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Author | Topic: Moral Relativism | |||||||||||||||||||||||
nator Member (Idle past 2199 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Sure, I might be wrong. I am pretty sure that it is the correct moral stance because of what I have learned about the system, talking to other people about it, my moral upbringing, my sense of fairness, etc. I'm a work in progress and always will be.
quote: It has been well-known for a long time that the death penalty is not a deterrant to crime. The US has the most citizens incarcerated as a percentage of our population, by far, compared to other Western nations. We tend to like to spend lots and lots of money building prisons and incarcerating people instead of spending less money on after school programs, education, literacy and job training, drug treatment, and other preventative programs.
quote: My morality is based upon doing and supporting that which harms the fewest people and helps the most.
quote: No, I can't be certain, but I have never heard an alternative morality that even makes ssense to me.
quote: Yes, I can imagine a situation like that.
quote: What does this mean?
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Hangdawg13 Member (Idle past 781 days) Posts: 1189 From: Texas Joined: |
Humans having a "sense" of right and wrong may be universal, but this is not at all the same thing as saying that a given conception of right and wrong are universal, objective, and not man made. So what do you believe constitutes "right"? and how did this sense evolve?
You can explain any and every moral or ethical dilemma by invoking mysteries, miracles, justice in the afterlife, etc. I'm not talking about any of that. I'm talking about day to day life and death.
Unless you can show me that algorithm into which you plug all the relevant factors and you get a "right or wrong" solution, you have no absolute morality. There are a variety of values, or as Jar said a moral foundation, upon which the circumstances can be reviewed to divide right from wrong. Almost everyone has a scale of values. It takes a properly constructed scale of values and set of virtues, plus humility, and wisdom to "process" the "relevant factors" to get a right or wrong solution. There are a set of absolute virtues and proper scale of values that upon application will yield the "right" solution. For example: You being an atheist believes that there is no afterlife. You believe that this life that we are experiencing right now is all we will ever have. This places a premium value of a "good" life on your scale. This leads to a variety of different philosophies, some of which seem contradictory to a person of my beliefs. You may want to abstain from something like capital punishment for fear of wrongly killing one innocent person, thus depriving that innocent person of "the good life". On the other hand, if a fetus is doomed to grow up in a bad society with unprepared teenage parents, it is better to end that life because the chances are it will not be "good". Your placement of this life so high on your scale of values also leads to other philosophies that people who believe in God deem cowardly. If, as Maximus Decimus Meridius said, "what we do in this life echoes in eternity" then our virtues and beliefs may become more important to us than life itself. The athiest may be less willing to fight and die for virtues and beliefs when all virtues are relative anyway and there is nothing to believe in.
You may believe this, but you cannot show me this objectively. Well, neither can you objectively show me that the qualities of right and wrong are products of evolution, so I guess its a stalemate.
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nator Member (Idle past 2199 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: I'm not sure what you mean.
quote: It evolved along with all the other social senses and emotions we have as a means to communicate and interact with each other, and they also tend to maintain clan or group identification.
quote: I'm with you up to this point.
quote: OK. Show me. Show me this unchanging absolute.
quote: Actually, being an Agnostic, I don't know if there's an afterlife or not, and I further do not believe that anyone can know if there is an afterlife or not. ...but for argument's sake, we can pretend that I am an Atheist.
quote: Of course, the Christian may be less willing to fight and die for virtues and beliefs because they believe that they are "saved", and thus guaranteed a place in heaven. They may therefore be more willing to be complacent and silent in the face of injustice and inequity because the people being treated badly aren't also "saved", say, or because they do not believe they have to do good works towards their fellow man to earn their place in heaven. So, Both Christians and Atheists may be less willing to fight and die for virtues and beliefs, but for completely different reasons. More moral relativism.
quote: Ah, but yes, I can certinly objectively show you evidence to suggest that a sense of right and wrong are products of evolution. This so so cool!...
"MONKEYS REJECT UNEQUAL PAY" SARAH F. BROSNAN AND FRANS B. M. DE WAAL Living Links, Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30329, USA Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to S.F.B. (sbrosna@emory.edu). During the evolution of cooperation it may have become critical for individuals to compare their own efforts and pay-offs with those of others. Negative reactions may occur when expectations are violated. One theory proposes that aversion to inequity can explain human cooperation within the bounds of the rational choice model, and may in fact be more inclusive than previous explanations. Although there exists substantial cultural variation in its particulars, this 'sense of fairness' is probably a human universal that has been shown to prevail in a wide variety of circumstances. However, we are not the only cooperative animals, hence inequity aversion may not be uniquely human. Many highly cooperative nonhuman species seem guided by a set of expectations about the outcome of cooperation and the division of resources. Here we demonstrate that a nonhuman primate, the brown capuchin monkey (Cebus apella), responds negatively to unequal reward distribution in exchanges with a human experimenter. Monkeys refused to participate if they witnessed a conspecific obtain a more attractive reward for equal effort, an effect amplified if the partner received such a reward without any effort at all. These reactions support an early evolutionary origin of inequity aversion. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...nkeyfairness.html#main
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General Nazort Inactive Member |
Well, then, I guess that we Agnostics and Atheists are just a lot more concerned with our effect on other people. It seems that your God likes followers who are kind of weak in the responsibility department. I mean, you just told me that it's more important to get forgiveness to God than the person you wronged, but who sufffers more from your wrong? The person or God? Man, I thought that Christians were all about stepping up to the ethical and moral plate, but I guess not. Please don't mischaracterize Christianity. Of COURSE we are concerned with personal responsibility, ethics, morals, and the effect we have on other people. I NEVER said we were not. I would argue that we are actually MORE concerned about how we treat others because we want to be good representatives for our God and make Christianity attractive. However, when you ask a question like "what is more important being forgiven by humans or being forgiven by God" I am going to answer what is more important in the eternal scheme of things. And again, let me emphasize that a crime agaist a fellow human is ALSO a crime against God. God feels each and every sin against him and is deeply saddened, and angered, by them. You should ask for forgiveness FROM BOTH humans and God. Hangdawg says:
Actually, I must correct the general here. Forgiving others is a requirement of being forgiven by God. Agreed. I was talking about asking for forgiveness, not forgiving. ______________________________________________________________________ We are getting kinda off track, I want to get back on track and try to reach a consensus as to the answer of the original question. The question is: Is moral relativism a valid view? Moral relativism is being defined as "There exists no source of moral absolutes." Here is a question I would like ya'll to answer, then I will try to go on from there to try to illustrate my anwer to the question of moral relativism. Here is the question: are the moralities of some people better than the moralities of other people? (Think groups of poeple like tribes, nations, etc) {Shortened long line of "_", to restore page width to normal - Adminnemooseus} This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 08-05-2004 03:47 PM If you say there are no absolutes, I ask you, are you absolutely sure about that?
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jar Member (Idle past 424 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
General Nazort writes: Here is the question: are the moralities of some people better than the moralities of other people? (Think groups of poeple like tribes, nations, etc) I don't think you can do much comparing groups or Nations except when you look at the extreme outliers. For example you can say that the Nazis were immoral. You could say that Japan during the Imperial phase when they invaded China, Mongolia, Korea behaved immorally. But you can look at just about every Nation and find examples of immoral behavior. I don't think that you would get very far trying to discuss Nations or even groups in general. Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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nator Member (Idle past 2199 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Perhaps, but Christians often believe they are "saved" and are guaranteed a place in heaven. There is a gret deal of the gay hate and woman hate that many Christians promote and practice as they feel they are justified by their religion to do so. It sure seems like a wash to me between the Christians and the non-believers.
quote: And again, I will say that this stance is not as good for our society, and thus less moral, because you are more concerned with youself than you are with others. Ultimately, that's a self-centered attitude.
quote: Well, what's a "crime against a fellow human" to a Christian? Is it a "crime against a fellow human" to require a woman to submit her adult will to men? Is it a "crime against a fellow human" to work to pass legislation to deny a segment of our population the same rights as you have? I would say so, but a Christian quite likely would not. They would justify and rationalize their "crime against a fellow human" with the Bible. ...and thus, moral relativism.
quote: Why? God sounds pretty human.
quote: But if given a choice, you only REALLY have to get forgiveness from God.
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: Ah, I see, that makes ALL the difference. As long as you do it in cold blood, it's just killing, and thats not wrong.
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: Your words, 'Dawg, and I will hold you to them. This message has been edited by contracycle, 08-05-2004 10:02 AM
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bob_gray Member (Idle past 5043 days) Posts: 243 From: Virginia Joined: |
schrafinator writes: The US has the most citizens incarcerated as a percentage of our population, by far, compared to other Western nations. Actually the US has the most citizens incarcerated as a percentage of the population as compared to _ANY_ other nation in the world.
General Nazort writes: Here is the question: are the moralities of some people better than the moralities of other people? (Think groups of poeple like tribes, nations, etc) Jar’s reply not withstanding I think it is possible to look at the morality of a society to some degree. For example, it could be argued that the German society from 1937 to 1945 was less moral than ours because they had a much higher rate of government sponsored murder. It would all depend on which metric you want to use to measure your morality. If we look at modern US society we could argue that we are less moral than say Netherlands because they don’t incarcerate non violent drug users and we do. But once again it all depends on your metric. If your system of morality says that drug use is bad and all drug users should be shot in the street then you would say that the Netherlands is less moral that the US and the US is less moral than Malaysia. Morality is relative. Or getting back to Shraf’s question about government spending we could ask if it is moral for our society to spend more money on incarcerating people than it does on educating them? Can you apply some sort of moral absolute to this question. Is there an absolute moral ratio of spending which is good and all others are of varying degrees of bad? Once again morality is relative.
schrafinator writes: My morality is based upon doing and supporting that which harms the fewest people and helps the most. I think this is a fair metric for judging morality.
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bob_gray Member (Idle past 5043 days) Posts: 243 From: Virginia Joined: |
Nope. The wrong version of killing a person even has its own special word: murder. Killing is okay in a just war, self-defense, and capital punishment.
And how do you measure a "just war"? Can you specify one and explain how, in terms of your absolute morality, it was just? And suppose someone is engaged in one of these "just wars" is all killing OK? If civilians get killed as a result of faulty intelligence who is morally responsible? The person who dropped the bomb, the one who provided the intelligence, the one who ordered the attack, or the one who started the war? And if you kill many civilians in a "just war" does it become unjust?
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5938 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
General Nazort
What? How is it opposite when it is the same? You say Christianity is A, and doing A is the exact opposite of A. A being escaping your responsibilty of sin. That makes no sense. Sorry GN, What I was getting at is that as a christian one is offered the opportunity to take ones sins and pass them off upon the person you claim you love most in your life.In other words you are willing to take the burden of the sin you would have had to spend time in hell over and pass it on to christ that He may bear the burden.The fact that it is offered does not mean that one should accept and when I was young and concerned with such illusions I felt that my choice not to accept was based on a "nobler" purpose, that of choice between taking my own punishment{as I was raised} and allowing someone else to pay for my mistakes{which has never been my creed}.
Why do you believe God does not exist? That is a difficult question to answer someone who goes by means of belief.I did not simply stop believing in God. I gave up on the notion of belief itself as a means of understanding of the world around me and most certainly as a means of actually understanding the dynamics of relationships between people and nations. It is far more plausible and evidentiary to state that religions and the positive and negative aspects of their different points of view are the result of strictly human forces and persuasions.The world is a far more marvelous place when viewed through eyes free of labels being placed upon people and when we see that people are not so different in the things that really matter. The world is also far more interesting through the scientific frame of mind and far more independant of human egos and fears though this is not to say that such does not occur but the actual insistence of peer review and the ability to test and by means of testing get clearer and clearer views over time is extraordinary.Religions have shown me over my short life naught but confusion and backpedaling and as such I no longer place any trust in such matters. I hope this makes things more concise and lucid. This message has been edited by sidelined, 08-05-2004 12:55 PM
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Hangdawg13 Member (Idle past 781 days) Posts: 1189 From: Texas Joined: |
Thank you for your reply.
And how do you measure a "just war"? Can you specify one and explain how, in terms of your absolute morality, it was just? Well, I would cite the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but I'm afraid that would cause this discussion to spin off of the topic of moral relativism and onto specifics of morality and polotics. This message has been edited by Hangdawg13, 08-05-2004 01:06 PM
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5938 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
General Nazort
No, he was engaging in an act of war, an act of killing, not murder. He did not kill them out of anger. He had a valid reason to - he had been told by his military officers to do so in order to remove a threat So if we can pass the burden of responsibility off to superior entities we may then absolve ourselves of responsibility for our actions.? If innocents die as a result of those actions is our responsibility still passed on to those superiors or is this wishful thinking used to accomodate the horror of the implementation of war?
In this scenarios, was the shopkeepers family the threat or did the bomb accidently kill them? No way to know but since his family was collateral damage{what a wonderful way to dismiss the carnage of high explosive effects upon soft human flesh} in a bombing run meant to destroy another we must consider them civilian innocents. "O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it..." [Mark Twain, "The War Prayer"]
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jar Member (Idle past 424 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
sidelined writes: In other words you are willing to take the burden of the sin you would have had to spend time in hell over and pass it on to christ that He may bear the burden. Again, that is not quite how a religous person likely sees it. Instead, the salvation given through Christ is a gift, freely given. It is not the sinner simply passing the burden over to Christ, but rather Christ who offers to help us bear such a burden. Again, from the BCP, this is the prelude to confession.
quote: Note that it applies to those who truly and earnestly repent. The actual confession is as follows.
quote: This is certainly not simply passing something over.
sidelined writes: The world is also far more interesting through the scientific frame of mind and far more independant of human egos and fears though this is not to say that such does not occur but the actual insistence of peer review and the ability to test and by means of testing get clearer and clearer views over time is extraordinary.Religions have shown me over my short life naught but confusion and backpedaling and as such I no longer place any trust in such matters. I think you might be misstating the role of religion in that. Religion is involved in the question of WHY, not how. With the exception of a few small but vocal sects, there is no conflict between religion and science. Things like TOE or any other field of endevor are simply tool used to determine how things happened. The moral question on the otherhand, is a region where religion can and does play a part. The Buddhist concept of enlightenment is applicable even to Christian theology. But religion in no way is a hindrance to gaining knowledge when it comes to the wonderous world around us. As an example, this is from the 1979 edition of the BCP.
quote: Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5938 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
jar
Religion is involved in the question of WHY, not how. With the exception of a few small but vocal sects, there is no conflict between religion and science. Things like TOE or any other field of endevor are simply tool used to determine how things happened I agree that religions say they are involved in the WHY but religions do not have any consensus of agreement concerning the WHY and IMHO this amounts to useless information. I have found in my life that religious peole CAN be {of course not always} the most brutal backstabbing of people and atheists for instance CAN be{of course not always}be selfless and morally complete in their actions.However atheists do not claim to have a secret that gives them moral guidance that subsequently is shown to be false. This is not to say that religion does no good just that it is not necessary to be religious to find purpose in life and we should not forget that there are religions that directly oppose each others conclusions and so what does it really mean to say that these books and rituals and observances deal with the WHY of life when the conclusions can be diametrically opposed. As to this item
Almighty and everlasting God, you made the universe with all its marvelous order, its atoms, worlds, and galaxies, and the infinite complexity of living creatures: Grant that, as we probe the mysteries of your creation, we may come to know you more truly, and more surely fulfill our role in your eternal purpose; in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. =Amen.= This says nothing of a why but it sure does intrude in on how does it not? It is obviously making a statement that is not to be evidenced in reality unless one first believes that a God exisits and even then only in the context of belief which is a product of our imagination. Consider this. God requires belief in order to give it the semblence of reality and yet reality and the things we discover in the world can be resolved without first having a belief.Jump off a cliff and gravity will carry you to youre doom whether you belief in it or not.The electomagnetic force will insure that doom by stopping your downward plunge in an instant.Of course the position of the christian religion conveniently excuses the ability to testing the presence of God by saying to step off a cliff so that God may catch you is "tempting" your God.But in the same book we have this statement by the very central core of the belief engine that christians adhere to christ himself. Mar 11:23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith Therefore I must ask a simple question and perhaps even open up another thread. Why do all of you doubt this ability when the very person you claim has forgiven you your sins {but only if you really believe which you cannot do UNLESS you believe with all your heart} has said you can do it.Why the hell have you not fixed the problems of the world through simply saying that by your absolute trust in God {which is part and parcel of being forgiven by God in the first place} this shall end? Fill in your own blanks as to what must end war,famine,colored contact lenses get NIKE and do it already! Or maybe it is all just an illusion Hmmm..
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