Because it isn't? It's only natural (in modern society anyway) to kill in self defense. Don't you think the rest is due to sociopaths and other insane fucks? *shrug* I guess maybe I was off on that part... I just hate murderous bastards. Seems to me like it is against human nature because it is exactly opposite of what is good for the species in evolutionary terms.
I can imagine a scenario where I could put a bullet in someone who just killed my wife or child. And if that is imaginable, then all you have to do is replace "wife and child" with whatever you happen to believe is at least equally important.
So, maybe I'm off base here. It's OK to sell all sorts of products with publicly desplayed sexual images because sex is almost instinctually desirable and therefore a good marketing tool. And if my niece gets obsessed about the fact that she doesn't measure up to these air-brushed fantasies, and begins to develop anorexia - then there is no foul here? Or that all those public displays of flesh make young men drowning in testosterone think it's ok to think of women as sexual objects, there is no foul? Chris and LauTzu, are you making an argument for straight moral relativism, that there is no absolute wrong?
well, it shouldn't... but it seems as if people let it bleed over into whatever. that's not neccessarily bad, but the fascination with it and labelling it as such seems to have a seductive element to uhm... some people ya know?
Eh, that's not neccessarily true. Technically you're correct, but man.. a lot of people are just making up shit as they go. In fact I wonder if most people really have the mental capacity to realize the implications (and live to) of the moral systems they claim to adhere to. You know what I'm getting at?
So doesn't this say that you can reason just as well as I can. Can't we reason that in the long term these things are not to the benefit of mankind? We don't need a religion or gods to see the same logic and then create some meaningful solutions. All Christianity does is threaten the offenders with an eternity in hell for being bad. Well clearly not many people buy that gibberish any longer. What are missing are real solutions and unfortunately too many people expect religions to provide that. As soon as we can eliminate religious influence from society then we can set about establish real solutions. Christianity has been trying for 2000 years and has clearly failed miserably.
To determine there is an absolute right or wrong requires an absolute standard and there is no such thing. Morality must be defined relative to the needs of humanity, nothing else make sense.
You may well be correct. And this shows that man has been struggling for millennia to define moral codes. Note that it was man that wrote all the religious books and ideas. It has been man who has been trying to second-guess what a god might define as absolute standards. In short we have been following our own standards for a long time. Unfortunately, with the outdated idea that the ancient laws are absolute means that they have not evolved with our changing needs.
I guess this is true if you are thinking of survival of the fittest. But such a system is very harsh. It forces most people into spending their lives performing tasks that they would rather not do. I see real problems and the breakdown of such systems when we start to introduce intelligent machines that can easily replace the roles of humans.
Successful is a relative term I think. It has taken evolution billions of years for us to arrive and we are a mess. As we learn more about ourselves and develop new technologies I fully expect that we will direct our own future and not have to wait for millions of years of random mutations to occur. But that isn’t quite what you meant. Evolution wasn't intelligently directed so we should expect massive injustice in much of what occurs. Diseases such as cancer etc are extremely unfair.
I think laws are necessary because of our limited intelligence. Once we learn to enhance our intelligence to levels very significantly beyond our current state then I would suspect that laws would become unnecessary.