I rest my case.
The Bible says a lot of things we believe are immoral, and even illegal, today are perfectly fine. Wouldn’t that be contrary to faith?
I believe in God. God says I can have slaves. I believe slavery is immoral. Hmmmm…
Not yet. Why can’t it commit a crime?
Humans have have come up with a system that doesn’t allow one to do to another that which one would not want to done to themselves.
I don’t believe empathy to be only a product of faith. I believe it is something that we have evolved to have because we need to survive in a social setting.
I’m not here to talk about the bible. And if one believes there is no objective moral code or inherent moral obligations we’re bound to, one has no basis to judge the bible anyways. It would all be baseless opinion with no binding reality.
You brought up faith.
What?
We have? And I don’t believe that you believe murder is evil simply because it is something you want to personally avoid solely for your own benefit. But hey, if you were more of a risk taker…You’re too good of a person for that. I can tell these things.
Not allow to be done to others that which we wouldn’t want done to ourselves…Knowing that your life began in the womb, would you want to have been aborted?
I believe it is evil because I have empathy.
People who have anti-social personality disorders often actually do not have much issue with murder, because they lack function in the brain related to feeling empathy. For them if it helps them out, they have no issue with murder.
Now, no, but I am conscious. When one is aborted they are not really thinking or conscious, so at that point I would not care. Just like I did not care about anything or have thoughts on anything before I existed.
The rational consistent position of the anti-faithers isn’t that being murdered is wrong. It’s just that they don’t want to be killed themselves. Like a gazelle running from a big cat.
Correct, you’re conscious. Now you can speak out against what you admit you would not have want done to yourself.
From a law position, I agree.
However, I think I would feel guilty about murder because of my empathy which is normally a human trait.
Empathy is one of many traits. Greed has made us very prosperous as a nation, even. Spilling even blood for it. Such as feelings of envy, rage, greed. None morally superior. There is no special inherent value to empathy. Unless one is ready to make a faith claim.
Why is a faith claim necessary for empathy to have value?
empathy is the characteristic that allows one to sympathize with another. I don’t see how you claim that has no value to society?
It has no superior value without a faith claim. We don’t have to order society according to some fetishization of universal empathy. We can reserve it simply for a friend, family, our racial group, a political affiliation, our side of a savage war. Etc. It isn’t wrong to reserve empathy only for those that look like ourselves, the rest can rot if not be crushed under us as we consume the Earth’s resources! Unless, we make some kind of faith based value judgement.
Ok, nature gave us empathy. It also gave us greed, rage, spite, suspicion of the other.
I disagree here, and do not think a faith claim is necessary to see that.
Then make your empirical argument that we are morally obligated to treat other races with equal measure. Nature doesn’t care. The universe doesn’t care.
Show me racism is evil under a microscope.
It assumes that faith existed before empathy.
Let’s not forget another human trait, faith.
80 something percent of the world’s population claim a religion. And I guarantee a majority of even the non-adherents operate on a number of faith based values.
You just pulled that out of your ass.
And that is worse than fearing an invisible sky fairy?