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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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@Breezy
What cynical and ridiculous scenario.
I told you that morality is subjective and it has been proven over and over again. Just because you can't prove otherwise makes no difference.
You are becoming increasingly a christian apologist.
I also told you I won't play your silly games and they ARE just that silly and inane.
Instead of asking what the point of abiding by morality in your stupid scenarios, you should actually state your point for making up such ridiculous scenarios.
No need to tell me every time you don't want to play, just don't participate.
I tell you because you need to be called out for such childish bullshit. It is all about you trying to corner atheist in a silly game of gotcha. It's stupid. We've already proven that morality is subjective. Even your stupid game proves it because people take a different idea of morality given circumstance. This gotcha game obsession is akin to Russian Tank's NDE posts which are just as childish.
It's only a "gotcha question" if you have gotcha beliefs. —Some dude named Kyle Kulinski
I don't know anything with certainty, nevermind the future. I consider the infliction of pain on another individual to be wrong, a view which doesn't really change based on context. But it is easier to answer how I would answer in terms of passive morality rather than active morality.
Well, context still applies to pain I presume. A butcher inflicts pain to kill and a surgeon inflicts pain to heal. Likewise I'm tempted to believe the rapes inflicted by Cosby were painless, given that he sedated many of his victims.
What do you mean by passive vs active morality?
I do eat meat, but I am opposed to the infliction of pain on animals, and I'm not particularly happy that animals must die in order to satisfy my bloodlust.
I believe that rape does not only damage the victim, but also society.
By passive vs. active morality, I simply refer to moral choices caused by simply not acting, or by choosing to act. Take for example the Trolley problem. If I was forced to make an apparent choice between 1 death and 5 deaths, it is not easy for me to know how I should act.
John, you wrote, “Likewise I'm tempted to believe the rapes inflicted by Cosby were painless, given that he sedated many of his victims.”
I suspect that is because you aren’t considering the subsequent, frequently profound, and enduring emotional pain.
Perhaps, but I think the emotional pain left behind by being consciously raped isn't of the same kind or degree as "sleeping" through the experience, and putting the pieces together once you awake. I cant imagine how traumatizing a surgery must be, going through it fully conscious, but one under anesthesia?
Interesting that you use surgery and rape in the same paragraph to describe how you place emotional trauma on some sort of totem pole of value.
John, there just is NO way for you (or anyone else) to qualify someone else’s pain. You can think that a rape survivor finds it less emotionally painful to be unconscious vs conscious but you will be making an vaporous assumption.
I hope your objections are due to the insensitivity of the subject, and not because you think rape loses its wrongness as a consequence of its pain.
WTF?
You're responding to my comment that morality and pain shouldn't overlap. I don't know if you're just correcting me, or siding with Sapporo.
Rape is wrong because it is the act of having sex with someone against their will. If any pain is inflicted, this is also wrong.
Sure, but doing something against someone's will is also circumstantial. Is putting said rapist in prison against their will immoral or just? Is forcing parents to vaccinate their kids immoral or just?
In my opinion a subjective morality just means it doesn't exist, and we're making arbitrary rules as we go along. Either morality is something external and independent from us, or its not real. I have no problem if people said things like pain avoidance and consent, are our best attempt to look behind the curtain to an objective morality. But to argue its purely subjective is self-destructive.
The morals of an individual and the laws of a country represent the individual/country at any one moment in time. I don't think defining something as purely subjective or purely objective is meaningful in such a context. You cannot ignore the law simply by claiming it is purely subjective, and it would be unworkable to say that the state is purely objective.
Well I would agree that the state is not the infallible giver of objective morality. Although, if process has ever been achieved in society, it has been by ignoring a state's subjective claims, difficult as it may be.
Neither the state nor the individual is infallible. A compromise is found between the two. They could of course both be "wrong", according to the values of the future.
" A butcher inflicts pain to kill and a surgeon inflicts pain to heal."
Actually they both try and reduce pain as much as possible, except when religion is involved in butchery of course.
"Likewise I'm tempted to believe the rapes inflicted by Cosby were painless, given that he sedated many of his victims."
Pain isn't only physical.
Well first off, I thought the original analogy here was kind of rediculous....
But I just want to remind everyone, "We are all on a plane that's going down". We are all going to die. But to kill someone ahead of that time, is murder, and it's morally wrong.
Well, I disagree. I do not think Jack Kevorkian’s assistance to folks or the folks ‘prematurely’ taking their own lives is morally wrong.
Hey Cyber, OK, well let me rephrase that....
To "murder" somebody before their natural time is up is wrong.
Ended a terminally ill person's life to alleviate needless suffering is a completely different thing. Certainly not murder.
@Fishy1: "Certainly not murder."
It is in many jurisdictions. A man got a life sentence in New Zealand for helping a friend, who was paraplegic and pain-wracked after a construction accident, to swallow an overdose of pills. Over-entitled religious morons still prevent society from having a sensible debate over situations like that.
Paraplegic, as in can't move their leg? There has to be more to the story, anyone that wants to die just for losing their legs, has an interesting outlook on life.
Well that reply Breezy, even by your appalling standards is absolute bollocks. "just for losing their legs" look up the definition of paraplegic " a person affected by paralysis of the legs and lower body."
Sheesh.
So I should just be quoting the dictionary at the cost of brevity, just to keep you from sayin sheesh?
No. More word games? You correct people on thew forums all the time, asking for correct definitions of words and phrases so you can continue with your pathetic word games.
I am calling you out for an unfeeling, unsympathetic comment that really gave us an insight into your lack of compassion, understanding and empathy.
The 'sheesh' is because "fucking arrogant prick" is way too many letters to type when hoping for an apology.
Shame.
@John 61X Breezy: "Paraplegic, as in can't move their leg? "
My mistake. I meant quadriplegic, as in can't move anything.
@ Fishy1, define ‘murder.’
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