at all costs because it’s not necessary to the discussion. You must be mixing up posts.

Dude what ever drugs you take, they are scrambling your brain. You are all over the map. how in the fuck did you get from Hitler thinking he was moral, to being a Christian of “some sort” then to being some what religious. Do you think before you type?

As far as what Hitler thought, it doesn’t really matter one hardy fuck what hitler thought, what he did was an abomination and exceedingly immoral. Do you not agree, or do you put what Hitler thought over those of his victims? Because the Hitler was the executioner of his own actions, does his will automatically supersede those of the people he murdered, tortured and oppressed?
Oh I know this shit totally went over your head.

What in the hardy hell are you talking about now? Introducing about 10,000 Red Herrings into the conversation does not prove that morality is a man made construct, nor that it’s relative. Brian I don’t mean this as insulting, but I don’t think you have actually given this a moments thought.
There is something called logic and reason that is designed to guide us in these discussions. Abandoning that completely is going absolutely no where. I have seldom run across thought patterns as fractured as this. Hell, I never even introduced religion into the conversation, you just did, I did not.

The point is, to get to the truth, you have to get past what people ‘think’ and drill down on what things actually are. THEN you can determine the morality of the action. Misunderstanding affects culpability, but it does not remove it completely.

You are very confused. That which is socially acceptable may or may not be moral. Social acceptability does not dictate morality. If it did, then slavery would have been moral. Sex slavery today is moral, killing people not like you would be moral. The point is, it’s not. Doesn’t matter what everybody thinks, it only matters what things are. Can you tell the difference.

How much shit do you want to drag into one conversation? Why are you passing political judgments on me, in the scope of a conversation where the topic is whether or not morality is relative or a static entity. You are as lost as lost can be.
You’re one of these surface thinkers. Do you understand what it is to take a single topic, drill down on the one single topic and hash out the truth from the fiction about that single topic? The topic is moral relativity. It’s ok to bring in examples to prove your point but to throw in everything to see if anything sticks is not going to work. Again, logic needs to drive this process. There is a complete absence of logic in your posts. None, zeta, nada, zero.

[quote]
There are a number of things that we would all disagree on regarding moral certainty. so if we all disagree how can it be called one thing or the other? How can we force these beliefs on others? Killing is bad, because we are all at risk from killers roaming the streets, we lock them up for the collective safety of the populace.

Stealing is bad because shit isn’t free, people (sometimes) work very hard for their stuff, anarchy would ensue if people did not have their stuff protected by the government, people stay calm when they feel safe, they flip over cars when their team loses (or wins) in the NCAA tournament, imagine what they would do if they came home to all their stuff missing and the police saying “Too bad”. This was a lot longer than I thought it would be, sorry.[/quote]

And way more painful to read. If you are going to argue that moral relativity exists, then you are going to have to prove things like slavery were in fact moral at the time, despite the oppression and abuse, and devaluation of another peoples. I am going to see if you can do this. See if you can focus on a single topic and out of that, prove your point.

To prove your point, let’s take slavery. It was socially acceptable at a time, but it abused, maligned, marginalized, abused and devalued a whole section of humanity for the selfish gain of others. Please explain how slavery, say in early America, was moral because people thought it was ok at the time…

Do not bring in, the Inquisition, man on the moon, dog poop, horses, drag shows, race cars, tables and chairs or any other irrelevant information. Stick with the topic, and prove that based on slavery being socially acceptable, it was therefore moral.

258

Pat, you have a serious time scale flaw with the slavery story. Why only go back to the 1800s? Prove to me how slavery was considered immoral in ancient Egypt for eg, 5000 years ago. You cannot apply your chosen prism looking back, you need to take it on what the standard was THEN. If morality is an immutable metaphysical law existing forever and always, it sure took a very long time to shine through, didn’t it? And funny how it coincided with human thought becoming more enlightened.

Surely it would have been a moral imperative to end it THEN, or in the many millennia prior to Egypt or post Egypt? Not just in the last few centuries? I don’t recall reading of too many Egyptian abolitionist movements. And certainly none with traction. And I can quite comfortably guarantee that the slave owners of the day lost no sleep about it being immoral. I would probably wager they thought it moral. So where all those masses confused way back when?

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[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]smh23 wrote:

…The rules under which we’ve come to live were determined over millenia by biology and evolutionary imperative…

[/quote]

Once again, this is why the creation/evolution debate is so fundamental.

It’s either one way or the other. There is no middle ground.
[/quote]

It’s either or, I agree. There can be no moral absolutism without a framework , a ‘giver’ if you will.

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[quote]Neuromancer wrote:
If morality is an immutable metaphysical law existing forever and always, it sure took a very long time to shine through, didn’t it? [/quote]

Is that really that crazy of a notion though?

If a few “powerful” people are willing to use immoral means to gain more power, why wouldn’t the followers, just follow? The person making the social rules isn’t moral by default, he or she is human.