Originally posted by xmarksthespot
Apparently he finally got fed up with you Nazi swine, after having allowed the systematic genocide of 6,000,000 Jews. Go figure.
Know that whole Holocaust thing? Never happened!
Originally posted by FeceMan
The conscience isn't meaningless, but our society has made it so. We can discern right from wrong, but our society teaches us otherwise. God's morals are good for heaven and Earth, but people just like to act like they aren't.After all, if I'm an absolutist, I'm naught but a fundamentalist.
Did you mean that people are afraid to define things in terms of the absolute, because they are afraid of being percieved as fundamentalists and becoming something that they were taught by our society is base and ignorant, primitive...?
i.e. that people have hobbled their active conscience by lacking the faith sufficient to be able to believe something absolutely and unequivocally, and as a result people are unable to clearly discern right from wrong because they are caught up in something like moral relativism?
Originally posted by FeceMan For starters, that taxpayers ought to pay for government-funded sex change operations.[/b]
Sex change operations and who pays for them are a matter of conscience? Should tax payers ever contribute to reconstructive surgery? "Ba hah!" you may say - they are totally different. However there is logic behind Governments contributing to both. Psychology behind the sex change - since it is recognised that there is mental justification in some cases, and the hideously expensive operation is beyond the reach of many people with a justifiable need to become a women. However it is not like that in all cases.
To my knowledge in Australia, and England (at least) to be entitled to that Government assistance one must meets with counsellors who assess whether there is a justifiable need to have the change, or whether it is something like repressed homosexuality affecting their perception (I am a man and like men, but that is sick, clearly I am a women in a mans body) - in which case they are directed to suitable counselling and do not receive government assistance, and if they insist upon the operation must come up with the funds themselves.
For my conscience it would be wrong for Governments, drawing upon taxpayer money, not to use some of it to help those in need - and some of those who seek sex-change operation have a genuine psychological need for it, and without it face an unhappy life.
As it is not God's duty to walk us through life, it is not His duty to make sure we're doing everything a-okay. However, when things became such a quagmire of immorality and evil, He decided to step in.
What in gubbins? Who is saying God has to walk us through life? It is you and others who claim he has been like a parent, and sometimes must, like a parent discipline his child. It is I saying that the analogy is trash since if that is the case he is a bad parent. Parenting is a consistent process till the child reaches the age of autonomy - yet God's parenting has, apparently, consisted of doing nothing for long periods of time, allowing the child to be wrecked and only then deciding to do something, which amounts to killing the child (humanity killed with flood) and then starting over by having some more (by way of Noah) - this is not good parenting.
I don't know. Compared to some deaths, drowning is merciful. Who knows--maybe God made it so the animals didn't suffer. I, of course, can't make any statement on that because it's not written in the Bible, but it is a possibility.
Funny that, in terms of statistics, the three forms of death people seem fear a lot is being buried alive, being burnt alive and drowning. Oh yes, at least he didn't burn them all. Or bury them all - though both would have been healthier - all of humanity lying around decomposing. Once again speaking from a farm perspective the period following a major flood in which a lot of livestock has been lost is very unpleasant and can be quite dangerous in terms of disease.
Like those wonderful "It wasn't really morally wrong for them because that was how their culture was" factors?
Because that was how the culture was. You can try to shoehorn modern laws into ancient history, but it is purely an intellectual, and ultimately relative exercises. Because morals and laws through the ages have not been set in stone, in fact the morals and laws of the US or Australia or wherever have changed in the last 200 years. Or 100. Or 50. Or even the last 10.
Don't forget that people had the opportunity not to drown. They just didn't take it.
Naturally, it was completely their fault. I actually believe they did choose not to drown (since no one really does) but there was no means to save themselves (since humanity was spread, and there was only Noah... so most wouldn't have known of God.) Tell me - how many humans could Moses have loaded on that magical ark of his? No many I'd bet.
Furthermore, a lot of the people who were so entrenched in the moral decay of the time were not even totally human--they were angelic halfbreeds, mockeries of humanity.
Hmmm. Just like Jews were a mockery of humanity in certain peoples eyes.
Good, Holy Man: "You're a giant! You are foul in the sight of God and thus you die!"
Giant/halfbreed: "Wait! What is my crime?"
Good Holy Man: "Existing. Bwahahahahah!"
Your example of being a boss in a company is flawed as there isn't a rival company running amok and hurting all the workers in the example.
No? In business one has competition. To be on the top of the sproggit market I need loyal staff. What better way to insure they stay loyal then to let the forces of my opponent sproggit maker do bad things to them? Heaven forbid I actually trust my staff, or respect them as friends or family. NO, I have to prove their loyalty to my fellow sproggit maker. Why I care what he thinks is irrelevant, he needs to be shown my loyal staff can be treated in the most appalling fashion with my permission and stay with me. Granted it wont matter since he wont change and people will still be people and in the future plenty will still go with him, but... but...
I fear that you won't answer thq question because you know what the answer is.
Very well - First Egyptian slaves were not the property of Egyptian citizens individually, they belonged to the state who set where they worked, for how long and at what jobs. Typically a slave would be "loaned" to a small number of Egyptian households to act like a maid, doing household chores or as a light laborer. It was the people holding the loan who were responsible for the slaves well being, since if the slave ended up getting ruined somehow they wouldn't receive another on future rotation - since slaves would be swapped out periodically. - the question of "did they care for the condition of the Hebrews" is one of little validity since that was not the right, nor duty of the Egyptian citizen.
And since God and the Hebrews didn't apparently care about the conditions they left the other slaves in (the ones evidently not as chosen in God' eyes) it is rather hypocritical.
Second, the image so popular of the Egyptians standing over slaves with whips as they dragged huge monument blocks is one with increasingly less historical validity. It is increasingly believed slaves were not responsible for monument construction, but rather off season Egyptian labor. As such slaves more likely worked in the above light menial work, or as servants at palaces and temples, as well as tending animals and the like. In all it is judged that an Egyptian slave was likely treated significantly better then a Spartan slave, better then other slave keeping nations at the time, and probably only slightly worse then a Greek slave.
Like I said, God doesn't always work in spectacular ways.
No, he just takes the credit of the blood, sweat and tears of humans who did what the important all loving God decided he wouldn't get involved in.
Moral relativism says that there are no moral absolutes and that right and wrong are defined differently by different people. Therefore, slavery, to one man, could be right while being wrong to another.
And.... is that in fact the case? Yes, yes it is. There are people, now the majority, who believe slavery is wrong, and they have good, rational reasons for it. Were there once people who believed it right and believed they had good, rational reasons for it? Yes, yes there was. Moral relativism is not about saying "there can be no laws", it is about recognising that obvious fact: people think differently from one another! It is the job of the state to separate morality from the decisions and try and implement what is best for the people. What is as just as possible. Because people have different morals.
Moral relativism recognises this - and once again, are your seriously saying that "slavery is good" as the same as "due to different social and moral perspectives some societies believed slavery was good."
What's your point? I don't think slavery is wrong in and of itself.
As long as it isn't those of a favoured religion being enslaved it seems. And that sounds vaguely relativist...
That's not the point. The point is that Josef Mengele was evil and that there was no denying it.
And the point is it is absurd by trying to imply that all the people who God has killed are somehow all Josef Mengeles'. Evil like that is neither common nor accepted in most cultures. The relevance of him in this debate is rather limited beyond "sometimes there are some really foul types who the world is better of without." And when one considered God didn't kill Mengele, that he escaped justice while on earth, and might have found God while living on comfortable exile and could even now be up there sipping German lager at the Heavenly bar... what with being given the chance all those "evil" people weren't given when God decided to get involved.
And yet those were the terms of victory at the time.
Can I shout "moral relativism" - those were the terms of victory at the time. That makes them right? Yes or no? And if they were right "at the time" - well, we know were that leads.
And if they were wrong and morality is relevant to time and context but absolute throughout it... then God is implicit in crimes against humanity.
Oh, but wait, maybe crimes against humanity don't count when one is not of the proper faith.
You could indeed.
Well there you go. Tell me when you have begun believing in the claims of Sociologists, and I will tell you when I have found a way of believing in the rest.