If you interepreted what I said as any sort of confirmation that absolute right and wrong exist, then you misunderstood my intention.

Well I, personally, don’t happen to agree with those definitions.

But even so, comparing rape/murder/theft to table manners only helps to illustrate that right and wrong are always relative.

The logical implication of that is by doing nothing, we can never be “wrong”. Thus, we should all follow the example of Pontius Pilate – by simply washing our hands of any difficult situation we find ourselves in, we can never be “wrong”.

Well I don’t agree with that stance. Personally, I think two murders are more wrong than one murder – regardless of who is responsible.

Replace “kill” with “rape” (or anything else you want) in my example. The exact same reasoning applies.

Your blind spot is that every human being has free will. In just one example, the people of Canaan were warned that the land had been given to the Israelites by God, but they refused to leave. This was described in Joshua, by Rahab the prostitution. She told Joshua's men that they had all had the same dream warning them of the coming Israelites. The people of Canaan who choose to stay, knew that they were defying God's will in doing so.

Well it may not be an option from your viewpoint, but it is the only option from mine.

Well babies have been killed for reasons that the killers through were “right”. So it is not true “that everyone would agree that killing a child is wrong”. Now if I said or implied that, I was wrong.

If it were true, then it would be simply because every single sane human has the same purposes – to further the survival of the race.

And you believe that they would all come to the same conclusions? All sane people live different lives, but somehow come to the same conclusions about morality?

With all due respect, I don't accept this explanation as an excuse for the biblical God's stupidity.

We're supposed to be concerned with the ideal of "perfection" here.

It is my position that any God who allows heathens to continue to have babies for 400 years whilst he waits for them to start worshiping him is already an idiot. All he had to do was make those people sterile and within a single generation they would have all been gone.

In fact, the same method could have been done at the time of the Great Flood.

An omnipotent god who allows heathens to continue to procreate and freely continues to place new 'souls' into their babies would be an idiot, IMHO.

And then to expect his good people to murder them off in a bloody war is even stupider yet.

I seen absolutely no excuses for such nonsense. If this God was supposed to be all-wise, and all-perfect, then his idea of wisdom and perfection do not match up with my idea of those concepts.

From my point of view the very behavior of the Biblical God is the kind of behavior I would expect from a barroom drunkard who has absolutely no clue how to do anything right.

It's certainly not the behavior that I would expect from an all-wise, all-perfect supremem being.

I know mortal men who have far greater wisdom than what is displayed by the tales of the Biblical God.

Like I say, if God is supposed to be perfect, then we can rule out the Bible as having anything to do with God. Clearly the God described in the Bible is anything but wise.

On the contrary, that is the very basis of my own personal philosophy and beliefs regarding right and wrong.

If we're accusing others of having blind spots here, I would say that your blind spot is in assuming that there is some entity outside yourself that is responsible for your life.

Whether or not I believe it, it's a fairly easily observed fact that they actually do.

That is, if we're still talking about the "right or wrong of baby killing" issue.

If we've now switched to the topic of morals in general, then it is still a fairly easily observed fact that not all people come to the same conclusions about morality in general, because not all people belong to the same groups and different groups have different purposes.

But that's the fallacy right there. It's not true that all people come to the same conclusions. That's a false argument that people try to make concerning extremely obvious things like harming innocent babies, etc.

When it comes to the more complex issues of morality and ethics people disagree wildly.

Just look at the Mediterranean religions alone, Judaism, Islam, Catholicism, and the myriad of opposing factions of Protestanism all disagree on many moral issues.

Consider even further the rest of humanity with Eastern Mysicism, Wicca, etc., and you've got even more disagreements on precisely what is moral and what isn't.

So it's a false argument to suggest that all people agree on morality overall. It just isn't true at all.

I am assuming you want the answer of yes. Sorry...

That depends on what the specific conditions may be and what the consequences of not raping the child would be as compared to the consequences of raping one would.

What other choice is there? A simple rape or a simple not rape? The answer is easy... It would be wrong.

If the choice was forced upon an individual to either rape a child or watch as that child and ten others get skinned alive and then raped, raping the child would be the right thing to do.

There is no absolute morality. We, as humans, cannot even begin to fathom all of the possible scenarios in which our actions will have immediate and lasting effects on others. Add to that the fact that another's wants and desires can and do play a role in our decision making, and we will often be given choices of which are the lesser of two evils.



The absolute morality idea ignores the fact that it is impossible to logicallyconclude what 'ought to be'(right or wrong) based purely upon 'what is'.

If you insist upon saying it is always wrong, then tell me exactly why.

Here's a thought.

If killing babies was absolutely wrong in any and every possible circumstance, then how can one justify the destruction of Sodom and Gamorrah?

The only way possible is to assume that there were no babies living in either city at the time of their destruction.

Not a very plausible assumption in my opinion.

The 'God of Abraham' is the epitome - in fact the very source of the "Do as I say not as I do." parenting method. Which, by the way, obviously does not work.

That's true. And there are many other examples where the biblical God condoned the murdering of infants by mortal men. One one place he commands men to murder heathens, their wives and children. Children? It doesn't give an age limit so this obviously includes any babies they might have.

Same thing with the promised lands. God sends his people in to murder every man, woman, and child. Again that would include babies as well as young innocent children.

So if killing innocent children is absolutely immoral then the God of Abraham is an immoral God. It's as simple as that.

A child's behavior is dictated by their parents, not the other way around. We have limited understanding of the ramifications of our actions. We often act out of pure emotion. God's commandments apply to us, not God. God's awareness extends to all things, including the past and future.

I also must point out that you are falling into the same fallacy as James. You cannot question the morality of God. Listen: You look at Sodom and Gomorrah and say "that's murder". But the Bible has already stated that God is all good, is perfect and doesn't do evil. So all I have to do is point to that and say "Whatever God did, it must have been good and just". How can you say it wasn't? You would need to be omniscient. You would need facts that aren't in the Bible...You would need God's perspective from outside of time. You cannot do it.

To a child, a parents punishment for playing with a light socket might seem extreme, but the parent knows best.

I'm just going to have to disagree with you and back slowly out of the room.

But I do have one question before I go...did you support the torture of prisoners in Gitmo?

That's the only decent parenting model. Would you let a five year old drive a car? Would you let a two year old start a charcoal grill?

God is patient and gives us a great deal of time before we receive our punishment or reward. Time makes no difference to God, what does make a difference is life. While life is still there, God waits for us to do the right thing. Any other way of doing things would be a violation of our free will. If a whole people suddenly became sterile, wouldn't they wonder about it? Wouldn't they seek a solution? And eventually somebody would say "Hey, how about that God we've been ignoring..." and free will goes out the window.

Way to avoid the hard questions...

What?

Do you mean this?



If so, here's your answer...it's not a hard question.

I am allowed by God to break any commandment in order to save my own or another's life, except for committing murder, sexual immorality or worshiping another god. This is how objective morality works. I can steal to feed the starving, if there is no other way. I can lie to protect myself or others. Those actions are still "wrong", but if they are the only available actions in that situation, then it is what I must do.

That's why pure absolute morality cannot exist, because there are paradoxical situations. Judaism and Christianity are objectively moral, so that the individual has to determine which is the least sin and commit the action.

So in your scenario, I would refuse to rape the child, because it's wrong. It's always wrong because it is a violation of dignity, both mine and the child's.

I've made this exact point before, but granted it was over 8 months ago.

Microscopic-sized alien reptile invasion.

There is a lot of us around who can thank our conscience, conscious, consciousness, and conscienciousness for them. They are a little (pardon the pun) like old-world dragons that many a mediaeval knight has fought, the likes of St. George and some knights of the holy grail.

Some modern words in use originated with dragon language. For instance, the expression to 'drag on'. Such as, for instance, a bad movie with too many lover's agonizing over sh...t and not enough car chase, fight or sex scenes, and such as like this post that just drag on and on and on and on.

Were the Nazis right in their actions? How about what was done to Jaycee Dugard? Was that right, since the guy who kidnapped her thought it was right?

Are men who beat their wives right, simply because they think they are? If not, then what if every man beat his wife? Would it be right to beat wives then?

I say no. I say that each person has their own right to dignity, which shouldn't be infringed upon. Rape, slavery, beating, murder, they are always wrong. And if a society existed that said they were right, the society would be wrong.