The Daktanese Technocracy wrote:Glorious Freedonia wrote:
Thank you for responding to my post. I agree with your first point. The problem, as I am sure that we both can agree, is the degree to which deviations from prohibitions on bad acts are deviated from. It is one thing to tell a lie in order to hopefully achieve the goal of passing misinformation to an enemy. It is another thing to tell a lie just to get out of trouble. One act is a good one objectively. The other one is a good one only to a criminal mind that is focused on self interest.
You're quite welcome. But what if, say, the enemy is America and you are Hitler? Is that lying good? And, again, what if your parents beat you for talking to the police, and you do so anyways and lie to get out of that trouble? Again, you must go on a case by case basis.
I also do not believe there is a objective good, so you'll have to prove that to me.
As to your second point, I am pleased that you know not to murder. I am pleased that you do not need anyone to tell you that it is wrong. Jesus mentioned about the wolves in sheep's clothes and I think he and you agree that there are scoundrels who use religion to advance bad things. I agree with you guys too. However, there is something that is good and noble and practical about having some rules, perhaps with a little wriggle room that ought not to be broken. I think I can clarify this by stressing that one moral rule should not be broken unless following that rule would break another rule. For example we may have two pretty uncontroversial rules: 1) Do not kill people; and 2) Protect human life. When we apply these rules to a hostage situation hostages will be killed unless you kill the bad guy.
Ordinarily, we do not rush to kill people. However here we are protecting human lives by taking a human life.
You'd have to have billions of rules--Perhaps a infinite amount. Is it not better to just have guidelines? Just such as, try to create happiness as long as it does not hurt others, so on. Much less bickering of rules and freezing should the case come.
The moral dilemna situation gets perverted when people have lousy moral values. If someone values self pleasure equal greater than the rights of other people, this can lead to all sorts of evil. There are many other ways that this can be perverted and some sort of a check is needed. I think the key to this is perhaps some sort of objective system of thinking such as the use of reason.
Like I said, I don't believe in a objective system of morality.
As to your third point, I am not Christian, but I am familiar enough with it to discuss it. How is sinning the only way to achieve good from a Christian perspective? I suppose it has something to do with the moral dilemna.
Well, imagine a situation where your parents order you to murder and rape a innocent person? It's a sin not to do it. But it's not a very nice thing to do. Also, sorry for the assumption, the vast majority of Theists I know are.
As to your fourth point, I do not understand your point. Communist societies are the only atheistic ones that I am aware of. Do you know of any others? I know that not all of the atheists are communists. I think we both know that. The point is that when you take God out of the moral and ethical thinking, it can very likely have bad results even if God does not exist. They did it in the different communist societies and those societies became hells on Earth.
I have heard of some native american tribes who had no gods, but I do not have their names on me at the moment, so I won't bring it up.
The point is, you're taking one situation, with one quality, and saying that that specific quality will lead to the situation every time. The nordic people ate cheese. Does that mean every cheese-eater will become a Viking and pillage the land? No. Just because communist societies did not have a theocratic hellhole of a morality system, doesn't mean that lack of a god automatically means people will oppress and starve others.
Here's an example of such a tribe, if it helps.