fifthfiend
M4J3ST1C L3G1SL4C3R4TOR
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This thread's still pretty civil by our standards
Arguably this just shows that we have the standards of total *******s.
This thread's still pretty civil by our standards
We would. What else? Are humans so insignificant as to have no say in that, to be incapable of deciding for ourselves how to behave without someone telling us? Like I said right below the passage you quoted, humanity has never required a Creator figure to figure out right and wrong. Thousands upon hundreds of thousands have lived and still live moral lives without allegiance to any specific Creator. And reliance on a God -- or gods -- to determine right from wrong is no guarantee at all of a truly morality by anyone's standards. Or are you going to tell me that more people haven't been killed in the name of God than for anything else in the entirety of human history?If there were no Creator who set the rules for right and wrong, then what else would make one thing right and another thing wrong?
But I digress. What we truly know as morality doesn't change. No one, not even the Creator of the Universe, could say "hurting others is good" and have it be true. That's not morality, that's an edict. That's not right versus wrong, that's a Public Announcement System.
BrianWilly said:"we as human beings also complicate the matter through sheer human nature. Human inventions -- even the most seemingly harmless ones -- like culture and nations and, yes, religions and, yes, even a lot of laws merely confuse the issue and obfuscate formerly clear-cut tenets of being."
Brian, the morality of humanity has changed and changes all the time. It is the reason there is now an ongoing fight to legalize and accept and embrace gay marriage. It is the reason Slavery was once a legal commercial trade. It is the reason abortion was once illegal, but not anymore in the good old US of A. It is the reason premarital sex, once frowned upon is now glorified in movies, literature and comic books.
It is the reason you and I once cloaked in the veil of innocence now may be hardened to the worst of spectacles on TV and in the news media. It is the reason why all of us deep down as Merevingi said in the matrix about our base nature..... if we knew the truth.......
"is totally out of control".
If not for the rule of law, or the opinion of the majority we might well sleep with our best friends wife and worse.
Our generation and the ones before us have changed and are continuing to change.
The reality is that what is morally right has always been determined legally by the majority. And over time the majority opinion has been trending away from what was previously thought by older generations, sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad.
One thing we do know is that the concepts over what we have been arguing about, what is right and wrong has not changed. It is the same old story, is obeying parents a good thing, is murder justifiable, is war ok, is homosexuality immoral, is it wrong to enslave another human being, etc etc etc.
That is the most significant point of all, that for some reason the tenets/laws/ideas over which the world is in an uproar have remained the same, throughout human existence.
And so perhaps the question that begs to be answered is how can that be?
We did not always exist and we have not always believed what we now believe, but the things we argue over seem to be unchanging.
And I'm merely another part of the problem that is the human experience. All I'm saying is that there is an answer.
The notion that human morals are always changing from one era to another depending on whoever is in charge is one opinion, yes. Another opinion is that morals are always evolving.
You're making the large assumption that morality is at a 1:1 ratio with legality.
You're also assuming that knowing what is moral is the same thing as doing what is moral.
I don't know that I generally disagree with what you're saying but I thought those particular points needed clarification.
highguard, what you are describing here is evil. I do not disregard evil; as I've said, humans beget evil and mistake it for good through the sheer fact of human nature and human inventions. Not only does evil exist, make no mistake about it, but it is also prolific.The Indians lost their home and land cause they had bows and arrows. The Europeans had guns. There were more Indians at the start in the new world but they had no power.
In films they were characterized as savages, we talk about how they scalped people, and even worse they wanted to keep their land. They resisted and killed many Europeans, so we killed almost all of them, women children and men and herded who was left onto the worst land we could find, where we did not have to look at them. Any who disagreed we killed. We had to kill so many because they were savages.
Talk to them about evolution of morality and they might have a different opinion, I hear that some are still bitter today over the "benevolence" we showed them. Some to this day think they were wronged.
.....
I think human history and observation says we are not such a being and we never will be, I think.
There are enough bombs to kill every man, woman and child on the earth.
Why, it is madness and yet we all know that someday, the unthinkable will happen, World War 111.
Someone is going to do something crazy and someone else will do something crazier.
We saw millions die in WW2 and yet we know deep down in our hearts that all the heartache, tears and lost lives of brave Americans, and the British and the French and the Australians and the people from the Caribbean and the whole world will not be enough to make us wise enough to have enough love for one another to halt the march to madness.
There are terrorists in the world and they represent this madness and they or someone like them will make us mad and the killing will happen, it always does, we are what we are.
If there is no God, then humans have to responsible for themselves. What a burden that would be! If there is no God, then it becomes even more important for humans to clean up after our own mess, to be good parents to our children -- and thus create the sorts of people who would intrinsically choose goodness, even if we are not those people ourselves -- and to do what we can for each other in the little time that we have. Because if there's no one to catch us if we fall, we'd better make sure we don't fall. That's not something to be afraid of, highguard; that's a goal. That's something to live for, something that we set down for ourselves.If there were no consequences to doing evil, would we over time all "evolve" into evil beings. I say that the answer to that question is yes. I sense within myself that if there were no laws, no societal pressures and ultimately no being who is intrinsically good, I would ultimately become evil.
I know this to be true of myself.
Society's norms are not enough to keep me in check, heck I break my own rules sometimes and I respect myself, I do really.
The truth I think is that if there is no God none of us are going to make it. That is what I believe.
Take away God and i would do stuff, take away the law and I would do more stuff, with societal pressure the only bulwark left I would do even more and more bad stuff, unless of course I am intrinsically a being that would choose good over evil.
If there is no God I know there will be nothing to stop what is coming and all that we see will one day come to an end.
I sense within myself that if there were no laws, no societal pressures and ultimately no being who is intrinsically good, I would ultimately become evil.
If there were no God, I'd do the same. Except I'd occasionally ram people's cars if they piss me off because, really, I'm already kind of an a**hole on the road and I've thought of doing it a hundred times. I might play chicken with some pedestrians, too. Take away their goddamn crosswalks and we'll see what kind of balls those smug motherf***ers really have.![]()