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As morals are entirely subjective that was both redundant and implied. Try reading the response and comprehending it fully before replying there's a good chap.
I'm just giving you the benefit of the doubt. But if it is implied, and you're aware of the insignificance of your values, then we can simply move past them.
That is just word soup. You must be tired today.
"Interesting that you chose the holocaust? Why not any of the great inter faith christian massacres that occur with astonishing regularity?"
The Holocaust was an interfaith Christian massacre? A country with centuries of history of antisemitism that was itself overwhelmingly Christian slaughtered millions of Jews. If that's not a religious genocide I don't know what is.
But not interchristian. Otherwise yes, I agree. I wanted a reason why Breezy would just pick that scenario as opposed to the Massacre in Amsterdam or the pogroms against Huguenots in France. Is it his Baptist bias?
The reason should be obvious: the Holocaust is the poster child of atrocities, and its survivors are currently alive. If you wish to replace that with something like the St. Bartholomew Massacre, then be my guest. Just preserve the essential narrative of the original.
Oh so this one was not allegorical like you have claimed the first question was? How are we poor mortals to tell?
What?
@ Breezy
You wrote
"Well that's the irony. The first scenario is meant to be symbolic. The 70 seconds represent the 70 years we're more or less expected to live. The dropping plane represents "Spaceship Earth." The murder and the questions represent our discussions of morality."
Allegory: a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.
Perhaps some guidance on your posts about your intentions to use allegorical, symbolic meaning and /or parables would elicit better quality replies.
The first example is allegorical, the second a realistic application. I do get quality replies, just not from you for whatever reason.
You are a funny funny man.
@John 61X Breezy: I can reasonably expect every single holocaust survivors to be dead anyway by the time I'm married. So what was the point?
The point was to make the world less safe for despots and gangsters.
i really think the scenario is silly as it would never happen as we all would just simply panic.
its engrained in our evolution that we as a species are built to survive, we think about ourselves for the most.
Well that's the irony. The first scenario is meant to be symbolic. The 70 seconds represent the 70 years we're more or less expected to live. The dropping plane represents "Spaceship Earth." The murder and the questions represent our discussions of morality.
Your comment is interesting given the parallel, because I would argue that it's engrained in our "evolution" to think we'll live forever. We definitely take risks as if we couldn't die. We attach value to things as if it lasted. We should definitely be freaking out constantly, placing every ounce of our collective energy into medicine and stopping our inevitable deaths, but instead we have people getting degrees in arts and theater, and debating on forums.
I feel like people's morality is time-sensitive. They attach more importance to the objection of murder, if the victim could have lived 10 more years, than if they lived 10 more seconds.
of course it is engrained in our evolution, it is the case that we 'want' to live forever, not that we 'think' that we do.
we take risks because of the effect of endorphins and we like it, its almost like a drug addiction of sorts.
if you put a hundred people in your plane(before any critical damage) and ask them all to jump out without a parachute, how many would? perhaps one if you was ridiculously lucky in having someone with a specific degree of mental instability.
why should we be freaking out? death is inevitable! it makes no sense to freak out over it, freaking out won't alter it.
most people tend to follow a path of what makes their short time more tolerable, if we all just lived day to day doing nothing,
we would go stir crazy.
for me, i followed a path into the hard sciences as i find happiness there and we can pass on that knowledge and keep learning.
this is the problem with theism i find, its slowly, day by day losing its grip on actual knowledge and clings on to us via morality and philosophy.
I do think many suicides either come about or are influenced by the idea of our hopeless and unexpected mortality. I don't think anyone would jump if the plane is fine, but if its going to crash, some in the comments already said they'd ask the murderer to shoot them.
I also think the difference between wanting to live forever, and thinking we'll live forever, is important. I certainly don't have a problem with both being true. As far as I can tell, if I think I'm getting a $100 and I realize I'm not, then I'm left wanting $100. People don't even like saving for retirement, they think the present moment is theirs forever. That should be an indication that we don't think we're going to die or even get old. I wouldn't not save just because I want to live forever, that wouldn't make sense.
I would also like to point out that evolutionary answers only explain so much. For all we know species like salmon consciously live on a cycle. They "know" when its time to breed and time to die, and seem to submit peacefully. There's no reason why we couldn't have been that way. So you can attach evolution to your answers, but its not really saying much.
you are in a way making my point, so well done.
yes some would like to be killed to forfeit going through pain, but if you think about it rationally, youll be killed so fast you will not even be that aware of it.
thats right, so one could say - they think they will go to heaven, realize there is no proof and likely does not exist. but you are left with acceptance or a yearning for there to be a heaven despite the evidence.
how is the salmon cycle different to humans? we know we have an age band in which breading is likely to be rewarded with success, and we have an age bracket where we are likely to die? some are fine with this, some are not.
you also that go on the premise that the salmon is not aware/conscious, the fact is we do not know if they are aware or fear death, they may very well do so.
Well certainly, we naturally avoid pain and seek happiness. I don't see why we wouldn't agree there. But when the jump is made, from saying this is how things are, to therefore this is how things ought to be, then I disagree.
Well certainly, we naturally avoid pain and seek happiness. I don't see why we wouldn't agree there. But when the jump is made, from saying this is how things are, to therefore this is how things ought to be, then I disagree.
of course, i certainly think we can agree on the human need to avoid pain and prefer happiness.
allow me now to step away from my usual scientific analysis, and offer a more personal viewpoint.
i think you can only use the premise of 'what ought to be' in a closed system,
this is one of the things that early in my life swayed me from my religion.
and by closed system, i mean in a god made universe.
i would expect there to be laws which cannot be violated at all, be that moral or in the realm of physics.
the fact a plane can crash kind of dismisses that, because in such an environment, an almost utopia.
you would expect no plane to ever crash and no one on board to kill another.
that is what ought to be, why should planes crash? why should people die?
a theist i would imagine could adopt positions such as 'god moves in mysterious ways' and other philosophical stand points.
however, a naturalistic world view makes more sense, and these bad things not only do happen, they have to happen.
food for thought i guess.
"Well certainly, we naturally avoid pain and seek happiness. I don't see why we wouldn't agree there. But when the jump is made, from saying this is how things are, to therefore this is how things ought to be, then I disagree."
You think we ought to cause as much pain and unhappiness as we can? Or just not care if we do?
John 6IX Breezy,
If you want peace and tranquility then everyone needs to under one system. It really doesn't matter what that system is as long as there's no opposing force to it. That's demonstrated by the biblical examples of Moses when he slaughtered the people who wanted freedom of religion and choice. It was repeated in the King Asa story when he killed all of the people who didn't like his fairy tale.
Jehu did the same thing = https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Kings+10&version=TLB
Even Yeshua will do it when he tosses people he doesn't like into the lake of fire.
So would you have stopped any of those characters from committing their slaughters? If you would then you would be fighting Yahweh, the deity you believe in. So why would you have tried to stop the "holocaust"? Isn't everything that happens Yahweh's will?
If at the last moment the plane was righted and glided to an effortless stop on a perfectly smooth runway would the person be accused of murder or rewarded for an act of mercy?
If the plane crashed and we saw footage of Algebe and the murderer fighting over the knife, before they both became pudding, we would all scratch our heads over the purpose.
But if the plane somehow managed to recover, he would definitely be charged with murder.
John: I would be very interested in reading an answer to your two questions from a morally objective viewpoint. Can you provide one?
It's self-evident that an objective morality implies my answer and viewpoint don't matter. If murder is wrong objectively then the murder on the plane is wrong, by definition.
Is there any killing (of a human, by a human) that is not murder? If so, what mechanism would one use to determine the difference? What mechanism would one use to determine who is correct if the difference is disputed?
Going with what CyberLN said. Would releasing a small amount of ionizing radiation into the environment be murder? It raises the cancer rates, which increases the death toll, but no single death can be tied directly to the release.
You seem to think killing a baby isn't murder so long as its in a womb, so I guess not all killing is murder. As far as what mechanism to use, I suppose whatever objective mechanism we used to determine murder was wrong in the first place.
Highly skeptical that you have such a thing.
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