The idea that your existence is ruled by another is as offensive as slavery, even if it is a chosen slavery.

i believe that humans have innate attributes instilled in their being, one being the absoulte truths of right and wrong. another is the desire and the need to worship something. We also have free will, so people choose freely what rules their lives. some people money, some power. everyone is a slave of something.

So the idea that because I don't believe in God puts me on the same level as a sociopath is offensive.

do you regard yourself as a good person? if so, have you ever told a lie? have you ever stolen something? have you ever had impure thoughts about someone else? well, if so, then a holy and righteous being will regard you the same as the vilest of people. everyone has sinned, and everyone is at the same level in His eyes. to sin is to literally miss the mark. both me and you are in the same boat as hitler and osama as far as He's concened. but God did provide a means to redeem each one of us, which is the core of my belief.

i think it takes more faith to believe that all the matter in the universe was compressed in a space smaller than a pea, somehow exploding and forming the flawless systems and structures of the cosmos, one being a planet that was far enough from a star to be the right temperature, and dense enough to form an atmosphere suitable for a primodrial ooze to somehow suddenly get hit by lightning and form a dna string in a membrane of cellulose that is self replicating, eventually adding on to itself and mutating into the different lifeforms we have today. and of thse lifeforms, one would develop the ability to reason, and to be able to decern right from wrong, and having these truths univeral in different cultures.

I would not hold that the person you are describing is following the correct moral code, nor would he think that I am.

Which is the definition of subjective, which was exactly the point Doug was trying to make.

another is the desire and the need to worship something.

I have no desire or need to worship anything. Does that make me less than human?

do you regard yourself as a good person? if so, have you ever told a lie? have you ever stolen something? have you ever had impure thoughts about someone else? well, if so, then a holy and righteous being will regard you the same as the vilest of people. everyone has sinned, and everyone is at the same level in His eyes.

I'm aware of this Christian concept, and it's retarded when applied to humanity. It has come to the point so that no one ever has to make a value judgement. I have the facility and desire to note that killing thousands of people is worse than stealing bread to feed my family. The Bible also notes ``judge not lest ye be judged''. It's all fine and well for God to forgive everyone, but it doesn't make sense for us real people.

i think it takes more faith ...

This is one of the most egregiously erroneous arguments that creationists make. It, in fact, takes no faith, as it's staring you in the face. Do you take it on faith that you're looking at a computer right now? Of course not. It's obviously there. The things we can't prove are just theories. They could well be wrong.

So how did it all start? Yeah, I know, the Big Bang. But how did that start and where did it come from?

So how did it all start? Yeah, I know, the Big Bang. But how did that start and where did it come from?

Please note that the same question exists whether you look at the beginning of creation from a theistic or an atheistic point of view. So neither belief yields an answer.

Please note that the same question exists whether you look at the beginning of creation from a theistic or an atheistic point of view. So neither belief yields an answer.

Exactly. I'm not looking for an answer. My point is that there is no answer. It's just a mind-boggling paradox. That in itself proves to me that there must be a higher level of understanding and existence which our minds can not comprehend.

Neither atheism nor creationism can be proved. Rather, they are both based on faith. Bitt has faith that there is no God, ferretboy has faith that there is, and Muhammad ala Jihad has faith that Allah wants him to murder the infidels.

Everyone has faith in something. Now which one is the right faith? Bitt's is based on an unanswerable paradox. Muhammed's is based on pure evil. Chistianity is based on love for your fellow man and the teachings of Jesus Christ.

So,
a) there must be a higher level of existence and understanding different from our physics and our thoughts, and
b) everyone has faith in something.

So we all have a search for the truth. You just have to find it.

i feel like im in a bad disney cartoon

So we all have a search for the truth. You just have to find it.

There is no spoon....

Oh boy. Here I go again.

First I would like to point out that nobody has brought up the difference between moral relativity and cultural relativity. I wish somebody else had because I'm not really qualified to explain it properly. But here I go, feel free to correct my explanation:

Cultural Relativity is simply that some things are good and proper in some cultures and not in others. Certain actions done here in the US would be highly offensive in other countries. The reverse is also true. I would provide examples, but I am sure you can come up with your own. As I understand it (through second hand knowledge) nearly all ethicists agree that cultural relativity is a real and true thing.

Moral Relativity is the idea that this relativity extends to all actions. Again through second hand knowledge it is my understanding that most ethicists believe this to be unfounded and just plain wrong. One of the simplest arguments against it being: "If all morality is relative then it cannot be immoral for me to believe that my personal morality is absolute." (Of course it can't be immoral either for you to tell me that it is wrong.) The reason that we are repulsed at the idea of it being ok to rape and murder 5 year olds is because it is wrong.

The problem whenever you bring religion into this is that most religions combine their culture with their morality. This unfortunately muddies the real question and sends people off on frivolous arguments on both sides. The question of eating pork or covering women's faces is a cultural one (or perhaps a nutritional one.) The question of murdering someone is not. Of course that some cultures (or religions) differ on when it is ok to kill someone is somewhat irrelevant. This would be something that should be able to be arguably determined is ok in certain cases and is not in others (I am by no means the man to do this arguing.)

I think another thing confusing this conversation is that the moral relativists seem to think that we are saying people can't have morals different from ours. They can. We are saying that there is only one [u]true[/u] moral code. (We aren’t even really insisting that it is ours.) We are referring to something outside the system. In a sense, we are saying that if nobody existed, if nobody ever existed, it would still be wrong for a person to kill another person in cold blood. That the moral code would be frivolous is irrelevant to its existence. Maybe I'm being too confusing with this paragraph, so if you don't understand it don't worry about it too much. It's probably me.

With what was said above I mainly wanted to introduce the particular distinction into the conversation. I'm sorry I can't back up my "Cultural Relativity=Good, Moral Relativity=Bad" argument with more, but I haven't the time, energy, or knowledge to do more. As I said, I am not the ideal person to put forth the ideas that I just did, hopefully someone better qualified will add to them. Below I will address some specific points that have been discussed.

By Jeff (FerretBoy):

My views really are just too different for you to understand.

By Bitt (wfaulk):

I think it's rather the former.

I agree that part of the problem with us having a profitable discussion on this is simply that our differing viewpoints are so foreign to each other. I see that you have many misunderstandings about what we believe and that we also are not getting a clear picture of what you believe. I also feel as Jeff (FerretBoy) does in that, if there is no higher being (I use "God" as you do, for simplicity's sake) then life is utterly meaningless and nothing I do can really matter. I think the difference might be that we define something as having meaning when it has meaning eternally whereas you define meaning in the here and now. Can you at least agree to this difference in viewpoint and concede that something that matters in the here and now may not matter eternally?

I think the second thing obscuring our communication is what we mean by happiness. I believe happiness to be relative to the individual and irrelevant to morality. I believe that no firm morality can be based on "what makes people happy" because what makes people happy differs from person to person. Therefore if morality is fixed then it should be based on something irrelevant to people's happiness. It would be nice if it made people happy, but it can't be required to.

I'd much rather humanity truly learn where it came from, or at least aspire to, than accept simple stories as truth.

And I couldn't agree more. If I were to let my mouth run about how I really feel about the things some "religious folk" say and do you would think I hated them more than the coldest hard-boiled atheist. Honestly I sometimes feel I spend more time correcting misconceptions about what I believe than I do actually explaining what I believe. And with good reason, for I intensely love the very thing they are defacing with their slander.

Let me say this: if a person is only believing stories then they have very little knowledge of what they believe and you are right to question them. On the other hand, just because stories are written about something does not make the stories untrue.

Do you take it on faith that you're looking at a computer right now?

Without drawing us out on another tangent, I would just like to mention that according to some philosophers, yes, it does.

The things we can't prove are just theories. They could well be wrong.

Would you understand me better if I said that I subscribe to the theory of God? Because honestly, it is something like that. If I ever KNEW the "theory" to be wrong I'm fairly sure I would abandon it. But the fact of the matter is I have seen too much for it to be a theory anymore. There is something out there, outside of all this. Admittedly it is a personal revelation, something I can tell you about but not show you so that you would believe it. But that doesn't change it for me because I have experienced it. Nothing can take that away from me. I am a Christian because it matches up best with all of my reasoning and experiences. The bits and pieces that don't match up I largely ignore because they are irrelevant to my core beliefs.

(w/regards to forgiveness):

I'm aware of this Christian concept

I don't think you sufficiently understand it however. Grace places us above the law. Before we were disconnected with God and His will was communicated to us through laws written on tablets of stone. Jesus died to restore the connection between man and Himself. Now God speaks to us personally and so the law is unnecessary, we know right from wrong. (For a better understanding please read the book of Romans, paying special attention to chapters 5 and 6.)

The idea that your existence is ruled by another is as offensive as slavery, even if it is a chosen slavery.

Slavery is wrong irrespective of the quality of the master. It may be inviting, but its wrong.

Actually I think your original distinction was the correct one. Everything hinges on the fact that it must be freely given. If you willfully chose to do something, how can you be a slave to it? This idea is the same as the one presented in the "go the extra mile, give him your cloak too, turn the other cheek" parable. I think perhaps the misunderstanding here is the difference in what we mean by "slavery". I can't really address this more until I better understand what you mean by slavery.


OK, I think that is all for now. Sorry that that was so directed at you Bitt, I hope you understand it is your ideas that I am referring to and not you personally. I really just thought there was a lot of miscommunication going on and I hope I have at least cleared up some of it without making things worse. Please understand that in all other regards I really do think pretty highly of you, you just don't seem to "get it" on this one thing.

Also I realize this was an incredibly long post and I'll be pleased just to know that you bothered reading all of it.

I would not hold that the person you are describing is following the correct moral code, nor would he think that I am.

Which is the definition of subjective, which was exactly the point Doug was trying to make.

To say that people believe different things is not the definition of subjective. I think the problem here is htat we are thinking about morals in a different way. The reason I say morals are absolute is because I think to follow or not follow the correct ones has consequences. In this sense there is an absolute set of morals that should be followed, even if people have vastly different ideas of what they are.

Think of it like this: two people are talking about jumping off a building. One guy says not to do it because he'll die, but the other guy truly believes he'll just float down and not be harmed. The fact that both people have their own ideas about what the consequences of an action are doesn't alter the truth of it. Unless they are in a level on Unreal Tournament, if they jump they're gong to die. This truth is objective, and while they may view it differently one or both of them must be incorrect.

So while I understand that everyone has their own ideas about what is or isn't good, I blieve that morals have been defined externally and it is our job to identify what they are. If this is true then morals are not subjective, because they are determined objectivly outside of us. If it is not true then morals are truly subjective, for there is no other standard other than that which we ourselves have errected.

Removing him from the country does take away a longterm problem

In my opinion that is the whole point.
Whatever the excuse presented to the public is, the point is that after the collapse of the USSR there is a huge gap in the world in terms of "control". While at the beginning the US and the West in general seemed to believe that a natural, spontaneous democratization process would take place where dictatorship used to be, unfortunately they were actually proved wrong, and very much so after Sep 11th. What is happening now, I think, is a long-term effort to regain control on those areas which the end of the cold war turned into "lands of nobody", "noboby" being also dictators who can promote/protect terrorism.
Soon after Sep. 11th Bush said a long war had started, and said it would not last less than 10 years. He meant it.
Here I am not saying this is wrong, and I am not saying it is right. I am just saying that a "novo ordo seculorum" is being put into place right now, and it is not going to be quick and easy. How could it be?

My 5 cents...

Think of it like this: two people are talking about jumping off a building. One guy says not to do it because he'll die, but the other guy truly believes he'll just float down and not be harmed.

(Totally unrelated to the serious discussion here...)

A man staying at a hotel decides to have a few drinks at the hotel's bar, which happens to be on the top floor of the 15-story hotel building.

He's half way through his third drink, when a second man at the end of the bar gets up, walks to the window, opens it, and jumps out.

Since the bartender didn't even flinch, the first man figures he must have had one too many and he'd hallucinated the whole thing. He's getting ready to pay the tab and leave, when the elevator opens, and who should walk in but the man who he'd seen jump out of the window minutes before.

The first man confronts the second man with what he'd seen. The second man replies, "Oh, I just drink enough alcohol so that it gives me buoyancy, and I float to the ground like a feather." Just to prove his point, he downs another shot, walks to the window, and jumps again, reappearing in the elevator a few minutes later.

The first man, anxious to try the new trick, quickly downs a few more shots until he feels as though he's floating. He runs to the window, jumps out, and.... splat.

The bartender turns to the second man and says, "Superman, you're an asshole when you're drunk."

Sheesh. I was going to stay away from this discussion, but after sleeping on it, it still troubles me. Not because of the opinions in general, but because of finding them here. This BBS does not represent the views of the guy on the street, but a self-selected clique closer to the bleeding edge of education and intellectual curiosity. It just doesn't feel that way all the time

So whatever, once again, happened to Oliver Cromwell's "I beseech you, in the Bowels of Christ, to consider it possible you might be mistaken"? OK, Old Ollie wasn't the best example of actually following that concept, but...

People with a diffent cultural background have different values. People with (or without) different religious backgrounds and convictions have different values.

Would I, as a Northern European, be happy with the US imposing their cultural values here, just because they don't agree with the Amsterdam coffee shops and the scandinavian public nudity? Of course not.

You can imagine how people here reacted when they found out the US has a plan to land commandos in The Hague to free US citizens in case they are brought to court at the International War Crimes Tribunal.

How can people in the US expect other countries to respect the US right to sovergnity if they dnn't respect others? That's why, despite all the shortcomings of the system, we need things like the International Court of Justice and the UN. Not just a fanatic US president who thinks he has a mandate from God to be the sheriff of the world.

And as to religious and moral relativism, I have to say that most world religions have the "live and let live" thing embedded very deeply in their core - it's just too bad that so many of the adherents of those religions don't live by it.

If you have a deep conviction about a Supreme Being or The Right Way or whatever, why is it so hart to imagine that other people might have equally strong convictions about different deities/things/constructs/whatever? And how can you be so sure your one is the right one? What *if* you happen to be wrong?

I have nothing against religious convictions, and I often admire them, but that shouldn't be at the cost of throwing rationality and chritical thinking out the kitchen window. The reason we are here, at our computers, communicating over these wonderful world-wide networks in our heated, all-mods-and-cons homes, is because of a tradition of questioning dogma, and rationally keeping on asking "what if" questions. Respecting intellectual freedom and learning.

So if I have a position, it would be "this world needs more Galileos and less inquisitors".

ik wil een mooi nederlands meisje neuken.... lief poesje.

just because they don't agree with the Amsterdam coffee shops and the scandinavian public nudity?

Well, not all of us disagree with those things! Keep up the good work.

-Zeke

There are more posts that I haven't read yet because they're on the next page and I want to respond to this now.

That was a great post. I cannot disagree with anything you've said, other than to say that I do believe that I understand the concept of grace (I did attend a Christian church for many formative years), but was pointing out that sometimes people confuse God's grace as their own.

Bringing things back to the original topic of the thread, there's apparently some ambiguity on how, exactly, Saddam was captured. I heard them talking about it on the radio this morning, so I went digging for some articles on the topic. This could very well be bunk, but check out this article from KurdishMedia. The gist is that Saddam may have been captured, much earlier, by Kurdish folks who turned him over to the Americans in return for staying quiet and letting the Americans take the credit. Or, maybe they just figured out where he was and the Americans swept in and took the credit. Or, maybe something else.

ik wil een mooi nederlands meisje neuken.... lief poesje.

That's why there is the Red Light District. Just pay at the cashier's.

Alas, I have been very sick and have not had the energy recently to get involved in this very interesting philosophical discussion after throwing it in a direction I have a lot to say about. People have been doing an excellent job, but there are a couple of concepts I have not seen mentioned.

> We are referring to something outside the system. In a sense, we are saying that if nobody existed, if nobody ever existed, it would still be wrong for a person to kill another person in cold blood.

I believe completely the opposite. The concept of morals is a creation of society and biology. It is biologically based and was created, by evolution, to advance the survivability of the species. Without society, morals are meaningless, and would never exist. Don't steal, don't kill (members of your own "tribe"), treat everyone as you would have yourself treated...all of these are necessary for a society to exist, and without them we would not be where we are today as a species. To believe that they exist outside ourselves, to believe they have some natural "rightness", is an understandable fallacy given the genetic hardwiring of our brain to follow these rules, but it is still untrue.

And in a great cycle of positive reenforcement, the society you live in shapes those morals to its own ends and teaches them, and punishes those who can not abide by them. Morals make society possible, society teaches and enforces morals. There is nothing divine about it. You seperate culture (differences in societies) and true morality, and say they are two seperate things. I say hogwash, they are deeply interrelated, and are meaningless seperated.

Don't steal, don't kill (members of your own "tribe"), treat everyone as you would have yourself treated...all of these are necessary for a society to exist

So I guess that means you wouldn't have any problems killing members of another tribe, like say Iraq? Better yet, we should just nuke the whole f'ing middle east so none of our tribe warriors will have to die in combat.

So I guess that means you wouldn't have any problems killing members of another tribe, like say Iraq?

That depends entirely on what your definition of "another tribe" is. It was (and is) common practice to demonise those groups against whom you wanted to whip up popular fervour.

It's easier to kill someone who's different.

A book I've just finished reading: "Berlin - The Downfall 1945" describes the level of demonisation happening on both sides of the German/Russian front. One comment from the Soviet soldiers upon entering Berlin is that the Germans "were just like them".

Groups are defined by their differences. If you can emphasise those differences, then the other group becomes less like you, and easier to kill.

> So I guess that means you wouldn't have any problems killing members of another tribe, like say Iraq? Better yet, we should just nuke the whole f'ing middle east so none of our tribe warriors will have to die in combat.

Don't confuse my describing of the true situation of the world with my own personal opinion. When it was written that your god said "thou shalt not kill", did it really mean anyone, or did it mean just your own tribe? Well, considering how warlike and violent the old testament and its god was, I think it is clear that this only applied to your own people, and killing non-Jews was fine.