Acriku
Maverick's Chew Toy
I am the law.
Posts: 35
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Post by Acriku on Feb 26, 2004 16:42:04 GMT -5
I don't know why he should care about our opinion, or if it matters whether he cares about it or not.
I think roots of the debate absolute morality v relative morality may lie in our beliefs toward a higher being.
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Ginnsu
Maverick's Chew Toy
Posts: 47
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Post by Ginnsu on Mar 7, 2004 15:16:45 GMT -5
People who think that morals are relative have no argument for rationally debating the matter. All they have is "get her"! So I am taking the argument ad absurdum on this one... A good ethics should have a way to argue good and evil. Even the brainless have "get her"... You know what I mean? Relative ethics is castrated ethics. I think we need to do better. If Ted Bundy's take on good and evil is as good as mine, I might as well slash my wrists! I would have to agree with tamara. In the culture where children kill their parents before they become decrepit, they would consider this a morally right act because they parents "go to a better place" young, healthy and vigorous rather then unhealthy. The theory being that if you arrive in the after life healthy, you will enjoy it more then if you arrive unhealthy and have to suffer in the condition you died with. I have to retract that statement. I don't truely agree with tamara. Ted Bundy's take on moral values is only not as good as tamara's because the masses have the opinion that tamara's is better. I do agrree with the masses, however, had we evolved differently we could have ended up with a moral standard completely different from the one we know. One that would seem totally absurd, such as the one tamara presented where a woman lives off murders of old men whom she marries then kills in clever ways. Sounds strangly akin to the mating rituals of the Black Widow Spider, no? I know it's hard to grasp the idea that the entire human race could have evolved in such a manner that this would be considered morally right by intelligent beings, and who knows, maybe in any scenario where this would take place it would be an impossibility because we'd kill ourselves off before we evolved. But many things are hard to grasp, sometimes even impossible. Of course I'm not suggesting that anybody slash their wrists. Nor do I see a reason to. I think it comes down to a matter of opinion, that is built upon the instinctual habbits of the human race, brought about by years of evolution and natural selection. Of course, on different levels it is not just biological processes that expand this, but also parental upbringing and numerous other influences. Which is the reason that a Ted Bundy is possible. Between gene deficiencies, absentee or poorly supported/informed parents, and the pressures of society, there is much room for "error" if I may use that term. But this also shows why nobody is perfect. I'd like to present the idea that maybe our evolved intelligence impedes the moral mindset of a Black Widow style senario being morally acceptable, but I don't know enough, nor can I think of a way to test this idea and explain it in any way that makes any sense. If anybody else has ideas or refutations to my idea, please do offer and explain. :-)
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coolguy
Maverick's Chew Toy
Posts: 26
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Post by coolguy on Mar 24, 2004 5:42:03 GMT -5
Not everything passed down is sensible. Slavery was passed down over millennia, Aristotle thought it was fine, etc... Laws and morals are two different things. Some laws are right, others are wrong and ought to be opposed. Funny that you mentioned Aristotle - he did not ever say "slavery is fine". In his writings he said that "slavery is natural" just as it is natural for some men to force animals (like horses or oxen) to do work for them it is also natural for some men to force other men to do work for them. He never said that it is OK for one man to force another man to do anything. He never said slavery was OK. You don't seem to understand Aristotle very well, although you at least knew that he had said something that is kind of shocking to people today about slavery, which is more than most people know about him. Anyway, I quite agree with him, slavery was quite natural. Men enslaved other men for millenia, and still do, they just have to use fancier words every time the enslaved figure out what's up and try to do something about it. Natural doesn't mean fine, or OK, or Right, just as traditional doesn't mean Right. Rape and subjugation of women is natural. Incest is natural. Murder is natural. Homophobia and racism are natural. Slavery is natural (and traditional). I'm sure Aristotle would have said these are all natural, but he never said they were "fine" (meaning ethical, or morally acceptable). Anything that is natural has remained traditional until people rationally determined that something was amiss with their moral compass and altered it. I hope you return to this board someday before I get bored with it, because you seem very interesting and smart. I think where it comes from makes all the difference. I think it doesn't "come" from anywhere. It has to be rationally determined and then agreed upon and "enforced." You're telling me that rules that resulted in punishing women for perfectly ethical and moral behavior by stoning them to death came from God or from a bitter/sweet moral mechanism in the mind? Sheesh. Why didn't the bitter/sweet moral mechanism of the mind detect that slavery was wrong over the thousands of years when slavery was considered OK? Up until the 19th century it was OK, according to Christians, to act naturally and slave other people. Until the 20th century, according to Christians, it was OK to act naturally and rape or beat your wife. This is not that long ago, this is not ancient history, it's US history. It was still OK, last century, according to Christians, to act naturally and hate other people based on color. It is still OK, according to Christians, to act naturally and persecute homosexuals, to wish them death and to treat them like sub-humans. Human beings are animals, and by nature do animalistic things. The human mind, the cognitive capability is what makes man different from animals, not some mystical power transmitted to us from God. The human mind is what has determined what is morally OK and what isn't, because without someone determining those things, we would just be a bunch of wild monkeys running around in the jungles fucking each other and killing each other and stealing each others' bananas. Instead because some of us have used our brains over the past 80,000 years, we're a bunch of very nicely groomed monkeys wearing invisible leashes who rarely kill or steal and most don't get to laid enough either, but some have really nice toys and all the bananas they'll ever need. When someone determines, logically, that some type of bahavior, like raping women, is wrong (it was probably a woman that figured that one out), then that person has to share that logical information with someone else, and get them to understand how and why it is wrong, and then they convince other people, and eventually, the public opinion changes, and eventually raping women gets outlawed. It's the same with little kids... your parents explain why it is wrong to poke your brother in the eye with a fork... because it hurts and you wouldn't want him doing it to you - it's logical that it's wrong, even if it is natural to poke your brother in the eye with a fork when he takes your favorite toy. God's not innately telling the little kid it is wrong to poke your brother in the eye, and there is no morality meter mechanism in the mind saying it is wrong (the natural (innate) thing to do is to hurt the brother back). If the parent can't reason to the little animal-kid, then the parent shows the kid that he's a lot bigger and can cause the kid a lot of pain if his moral guidelines aren't adhered to. I wonder if Aristotle thought the knowledge of good and evil comes naturally, or by osmosis from God, or what he thought of that? It's obvious to me it doesn't come naturally, but by millenia of trial and error, as men improve the moral compasses they make, as they notice what came naturally or what had been traditional was flawed and compensate for those flaws. The Bible never said anything about it being wrong to subjugate or rape or even kill women... that right there should show how dated (as a philosophy) it is, and should show that it did not come from some omniscient god (an omniscient god should know what is right and what is wrong, even if men did not yet know).
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