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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
 Posted - 02/06/2006 : 22:38:13 [Permalink]
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lord_hevonen revealed: quote:
By the way, continuing what i wrote earlier, it is common to say that morals depend completely on the culture, but i would really like to see the culture that allows killing for no reason...
I don't think you ever will find such a society. Morality is, at base, a set of social rules to make cooperation possible in the societal context. Killing without reason is so essentially antithetical to cooperation, that nowhere has it been "morally" accepted.
One thing, though: Usually tagged like irrelevant legislative "riders" onto the cooperative rules that I think form the basis of any society's morality, are political and religious rules that probably provide no, or even negative, survival value. The chiefs and priests make sure these exist, though even this kind of "morality" itself varies with time and space. The polygamy of King Solomon was accepted morally, but there is a general Judeo-Christian religious prohibition on polygamy at present.
I think that the Ten Commandments are an interesting example of a simple, codified morality, especially written for a group of wandering neolithic or bronze age tribes. The commandments seem clearly to be a greatly simplified version of the Code of Hammurabi, an easily memorized "Non-Readers Digest" version for a largely illiterate people, with God stuff added in by priest-kings.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 02/06/2006 : 22:53:33 [Permalink]
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Bill keeps saying stuff about how people who think morals are not absolute have no right to make moral judgments of others. That if we do, we are being intolerant. This is a highly ironic contradiction.
Saying something is “intolerant” is itself a moral judgment. If morals are relative, then I can do whatever the hell I damn well feel like.
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"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 02/06/2006 : 22:56:36 [Permalink]
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Also:
Bringing up AIDS regarding gay sex is stupid because, as many people have pointed out, it is not especially gay sex that causes AIDS, but unprotected, promiscuous sex with partners that one cannot verify have been tested. One of the reasons HIV spread so rapidly among gays in the 80's in America was because it was new – so no one had to fear it – and because there was a culture of promiscuous young gay men. Has it ever occurred to you that a society that forbids gay marriage and shuns homosexuals is encouraging gay people to be sexual deviants? Why shouldn't they be? After all, if they try to act conventional by pairing off with a single lifetime partner, they are viewed as just as perverted by bigots.
By the way, I don't know any lesbians with HIV or AIDS. One could easily argue that lesbian sex is generally safer than heterosexual sex.
WARNING: Explicit descriptions follow: Bill, your constant comparison of pedophilia to homosexual sex is infuriating. Even in Greek society the man/boy sex was not a mutually pleasant experience, and it (like modern day pedophilia) often involved outright rape. There have been tons of things written about how it was actually taboo to penetrate boy's anus for most of the Greek age (they were supposed to thrust in between the thighs, if at all). Also, plenty has been written about how while the Greek boys appreciated the affection, mentorship, and often gifts, they generally did not enjoy the sexual practices. Boys in school were carefully protected from predatory men. It was much more like prostitution than a mutual romantic or sexual relationships.
Obviously that bears no similarity to either modern day conservative or promiscuous gay cultures. With modern homosexuality, we are talking about equal, consenting adults engaging in the relationship for mutual pleasure or feelings of romantic love.
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"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 02/06/2006 : 23:06:50 [Permalink]
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And I ask yet again, Bill: If pedophilia practiced by a man against a boy is a homosexual problem, then why is not pedophilia practiced by a man against a girl a heterosexual problem?
It's neither, of course. Pedophilia's a pedophile problem. Gay or straight makes no difference.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 02/06/2006 : 23:07:56 [Permalink]
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Siberia wrote: And even promiscuous people can be relatively safe if they wear protection.
Yup. too bad they usually can't afford it, don't have access to it, and don't even have access to the education that would let them know about it. And thanks to G.W.Bush's efforts to please fundamentalist Christians, a lot of sex education and birth control that would have been sent over to help has been supressed because the same organizations would also let women know about abortion options.
People in southern Africa aren't especially more promiscuous than Americans. Many of my friends and I were fairly promiscuous in our late teens and early 20's. But we always used condoms, got tested regularly, and some of us even required to see STD test results before sleeping with someone. Because we access to education and resources. So far, no one I know has contracted HIV. Go figure. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 02/06/2006 23:09:07 |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 02/06/2006 : 23:23:00 [Permalink]
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quote:
Posted by lord hevenon:By the way, continuing what i wrote earlier, it is common to say that morals depend completely on the culture, but i would really like to see the culture that allows killing for no reason...
For no reason? Genocide against the Jews by the Nazi's, the Rwandan genocide, to name two recent ones. The practice by the ancient Greeks of throwing infants from a captured city off the walls after raping and killing their captured mothers, to name an ancient one. There are many examples across history of societies valuing senseless murder.
Brutal murder, human sacrifice, cannibalism, ritual prostitution, forced-by-torture faith conversions, genocide, slavery, and many many other things we would consider immoral today have been accepted societal norms at some place and time in the past.
quote:
Posted by marfknox:If morals are relative, then I can do whatever the hell I damn well feel like.
Anyone can do whatever the hell they damn well feel like, the relative nature of morality has nothing to do with that at all.
Bill is trying to make the tired old argument that morality is somehow absolute, unchanging, and the same throughout all cultures and societies. The stupidity of his position is enough to make one think he is a verlch sock-puppet.
Bill seems to be some sort of new convert to a fundie faith. He does nothing but vomit forth old worn out crazy-fundie arguments and positions. I'm sure he probably thinks he is doing some "good works" by preaching to us godless and amoral skeptics.
It would be different if he had something new or origninal to say.... but he is just reading back to us from the published propoganda that his local hate-faith religious group has given him.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 02/07/2006 : 00:05:30 [Permalink]
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Dude wrote: For no reason? Genocide against the Jews by the Nazi's, the Rwandan genocide, to name two recent ones. The practice by the ancient Greeks of throwing infants from a captured city off the walls after raping and killing their captured mothers, to name an ancient one. There are many examples across history of societies valuing senseless murder.
All of those examples had reasons behind them.
genocide again Jews - to take resources away from wealthy Jews and to create a scapegoat so the German people would blame Jews and not the government for their economic woes.
Rwanda - like any other ethnic conflict, the roots are tied to groups wanting to monopolize resources, and like the Nazis, people of one group gaining power by pointing the finger at a scapegoat.
Infanticide is a common practice, even among many animals like chimps, gorillas and baboons. The evolutionary advantage is obvious: kill an infant, and the mother - who is now no longer nursing - will be more quickly furtile and will have more time and energy to spend on raising future offspring that will have the genes of the baby-murderer/rapist. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 02/07/2006 00:06:26 |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 02/07/2006 : 00:12:19 [Permalink]
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To Bill: I think a lot of your responses are now bordering on nonsense. I get what you are doing, you are trying to demonstrate for us the absurdity of relative morality by taking it to an hypothetical extreme in discourse.
However, you are the one making a claim. You are claiming that morality is absolute. Prove it. Give us an example of an absolute moral law, and then explain to us how you know it is absolute.
Numbers are absolute. 2 + 2 = 4. It will always equal four. The theory of gravity claims an absolute, and it backs that claim up by saying there are no violations to this law. If someone can ever scientifically bring forth an example of something breaking the law of gravity, it will no longer be considered an absolute.
We have consistently brought forth examples of how some people break what are considered moral laws by other people. If the law can be broken, it is not absolute. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 02/07/2006 00:13:19 |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 02/07/2006 : 00:24:41 [Permalink]
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There is an excellent, easy to read, essay on this topic by the ninety-some-year-old historian Jacques Barzun. Though the guy is a conservative, he despises how religious moralists have blamed the concept of "moral relativism" for today's supposed "moral looseness". Basically he seems to think they are misusing what the term "relative" actually means and also don't know their history very well. Here is my favorite passage from "The Bugbear of Relativism" in the book The Culture We Deserve:
"No clearer instance is needed than that of usury, by which the Middle Ages meant taking or paying any interest whatever for a loan. It was deamed a heinous crime and in various periods and places was punishable by death. The reasoning was biblical and clear. In a purely agricultural society, money does not beget money as seed and animals beget their kind. To exact interest was therefore to take cruel advantage of another's want, particularly in times of famine, which were frequent.
"But as trade revived and joint-stock expeditions to the East prospered, it became clear that money could beget money, and the church began to find uses and excuses for usury."
Muslims today still consider usury a sin, and support that argument with the Koran. But then, most still live in agrarian societies. Sort of like how even though modern homosexuality is nothing like that in biblical times, modern day conservative Christians continue using the 6 (maybe) citations in the Bible to argue against homosexual acts, even though the acts in the Bible are more related to pedophilia (New Testament) and pagan rituals (Old Testament) then mutual relations for the sake of attraction and/or love. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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Bill scott
SFN Addict
USA
2103 Posts |
Posted - 02/07/2006 : 05:23:01 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dude
quote:
(bill) How can you call me a bigot?
Surely you jest.
Your hatefull rhetoric and intolerant nature are plain for all to see.
If morality is simple left to the majority. i.e. majority rules then the american people have spoken, and homo sex is immoral. So in your world of living and breathing morals that change with the wind the majority of the american people are bigots. |
"Lets get one thing clear, Bill. Science does make some assumptions." -perrodetokio-
"In the end as skeptics we must realize that there is no real knowledge, there is only what is most reasonable to believe." -Coelacanth-
The fact that humans do science is what causes errors in science. -Dave W.-
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 02/07/2006 : 06:25:28 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Bill scott
quote:
Originally posted by Dude
quote:
(bill) How can you call me a bigot?
Surely you jest.
Your hatefull rhetoric and intolerant nature are plain for all to see.
If morality is simple left to the majority. i.e. majority rules then the american people have spoken, and homo sex is immoral. So in your world of living and breathing morals that change with the wind the majority of the american people are bigots.
References please.... What percentage of the American people think that homosexuality is immoral? What percentages simply don't care. What organization(s) ran the study?
And how would you like these pieces of walking, human faeces deciding what your morals should be?
quote:
By CARRIE SPENCER GHOSE
COLUMBUS, Ohio Feb 6, 2006 (AP)— States are rushing to limit when and where people may protest at funerals all because of a small fundamentalist Kansas church whose members picket soldiers' burials, arguing that Americans are dying for a country that harbors homosexuals.
During the 1990s, the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., went around picketing the funerals of AIDS victims with protest signs that read, "God Hates Fags." But politicians began paying more attention recently when church members started showing up at the burials of soldiers and Marines killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Legislation is being considered in at least 14 states, and several of the bills moving quickly, with backing from legislative leaders and governors.
If they pass, the bills could set up a clash between privacy and free speech rights, and court challenges are almost certain.
I wonder if the ACLU will become involved in this, if it goes to court...
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 02/07/2006 : 06:25:38 [Permalink]
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So by your logic we should be doing whatever is most popular wherever we may be? How lame. So you are saying then that if you were born on Lesbos 3000 years ago you would have gladly and morally given your wife and daughters to every member of your party for sexual pleasure?
Not to mention what would be moral in Germany/Rawanda/etc. |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
| Edited by - BigPapaSmurf on 02/07/2006 06:27:46 |
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Bill scott
SFN Addict
USA
2103 Posts |
Posted - 02/07/2006 : 07:59:24 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Siberia
quote:
Originally posted by Bill scott
Right. Like when society says this is immoral and science says it is dangerous and people do it anyway. Their crazy and have no concept of the results they may face for their ignoring of the obvious.
Ah yes, the problem is, people do stupid things. They drive too fast, drink too much, smoke and use drugs quite dangerous and they know it's dangerous. But do it anyway. In spite of indoctrination, in spite of people forcing morality down their throats, in spite of scientific warnings, in spite of themselves. Why? I don't know, but they do.
And even promiscuous people can be relatively safe if they wear protection. So it's not a hazard anymore - except, perhaps, in sub-Saharan Africa.
At least we agree that the presence or lack of homosexuality is irrelevant when it comes to social ills and disease?
Ah yes, the problem is, people do stupid things. They drive too fast, drink too much, smoke and use drugs quite dangerous and they know it's dangerous. But do it anyway. In spite of indoctrination, in spite of people forcing morality down their throats, in spite of scientific warnings, in spite of themselves. Why? I don't know, but they do.
(bill) It is all most as if man has an internal drive to do what is wrong. Hmm???
And even promiscuous people can be relatively safe if they wear protection. So it's not a hazard anymore - except, perhaps, in sub-Saharan Africa.
(bill) I would suspect a big problem in africa is the lack of access to "protection." But I don't know. In the case of the gay american male they have full access to "protection" but many fail or refuse to use it. After all it does restrict the pleasure and sensation level and that is what the unbridled, unrestricted, sleeping around with anyone and everyone lifestyle is all about, pleasure and physical sensations. They value the pleasure of the moment over the future of their health and well being. This is the same for the highly promiscuous hetro as well. They put themselves at risk from this dangerous behavior for pleasure. The general public has called this immoral and the gov. has produced the science that this is dangerous and to engage your playing russian roulette. Yet people in masses deify both and do as they please. People have reported that they seek to escape this type of behavior only to be drawn right back to it. Once they have a taste for the sweet honey is hard not to return. It is all most as if man has an internal drive to do what is wrong. Hmm???
At least we agree that the presence or lack of homosexuality is irrelevant when it comes to social ills and disease?
(bill) We don't agree. In the US sexual transmitted disease is disproportional in the homo community. Alcohol and drug abuse also reek havoc on this community. In most cases it is a highly promiscuous lifestyle where pleasure is the ultimate goal and many times personal safety and health are tossed to the wind in quest for the prize. Hetros who live the same promiscuous lifestyle face many of the same ill effects. Proportionately not the same risks, but the risks are there none the less.
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"Lets get one thing clear, Bill. Science does make some assumptions." -perrodetokio-
"In the end as skeptics we must realize that there is no real knowledge, there is only what is most reasonable to believe." -Coelacanth-
The fact that humans do science is what causes errors in science. -Dave W.-
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Bill scott
SFN Addict
USA
2103 Posts |
Posted - 02/07/2006 : 08:03:18 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by HalfMooner
Siberia Stated: quote:
A little note. Bill, if you've ever studied history, you'd know that in the Dark Ages, in spite of being extremely bound by religion, sex with children was ok. In fact, most girls were married by the age of twelve. In fact, that's a practice that still exists in parts of India and in some indian tribes, here in Brazil for exemple. But in Europe's medieval period, it was quite normal and absolutely not immoral to marry tender girl-children at such age.
In my opinion, that's a good argument for a "societal relativism" hypothesis of morality. My thought is that such early marrying in Medieval times was probably driven by the horrendous infant mortality, plague, famine, and war of the time. Society simply needed every person of even marginal childbearing age to reproduce as much as possible, just to make up for the mortality rates. Much of what was accepted as "moral" then is considered, rightly, immoral now, given our far different societal cirumstances.
Morality has always evolved through history.
Morality has always evolved through history.
(bill) Up or down? Are we working towards that utopian society where evolution comes in full circle, where man, in all his glory, conquers the ills that have plague civilizations since the dawn of time? Well if that is the over all big picture let me inform you that we are going in reverse direction. We have had 1000's of years of "modern civilization" trying to work it all out yet we just came out of one of the most bloodiest centuries the world has ever seen. As our knowledge increases our morals seem to remain status quo at best, and regress at worse. The more our knowledge advances it just seems we come up with more effective ways of killing each other. Back in the day nations went to war with sticks and stones. Now they just build nuclear armed ICBM's where they can eliminate entire cities from the other side of the globe. Man still has the bent to do wrong just as he did in the cave with the stick and stone. Modern technology has just given him the power to do it on a much grander scale. The 21st century seems to be aligning itself for more of the same. Are men more evil these days then in past. No, just now we fight with all kinds of WMD's rather then sticks and stones.
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"Lets get one thing clear, Bill. Science does make some assumptions." -perrodetokio-
"In the end as skeptics we must realize that there is no real knowledge, there is only what is most reasonable to believe." -Coelacanth-
The fact that humans do science is what causes errors in science. -Dave W.-
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Bill scott
SFN Addict
USA
2103 Posts |
Posted - 02/07/2006 : 08:08:10 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by marfknox
Bill keeps saying stuff about how people who think morals are not absolute have no right to make moral judgments of others. That if we do, we are being intolerant. This is a highly ironic contradiction.
Saying something is “intolerant” is itself a moral judgment. If morals are relative, then I can do whatever the hell I damn well feel like.
Saying something is “intolerant” is itself a moral judgment. If morals are relative, then I can do whatever the hell I damn well feel like.
(bill) Exactly mark. That is why I said it in jest. The homo crowd loves to scream "intolerant". Anybody who calls homo sex immoral is just "intolerant." Yet when asked about nambla they will say this behavior is immoral. They have just made a judgement on nambla based on their own morality, which they somehow have concluded trumps namblas morality. They do this just after chiding hetros as being "intolerant bigots" for calling homo sex immoral. (sigh)
A world where morals come and go and change with the wind is just another way of saying that morals are relative. If morals are relative then no one can make a judgement on any immoral/moral issue. The homos will say we don't call homo sex immoral so who are you to force your morals on us. The child molester will say they are not involved in a immoral act and who are you to pass moral judgment on me when I don't even subscribe to the notion that child/sex is wrong?
Yes it is illegal, but so was homo sex and that was their battle cry, "intolerance". PC took over and common sense was ejected and before you know it, despite that fact that the american society had deemed it immoral with a majority and that science and stats have labeled it a dangerous activity to your health the gov. "legalized" homo sex with the help of activist judges.
Now that homo sex has been declared legal despite that the fact that it was illegal and immoral in america what is to stop the nambla gang from going the exact same path and winning? The fact that it is illegal means squat as homo sex was illegal as well. What is to stop people who want to have sex with their farm animals from using the homo logic to proceed in their "cause"? What is to stop farmers who want maritial status for their sheep they have a relationship with? Were all are just animals so you can't deny the sheep his full rights as the farmers domestic partner. The homo crowd will say that is just being silly, but how can you say that?. Have you made a judgment that homo sex is moral and deserves legalization while farmer horse sex is immoral and should not be legal. Same for child/adult who wants to advance the child/adult relationship to a legal level. By who's standard have you judged child/adult sex immoral? |
"Lets get one thing clear, Bill. Science does make some assumptions." -perrodetokio-
"In the end as skeptics we must realize that there is no real knowledge, there is only what is most reasonable to believe." -Coelacanth-
The fact that humans do science is what causes errors in science. -Dave W.-
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