Why do you "believe" they are wrong?
Explain to me why the following things are wrong
- Thread starter Norsefire
- Start date
Why do you "believe" they are wrong?
Norsefire:
Does God judge on a whim, or because he knows what is right and wrong from some source other than himself?
I already explained that. It denies the intrinsic value of other human beings. A purely selfish individual is a sociopath - not an ordinary, functioning human being and not a useful member of society.
Does God judge on a whim, or because he knows what is right and wrong from some source other than himself?
I already explained that. It denies the intrinsic value of other human beings. A purely selfish individual is a sociopath - not an ordinary, functioning human being and not a useful member of society.
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
Great question, genius even !
I suppose if there even is a God, then on a whim.
And why is denying the intrinsic value of other human beings and being a selfish individual wrong?
Seems a pretty poor basis for defining what is right and wrong - what some sky fairy says.
It's wrong because it's a double standard; you have one set of values for yourself, another for everybody else. Its inconsistent and arbitrary and self-serving.
Its practical effect, of course, is that nobody wants to know you, and you can't participate properly in normal human society.
Regardless. Even if it did originate from a place seperate from God, "God" is still a useful tool for teaching and enforcing it.
Why is it wrong to have a double standard?
Because God says so and for no other reason.
Simon Anders
Valued Senior Member
I think it's pretty clear. The area where you would run into trouble is when you would expect anyone else to be consistant or moral. You will have stepped outside the contract.
Huh? I don't understand what you are saying.
Yeah, I see where you're going. You're arguing for complete moral relativism. There are a lot of practical problems with that - e.g. you can't run a moral society on the basis of "whatever is right for you is ok".
Also, moral relativists are in no position to dispute those who claim morality has an absolute basis. Because, to be consistent, the relativist has to say "if it's true for you that morality is absolute, then that's ok".'
I'm not a relativist.
I'm not arguing for it, but I'm arguing that that is the reality of things.
Besides, isn't that the whole premise of liberalism? "Do whatever you want"?
Another problem, though, with moral relativity as opposed to imposed objectivity (i.e, religion) is that if not everybody has the same moral code, there is no longer a point to adhereing to "morality", or in other words, no longer point in being a "good man" because, within such a society, there is no such thing as being a "good man"
It's still an opinion that morality is absolute.
Challenger78
Valued Senior Member
Because all those things involve hate, and the complete subjugation of another human being, because they involve stripping another human being of all their rights. (except perhaps stealing).
On the other anarchist hand
Because they involve the strong, killing the weak or the disadvantaged, and that is wrong because ....
What can this discussion possibly achieve? Why have you wasted your time on the computer for six pages while you could have been doing something productive with your lives?
Everyone here knows and has said a hundred times in their own words that the terms 'right' and 'wrong' are subjective.
The law however is written to suit the morality of the consensus.
Everyone here knows and has said a hundred times in their own words that the terms 'right' and 'wrong' are subjective.
The law however is written to suit the morality of the consensus.
And why is hatred and subjugation wrong?
Unless you don't recognize the law, in which case it's tyranny and opression that you are forced to obey the law
Pandaemoni
Valued Senior Member
These are wrong because culture teaches us they are wrong. That's it. In the past these things *sometimes* applied but usually only to members of your own group (and not always even then).
Murder--to Romans this was only a crime if committed against another Roman, and only if that other Roman wasn't subject to your authority. The head of a household was (during the Republic and for the first few centuries of the Empire) free to kill slaves, children, wives, and anyone under his direct authority, and he didn't even have to give a reason. He had vitae necisque potestas, the power of life and death...and no one thought that was "wrong."
Rape--same answer. In many cultures it only applied to women within your group over whom you did not have control, and evern then the "wrong' was usually in the nature of "it is bad what you did to that woman's husband." The immorality was not what you did to her, it was that you potentially confused parentage. In an age before modern medicine it was believed that a man's traits could "linger" and be passed to children down the road,hence corrupting bloodlines well after the regular 9-month gestation had passed.
Thievery--many cultures existed (and some still do) without property as we know it, so without a concept of theft. It's a cultural development that likely arose after the end of our hunter-gatherer days, not an objective fact.
Torture--has obviously been allowed in past cultures, and not even all that long ago. When medieval torturers did their work, they often thought what they were doing was good, especially if it forced a witch to confess or a Jew to accept Christ, because it saved their souls.
Kidnaping--Is still a culturally recognized way to get yourself a bride in some areas of the world, like central Asia. "Marriage by capture" has a long tradition. It's even sanctioned in the Bible, when the tribe of Benjamin is told to do just that, and there they were to kidnap fellow Jews and marry them. In Roman culture the Rape of the Sabine Women wasn't looked on as a story of immorality, it was just looked on as a story, no more or less moral than listening to the tale of the Trojan War. (In that context, "rape" meant "kidnaping" not sexual assault, a confusion due to the Latin word "raptio" meaning the kidnaping of women.) Kidnaping women as slaves or brides was likely very common in the ancient past.
Genocide is murder writ large. here was no prohibition on it at all until modern times. The main mark against it is that it is time consuming and resource intensive, so probably unwise from that perspective. For ancient societies,it was likely better to enslave a population than to slaughter it. But "unwise" is not the same as "unethical."
All of these things are viewed as "wrong" today because we are taught that they are so, and the human mind is a sponge that absorbs social rules we are taught. The goal of the social rules is to produce a stable society, which typically requires limiting the nature who who such practices may be practiced against, but does not seem to require an absolute prohibition. One can make an argument that it is "better"to live in a world filled with nations that hold these things to be "wrongs" in common, as they are then less likely to use them against each other, and that might lead to a more orderly and safer world, but (a) that's speculation and (b) that the world might reach Pareto optimality through such a commonly shared set of beliefs doesn't render contrary views objectively "wrong" (though, subjectively, I am free to call those contrary views wrong).