Moral statements relate to the morals of the person making the statement, then, as everyone’s morals can differ, are moral statements simply onions? If everyone shared an opinion, would the moral statement be more valid than if people’s opinions were divided?[/i]
gay people are gay because chemicals in their body are messed up. therefore their ‘opinion’ is that they are unable to control their gayness.
evangelicals dont know a god damn thing about god or gay people or anything of any value beyond how to breathe and maybe eat. therefore their ‘opinion’ is that god says all kinds of crazy crap that makes no sense.
their opinion is stupid, misinformed and is destroying my country there is no arguing against that. please try, id be quite amused
I’m guessing you live in America?
If it were true that homosexuality is caused by an unbalance of hormones… it would mean that being gay is completely natural!
How can evangelicals say that God thinks it’s wrong to be gay… has God whispered this gem of knowledge in each of their ears?
I would not like to try and argue against your view… I’d probably make myself sick.
Everyone’s opinion of what is moral can differ, yes. That proves nothing except that everyone’s opinion is different. The fact may still be that morality is not subject to the opinions of everyone, and simply ‘is’.
If I make the statement “It is wrong to kill another human so that I may take his money” then I am 1) expressing an opinion but 2) making a moral statement I can easily support and no one can argue effectively against.
By the way, I hope this isn’t a stupid question… Is “dubya” George Bush? If so… why is he called dubya? It wouldn’t have anything to do with his middle initial being “W” would it?
How about… “It is wrong to kill another human so that I may take his oil”
yes instead of saying “du-bul-yoo” as we english speakers do, dubya pronounces it and many other words with an accent that i associate with ignorance and stupid gay-bashing
when i think about naked men, i gag. forget about thinking about what gay people actually do. i absolutely can not imagine that people would purposely subject themselves to social alienation through their adolescence only to participate in something that disgusts the crap out of them like it does for me. thats why i believe its definetely chemical and out of their control.
Soddom sounds like sodomy! therefore sodomy must be destroyed! and since god apparently got old and impotent and lost his ability to zap cities off the face of the earth, we have to do it ourselves.
theres this wonderful book filled with gods love, wisdom and the Good News, its also filled with the Bad News and the Indifferent News and the Completly Ambiguous News.
this book has been the center of all human ignorance for 2000 years, and thats why people think it must be true! even when it contradicts itself.
the moral systems differ, yes…
it is the case that under a christian moral system it is wrong to murder for any reason
it is the case that under the morality of ethical egoism that it can be right to murder
it is not a question of opinion however because under the different systems, certain things are considered moral where others are not…
which system to choose is arbitrary but morality isn’t simply opinion…
-Imp
ONE WAY of looking at it would be if there aren’t enough shareholders in the OPINION then it remains merely that. If there are, it may coalesce into a so-called moral statement. If it crosses international boundaries it becomes an ecumenical one regardless of its original merit. One can apply this not only to individuals, groups, regions and hemispheres but also to historical time. Validation is based on acceptance - for better or worse. One reason why we’re so top-heavy with crap!
is that in the case of self defense? or some kind of self serving failure to adhere to the golden rule?
cause if its the latter, it is wrowrowrowronnnng. thats not my opinion, that is the statement given by the person who is being killed for a reason other than self defense. that person said so because he is screwed and he didnt deserve it. thats why its wrong and not just my opinion
the golden rule is logically the key to morality. when dealing with large numbers of people sure it gets difficult, but it is possile to calculate greater good if youre not fooling yourself and trying to be selfish and overly paranoid about it.
for example, quarantining a city, while unfairly resulting in more deaths for those trapped in the city, prevents the much larger number of unfair deaths caused elsewhere if the quarantine were not put in effect. this is a very very clear logical decision to kill that very clearly adheres to the golen rule.
morality is not an opinion, its the golden rule. if you dont follow it you are wrong. i have soundly defeated all ILP attacks on the invincibility of the golden rule. please try again
The golden rule, as it were, originated from the book of Matthew-if we want to absolutize morality to that, so be it. Look, behind all the rhetoric, the options are quite few.
1:That there is no true aboslute to look to, so “morals” are not really morals but rather arbitrary absolutes based on what man deems socialogically beneficial at the time at which point in his total depravity he will manipulate social science according to his own political or social desires rather than standing on concrete objectivity or-
2:An absolute in the universe has spoken about morality and allowed humans to feel true guilt not just guilt feelings about thier morality and lackthereof, and plato is right and saying that morals do not exist without absolutes.
ok, what If you like to be treated differently than your neighbor? For instance you are a sado-masochist, and you like to pull at your own nipples till they hurt like hell. Should you then treat other people the same way, pulling on their nipples till they hurt like hell?
only if you dont understand that you are an unusual sadomasochist.
imagine you were born crazy like this and you lived in a cage until you were old enough to have fully developed the idea that nipple grabbing feels as good as whacking off. you sit there and pull your nipples just like a normal person pulls their dick.
one day your let out of your cage and your off to go find a friend. for simplicity sake lets say you are also gay. so you go make a boyfriend and your back on his bed and you think to yourself, ‘oh ill bet he’ll love that thing that i do when im by myself with my [dick/nipples]’
would you blame the sado if thats what he truly believed? i think the reason why you know that sados would be wrong in hurting others in this way is because sados know well that what they do hurts other people and nobody enjoys it like they do.
this is called “ethical relativism” and there or more than a few arguments against it… anyway, the argument for it can be summed up with the famous quote of Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War
“the strong do what they will and the weak do what they must” again, like i said before, there is more than a few ways to argue against such a point of view…
from monotheistic theology to confusianism to Nietzsche to etc…
no, it is your opinion…
again, this is your opinion, nothing more…
yes it is your opinion… you haven’t defeated anything…
do some reading, your idea of “morality” is completely wrong…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality
classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html
pay careful attention to Thrasymachus…
and a bit of Nietzsche for starters…
mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/Nietzsc … l_tofc.htm
mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/Nietzsc … gytofc.htm
-Imp
imp i dont know if you posted this before or after you annoyed the crap out of me by posting your list of links, but for christs sake if you people are going to say that “ethical relativism” or “Future Mans perfect description of the Golden Rule” as i like to call it, are not right, then why the crap dont you EXPLAIN how i am not right. clearly you know something or else you woudnt have refered me to a book.
i am not going to be able to pinpoint what you are talking about in that book, so why dont you just spell it out for me now.
if anybody thinks that the golden rule is not a perfect absolute moral standard, tell me why and ill prove you wrong.
multiple
imp i dont know if you posted this before or after you annoyed the crap out of me by posting your list of links, but for christs sake if you people are going to say that “ethical relativism” or “Future Mans perfect description of the Golden Rule” as i like to call it, are not right, then why the crap dont you EXPLAIN how i am not right. clearly you know something or else you woudnt have refered me to a book.
i am not going to be able to pinpoint what you are talking about in that book, so why dont you just spell it out for me now.
if anybody thinks that the golden rule is not a perfect absolute moral standard, tell me why and ill prove you wrong.
If you understand that you are a sado-masochist and you refrain from yanking nipples, you are no longer doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. Instead, you are doing unto others what you imagine if that if you were them you would like to have done to you. But thats not quite the same, is it? If you are imagining that ‘you’ are someone else, then does that still count as an action supposedly performed towards ‘yourself’?
That is why I say that the Golden rule is an approximation, its true most of the time enough to rely on, but by no means cuts to the heart of morality.
youre right in that it is possible for a sado to be raised in a cage so that he thinks it is morally correct to hurt.
i would say that THE ONLY standard you could ever possibly use is the golden rule. i would not say that the golden rule used in any situation will always make everybody perfectly happy, but that if everybody followed the golden rule, the world would be perfectly happy.
the reason why this exception doesnt matter, and the golden rule remains the ultimate guide is because this exception doesnt happen unless there is a humongous perversion of society. anybody who grows up surrounded by humans knows how humans feel, and also notices when the average feeling of neighbors is different from their own.
besides the impossibility of the scenario and gods inability to plan for it, what if you met a sado who treated nipple pulling like sex, as in he would only do it to those who he truly loved. then he attacks your nipples with a big friendly grin on his face and you recoil in horror. after you both explain and understand the situation, do you damn him to hell or do you have a good chuckle? how offended do you think he would have been that you recoiled in horror from his sexual offering?