as i said, absurd. i'm agnostic, don't believe in god. my morals are every bit as high as yours. after all i think murder is morally wrong even without accepting the existence of god.

Respectfully, I don't think you understand my arguments.

I never implied that you have to believe in God to have good morals. I said that for moral absolutes to exist, God must exist. I don't doubt your morality and you are possibly more moral than I am in my day to day life. But that has nothing to do with the discussion.

Is murder always wrong, in every case? If so, then murder is a moral absolute. The question is where do moral absolutes come from? A moral absolute cannot be the result of a nature, since it is always true. If murder is wrong due to evolution, then it wouldn't be absolute, because evolution could change the morality and make murder the right thing. Moral absolutes cannot be the result of societies, because the morality of cultures changes with time. There is no explanation for a moral absolute other than that they were created by a supreme being and placed within the minds of people. That's the point I was making. I hope I have explained it more clearly.

Spider...

You stated earlier that absolute morals exist, but in another post also said that there is no such a thing as absolute morality.

Could you clarify this?

Are you saying that because some people believe that wrong is always wrong, and right is always right that absolute morals exist?

Are you accepting the fact that different individuals have different ideas of what constitutes right and wrong?

Earlier I conceded to the proposition that rape is always wrong. That is not sufficient evidence to conclude that absolute morals exist. That just means that I personally think it is always wrong.

Why is rape wrong?

Earlier you mentioned the personal dignity factor. Are you implying that negatively affecting one's personal dignity is always wrong?

So many questions...

Absolute morality doesn't exist, except maybe in God. Morality, remember, is how you go about doing right. If I said that absolute morality exists, I mistyped.

What I believe does exist are moral absolutes. That is "Rape is always wrong", "Murder is always wrong", etc.



No, it's a judgment call. I think one moral that everyone can agree on is that you should treat others as you want to be treated. This moral is the foundation of society. Why join a society where you can be mistreated? We see societies like this, but they are always controlled by force. Only those who are allowed to abuse others actually want to be there.



I believe everyone has their own moral code, but I think everyone knows the moral absolutes. I see no evidence to make me think otherwise. Sociopaths hide the fact that they torture animals, a behavior that starts very early in life, usually with very small animals or insects. I think the fact that they hide what they do is evidence that they know it is wrong. It's not murder, but it's not far from it. I think that people are aware of when they violate a moral absolute, but they can always choose to ignore it. To quiet their conscience, they will often come up with excuses. I've never heard of a rapist saying "I wanted to rape her", they say "She was leading me on".



Correct. But I believe from observation we can see a clear moral code that the human species is universally aware of. I think that the action of the conscience can be seen from children to adults. Criminals and saints alike.



That's one reason. Dignity in the sense of "an innate right to respect and ethical treatment". But I think we all have an innate understanding that we should treat others as we desire to be treated. As to why we should do this, that's the question. The biggest and the strongest could rule with force as they often have. That's how the apes live, with a pecking order and all knowing their place. But it's so ingrained into human nature that we deserve to be treated fairly, that it cannot simply be the result of evolution. If it was evolutionary, then we would be more like the bonobos. We don't always see a drive to treat each other fairly, but we all cry out to be treated fairly.

I guess I have to say, that I can't say the reason rape is wrong. Rape is just wrong. Unless you want me to say "Because God wants it that way", because I'm more than willing to believe that.

I mentioned earlier and James further hit on it as well...

Doesn't moral judgment always regard the element of intentionally harming another?

Suicide hurts no one.

If you murdered a person and hid the body, it wouldn't hurt anyone to lie.

If you lied to your wife to prevent her from knowing that you cheated, you would be saving her pain.

I just think that morality applies regardless of if you want to intentionally hurt someone.

The curious thing about this position is that in some cases, moral absolutes are totally irrelevant. It is obvious that it is possible to conceive of a situation where no morally right action is possible. In such situations, moral absolutes serve no purpose whatsoever. One has no choice but to fall back on moral relativism. So what we actually have is the ironic situation where moral relativism must come to the rescue when moral absolutism fails to provide a solution.

Based on what you wrote here you have a very different idea of what it means to 'harm' someone than I do. So that certianly explains a lot.



The Wicca Rede applys to harming yourself as well as harming others. If you consider it to be ok to take your own life then why should it be wrong to kill another?



Based on this it sounds like you don't feel that there is anything wrong with murder as long as you don't lie about it.

The harm has already been done.



Again, you don't seem to even understand why cheating is wrong in and of itself.

If you cheat on your wife and didn't tell her, there are many things that could go wrong to harm her.

First off, you're already lying to her by the very act since you had vowed to love only her when you married her. So the very act of cheating is already causing you to have broke a oath which is the same as lying.

Second, the very act of not telling her could harm her. You'd not giving her the option to refuse to continue to be intimate with her because of this act, and therefore she could contract a disease that you have picked up from our infidel relationship.

Third, by not telling her the truth, you are living a lie. Should she happen to discover this eventually, not only will she be harmed by the act, but she will be doubly harmed by your deceit.

~~~

So as far as I can see, you don't even understand the basic concepts of 'harm'. You appear to be extremely short-sighted in what constitute harm.

When Wiccan's say to harm none, they mean it. They aren't speaking superficially.

James,

You somehow missed the context.

My post was in relation to what CreativeSoul said:



My examples were all cases where another person may not be intentionally harmed, but it is still a sin.

Insults and libel aside, your "rebuttal" of my post is actually just backing up my position.

Let's take my examples one at a time:



My example was to show that someone could kill him/her self without intentionally causing harm to others.



I'm not sure if you are trying to upset me or simply not thinking. My point is that the LIE wouldn't hurt anyone in the case. The murder wasn't even important in this analogy, it was simply something for the lie to be about.



Once again you have completely missed the point. It's possible that a situation could exist when the only harm that could be caused to the wife would be by telling her the truth. The damage to their relationship and the violation to their marriage vows wouldn't be evident unless she found out about the affair.

These were simply examples of how one could sin without intent of hurting another. How many cheating wives / husbands have ever said "I didn't mean to hurt you" and meant it? Sometimes someone doesn't intentionally hurt another, they simply don't care if they do.

Spider, I strongly disagree with the idea that "suicide generally hurts no one but the person who did it".

Having murdered someone, the act of lying about it afterwards may seem to not do harm onto itself, but it (like all lies) undermines a semi-consensual system by which people prevent others from harming themselves/others. The act of undermining that system is, in itself, harmful, in my view.

In the case of cheating on one's wife, it is absolutely true that one is sparing the wife immediately emotional pain if successfully lying about it, but the principle of undermining trust is even greater. If someone gets a great deal of emotional satisfaction in life by being in (or believing their are in) a trust relationship, the act of lying tangibly erodes the foundation for that. To me, this is harming that person. There is subtly as to whether its 'really' harming them 'if they never find out', but one is certainly creating a situation where greater harm becomes possible. Besides, people pick things up subconsciously, even if they are in denial about it.

Please disregard previous post.

Maybe I didn't word that well, but I still can't understand how you and James both came to the same conclusion. It didn't seem strange that a Christian would be defending murder or adultery? I just think that you really have to pay attention to the context in which the answers are supplied to understand what is being said.

Anyways, thanks for understanding my explanation to James, I'm glad that was clearer anyways.

It's wrong because my 'God' says so.

Damn it. I messed up.

It's absolutely wrong because my 'God' says so.

Two things.

1) There is an edit button.

2) Who said the above quote?

I did, tell me why I am wrong.

Take three!

Well, I have to agree with you on one thing. I certain don't understand you.

You ask, How many cheating wives / husbands have ever said "I didn't mean to hurt you" and meant it?"

My answer would be Zero!

Any husband who thought that cheating on his wife wouldn't hurt her would need to be seriously mentally deficient.

Such a man would also be free of any sin.

This is another thing about a mythology that has a God casting sinners in to a hell fire. They are supposed to have knowingly made the choice to sin.

Well, if they didn't even understand that what they did was wrong, then they couldn't have been knowingly sinning.

For a God the old adage "Ignorance of the law is no excuse" can't work. A person necessarily must know that they are being defiant of their creator, otherwise they couldn't be held accountable.

This is precisely why those examples you give in the Bible don't justify God. It's not going to work to have God allowing people to be harmed when they aren't even aware that they are doing something wrong.

For example, the Biblical God could not hold me responsible for rejecting the Bible as his word (even if he actually exists).

The reason is quite simple. I'm not "rejecting" that God anymore than I'm "rejecting" Zeus. I've looked at all the material available and decided that no genuinely divine all-wise being could be as supid as the Bible demands.

To be cast into hell for having made a sane and healthy judgment on an absurd mythology would be a gross unrighteous act.

Since the Biblical God is supposedly incapable of committing such grossly unjust acts, there is no way that God could hold me repsonsible for having made a perfectly sane and reasonable decision.

Therefore, by the very fokelore itself, it would be impossible for that God to be mean to me when I've done nothing 'wrong' knowingly.

He would need to send an innocent soul to hell which would be an unrighteous act. But he's not supposed to be able to commit and unrighteous act because he's supposedly a rightesous God.

The whole story falls apart by the very simple fact that this God is supposed to be mean toward non-believers. That's an unrighteous act right there and flies in the face of what the God is supposed to be.

So the very basis of the religion is a gross contradition.

Plus your claims here that withholding truths from a loving partner is not harming them is also totally absurd as far as I'm concern.

You're stealing their sovereignty by giving them false information to make their decisions.

Lies harm people!

If you think they don't then why do you think they would be wrong?

You just have no understanding of harm. You're attempting to reduce 'harm' to only the obvious physical kind of harm. There are many ways to harm people and lying to someone that you are in a consecrated relationship is definitely harming them.

So I totally disagree with your absurd notions of what constitutes harm and what does not.

And that just futher fuels the truth that no two humans can even agree on what's absolutely right or absolutely wrong.

We can't even agree, so there you have it. Case closed.

In spidey's defense, he was merely asserting contradictions to what I had posted regarding intentionally harming another.