The Battle of Good and Evil
Sir Christian-A-Lot: All right,my friends the Gentiles' Club, while we may not agree on the definitions of the words I will put forth, our understanding of what we each mean when we say them will be paramount to understanding our views in subjects to come. Here are my questions:
Is there such a thing as good and evil, Right and Wrong? why or why not? What is it?
Is there absolute morality, or can morality exist without absolutes, if so where does morality come from? Who is to tell me what is right and wrong and why should I listen to them?
First, my position. Then the dialogue may follow:
I'll begin with the origin of morality, and I'm going way back, to the beginning that is. Yes, I believe it originates with God. If the Christian God is true, then this is how morality came about. It says in the Bible that God is unchanging, the same now and tomorrow, alpha and omega, and all that. HE IS ABSOLUTE. And by His character, by His very nature, He is Love, as it says in first John, God is justice, Holiness, He is Good... Like my nose. I physically have a nose. Since my birth I always have. I could choose to lop it off, God COULD choose to no longer be clothed in Love. Yet He continuously chooses through infinity to keep this character, to not change. And I'll keep my nose, thank you.
Then God made us, actually, he made us out of his characteristic, which is Love. Love shares, wants to give others love, so he created us to love and be loved. The big deal in Christianity is that he made us IN HIS IMAGE. He made us good, but even more so he put goodness on our hearts. C.S Lewis puts it, that we can't see the architect in the architecture. But we can see a character, what rules he set up, what wall holds what up, where the phone should be plugged in, to have the thing work how he wants it too. In His image, we were given goodness in the form of a conscience, the floor plan to how we should best work . It's hard to deny this conscience, we can dull it, but it is in every human.
Why should we work in a certain way? The answer. To be able to join, be in the presence of our creator. Look at pure light. Can pure light have darkness within it and remain pure light, no. Either it's light or dark, not both. Sadly we humans made the decision to be in darkness or atleast murky, and Light cannot live in harmony with this, which is known as sin. Love wouldn't mean anything if it were forced, so God allowed us to choose as we have, but the conscience he built in us is still here, whether in darkness or light, for it was embedded in our human nature while we were still all GOOD.. It says in the Bible that people will have a form of godliness but not know God. How can that be? It's a shabby form, I'll say, but it is there, people can be moral without God to an extent, because it is now built inside them, sometimes as a pesky afterthought, but there nonentheless.
That's why I disagree that different civilizations have different moral codes. They may submerge certain ideas for others, some not moral just because they like to do those immoral actions, but the general code is inside us all. "the moral law within us," as the philosopher Immanuel Kant said. That's why “love thy neighbor as yourself" is in every major religion and people from Christians to Buddha, to Hinduism in the Mahabharata, Islam, Jainism, Black Elk a native American spirit guide, Zoroastrianism, Confucianism. Every major culture has this in some form, and that's too much a coincidence.
Socrates asked "whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods." My contention is that even God didn’t make up love, he is love, it always existed, like gravity did before it was given a name. "the moral law within us," as the philosopher Immanuel Kant said. What provokes our moral outrage? Injustice? Cruelty? Oppression? There is the sense that an absolute standard of morality is being violated, an objective standard that transcends humanity. And if an absolute standard of morality exists it can only do so if it stems from an infinite dimension -- a realm that is eternal, beyond time, with no beginning and no end. Its source cannot be in time, which is constantly undergoing change. It must be beyond time, in the infinite dimension. Only God, the infinite being that exists beyond time, is absolute and unchangeable.
'I am God, I do not change.' (Malachi 3:6)
And what is moral, what is good, what is absolute? There are all these rules andabortion-like dilemmas, but morality all comes down to who God is, what every person has in his heart in all those cultures and religions I mentioned: to want LOVE. That is the absolute law on our souls. And if God is love, it comes from Him. Did he choose Love as we finite humans did, no, because choosing brings us in the dimensions of time. God IS. Love IS. I AM is His name. That is absolute. and anything we call absolute must come from, well THE Absolute, who is God.
So what is evil? Well, after you go through good, evil is easy to figure out. It's simply the opposite of good, of God, outside God's will. How can you SIN against God by not doing good, unless He IS goodness, so by choosing the opposite you deny Him. What about things that aren't the opposite or aren't GOOD, well, those things aren't evil or bad either, this is where we individually can decide things for ourselves. Only LOVE and HATE are absolute ideas, eating meat, not so much. That's within time, within the physical.
Jesus himself goes deeper than even human definitions of good. Most of us think good is by what we do and don't do. Jesus said if you lust in thought it's a sin. God says in the Bible that he goes deeper then actions into motives and thoughts and finally in the HEART. We're back to love again. Out of the physical doing. If the heart is good, if the tree is good, Jesus said, the fruit, the actions will be good as well.
But all this means nothing if God doesn't exist and absolute morality doesn't exist. So let's look at that option. First, we have to deny, hide away our conscience. As C.S. Lewis said, the herd instinct can be "do I run away from the lion for survival or do I save my friend from the lion risking death. But the herd instinct cannot also be what tells you which is better, a judge. That must be something separate, a conscience or built in moral code. the conscience is separate from the instinct like the notes on a guitar is separate from which note you choose. But let's deny this for a moment as hard as the evidence of it is. Let's see the world of relative morality, and try to justify it, see if it makes sense.
To say that anyone can decide for themselves what GOOD is individually,means there is no true right and wrong. Though you can be angry all you want whenever you want, you really have no BASIS or reason to stop oppressers, their actions are not WRONG. Your only reason to stop them can be Selfishness, that you want others to accept your standards, that you in effect are better than the one who thinks differently, that you are a kind of god, and definitely not RESPECTING their beliefs(that’s the big thing now, not offending wins over right and wrong).
If someone believes in relative morality, and you make others go by your own right and wrong, you're conceited, you are trying to enslave someone else with your ideas on life-- what right would you have to do this? If someone wants to hate gays, call them fags, who are any of us to tell them they’re wrong. You can try to persuade them differently, but if its not WRONG, good luck with that. How about the murderer, he seems to enjoy murder and has no conflict within himself, so he isn’t wrong. You have no authority or right to stop him, because surely punishment has no point or RIGHT in THIS RELATIVE world. I mean, you can punish, but then you’re being a hypocrite. The Relativist has just made every battle to stop oppression, murder, stealing, etc, harder and selfish and hypocritical, because in their mind, perhaps hating gays is cool. Maybe they are right, atleast to them THEY ARE.
The Relativist argues that the more advanced society is, the more moral we'll be, a sort of moral evolution. While there are many problems with this unmerited assumption, mostly that if you just look at man's history we've done the same horrible things from Egypt enslaving the Jews to Rwanda's genocide, and between them I see little moral evolution. But let's put your statement in the realm of intellect. Let’s test everyone’s IQ and whoever has the highest is “more right”. Sadly, the retarded are far nicer then most geniuses, but then what is nice? Maybe to someone in this relative world this isn’t a good quality, niceness, and we should respect that and not display kindness in hopes to not offend.
Look at how confusing it all gets, for it doesn’t make sense, this relative morality. And if it does, all picketers should cease, and relativists should picket themselves for trying to put their morality on others. But then THAT would be wrong, right? or right,wrong? hmmm. Funny how those who say there is no set morality also call President Bush Satan, evil, bad, (all terms of judgment and beckoning to an absolute morality). Only when it fits their cause do they go to what they know deep inside, that there is Right and Wrong. Just the relativist statement, "There is NO absolute," is itself an absolute statement. Even their own rhetoric verifies what they try to destroy. How confusing and wishy washy the world gets without absolutes. Dostoevsky said, "Without God, everything is permitted." Even belief systems that contradict itself, I guess.
So we see that right and wrong don't exist without it being absolute. And yet we know, if you look into your heart, into truth, you know there is a right and wrong. The squirm in your stomach when you see a black man beat as the shouts of nigger ring through your ears verifies that there is wrong, when someone loves you with their whole heart you KNOW there is good. What inhibits the acceptance of this Truth is the want to do, well, whatever you want, to be in control, to be your own god in effect, in selfishness. Hell, If something is right, then, shoot, you could be wrong! Heaven forbid!! What fun is that? But this desire to be your own god isn't reality. We actually have very little control of our lives, we had NO say in our birth, we have no right in ourselves to tell others how to live, WE ARE NOT GOD. And our conscience, though some have dulled theirs to the nub, tells us that there is right and there is wrong. And Love is the catalyst to that right and wrong, for Love is against hate. This is an absolute. And this draws the line between good and evil.
Is there such a thing as good and evil, Right and Wrong? why or why not? What is it?
Is there absolute morality, or can morality exist without absolutes, if so where does morality come from? Who is to tell me what is right and wrong and why should I listen to them?
First, my position. Then the dialogue may follow:
I'll begin with the origin of morality, and I'm going way back, to the beginning that is. Yes, I believe it originates with God. If the Christian God is true, then this is how morality came about. It says in the Bible that God is unchanging, the same now and tomorrow, alpha and omega, and all that. HE IS ABSOLUTE. And by His character, by His very nature, He is Love, as it says in first John, God is justice, Holiness, He is Good... Like my nose. I physically have a nose. Since my birth I always have. I could choose to lop it off, God COULD choose to no longer be clothed in Love. Yet He continuously chooses through infinity to keep this character, to not change. And I'll keep my nose, thank you.
Then God made us, actually, he made us out of his characteristic, which is Love. Love shares, wants to give others love, so he created us to love and be loved. The big deal in Christianity is that he made us IN HIS IMAGE. He made us good, but even more so he put goodness on our hearts. C.S Lewis puts it, that we can't see the architect in the architecture. But we can see a character, what rules he set up, what wall holds what up, where the phone should be plugged in, to have the thing work how he wants it too. In His image, we were given goodness in the form of a conscience, the floor plan to how we should best work . It's hard to deny this conscience, we can dull it, but it is in every human.
Why should we work in a certain way? The answer. To be able to join, be in the presence of our creator. Look at pure light. Can pure light have darkness within it and remain pure light, no. Either it's light or dark, not both. Sadly we humans made the decision to be in darkness or atleast murky, and Light cannot live in harmony with this, which is known as sin. Love wouldn't mean anything if it were forced, so God allowed us to choose as we have, but the conscience he built in us is still here, whether in darkness or light, for it was embedded in our human nature while we were still all GOOD.. It says in the Bible that people will have a form of godliness but not know God. How can that be? It's a shabby form, I'll say, but it is there, people can be moral without God to an extent, because it is now built inside them, sometimes as a pesky afterthought, but there nonentheless.
That's why I disagree that different civilizations have different moral codes. They may submerge certain ideas for others, some not moral just because they like to do those immoral actions, but the general code is inside us all. "the moral law within us," as the philosopher Immanuel Kant said. That's why “love thy neighbor as yourself" is in every major religion and people from Christians to Buddha, to Hinduism in the Mahabharata, Islam, Jainism, Black Elk a native American spirit guide, Zoroastrianism, Confucianism. Every major culture has this in some form, and that's too much a coincidence.
Socrates asked "whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods." My contention is that even God didn’t make up love, he is love, it always existed, like gravity did before it was given a name. "the moral law within us," as the philosopher Immanuel Kant said. What provokes our moral outrage? Injustice? Cruelty? Oppression? There is the sense that an absolute standard of morality is being violated, an objective standard that transcends humanity. And if an absolute standard of morality exists it can only do so if it stems from an infinite dimension -- a realm that is eternal, beyond time, with no beginning and no end. Its source cannot be in time, which is constantly undergoing change. It must be beyond time, in the infinite dimension. Only God, the infinite being that exists beyond time, is absolute and unchangeable.
'I am God, I do not change.' (Malachi 3:6)
And what is moral, what is good, what is absolute? There are all these rules andabortion-like dilemmas, but morality all comes down to who God is, what every person has in his heart in all those cultures and religions I mentioned: to want LOVE. That is the absolute law on our souls. And if God is love, it comes from Him. Did he choose Love as we finite humans did, no, because choosing brings us in the dimensions of time. God IS. Love IS. I AM is His name. That is absolute. and anything we call absolute must come from, well THE Absolute, who is God.
So what is evil? Well, after you go through good, evil is easy to figure out. It's simply the opposite of good, of God, outside God's will. How can you SIN against God by not doing good, unless He IS goodness, so by choosing the opposite you deny Him. What about things that aren't the opposite or aren't GOOD, well, those things aren't evil or bad either, this is where we individually can decide things for ourselves. Only LOVE and HATE are absolute ideas, eating meat, not so much. That's within time, within the physical.
Jesus himself goes deeper than even human definitions of good. Most of us think good is by what we do and don't do. Jesus said if you lust in thought it's a sin. God says in the Bible that he goes deeper then actions into motives and thoughts and finally in the HEART. We're back to love again. Out of the physical doing. If the heart is good, if the tree is good, Jesus said, the fruit, the actions will be good as well.
But all this means nothing if God doesn't exist and absolute morality doesn't exist. So let's look at that option. First, we have to deny, hide away our conscience. As C.S. Lewis said, the herd instinct can be "do I run away from the lion for survival or do I save my friend from the lion risking death. But the herd instinct cannot also be what tells you which is better, a judge. That must be something separate, a conscience or built in moral code. the conscience is separate from the instinct like the notes on a guitar is separate from which note you choose. But let's deny this for a moment as hard as the evidence of it is. Let's see the world of relative morality, and try to justify it, see if it makes sense.
To say that anyone can decide for themselves what GOOD is individually,means there is no true right and wrong. Though you can be angry all you want whenever you want, you really have no BASIS or reason to stop oppressers, their actions are not WRONG. Your only reason to stop them can be Selfishness, that you want others to accept your standards, that you in effect are better than the one who thinks differently, that you are a kind of god, and definitely not RESPECTING their beliefs(that’s the big thing now, not offending wins over right and wrong).
If someone believes in relative morality, and you make others go by your own right and wrong, you're conceited, you are trying to enslave someone else with your ideas on life-- what right would you have to do this? If someone wants to hate gays, call them fags, who are any of us to tell them they’re wrong. You can try to persuade them differently, but if its not WRONG, good luck with that. How about the murderer, he seems to enjoy murder and has no conflict within himself, so he isn’t wrong. You have no authority or right to stop him, because surely punishment has no point or RIGHT in THIS RELATIVE world. I mean, you can punish, but then you’re being a hypocrite. The Relativist has just made every battle to stop oppression, murder, stealing, etc, harder and selfish and hypocritical, because in their mind, perhaps hating gays is cool. Maybe they are right, atleast to them THEY ARE.
The Relativist argues that the more advanced society is, the more moral we'll be, a sort of moral evolution. While there are many problems with this unmerited assumption, mostly that if you just look at man's history we've done the same horrible things from Egypt enslaving the Jews to Rwanda's genocide, and between them I see little moral evolution. But let's put your statement in the realm of intellect. Let’s test everyone’s IQ and whoever has the highest is “more right”. Sadly, the retarded are far nicer then most geniuses, but then what is nice? Maybe to someone in this relative world this isn’t a good quality, niceness, and we should respect that and not display kindness in hopes to not offend.
Look at how confusing it all gets, for it doesn’t make sense, this relative morality. And if it does, all picketers should cease, and relativists should picket themselves for trying to put their morality on others. But then THAT would be wrong, right? or right,wrong? hmmm. Funny how those who say there is no set morality also call President Bush Satan, evil, bad, (all terms of judgment and beckoning to an absolute morality). Only when it fits their cause do they go to what they know deep inside, that there is Right and Wrong. Just the relativist statement, "There is NO absolute," is itself an absolute statement. Even their own rhetoric verifies what they try to destroy. How confusing and wishy washy the world gets without absolutes. Dostoevsky said, "Without God, everything is permitted." Even belief systems that contradict itself, I guess.
So we see that right and wrong don't exist without it being absolute. And yet we know, if you look into your heart, into truth, you know there is a right and wrong. The squirm in your stomach when you see a black man beat as the shouts of nigger ring through your ears verifies that there is wrong, when someone loves you with their whole heart you KNOW there is good. What inhibits the acceptance of this Truth is the want to do, well, whatever you want, to be in control, to be your own god in effect, in selfishness. Hell, If something is right, then, shoot, you could be wrong! Heaven forbid!! What fun is that? But this desire to be your own god isn't reality. We actually have very little control of our lives, we had NO say in our birth, we have no right in ourselves to tell others how to live, WE ARE NOT GOD. And our conscience, though some have dulled theirs to the nub, tells us that there is right and there is wrong. And Love is the catalyst to that right and wrong, for Love is against hate. This is an absolute. And this draws the line between good and evil.
posted by Sir Christian-A-Lot @ 1:53 PM
1 Comments:
At 9:31 AM ,
Sir Christian-A-Lot said...
Dr. Nick (resident pragmatist):
My take on the question, is there such a thing as good and evil, Right and Wrong? Well, in the sense that there are these cosmic forces of Good, Evil, Right, and Wrong. No, they do not exist. Now are they concepts that exist and influence us? Absolutely. But they are constructs created by language, and these words wield much power over our minds, and therefore they can be very dangerous.
Good and evil, right and wrong are different among different cultures, even to the individual. What one calls "good" or "right" is agreement between what one expects, wishes, or wants and the particular situation or outcome. The points where these individual "preferences" overlap reflect a society's own judgment of good and evil, right and wrong, and further tie that particular human tribe together. Therefore, it is an evolutionary advantage for humans to have developed a sense of right and wrong, as this fosters communality, which in turn assists survival.
Morality differs wildly across time and cultures. Few activities, if any, are always morally wrong across all human societies. Morality is a selective preference created dynamically by culture. So no, there is no absolute morality.
Your society tells you what is right and wrong. You can choose to listen to society and reap the benefits, or you can choose to decide for yourself what is right and wrong, risking the admonition of your tribe.
Gregorscoff:
Yes this is a tricky one because on either side you have to make leaps of faith. The leaps on the faith side are more obvious. To buy into most of the world's major religions, you have to believe that there is a universal Way and something that is NOT that way. Wether you are a Taoist or a Baptist, you have to couple your observations with a belief that there is a force in the world that can show us how things should be. It does not matter whether or not you call that Tao, YHWH, or Heavenly Almightly Lord God Jesus Above; until you get into the particulars of what that entity is saying. But they all agree there is something that is somehow a part of humans, but also more than and beyond humans.
The humanist side takes no less a leap of faith. The idea that every society creates its own morality just pushes the origin back. Why did they do this? The pat answer is that it was a response to their environment and certain survival and biological imperatives. This makes sense. But, knowing and demonstrating the physical cause and benefit of every single moral idea in human history is no less difficult than presenting me with physical evidence that the Tao or YHWH or HALGJA exists. One could just say it just is, its random that cultures come up with value systems, there is no reason for it. But that still is a leap of faith. Saying that a group of people creates culture in a random fashion is no more or less empircally demonstrable than saying it was all Divinly inspired.
What I see is that while cultures certainly vary in every respect, they are still all a magnification of individual humans. So, one could point out that there are societies in which wanton killing (in a controlled environment) was acceptable, such as the Roman Empire, and other in which murder was even a virtue as in ancient MesoAmerican culture or any that practiced human sacrifice. This does not exclude the idea however that there were not individuals within those societies who were very virtuous.
The fact is that across geography and time, we see diverse cultures in which isolated members thought of and wrote down virtues. No matter how much their cultures differed, or even their particular beliefs about gods and the origin of life etc, the major tenants of virtue itself does not vary much. To be sure there have been religions that were radically different than the major ideas of virtue and there are still adherents of the major religions that are despicable pigs, but the faiths that humans have tended to widely accept do not vary much in their concept of good and evil. The Tao, the Torah, Plato's Republic, the New Testament, the Koran, and others tend to in the macro suggest some of the same virtues and some of the same failings.
Some are indeed survival responses, the Jews not eating certain meats for example, but others are not necessarily survival based at all. Stealing and raping and killing within your own society is obviously detrimental, but why forbid it across the board? It was very beneficial for the societies that practiced those things against the cultures they sought to destroy.
Why do we see certain things as wrong? This always annoyed me the most about anarchists. I got into a huge argument with a DC anarchist 'leader' in like 2002 that set me on the path of changing my politics. Is was essentially my assertion that his tendancy to police the way I spoke so closely was no different than the tendancy for fundamentalist Christians to do so. If my saying 'you suck' is homophobic and that 'oppresses' people, what is the metric you are using? At least the Christians are consistent in that they have some literary basis for their beliefs. If they tell me homosexuality is wrong, at least they can point to a verse. Now, I disagree that that verse can and should be interpreted in that way, but that is an issue of hermenuetics. I think believing the bible forbids all these behaviors is like believing the earth is 6000 years old. But isn't even worse for the secular humanists who assert moral imperatives all the time, but offer no basis for them whatsoever? Opression is wrong, war is evil, all humans have rights? Who says? Am I missing something? If we are really just animals who got really smart, and truly the whole universe is a cosmic accident, why does it matter if I eat other animals, as many other mammals do, or rape people, which would help me pass along my genes, or own slaves, or whatever else goes against human 'rights'? Where do those rights come from if they are not an evolutionary benefit?
Actually, I am really curious, and the stakes to me are high. How can anyone who does not believe in an extra-human intelligence argue that anything is right or wrong? I think that the most logically consistent are the occultists and satanists who said, "Do what thou wilt." That is a consistent Athiest position. I don't think there were many satanists who believed in satan or God, what they were really saying is "We're here, there is no reason, so do whatever the fuck you feel like." While I may disagree, that at least makes sense. And then they can chose to compact into a society that sees those things are detrimental to progress and agree to not kill and rape just because it lands them in jail.
Still, can you argue that culture necessarily creates morality to function well? Extremely heirarchical societies with slaves functioned very well. The incredible technological achievements of Egypt, Rome, the Mayans, the Aztecs, China, these were all societies that were incredibly oppressive and brutal. So, if you are going to appeal to the desire of every human wanting to be free from oppression, where does that desire come from? My survival chances are better as a slave than they are alone in the wilderness.
I think there are basically two consistent positions here:
1) there is a God or Gods and He/She/It/Them/the force/the way/whatever revealed to us in several instances that there is a good way to do things and an evil way to do things even when those things may conflict or be exclusive from our survival techniques. we should follow these rules not just because they will serve us in life, but because to not do so is a disrespect to our very reason for being.
or 2) We are a random and soulless animal in a universe made entirely of statistics, physics, biology. what we do does not matter at all except in so far as it allows or disallows us to participate in society. the rules created by society are all made up by humans with the sole purpose to promote civil society and it is driven by the biological need for individuals to stay alive and satisfy their various hungers. so, wanton killing, child molestation, owning slaves, eating people or whatever activity you can think of are not wrong. they may be illegal in some epochs, just to promote civility, but they just are.
Dr. Nick:
Good stuff here.
Quote from: gregorscoff -"Yes this is a tricky one because on either side you have to make leaps of faith... knowing and demonstrating the physical cause and benefit of every single moral idea in human history is no less difficult than presenting me with physical evidence that the Tao or YHWH or HALGJA exists... Saying that a group of people creates culture in a random fashion is no more or less empircally demonstrable than saying it was all Divinly inspired."
That quote doesn't ring true to me. If I've seen no evidence that disproves the existence of the Loch Ness Monster, is not believing in Nessie a leap of faith? Of course not; it's the rational, reductionist stance. And while certainly it is a lot of work to trace the development of specific moral ideas within a culture (and many anthropologists are doing so), it is at least possible. More importantly the theories are falsifiable, whereas it is impossible to disprove that God exists or is the source of morality (or what have you). Believing in something that cannot be disproved is by definition faith.
Finally, culture isn't created randomly, it's created as you said in response to environment and internal conditions. In many ways it's deterministic, for example desert cultures have more in common with other desert cultures than arctic tundra dwellers.
Quote from: gregorscoff "Stealing and raping and killing within your own society is obviously detrimental, but why forbid it across the board? It was very beneficial for the societies that practiced those things against the cultures they sought to destroy."
My response, By definition, the official mechanizations of culture such as the State almost never ban these things outside of their own culture. For example, today I can kill someone in Mongolia and not be held accountable in the US, because the state doesn't care what happens outside its borders. Similarly I can smoke pot in Amsterdam and not be in trouble anywhere.
The case of religion, however, is more interesting. Religion at its best tends to promote the transcendent, a greater acceptance of who is part of our "tribe". Who or what one considers as part of their tribe varies considerably by time and place. But there's an interesting pattern which I'll delve into later on.
Quote from: gregorscoff, "I got into a huge argument with a DC anarchist 'leader' in like 2002 that set me on the path of changing my politics. Is was essentially my assertion that his tendancy to police the way I spoke so closely was no different than the tendancy for fundamentalist Christians to do so. If my saying 'you suck' is homophobic and that 'oppresses' people, what is the metric you are using?"
Haha. I fucking hate the language police. This is kinda sad, because anarchism is really antithetical to policing language. Not only is this essentially linguo-fascism, it is incredibly stupid, attacking the symptoms of oppression rather than the cause. Do you think if all of America stopped saying "this sucks", "this is gay", "you're such a fag", etc. that people would stop hating homos? Fuck no. Stupid stupid stupid. I suspect DC activists tend to be a PC bunch. Ugh, I guess this is offtopic. Sorry for the rant.
Quote from: gregorscoff, "...isn't it even worse for the secular humanists who assert moral imperatives all the time, but offer no basis for them whatsoever? Opression is wrong, war is evil, all humans have rights? Who says? Am I missing something? If we are really just animals who got really smart, and truly the whole universe is a cosmic accident, why does it matter if I eat other animals, as many other mammals do, or rape people, which would help me pass along my genes, or own slaves, or whatever else goes against human 'rights'?"
Absolutely. The secular humanist is (often unwittingly) claiming there is an absolute morality. This is no different than the Fundamentalist Christian that he probably despises. Cultural fascism either way. These moralists have been raised in a culture which, for reasons I'll try to address, says oppression is bad, everyone is equal. The problem is that it is VERY difficult to step outside of your own culture. Once you do, the world becomes a scary quantum world of possibility with no absolutes where your only means of survival is your ability to think for yourself, an activity it seems most humans are allergic to.
So go ahead and eat animals, rape people and own slaves. Rest assured that you are not violating some cosmic law that governs quirky human behavior. HOWEVER, if you are violating your culture's moral code, or even worse, your own, there will be consequences.
Quote from: gregorscoff, "Where do those rights come from if they are not an evolutionary benefit? ... if you are going to appeal to the desire of every human wanting to be free from oppression, where does that desire come from?"
Ahh, the juicy bits. When discussing the morality of a particular culture, it's interesting to note not only what is and what is not moral, but to whom do these morals apply? Initially, this "who" was very narrowly defined, but as human societies became larger and more complex, ideas of who is part of our moral tribe correspondingly widened. (There is evidence that most pre-agrarian societies were essentially egalitarian, but they, too, would have placed limits on the equality, for example, a competing tribe.)
Over the course of time and across different cultures, this "who" has been variously described as: the hunters of our tribe; the ruling class; the land-owning males in our city-state; the land-owning white males in our country; white men and women in our country; all heterosexual citizens of our country; all people regardless of race, creed and origin; etc. The "desire of every human wanting to be free from oppression" is a relatively new concept in the human mind.
The point is that our criteria for who we define as equals has been increasing, to the point that animals are even included (eg. vegetarianism in the Western world). If we were having this conversation about morality only 150 years ago, we'd likely be slave owners, yet we wouldn't hesitate to consider ourselves moral individuals. Thomas Jefferson, probably the most virtuous statesman in the history of the US owned slaves.
So what is behind this shift? That's a great question, and I don't have an easy answer. Perhaps humans have an evolutionary slant toward accepting others into their tribe, which would afford them a larger tribe and therefore more means of survival. Maybe religion and spirituality play a part in awakening our consciousness to see other people (and creatures) as we see ourselves. Perhaps this is the pragmatic way that a more and more interconnected society needs to function in order to maintain civility.
Gregorscoff said that there are two options, man makes up morality to uphold civilization, or God set up good and evil. Well, since I think I'm being logically consistent, and I don't agree with either of the two, I'll proffer up a third (somewhere in the middle, where the truth usually lies):
3) Morality is a human technology. It is a tool, and much like other tools, it looks different based on the time and place of the culture that created it. A more sophisticated culture will have a more sophisticated morality. Morality adds value to the culture that creates it, much like the Internet adds value to our technologically driven culture. What we do DOES matter, as our actions affect everything around us. Our sense of value and meaning is determined by our choices and our connectedness with the earth and the people around us, not whether our actions hold up to some external "objective" morality. To put it in more mystical terms, meaning comes from what we DO, not from what we should and shouldn't do.
gregorscoff:
When we developed culture, we were obviously no longer like any of the other animals. We ran around naked gathering food and living life. Then knowledge came along. We came up with the rather silly idea of clothes, and started to gather knowlege about the world that no other animal had. We made tools and jewelry. Genesis even says that agriculture was developed as a sort of punishment for having availed ourselves of this knowlege. All true. Human innovation and technology came at a price. I don't think that we can go back, nor would I want to, but life was different for us when we started speaking and making tools.
I think we can all agree there is something to this. Whether you believe that shit went down exactly and in the same time frame as it says in Genesis, or perhaps that it is still the work of Divine inspiration - just a little boiled down for human consumption, or even that it was a cultural oral tradition that man created to give meaning to his short and harsh life, we can all admit that it makes some sense right? When it was clear to us that we were substantly different than the other animals, we knew that we were operating under a different set of rules. It is with our superior intellect that we can act in a manner that is 'good' or 'evil'. So, these ideas came about when we had eaten from the knowlege tree, or created language and culture.
And as a result we long ago started the tradition of sitting in judgement of one another. This activity is by no means owned by Christians. All people in all cultures judge other peoples' actions against some metric. We all have this sense that there is a way to do things and a way not to do things. It is part of being human. The Bible mentions this too and in no uncertain terms tells us in fact that sitting in judgement of other humans beings is one of the foundations of evil. If so, the world is an incredibly evil place. Not hard for me to buy. I say, in a certain sense, it does not matter if you call the serpent (I am pretty sure the Adam and Eve story does not say satan) the origin of that evil or 'chance' or culture. It was, it still is. The greatest sin is Pride, and what greater pride than that of man who has liberated himself from the drudgery of foraging for food in the jungle? And remember, I love technology, and we cannot go back anyway. But I think Genesis really makes the point. We made a choice. We gave up what the other animals still have: the bliss of ignorance. As a result of this, we became privy to the idea that the world belongs not to us, but to something sinister and scary. Our bite off the tree of knowlege showed us some great things, but it also provided fertile ground for the seeds of evil. No technological breakthrough has come without a price, neither did our first bite.
Dr. Nick:
Gregor, you've brought up some VERY interesting ideas regarding the Genesis account of Original Sin. I'm quite curious if you (or SCaL) has read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. It contains a fascinating interpretation, but it's a little too much to get into right here and now (and maybe a bit offtopic). But I think you've picked up on the idea that pre-agricultural humans did not have a concept of good and evil, at least not in the way that we do now. As we moved towards agricultural production (and partook of the metaphorical fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil) we either created or became aware of morality, depending on your point of view.
Quote from Sir Christian-A-Lot, " Doc, you said once that the one thing you believe in is Love. Well, Love is the catalyst to right and wrong, for Love is against hate. This is an absolute. And this draws the line between good and evil. "
I would offer that the opposite of Love is not Hate, but rather the absence of Love; No-Love. Hate is only a human emotion while Love seems to be much deeper. And while it could be that Love is what drives us to create for ourselves "Good", there is no "evil" any more than there is "hate".
Sir Christian-A-Lot"
finally, I can respond. Doc, our representative realtivist pragmatist, who I will use to represent the flaws in this perspective. First, interestingly you rarely answer my questions, but find a loophole in the the question to throw me off the trail. this will not do. I brought up a fact of love thy neighbor being a moral code in every major and most minor religions as a reason to show a common absolute morality:love.
I also said that if someone believes in relative morality, and you make others go by your own right and wrong, you're conceited, you are trying to enslave someone else with your ideas on life, what right would you have to do this?
to which you replied " I agree 100%." so if anything is truly right, well, it's absolute. But we obviously have a wall up in our language here to make each pother understand, or I am insane.
Then came the reply Doc made that made me truly insane. there is no right and wrong, he says, but the murderer is wrong! The murderer is quote, " fucked up in the head" This is a judgment statement. this murderer, Gacy, just has a different point of view, his own standards, you surely don't judge him as wrong do you. of course not. and anyone reading this will surely agree with your statement that he is not wrong but we should judge and put him away for this. I must be insane. or is he universally wrong, and absolutes exist. which one. Gacy not bad or wrong, or he is and there is an absolute right and wrong. What is your answer, dancing man?
Then you say, " love is not the opposite of hate" cool. I didn't say that either if you look back and actually READ the words I said. I said when love exists it by its nature is AGAINST hate. that is true, no? And where do you get that evil is merely a human emotion and love is more. where do you come up with these "facts". Don't "tell" me hate doesn't exist. Go to Israel/palestine and tell me hate doesn't exist. silliness.Doc said, quote, "there is no "evil" any more than there is "hate"
I agree. as much as hate exists, and it does, so is the level of evil in the world. thanks for proving my point. Snide, yes, but I got ya on this one, Dr. Semantic. And the moment you re-enter earth, spaceman, you will see that hate exists and then according to your own words have to agree that so does evil.
You once said, "Yes, people do horrible things to each other”
Whaaaaa!!?? HORRIBLE, you say? This word should not exist, it constitutes "BAD". And you don’t believe in any real good or evil. “I don't think good and evil exist in any real way”, you said in a post. Seriously, I want you to contemplate these double thoughts, opposite thoughts. One part of you is lying to the other. And I'm only using quotes in a mere four topics, let alone your everyday life. YOU, DR. NICK said ,quote," I see endless beauty, possibility and hope”
Hope, you say? Possibility for what? Hope That YOUR standards of good and bad win over others, or that society in fact DOES get more GOOD? I think you meant the latter, which I admire. But for some reason you're afraid to say it intellectually. If only you would Just admit that good exists, otherwise you meant the former statement which is selfish, and I don’t admire that selfish goal to make others more like you so much. And Finally, the relativist Dr. Nick rode his slippery slope all the way down the snow drift when he said, " So no, there is NO absolute morality."
To say that actually sets up an absolute. that it absolutely doesn't exist. or do you admit the possibility which would be an intellectually honest statement along with the belief in relative good and bad. Why is it so scary to believe that there is right and wrong, good and evil? Of all people, you don’t want to close off possibilities, but this impossibility is so uncomfortable that you have shut down to it, which is dangerous to do when searching for truth, closing something off no matter what, which you seem to have done in this case. With the Christian God too, but that’s another story.
Gregorscoff said, "I think that admitting that there is an evil is scary to many people, as it once was to me, because that invites comparison to what must be 'good.' We all know that we fail this comparison, intuitively." I agree.
So I am confused to the relativist positon, Dr. Nick. If it's not wrong, why do you think we should stop oppression, or capitalism? Are you against our pre-emptive war with Iraq, separate from it being wrong, how so? why are your morals better than the governments? Why should they listen to little 'ol you, what RIGHTS do you have, really, since your epiphany? Shouldn't you keep your mouth shut and just live? Where is the line drawn? I, of course, don't think this, but a man who believes nothing is right or wrong other then selfish desire to have people follow your personal moral code, should not judge as many humanists tend to do. Doc said, "Believing in something that cannot be disproved is by definition faith" By that definition you've put your faith in moral ambiguity.
Then doc said, "By definition, the official mechanizations of culture such as the State almost never ban these things outside of their own culture." exactly right, I say. they can't go outside their boundaries. And since your boundaries are your body, and you believe in relative morality, you should never try to stop someone from doing anything, whether buying a chiklet, to murder. it's not your business. it's out of your boundaries.
Dr. Nick:
Let me try to use an example of my relativism. There is no absolute velocity in the universe. I might be sitting still in my chair right now, but in reality I'm whirling through the solar system at tens of thousands of miles an hour around the orbit of the sun. But we define velocity in terms relative to two bodies. So is it meaningless for me to talk about my velocity when there is no absolute velocity? Heck no. It's very meaningful, particularly to the people on earth that are all moving at the same velocity to begin with.
Or perhaps a sailing analogy. We are all, like it or not, adrift on massive ships of thought. Each ship is a culture trip, and almost everyone is on one. Some poor souls decide to jump off the ship because they don't think they need it. Most of them drown. A few learn how to swim and realize that they can, indeed, make it on their own. But they look at the ships and realize that you can get to where you're going much faster on a ship then by paddling with your arms. So they climb back on board.
The murderer has jumped ship. He no longer wishes to be a part of cultural programming. Fine, that's his choice. It is in the best interest of the ship, though, to keep him away from the rest of the people on board until he either drowns or decides he wants to be part of the ship again.
Sir Christian-A-Lot:
This whole "what is good is what works" will bite you in the ass soon enough in future subjects. In itself it doesn't make sense, so I may need clarification. When saddam mass murdered those who uprised against him, IT WORKED-- he kept his power, but that WAS NOT GOOD, what he did. So you'll have to elaborate or discard this new definition of good.
also to clarify on the murderer. in your ship analogy you implied that murdering innocents is not bad or wrong, just that society would be better off to isolate him. Is this correct? I Just need to hear it from you on record. Do you sense a future trap, Spiderman?
also going back to the good doctor using the word horrible as " merely an off-the-cuff remark". I'm not trying to take you out of context, someone with your beliefs shouldn't use "horrible" I don't think. it's judgemental and places your standards on others. the fact that it was "off the cuff" DEMONSTRATES your true beliefs, I think. that "horrible" is real, that things are universally horrible. I must be wrong here. And if it is just you stating your individual idea of horrible, what does that mean to me? Why should I care what you or anyone else thinks. On what authority should I listen to your whining on what is horrible or unjust in the future? In that case it's merely your say against anothers. That's the only issue I have with your definition of good and bad, but it's important to know where you stand, even if it's in quicksand... I jest.
Dr. Nick said, "it's troubling for me to hear you so opposed to what you deem "selfish morality", "mak[ing] others more like you so much". Isn't that what absolute morality seeks to accomplish? Getting the whole world to abide by the one measure of absolute correct behavior?"
I think it's funny how we project our understanding on something completely different than our own beliefs, isn't it? Those who believe in absolute morality as I do, aren't trying to get people to "act like me", that's what you pragmatist relativists do. Absolute moralists don't act a way just because we LIKE it, but because it IS. You wouldn't be acting like ME, if there is an absolute good and bad, you'd just BE GOOD.
Only with ABSOLUTE MORALITY does MY action have nothing to do with YOURS-- like in GOLF. I'm not playing you, I'm playing the course, as are you-- the moral course that is preset. In your world of pragmatism and relativism, in order to stop oppression as you see it or whatever, you must play everyone INDIVIDUALLY, and that battle, my friend, is un-winnable, and pointless. So good luck with fighting a system like capitalism with your set of pragmatism. It is doomed.
I'm just gunna pat myself on the back for that golf analogy. Well said, Sir Christian-A-Lot, well said, indeed.
Dr. Nick:
Well the way this works is, we can't just blanketly declare one action good without having a point of reference. For Saddam, yes he most definitely thought his actions were good so they were in fact good for him. What about for the people of Iraq? What about for the Middle East? What about for humanity in general? By not relying on a universal standard of right and wrong, we are forced to look at the world through different viewpoints and ask difficult questions. I feel this can only increase our understanding of the world, as opposed to dismissing things we don't like as evil, closing the subject off to further inquiry. Sir Christian-A-Lot said," Why should I care what you or anyone else thinks if there is no absolute right or wrong." Well, my response, perhaps you agree with someone. Perhaps you want to learn about an opposing viewpoint. Perhaps you are just interested in learning how other human beings perceive the world. I don't know. These are merely my reasons. What are yours? The ultimate authority is yourself. Thankfully in the US we can say pretty much darn near anything we want (at least for now), and nobody has to listen. But I would hope that somebody would listen for the reasons given above.
Your golf analogy was good indeed. I suppose I take issue with it in the following way: Not everyone is on the same course, or at least playing the same holes. What you see in your 18 holes as the entire course, is only a small fraction of the thousands of holes that make up a much larger course. And no human can see the whole thing at any one time. If we want to make any sense of things, we must understand this first.
I'm of the opinion that the fundamentals of scientific thought--logic, empiricism, Occam's Razor--allow us to make sense of the world to a certain extent. And I'm quite convinced my own experiences correspond to and represent a reasonable facsimile of reality. However, I think there are questions which human science does not seek to answer and in fact cannot answer, because of the way our nervous systems work.
Sir Christian-A-Lot:
well, our differing opinions on the golf course analogy shows our two worldviews. and since neither caved theirs, we must at least keep these in mind in understanding each other going forward. which is good. I was doing research on this topic and found a funny piece commenting on the leftists/reltivists morality. I submit it here:
these are the Ten Commandments of the Leftist :
1. Thou shalt observe anyone whose people, gender, race, creed, color or economic class have ever been unempowered and keep them holy.
2. Thou shalt worship all manner of inanimate objects, inversely proportional to the extent they have been soiled by humankind’s touch. (Trees and rocks are wonderful; 200-year-old antique furniture made by a Native American craftsman is OK; your Sears coffee table is a sin; and your two-story, land-hogging, resource-depleting house is an abomination unto the Lord Gaia.)
3. Thou shalt also worship all other manner of beasts and plants over your own kind.
4. Thou shalt curse anyone whose people, gender, race, creed, color or economic class have ever wielded power over the First Commandment peoples, even unto the umpteenth generation. Don’t bother checking whether the accursed one is actually “empowered”; he (definitely a “he”) is guilty by association.
5. When thou judgest a sin, blame not any entity covered by the Third Commandment for the woe of a Second or First Commandment entity.
6. Nor shall thou blame any among the Second Commandment for the troubles of the unempowered.
7. When thou judgest among various of the beasts and plants, take the part of the one that most makes you want to say “Awwwwww, how cute!”
8. When thou judgest among various of the unempowered, take the part of those you most sympathize with; yea, even as you pay respect for and preservation of another’s culture, you may castigate the culture for marginalizing women. This is not favoritism, this is activism.
9. In fact, whenever blame is to be allocated, or if thou art bored, blame instead the Fourth Commandment bastards, for even if they participated not in the sin, their Society is at fault.
10. If thou art one among the bastards’ number yet keep these Commandments sacred, you may claim superiority over your fellows and deliver unto them lectures, even as you commit their sins.
gregorscoff:
My final thoughts on the matter. The undeniable historical mobility of morality does not prove that absolute categories do not exist. If you assume the worldview that there is an absolute Good and Evil emanating from intelligences beyond our comprehension, then you can also easily assume that we as humans may mimic these categories but consistently fail at doing so. Therefore, if slavery is moral in one epoch and 'immoral' in another, it does not mean that the absolutes of Good and Evil have changed one iota, but rather that our ability to interpret or adhere to them has been altered.
Therefore, you make a choice, perhaps built on intuition, perhaps built on fear, whatever, I cannot guess motivations. But you cannot argue that science or logic or reductionism make a difference. Certainly we can look in human history and find evidence of different moralities, but so can we also find evidence that humans almost universally believe in an intelligence superior to our own and the golden rule. Just as a universal human belief in a superior intelligence offers no proof of it, the obviously relative moralities of a flawed humanity offer no proof that Good and Evil do not exist. It is a guess, a belief, a worldview that morality was created as a tool of progress and civility. You can no more empirically demonstrate or reduce to the idea that Good and Evil are biologically and historically derived than you can that they are Supernaturally derived.
So, to fully expose my position: I believe that there are binary forces in the Universe. One is Good. The other is that which was self-supposed to be better and thus is Evil. I also believe that the best examples we have of that binary come from people who were obviously privy to some information that eludes most of us; people such as Socrates, Loa Tzu, and of course Jesus.
The Battle of Good and evil: Our Conclusion
In this dialogue, we discussed the nature of good and evil. We all agreed that we needed to understand each other’s belief when it came to these words, “good”, and “bad”, before we could begin to comprehend one another in subjects to come. I, Sir Christian-A-Lot, posed, “ Is there such a thing as good and evil, and if so, is it absolute or relative?”
The majority opinion by myself and my bearded friend, Gregorscoff, is that good and evil do exist and do so within an absolute system. Gregorscoff struggles with this issue but logic leads him to absolute good and evil. Here are Some reasons he gives for this position, summarized as follows:
A) “Humans are now, and have always been full of the tendency to do things which we all seem to at the same time recognize as things that we would never want done unto us.”
Love thy neighbor as thyself is universally recognized as if placed upon our collective human souls. “We all have this sense that there is a way to things and a way not to do things. It is part of being human.”
B) When you say that there is evil, i.e, Hitler, murder, etc, there must be “good” as well. And visa versa.
C) To take the counter-opinion of no absolutes, no set right and wrong, as humanists do, how can you in turn ever assert any moral imperatives as they do, such as “Oppression is wrong, war is evil, all humans have rights? Who says? If we are really just animals who got really smart in a cosmic accident, why does it matter if I eat other animals, as many other mammals do, or rape people, which would help me pass along my genes. On what basis can human rights be an issue, beyond evolutionary benefit?
D) Simply because other groups have different standards of morality doesn’t MEAN there is no absolute, it could just as easily mean that those groups have in some way mutilated these absolutes for their own desires, or failed in their mimicry of the absolute.
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I, Sir Christian-A-Lot, see this from my worldview belief in God. Here is a summery of how I came to my position:
A) "If God exists, as I believe, GOD is absolute. And his character: LOVE, must be absolute as well, because if it were separate from God/the infinite, it would exist in time, it would be changeable. Then he made us IN HIS IMAGE, imprinting the desire to love on our hearts. Before sin entered the world, he made humans with a conscience, testifying to us what is good and bad. Even after we sinned, the conscience he built in us is still here, for it was embedded in our human nature while we were still all GOOD. People can be moral without God to an extent, because it is now built inside them, sometimes as a pesky afterthought, but there nonetheless. Like a manual to our souls, when we go against it, our conscience testifies to the absolute of right and wrong as it is seared, breaking a law within us. The fact that we all feel this conscience demonstrates it’s absolute." Please see my first letter to this subject for more detail on God’s role in morality’s origin. Trust me, it's gold.
B) " Love is the moral law within us. That even when you don’t believe in God, we still desire love shows its truth. Love is absolute, and if that is true, and it is good, and Hate is against Love, there it is: Good and evil. Absolutes. Love draws the line between good and evil." All else derives from these two things in its respective categories.
C) My similar retort to Gregorscoff’s on relativism was “If someone believes in relative morality, you really have no BASIS or reason to stop oppressors, for oppression is not wrong to them. Your only reason can be Selfishness, that you want others to accept your standards, that you in effect are better than the one who thinks differently, that you are a kind of god, and definitely not RESPECTING their beliefs. In that sense, you are conceited, trying to enslave someone else with your ideas of life. Only if you are acting to a greater absolute morality, would there be a right on an individuals part to step in and change what others are doing. As Dostoevsky said, "Without God, everything is permitted." And should be, including rape, murder, and slavery. But in my view of reality, “the squirm in your stomach when you see a black man beat as the shouts of "nigger" ring through your ears verifies that there is wrong, and when someone loves you with their whole heart you KNOW there is good. What inhibits the acceptance of this Truth is the want to do, well, whatever you want, to be in control, to be your own god in effect, to live in selfishness.
D) I said, "to believe in relative morality, we can only judge things within our boundaries, which is our own bodies. If this is true, you should never try to stop someone from doing anything, whether buying a chiklet, to murder. It's not your business. It's out of your boundaries.” Shoot, then I’m glad we never went into Rwanda. That would truly have overstepped my and humanity’s boundaries.
E) My final point was an analogy. Only with ABSOLUTE MORALITY does MY action have nothing to do with YOURS-- like in GOLF. I'm not playing you, I'm playing the course, as are you-- the moral course that is preset. In your world of pragmatism and relativism, in order to stop oppression as you see it or whatever, you must play everyone INDIVIDUALLY, and that battle, my friend, is un-winnable. Those who believe in absolute morality as I do, aren't trying to get people to "act like me", that's what pragmatist relativists do. Absolute moralists don't act a way just because we LIKE it, but because it IS. You wouldn't be acting like ME, if there is an absolute good and bad, you'd just BE GOOD.
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Dr. Nick had the minority view in this discussion that good and bad do not exist in an absolute, universal way, but only does so as each individual sees fit, or as a society collectively decides. His definition of what is good is what works, otherwise known as pragmatism. To the good doctor, morality merely “adds value to the culture that creates it. Our sense of value and meaning is determined by our choices and our connectedness with the earth and the people around us, not whether our actions hold up to some external objective morality.” “So go ahead and eat animals, rape people and own slaves. Rest assured that you are not violating some cosmic law that governs quirky human behavior. HOWEVER, if you are violating your culture's moral code, or even worse, your own, there will be consequences.” Now, as an aside, I, Sir Christian-A-Lot, don’t quite know how he is so sure absolutes don’t exist without the scientific proof that he loves so much before he makes definitive statements like this. But, because he was in the minority it is only right to give him the last word on the matter. Here are a few of his reasons why he believes in a relative morality:
A) Different moralities can be found around the world, few if any completely matching the others on any universal scale, and is constantly evolving or devolving throughout time, such as the example of slavery, or the need for individual freedom. Morality, then, is shown to be chosen by each tribe/society.
B) Morality is relative because we are all coming from different perspectives. “An example of this is that there is no absolute velocity in the universe. I might be sitting still in my chair right now, but in reality I'm whirling through the solar system at tens of thousands of miles an hour around the orbit of the sun. But we define velocity in terms relative to two bodies. So is it meaningless for me to talk about my velocity when there is no absolute velocity? Heck no.” It's very meaningful, but only as we understand the context or reference, and so it is with morality. “By not relying on a universal standard of right and wrong, we are forced to look at the world through different viewpoints and ask difficult questions. I feel this can only increase our understanding of the world, as opposed to dismissing things we don't like as evil, closing the subject off to further inquiry.” And as long as we refer to a particular society or group, those values they chose become very meaningful indeed.
C) Dr. Nick said, “Not everyone is on the same course, to take Sir Christian-A-Lot’s analogy further, or at least playing the same holes. What you see in your 18 holes as the entire course, is only a small fraction of the thousands of holes that make up a much larger course. And no human can see the whole thing at any one time.”
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As a final note on this subject, we all seem to agree that neither answer, in the question of relative or absolute good and evil, is ironclad provable. Saying that a group of people creates culture in a random fashion is no more 100% empirically demonstrable than saying it was all Divinely inspired. Each worldview comes down to faith in something, by concluding either way. But, that said, we ain’t both right, so in the end here, someone’s ABSOLUTELY wrong.
And the quest for truth continues on...
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