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Loosely translated, Steven Steve says "Kill the whales":
It's because religion provides morals for morality's sake (in a good vs. evil frame) as opposed to logic and science which provide morals for survival and pleasure's sake (in a survivable vs. unsustainable frame). Technically basic logic provides no morals but these are provided by biology and memes. These memes include religion. When one rejects laws of good and evil and realize that they are just varying degrees of altruism and/or selfishness presented in religion the conclusion is that behaviors are not kosher because God says so but because there's an actual, tangible reason for them (e.g. survival).
This. 
People who claim religion has a monopoly on morality or the concept of good and evil are stretching a bit, imho. Granted, the concept of absolute good and evil are pretty much out the window, but we live in a relative universe and it's about time we got used to it.
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Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Blindy. who doth quote:
People who claim religion has a monopoly on morality or the concept of good and evil are stretching a bit, imho. Granted, the concept of absolute good and evil are pretty much out the window, but we live in a relative universe and it's about time we got used to it.
The problem that I have with moral relativism is that it ignores the truism that, as human beings, we are provided with a frame of reference from which we can establish an absolute morality: That of human beings.
Things that advance the human condition can be said to be absolutely moral, or at least as absolute as matters to any human being. Maradon! fucked around with this message on 03-29-2009 at 01:51 PM.
We don't need a higher power to justify the assertion that human beings are sovereign, individual entities. Cogito ergo sum. We hold these truths to be self-evident.
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Nina attempted to be funny by writing:
Yeah, I guess shitting up threads and abusing mod powers is being good.
Why is this a big deal to you.
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The logic train ran off the tracks when Mr. Parcelan said:
Why is this a big deal to you.
Because it directly affected him personally and he hates you for it.
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Maradon! had this to say about Optimus Prime:
Well, take slavery for example. Slavery can be described as universally immoral, even if a culture does not consider it immoral, because the reasons that slavery is immoral in the first place are true for all humanity.
This is inconsistent with your definition. From a utilitarian standpoint, is it okay to enslave one person to advance the conditions of all? 100,000 people? Even the simplest examples of absolute morality crumble under casual examination. Noxhil fucked around with this message on 03-29-2009 at 10:10 PM.
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Mr. Parcelan had this to say about dark elf butts:
Why is this a big deal to you.
Who said it was a big deal? I wouldn't have had the thread deleted otherwise. I'm just disappointed -- I thought you were more mature.
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Nina had this to say about (_|_):
Who said it was a big deal? I wouldn't have had the thread deleted otherwise. I'm just disappointed -- I thought you were more mature.
Well, jeez, man.
I can't really offer anything in defense of that. I'm occasionally immature on a message board. That doesn't really justify things, but that's just how it happens at times.
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Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Noxhil who doth quote:
This is inconsistent with your definition. From a utilitarian standpoint, is it okay to enslave one person to advance the conditions of all? 100,000 people? Even the simplest examples of absolute morality crumble under casual examination.
In the future, you'll probably want to make sure you understand the point you're responding to and you'll certainly want to avoid arbitrarily declaring yourself the victor in a debate, especially after a point as silly as this one. Pretty juvenile of you all around, in fact.
This counterexample that you're trying to slap together here isn't a moral question, it's a mathematical one. The old "Is it moral to X to Y people so <Y people can have X" scenario isn't even answerable on moral terms, morality is a system of determining right and wrong when the figures posed in such questions are unknown, moral questions aren't "Is it right to kill a child if you save a million bajillion people?" (hint: Neither answer to such a question is either moral or immoral) but "Is it right to save people?". So right off the bat, your little response here says absolutely nothing about the question of objective morality.
Is it "ok" to enslave one person to save a billion? Maybe and maybe not, but if you decide that it is, does that suddenly make slavery moral? Or does that make it immoral, but necessary in this one case? Are you starting to see how your scenario is irrelevant to the question of morality yet? Maradon! fucked around with this message on 03-30-2009 at 01:05 AM.
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Steven Steve's unholy Backstreet Boys obsession manifested in:
kosher
I never want to hear this fucking word again. Monday is my finals night of a hellish semester taking a class on Judaism, because my current fuck nugget school has a religion requirement and that's all that was available in my time slot.
It *could* have been interesting, if the guy teaching it wasn't a Reform Jew who the ultra-Christians in the class got into constant religious debates with. As it was, it was like a huge advertisement to be Jewish and it just completely turned me off.
As to religion in general, most of the rules regarding morality in religion were just a way to maintain social order in a society. The edicts of the Ten Commandments, for instance, can be read as a guideline for preserving a society from anarchy and chaos. If everyone was going around murdering each other and stealing from one another, the community bond would be broken. By establishing moral laws and a reason to follow those laws, then you are able to maintain a society as a whole rather than a fractured mess.
I can tap into that innate feeling that most humans have of what we should and should not do to one another. I personally don't feel I need religion to teach me this, so I remain unconvinced as to why I need to subscribe to one. But religion fulfills something empty in others that it doesn't in me, so I have no qualms about what they wish to be apart of, so long as they're content to leave me out of it.
Lyinar Ka`Bael, Piney Fresh Druidess - Luclin
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Lyinar Ka`Bael had this to say about pies:
I never want to hear this fucking word again. Monday is my finals night of a hellish semester taking a class on Judaism, because my current fuck nugget school has a religion requirement and that's all that was available in my time slot.It *could* have been interesting, if the guy teaching it wasn't a Reform Jew who the ultra-Christians in the class got into constant religious debates with. As it was, it was like a huge advertisement to be Jewish and it just completely turned me off.
As to religion in general, most of the rules regarding morality in religion were just a way to maintain social order in a society. The edicts of the Ten Commandments, for instance, can be read as a guideline for preserving a society from anarchy and chaos. If everyone was going around murdering each other and stealing from one another, the community bond would be broken. By establishing moral laws and a reason to follow those laws, then you are able to maintain a society as a whole rather than a fractured mess.
I can tap into that innate feeling that most humans have of what we should and should not do to one another. I personally don't feel I need religion to teach me this, so I remain unconvinced as to why I need to subscribe to one. But religion fulfills something empty in others that it doesn't in me, so I have no qualms about what they wish to be apart of, so long as they're content to leave me out of it.
i hear youre a pedo
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nem-x is SUPER gay has funnier quote texts than me:
How do you feel about the word 'Halal'?
I never want to hear this fucking word again. Monday is my finals night of a hellish semester taking a class on Islam, because my current fuck nugget school has a religion requirement and that's all that was available in my time slot.
It *could* have been interesting, if the guy teaching it wasn't a Reform Muslim who the ultra-Christians in the class got into constant religious debates with. As it was, it was like a huge advertisement to be Muslim and it just completely turned me off.
As to religion in general, most of the rules regarding morality in religion were just a way to maintain social order in a society. The edicts of the Ten Commandments, for instance, can be read as a guideline for preserving a society from anarchy and chaos. If everyone was going around murdering each other and stealing from one another, the community bond would be broken. By establishing moral laws and a reason to follow those laws, then you are able to maintain a society as a whole rather than a fractured mess.
I can tap into that innate feeling that most humans have of what we should and should not do to one another. I personally don't feel I need religion to teach me this, so I remain unconvinced as to why I need to subscribe to one. But religion fulfills something empty in others that it doesn't in me, so I have no qualms about what they wish to be apart of, so long as they're content to leave me out of it.
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nem-x is SUPER gay has funnier quote texts than me:
Do Muslims have The Ten Commandments?
yes except it's wackier and you wouldn't understand it
There are more technical uses of both words that would lead one to other conclusions, but I find it useful nonetheless.
What you can't do, except arbitrarily, is define good or evil logically. They are essentially emotional, religious terms. I can say that allowing unjustified killing would ruin society and as such we should outlaw murder...but that doesn't mean murder is evil unless I attach some sort of religious connotation to it. Good and evil, like religion, are just ways of getting people to behave like you want them to without having to explain so the stupid people get it.
As such, I rarely use either word except when the emotional impact is useful; they don't lend themselves to reasoned discussion.
Where many people go wrong, however, is in arguing that, since there are no absolutes (good and evil), then all behavior must therefore be equal. We can still make ethical choices without falling back on emotional crutches like good or evil. It is not, in fact, inconsistent or hypocritical, as some would say, to acknowledge the ultimate relativity of morality while still firmly working towards a world or system where certain types of behavior are simply not allowed--not because they are evil, but because a world in which they are commonplace or condoned is not one in which reasonable people would choose to live. [And no, I'm not a huge Kant fan; he takes the notion to the absurd, IMNSHO.]
--Satan, quoted by John Milton
