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  #1  
Old 08-18-2005, 12:18 AM
David Sklansky David Sklansky is offline
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Default My Take On Absolute Morality.

I have said that there is no absolute morality. By that I may mean something different than what people think I mean so I will explain it shortly. First though the issue of and morality and God. When I said there is no absolute morality without God, I phrased it that way merely to prod people not to argue with Not Ready about a side issue. I really don't think that there is an absolute morality even with God, even if he exists. All there is is God's wishes.

Furthermore even if you want to equate God's wishes with absolute morality you still have big problems. The biggest of course is that there probably is no god who cares what we do. And even if there is, how do we know what he wants? The bible? No good reason to believe it tells us what he wants. There are so many alternatives. Including the alternative that he hasn't yet bothered to tell us. After all that was the situation people 6000 years ago were in.

Yet another problem is that not all situations are covered. If I tell a virginal young girl I'll feed 1000 starving children if she strips naked for me is she doing good or evil if she accepts? Maybe the bible or Koran covers that type of thing but I'm sure that some things aren't covered.

Anyway that is off the subject. My point about absolute morality is not a deep one. It is simply the same point that you can make about something like beauty. It is in the eye of the beholder. Remember the Twilight Zone where the girl wakes up to her failed plastic surgery operation? Not farfetched at all. Imagine that on a different planet there were humans exactly like us. Except they had no ears. Just small holes in the side of their head. If Shana Hiatt visited that planet almost no man could bear to get near here. She would look grotesque.

Lets skip to those Nazis who were a willing part of the Holocaust. An obvious case of evilness? Why? I'm quite sure that the majority of Nazis were not licking their chops at the thought of killing Jews. And that they were not sociopaths either. This is probably even more true of the doctors who performed medical experiments. What at least some, if not most of them, were is people who had figured out a way to turn off enough of their empathy instinct to rationalize doing horrible things to fellow human beings because of the greater GOOD they thought would result.

They were for the most part not anywhere close to being evil by most peoples standards but were simply stupid and perhaps psychologically weird. But they would disagree with that assessment. Just as researchers who torture animals for the sake of better medicines would.

Meanwhile if you invoke Hitler to talk about this subject you are going too far anyway. Because even if everybody agreed that somehow Hitler was absolutely immoral it wouldn't have much affect on our lives. Few people wrestle with the desire to kill 6,000,000 Jews.

That's why I would rather talk about slavery. In America. Unlike extreme Nazism which can be chalked up as an aberration affecting a handful of Germans (I'm not counting the thousands who I believe were just reluctantly following orders), slavery was condoned by tens of millions for several generations. The same slavery that is now considered by most people almost as clearcut an example of absolute evil as the concentration camps. Yet it was condoned by millions of otherwise highly moral and usually religious people. And I don't want to hear the excuse that they truely thought blacks were subhuman to the point of animals. Nonsense. They were subjected to enough free blacks or intelligent slaves to know that blacks were in the same ballpark as whites even if possibly inferior. But millions tuned off their empathy instinct because they were stupid or because they needed to rationalize what they were doing out of selfishness. And I'm quite sure most of them who were religious were sure they were not sinning. So much for God providing absolute morality.

And for those who try to claim slavery is another abberation not likely to be widely repeated let me point this out. Right now you, me, Pair The Board, Not Ready, and Andy Fox, are choosing not to save at least 100 childrens's lives in Africa just so that our lives can remain a tad more comfortable. We have all turned off our empathy instinct. Unlike the Germans and the Southerners who rationalized a greater good, our excuse is that they actually did something while we are simply avoiding doing something. Rationalizing using the morally suspect (and illogical) principle that sins of omission are not nearly as bad as sins of commission. But it seems pretty commonsensical to me that if killing Jews or enslaving blacks is absolutely immoral so is letting all those little children die. The only reasonable excuses I can see is that you are already poor or that in the long run the excess money you don't donate will save even more lives.

I can see 1000 years from now, on another forum, people talking about Americans lack of help toward Africa in almost the same way as we now talk about the holocaust or slavery. When they are debating absolute morality.

Bottom line is that if you want to claim there is such a thing as absolute morality, either with or without God, it seems to me that you got some serious self evaluation to do.
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  #2  
Old 08-18-2005, 12:29 AM
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Default Re: My Take On Absolute Morality.

Just to emphasize how easy it is for us to save some lives in Africa, if you have a credit card you can donate here
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  #3  
Old 08-18-2005, 01:00 AM
andyfox andyfox is offline
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Default Re: My Take On Absolute Morality.

We haven't all turned off our empathy instinct. As we discussed a while back when we talked about the movie Collateral (and The Third Man) for many of us, out of sight, out of mind. But one cannot right all wrongs or help everyone. Were Ghandi and Mother Teresa people who had turned off their empathy instincts because they didn't help people in Africa? [assuming they didn't]

Seems to me your claim that there isn't an absolute morality is rather a claim that no person (or very ferw people) can be perfectly moral. Because if they spend $5 more on the steak instead of having the chicken and sending the $5 to charity, they're responsible for killing children.

As for war criminals, what about Colonel Ishii of the infamous Unit 731 in Manchuria? He set out to find out if it was possible to infect men in the same way that lice, mosquitoes, ticks and fleas do. His laboratories thus produced vats full of the bacteria of typhus, tetanus, anthrax, smallpox, and salmonella. He then infected people, who were referred to as martuas, "wooden logs." 3,000 such human guinea pigs lost their lives in grotesque experiements. Some had their blood siphoned off and replaed with horse blood; vivisection was practiced on living human beings.

After the war, he bargained for full immunity in exchange for his data. Genreal MacArthur not only agreed but arranged for Ishii not to be prosecuted. Ishii died at a ripe old age, never prosecuted, and lectured to U.S. Army specialists on chemical warfare at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

This was not a man who was looking to do greater good; he was looking for a better way to kill people. Human beings who do these things to other human beings because they think it will result in a greater good might well be stupid and weird, and have a peculiar or selfish definition of "great good," but they are also evil. Do you really think you and I are just as evil because we don't live like St. Francis of Assisi?
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  #4  
Old 08-18-2005, 01:33 AM
David Sklansky David Sklansky is offline
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Default Re: My Take On Absolute Morality.

"Were Ghandi and Mother Teresa people who had turned off their empathy instincts because they didn't help people in Africa? [assuming they didn't]

Seems to me your claim that there isn't an absolute morality is rather a claim that no person (or very ferw people) can be perfectly moral."

I think Ghandi and Mother Theresa had acceptable excuses.

I think there is no absolutely morality. However if there is, than almost all of us are either absolutely moral (including Hitler and Jefferson Davis but perhaps not the BTK killer) or almost none of us (including Alan Combs, Ted Kennedy, and Bill Cosby, but perhaps not Ghandhi, or the Doctor's without Borders.) There just isn't enough difference between killing people for misguided reasons and letting thousands die when it could easily be prevented.

So though it was a bit off the subject as to why there can't be absolute morality, I couldn't resist needling those who argue there is (with or without God) when I don't think they meet the standard themselves.
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  #5  
Old 08-18-2005, 01:36 AM
chomsky53 chomsky53 is offline
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Default Re: My Take On Absolute Morality.

why do you insist on offering you uneducated opinion about things? stop embarrasing yourself.
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  #6  
Old 08-18-2005, 01:41 AM
andyfox andyfox is offline
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Default Re: My Take On Absolute Morality.

"There just isn't enough difference between killing people for misguided reasons and letting thousands die when it could easily be prevented."

I'm not quite sure exactly how "easily" thousands of deaths can be prevented, but let's assume, for the sake of argument, that it's true. So you see "not enough difference" between Charles Manson and somebody who votes for a United States senator who is not in favor of increasing humanitarian aid for Africa?
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  #7  
Old 08-18-2005, 01:44 AM
David Sklansky David Sklansky is offline
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Default Re: My Take On Absolute Morality.

Read my post again Andy.
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  #8  
Old 08-18-2005, 01:57 AM
andyfox andyfox is offline
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Default Re: My Take On Absolute Morality.

Ok, so Manson probably falls into the BTK killer bracket.

I can accept the fact that many who claim to be moral because they are Christian are either full of it or are kidding themselves. I have a hard time accepting that living a bit nicer equals not doing enough equals letting people die and is not much different than actively killing people for misguided reasons. But maybe I need to think about it some more.
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  #9  
Old 08-18-2005, 02:01 AM
andyfox andyfox is offline
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Default Re: My Take On Absolute Morality.

BTW, any comment on this, from Pair the Board, in another thread?

"I'm not so sure that devotion to Christ implies a life like Mother Theresa. . . a life's vocation of love does not necessarily mean making a big show of it. A kind word, a friendly smile, a tolerant attitude, an empathetic response, paying the bills, raising good kids, maybe even having some beers with the guys. Maybe we can do more but we can't do everything. We each have our own mission. The mission of Jesus was to bring the message of the kingdom of heaven amongst us. But he lived life fully while he was doing it."
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  #10  
Old 08-18-2005, 11:09 AM
Rick Nebiolo Rick Nebiolo is offline
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Default Re: My Take On Absolute Morality.

[ QUOTE ]
"There just isn't enough difference between killing people for misguided reasons and letting thousands die when it could easily be prevented."

I'm not quite sure exactly how "easily" thousands of deaths can be prevented, but let's assume, for the sake of argument, that it's true. So you see "not enough difference" between Charles Manson and somebody who votes for a United States senator who is not in favor of increasing humanitarian aid for Africa?

[/ QUOTE ]

As usual, I'm having trouble understanding David.

How can starvation in Africa "easily be prevented" by you or David sending more to charities that serve Africa? My understanding is that starvation in Africa isn't usually due to any lack of food sent by more developed nations; rather political leaders use starvation as a tool for their own ends.

~ Rick
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