Moral Absalutes COME ON!! try and tell me murder is wrong!

reply to post by the illuminator


Murder is a specific kind of killing. However if you widen it to all types of human on human killing than there are tons of examples in which many people think taking a life is acceptable. Self-defense, capital punsihment, abortion, assisted suicide, etc.

There are also ways that killing used to be accepted that we now reject as murder. For instance in the Old Testament it says that rebellious children and women who aren't virgins on their wedding night should be put to death. If someone did that today we'd see it as a horrible murder, not following God's law, yet back then it was the law of the land. Slavery was also condoned in the Old Testament yet Christians and Jews seem happy to agree that slavery is wrong. Could it be because morality has changed?

Like it or not moral values do change over time.

reply to post by Greensage

If I am the reason why I was sexually and physically abused, if I am the reason I was emotionally abused then yes you should kill me. If you are incapable of killing the monster then you might very well be enabling the monster to exist, perpetuating its existence.

Having been a paedophile’s victim may excuse your anger but it cannot justify killing paedophiles.

Using Religion to justify the existence of this evil makes no sense to me.

I am not a religious person. I merely point out that many traditional societies accept substantial age differences between husbands and wives. Sad and shocking though it may seem, a lot of them even condone child marriage.

The harm that is placed within never goes away so I am incapable of seeing your point of view.

If you were abused as a child, you have my sympathy, but it does not make you right.

I do not understand why you are incapable of seeing how removing a monster is unjust; would you let a rapist do time and expect them to change?

Judicial murder in a democratic society makes murderers of us all.

Killing is the easy part, not killing is the conscious effort to be better than them!

That was my point, I think.

Yeah, your title is definately a little misleading. But, it really comes down to a matter of perspective and how you define murder. If it is simply the act of killing, then this happens to go on every second of the day by hundreds of different people. In this case, then a large portion of humanity would say that this is just fine to do. But also it is important to consider some of the other possibilities involving death inflicted from one person to another.

1. War
-Are you the one being attacked because of holy wars hundreds of years ago?
2. Abortion
-Rape?
3. Revenge
-Batman? (though he doesn't make a name for himself from killing people, he saw his parents murdered, does that justify his constant attacks on the Joker?)
(4. True accident)

When I think of "murder" I think senseless destruction of another's mental or physical existance. In which case, it is never justified. However, there are ways to justify death.

Originally posted by the illuminator
I am looking for a person to tell me Murder is ok. that if i came up to them and murdered their parents right in front of them that they would be ok with that.

I simply dont get it. there is clearly a right and wrong in our world. not just our world view but EVER world view.

Good Day.

Murder...killing for any "ISM" , be it Socialism, Fascism, Nationalism, Hinduism, Islamism, Christianism, Catholicism, ETC...is wrong!

It breeds fear, fanaticism and bloodshed!

ALL LIFE IS IMPORTANT! We are all ONE.

Regards and Nameste,

-Chung

Morals are Easy.

Too easy, and there is nothing supernatural about it.

I am alive. You are Alive.

WE have no right to take the life of others, because we don't want others taking our lives.

It's not exactly a difficult concept to grasp.

reply to post by Astyanax

So you do believe in absolute morality, then! If the morality of an act can be defined independent of any human opinion about it, then morality is by definition absolute.

Nope, I was talking about individual prediction ability, not absolute/relative morality. If we assume that morality of an action is determined by its consequences, then there are two consequences present:
1. Consequences that we believe are likely to be true, these determine our moral judgement of an act
2. Consequences that will happen in reality - these determine the real moral judgement of an act according to our moral system, one that may differ from 1. according to our prediction ability

This does not say anything about morals being relative or absolute.

reply to post by Maslo

If we assume that morality of an action is determined by its consequences, then there are two consequences present:

• Consequences that we believe are likely to be true, these determine our moral judgement of an act

Then the judgment will vary according to (a) the judge’s predictive ability, as you say, and (b) the morals of the judge. This is a morally relativistic situation. No argument.

• Consequences that will happen in reality – these determine the real moral judgement of an act according to our moral system.

This full set of consequences cannot even be described, let alone judged. So if actions are to be judged by their consequences as you say, human assessment of the morality of any act is simply impossible. This scenario leads to the result that morality does not exist.

This does not say anything about morals being relative or absolute.

Wrong; it does. If the morality of an act is judged by its real consequences, then either there is an absolute standard, independent of human opinion to judge by; or else judgment is impossible and – given the other stated conditions – morality cannot exist.

Maslo, may I suggest we terminate this fruitless discussion and move on to what really matters – not morality, but ethics? I’m sure we both agree there is no such thing as absolute morality – such beliefs are a throwback to an earlier, more primitive era of human culture. What may or may not be absolute is ethics. What do you think? Is it possible to devise a prescriptive ethics that is applicable without modification to all sentient beings? Or, at least, to all human beings?

I am perfectly content to ignore the question whether such an ethics is applicable to God. Comme Lapalace, nous n’avons pas besoin de cette hypothèse..

reply to post by the illuminator


If you murdered my family, I would do the same to you.

then I expect you to forgive me as I would forgive you.

Oh wait your dead........ you cant forgive me........ looks like i don't have to forgive you ether.

It wouldn't be ME you would need forgiveness from. You didn't kill me. Those you killed are dead and can NEVER forgive you.

So by me killing you, I my self can NEVER be forgiven.

Why would I bring that upon my self?

My forgiveness means nothing to those whom are no longer alive to forgive.

reply to post by Astyanax

This full set of consequences cannot even be described, let alone judged. So if actions are to be judged by their consequences as you say, human assessment of the morality of any act is simply impossible. This scenario leads to the result that morality does not exist.

Why? It can sometimes be described accurately, when our prediction ability is sufficient. Sometimes we know what will happen, sometimes we dont. The act itself still has the same morality in reality because only one set of consequences will ultimately happen. You are drawing conclusions from this that are not there. This scenario leads to the result that in real world, determining the morality of an act accurately according to consequencialist moral system is not always 100 % accurate, because we lack omniscience. Nothing more.

reply to post by Maslo

It can sometimes be described accurately, when our prediction ability is sufficient.

But our ability is never sufficient, nor can it ever be. We cannot even predict all the consequences of a sneeze. Consequences ramify in the world beyond any possibility of measurement. Thus we can never judge an act by its consequences except in a rather naive, superficial kind of manner. A better judgement can be arrived at in hindsight after a generation or so, perhaps, but even this can only be temporary and provisional.

Sometimes we know what will happen, sometimes we dont.

We never know, except for the immediately foreseeable consequences. And they are not enough to judge by.

You are drawing conclusions from this that are not there.

I think you should examine what I have written a little more closely, with a view to the philosophical implications.

Not interested in talking about ethics, then?