Moral absolutes

by Aztec 163 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Skeptic

  Yerusalyim,

  Note INTENTIONAL taking of INNOCENT human life. Were I as a soldier INTENTIONALLY trying to kill an innocent civilian it would be murder. Thanks goodness the US doesn't make it a habit of INTENTIONALLY targeting INNOCENT civilians.

  First, understand I am not criticizing military action, or military service.

  Secondly, how do we define intentional in this case? Surely the military stategists know that when you bomb a city, innocent children are likely to die. Even when they plan to minimize civilian casualties, there are circumstances when they know innocents are going to die. I believe the term for this is "acceptable losses".

  The moral issue here then becomes not the intentional taking of innocent lives, but the benefits of taking those lives verus the costs of not taking them (i.e., not taking military action). Hence, the morality is still relative.

  A few months ago, Israel sent a fighter plane and blew up a house. A terrorist whom they had been pursuing for years was living on the second floor of the house, and they knew that this was their only chance to get him, as he was extremely elusive.

  Israel knew a family was living on the first floor, and knew the family was home. They knowingly fired at the house, knowing that the innocent family would be killed or seriously injured. I can't remember the number of deaths, but I do remember the photos of the seriously injured young children.

  Israel considered this to be an acceptable cost, factoring in the number of lives that would be saved once the terrorist was killed.

  Israel intentionally killed/injured that innocent family. Was their action absolutely morally wrong?

  I will leave the discussions on rape and child abuse alone, as it distrubs me beyond measure. I am aware of some very sick scenarios which would not be appropriate for this forum.
• 

  Skeptic

  If God has that ultimate power to create our lives and spawned the human race, then he does have the right to decide what is absolutely right and wrong. It wouldn't matter what our puny little minds thought.

  Jourles, I am answering this more for the benefit of Christians on this forum, as what you stated is a common Christian viewpoint.

  I never did get the connection between having the ability to create life and having the right to then set right and wrong behaviour for the life we created.

  If a scientist developed ability to create life from non-living matter, does he have the right to decide what happens to that life? What if he is a pedophile and creates a human baby from non-living matter. Does he then have the right to molest that child? After all, he gave it life.

  If God existed and gave us life, does He/She/It have the wisdom to know how we should live? I have yet to see evidence of that.

  Another scenario: What if God was a cruel SOB, and made life just so He could torment it?
  

  Any RAPE is morally wrong...ALWAYS

  I know I would not touch on the topic of rape, defined as forcing unwanted sex on someone. I have a friend who's previous girlfriend was forced into prostitution as a child by her father. She was forced to be a hooker for years. She was then sold to another pimp and forced to work for him. She was forever scarred and suffered horribly all her life.

  My friend got her off the streets. He eventually located her father, and with the help of other friends, forced him to have anal sex with a horse.

  This disgusting man was raped. Was it morally wrong after what he did to his own daughter?

  Now you know why I find this topic sickening to think about. And this story is a minor one compared to some scenarios I could tell.
• 

  Aztec

  Yiz,

  Of course there is Moral Absolutes, if there had been none, there would be no rule of Law, only chaos and mahem.

  No woman would be safe from rape because man thinks it's ok to rape a woman simply because he doesn't believe in moral absolutes. (I'll do whatever I want, however I want and if you don't like it, tough!)

  No one would be safe from anyone that would get pissed off if someone just looked at someone and pulls a gun to kill you just simply because he or she didn't like the way you looked at him/her. Especially not to have to answer to anyone except those that wants revenge

  The problem with your pablum is that 1) you are generalising 2) you are completely incorrect. There is a differance between something being legal and something being moral. Ethics and laws are not mutually exclusive.

  Drwtsn,

  The problem, as I think I've already expressed to you, is that your definition of rape is not necessarily the same as everyone elses. Herein lies the problem. Once you accept that there are NO BLACK AND WHITE lines then you will see the thrust of my argument.

  Thanks for the responses!

  ~Aztec
• 

  Realist

  interesting topic - kind of related tot he abuse topics we had previously.

  ethics and moral rules are a human invention that allows complex societies to develop. however there are no absolute moral rules - no natural laws that would define any ethics - therefore its all a human concept.
• 

  SixofNine

  I think what we're all learning here is that revenge is a very good thing .

  None of it is an easy question, save for in the thoughts of people who get their so-called morality out of a book. And even then, in practical application, it becomes subject to their individual whims and personality bent.

  While I certainly don't believe in moral absolutes (where would they come from?), I have no trouble accepting limits on behaviour, and punishment for stepping over those limits. Ok, maybe a little trouble.

  The thread has already shown the apparent weakness in the "do not kill" doctrine... but sometimes I wonder, very much at odds with my curmudgeonly old testement like character, if maybe them wimpy Europeans are right, and maybe the way to eliminate killing is to take the lead, ie. not killing murderers, rapist, anyone. Lock them up forever yes, but don't kill 'em. That goes against all my inner vengeance-is-mine instincts however. It also doesn't help me out with when and how to prosecute a war of defense.

  Without ever having studied it, or even put it into a search engine, I really like the phrase "moral relativism". First of all, because as I read that, I see that such is what it comes down to anyway, even for the "moral absolutist"; they are only fooling themselves. Second, I guess I also like it because it makes me think of morals as being relative to a certain principle (I realise it is commonly applied to morals being relative to the situation), that principle being reciprocity, do unto others, the golden rule.... And yet, that principle must take a back seat to a societies' needs when you have people in society who refuse to live by said principle. I do not mourn for those people when they are hanged by the neck until dead.
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  drwtsn32

  Herein lies the problem. Once you accept that there are NO BLACK AND WHITE lines then you will see the thrust of my argument.

  Ok, I'll bite. Please define rape so that it retains its intended meaning yet by the same definition cannot be considered always wrong. I don't think I can do it....
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  logansrun

  I base any moral argument on utility -- is the action harming anyone; is the action helping anyone? In thinking about the phrase "moral absolutes" I have come up with my own doctrine, which I call "provisional absolutism." (Yes, I know that is an oxymoron)

  Here's what I mean. Let me take probably the most heinous and disgusting crime one can possibly think of: the torture and murdering of innocent children. There is a part of any decent person's moral psyche which states that this is always wrong -- unconditionally. But, is it? Using the argument of utility let me give you an example of when it might be the correct thing to do.

  An alien being of incredible power has abducted you and a child. The alien instructs you to torture the child till it dies an excrutiating death. If you refuse to do this, the alien will send a powerful beam of energy towards the earth which will obliterate it, killing all six billion people on the planet forevermore. What do you do?

  I would kill the child. One child's pain and death does not equal the sudden destruction of all life on earth as we know it -- the latter is far more costly. So, from a utilitarian argument, the "moral" thing to do would be to comply with the aliens insideous demand.

  But the scenario I have just described is so outlandishly far-fetched that it hardly deserves much thought. Such a predicament (or anything like it) has never occurred to any member of the human race as far as I know. The chances of any one of us being put in such a ridiculous scenario are so slim that I would state that I DO believe in moral absolutes -- provided that such a dubiously concoted scenario such as above does not occur.

  I guess I have it both ways then -- the moral sense in me wants to believe in absolutes, but the logical side says this isn't always true. Call it, "absolute morality with an asterisk."

  Bradley
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  drwtsn32

  ... killing all six billion people on the planet forevermore. What do you do?

  Interesting line of reasoning. If such a situation were to develop, you could justify any "immoral" action against a person.

  But weren't you still forced to do something immoral? Even though that something was less immoral than the destruction of an entire planet?
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  expatbrit

  Hey Aztec, getting deep here, are we?

  My viewpoint on it is the same as Elsewhere's. There are no moral absolutes. Rather our ethics and morals are formed by our own perceived self-interest. This was explored by the philosopher Thomas Hobbes. [shameless plug]Here's a post I did on it a while ago: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/21395/1.ashx [/shameless plug] The Hobbesian world-view very effectively explains human behaviour (particularly hypocrisy) very nicely, without the need to multiply entities unnecessarily, such as God

  As to whether God could be a source of absolute morals, Plato demolished that idea thousands of years ago in his dialogue Euthyphro. Put briefly, if God was the source of morality, then he could decide that raping children was good, and it would then be good simply because God says so. If you respond to that and say "God would never say that something so horrible as child-rape is good", then what you're saying is that God has merely recognized the inherent badness of child-rape. But that means that there is a standard of morality independent of God, in which case, God cannot be the source of morality. So why do we need God? Why not instead just bypass God and go to the source? Trouble is, the same argument applies equally to any source of morality higher than God. You get into an inifinite loop. Another good reason why there can be no source of absolute morality.

  Expatbrit
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  pettygrudger

  Ditto whatever Expatbrit said! (it sounded pretty deep - and I'm sure I'll agree with it as soon as I've had an hour to digest!)