Siegswife...Your comment is well expressed. The definition of "morals" inherently implies absolutes. The question really is one of universality of the standards. What is absolutely "wrong" in one culture is not so regarded in another. This does not necessarily mean that any one culture's opinion is better than another, it MAY be more informed, or it my be that the environment in which the culture evolved was different and therefore different standards worked for the betterment of the whole. Polygamy is considered both illeagal and a fundemental betrayal in our society, but as we know that in others it is not considered so by the men or women in other cultures. What is considered universally wrong is betrayal. What constitutes betrayal is each society's right to determine.
I was expecting fallout from my sex with minors comment. In my first post I made clear that a society's standards are real and effective methods of constraint. This means that to individuals within that system everything they feel or believe passes thru this lens. Feelings are real. Therefore a child that is feeling hurt is hurt. Due to the growing consensus about the undesirability of sex with minors, many have been tempted to attribute mysterious psychological certainty of harm to behavior that is ultimately entirely physical. The emotional and psychological loading of the behavior is again cast by the social norms of each culture. It is not up to individuals within that society to callously impugn or defy those conventions.
To do so would inevitably emotionally/psychologically "harm" others.
To compare my comment to that of an aberant counterculture is to miss th very point of my post.
TJ....you are wisely seeking to define terms like "murder" because that definiion is the very crux of the matter. Your definition is predjudicially loaded to match your sense of fairness and yet includes allowance for those culturally accepted occassions when killing is sanctioned.
Doesn't it simply all boil down to those universally recognised concepts of, "helpful, harmless, harmful"? As they say,the rest is commentary.
Moral absolutes
by Aztec 163 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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peacefulpete
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Aztec
Irenaeus,
So, then, if there is no summum bonum, Nietzsche was quite right: We are beyond Good and Evil! This means that killing 6,000,000 Jews in concentration camps was not immoral; it was just Hitler expressing his feelings. It means that cannibalism, human sacrifice, the burning of small children to Moloch, and the sexual violation of small children is okay if it suits your fancy.
You did miss my point. However, peacefulpete's response to you is sufficient.
Expat, I'm starting it tonight. Wish me luck.
Teejay, I wish I had more time to debate this with you but I don't. Perhaps you should go back and really read all of the responses. Alot of good points have been made.
~Aztec
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teejay
>>> Your definition is predjudicially loaded to match your sense of fairness and yet includes allowance for those culturally accepted occassions when killing is sanctioned.
I don't think the definition I used is prejudicial at all. To the contrary. It takes into account varying cultural differences and applies itself equally to all of them.
However stringent or lax a culture's views are of, let's say, murder, there are limits to killing someone. Using the hypothetical Amazonian tribe as an example, as barbaric as they might appear to more "civilized" cultures, even they have some limits to the taking of human life. Within the context of their culture, murder is wrong. The same for rape.
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Big Tex
I don't mean to bag on you Pete, so please don't take it that way.
In my first post I made clear that a society's standards are real and effective methods of constraint. This means that to individuals within that system everything they feel or believe passes thru this lens. Feelings are real. Therefore a child that is feeling hurt is hurt.
Agreed.
Due to the growing consensus about the undesirability of sex with minors, many have been tempted to attribute mysterious psychological certainty of harm to behavior that is ultimately entirely physical. The emotional and psychological loading of the behavior is again cast by the social norms of each culture.
I think this is where we disagree. If this were true, a 10 year boy performing oral sex on an adult would enjoy it in much the same way as an adult. But that is not what happens. Pedophilia is not a case of some lithe nymphette named Lolita seducing an unwilling older man, nor is it some sexually charged boy who just can't wait for a real man. No. Pedophilia is ugly, it is humiliating it is embarassing. Yes the act is physical, but you don't appreciate the emotional impact of being forced. Understand that during rape, someone else is in control of your body. They can, and will, do whatever they want, however they want and for as long as they want. You, as the victim, are placed in a subordinate role. Your wishes, thoughts and feelings are irrelevent. There is no mysterious psychology to that. It is real today, it was real 100 years ago, it was real 2,000 years and it will always be that way as long as humans are wired they way we are.
I also disagree strongly that "emotional and psychological loading of the behavior is cast by the social norms of each culture" as it relates to rape and pedophilia. Whether it was accepted and viewed as "moral" by the Romans that Tiberius could have any boy he wanted, does not take into account how the boy himself felt. At the time there would be confusion of feelings. One the one hand he's being well fed and cared for, but on the other he is particpating in something for which is not ready for either physically or emotionally. Children are not prepared, nor are they supposed to be, for a physical, sexual relationship with an adult. Societal norms don't change that fact.
And what if a particular boy did not want to be sodomized by the emperor? Nowhere in the literature of the time, is there any discussion of the children felt or what happened when they were grown. To say that these children grew up to be well adjusted and happy (for the time) adults simply because their society approved of pedophilia and ours doesn't, flies in the face of everything we have learned about the dynamics of sexual abuse. It also insults and demeans the struggle victims have in overcoming the damage left by the offender. The belief that no harm comes to a child who is being used sexually by an adult is flat out illogical. It is not supported by fact, it is not supported by experienced and it is not supported by a shred of logic and reason.
Now if you want to debate about whether the Greeks and Romans were moral or immoral for doing this to their children that is another matter. Or if you want to debate about the morality of pedophilia in general, again another argument. But please don't say that any harm that comes to a child from being sexually used by an adult is because of societal norms of the culture. That philosophy is dangerously illogical and makes treatment that much more difficult.
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expatbrit
Another way of viewing moral relativism, part from the idea that there is no action that is always right or wrong, is simply to say that each instance of an action must be viewed in its surrounding context when making a moral judgement about it. This is reflected in the legal principle of "extenuating circumstances", which is a practical application of moral relativism. It may be that, for a given action X, there never arises an instance where it may be considered morally good. Nevertheless, the possibility always remains that such an instance could occur, and therefore context must always be taken into account in every occurence of action X.
For instance, take the action of killing another human being. We give this action various labels of moral gradation, depending on the judgement we've made, for example murder, manslaughter, execution, self-defence. These are all different labels for the same action. The context in which the action was committed determines which label is used.
Often, the commandment in the Bible "thou shalt not kill" is used as an example of absolute morality. But really it is nothing of the kind. God utters this supposed absolute piece of morality, but then both He and His followers promptly blow it away by slaughtering thousands, using various justifications e.g. they worshipped Molech etc. The God of the Bible is therefore morally relativistic.
One response to this is that the command "thou shalt not kill" actually means "thou shalt not murder." But this is merely another way of saying "thou shalt not kill wrongly"; again this is an exercise of moral relativism, since context determines whether the action of killing is wrong or not. This is also why saying "murder is an absolute wrong" is rather a meaningless statement, since what you really saying is that a killing which is judged as being relativistically wrong is absolutely wrong. Remember, murder is not an action, it is one of a number of labels given to an action.
This explains the great variance in moral judgements on killing. For example, some people believe that capital punishment is murder and therefore morally wrong, others believe that it is justified and morally right. This is a good demonstration that there is no known moral absolute to the action of killing a human. Everyone makes their own moral judgements based on context. The question then becomes, what shapes a person's perception of the context?
Expatbrit
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peacefulpete
Big Tex...I know this is not a topic easy to objectify. It repulses me as well when children or adults are "forced" to act in a way they recognise as wrong. I'm afraid that you have yet to catch my meaning. I have merely said that there is no genetic or congenital sense of harm associated with sexual behavior. Tho it is tempting to declare as much, the evidence from both biological and social sciences does not suport it. Does this legitamize the behavior in a culture that forbids it? No. Your commment seems to overlook my statement about the society's and child's approval and consent of the behavior. In Greece it was regarded an honor to have the affections of a rich or prestigious older man. Forcing anyone to do something of this nature is harming them it is true. But then we are not talking about sex with minors anymore, we are discussing granting personal dignity and respect for the rights of others. These priciples again return us to the universal and quantifiable concepts of ,"helpful,harmless,and harmful". In other words it is not the act of body parts touching that is objectionable, it is the humiliation, the fear, and the resultant loss of self respect that needs to be condemned. These are of course unlegislatable priciples. Each society then is compelled to frame into law prohibitions that regulate those acts which are deemed by that body as offending those fundemental principles. These laws result from the unique cultural sensitivities of that society. The shear preponderance of those sensitivities molds even the very young's opinion of behavior worthy of pride or shame. Shame is painful and can have far reaching consequencs. As I said earlier, and you agreed, a child that feels hurt is hurt.
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UnDisfellowshipped
OrbitingTheSun said:
I agree that sexual abuse is wrong but no one has mentioned the cyclical nature of sexual abuse. An adult may initiate the cycle but the consequence is often children molesting other children. People don’t have a problem with executing adult sexual predators, but there are a number of child sexual predators who do the same exact things as adults. Are they guilty of the same moral offense?
I believe that an adult who molests or rapes a child is guilty and deserves to be punished -- no excuses. Now, with children molesting other children, it gets trickier about what to do, because who knows what they have been taught about sex. It also depends on how old the child who molests another child is. ___________________________________________ Also, here is my list of "Moral Absolutes" (since everyone seems to have their own definitions of words, I'm going to go with the Merriam-Webster Dictionary Definitions). The following things are WRONG and EVIL in the eyes of God. Period. Absolutely no compromises. * Murder -- "the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought" (Merriam-Webster) * Abortion -- "the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus" (Merriam-Webster) * Child Molestation -- "to make annoying sexual advances to; especially : to force physical and usually sexual contact on [children]" (Merriam-Webster) * Child or Spouse Physical Abuse -- "physical maltreatment" (Merriam-Webster) * Rape -- "sexual intercourse with a woman by a man without her consent and chiefly by force or deception -- compare STATUTORY RAPE b : unlawful sexual intercourse by force or threat other than by a man with a woman" (Merriam-Webster) * Adultery -- "voluntary sexual intercourse between a married man and someone other than his wife or between a married woman and someone other than her husband" (Merriam-Webster) * Bestiality -- "sexual relations between a human being and a lower animal" (Merriam-Webster) * Fornication -- "consensual sexual intercourse between two persons not married to each other" (Merriam-Webster) * Homosexuality -- "1 : of, relating to, or characterized by a tendency to direct sexual desire toward another of the same sex 2 : of, relating to, or involving sexual intercourse between persons of the same sex" (Merriam-Webster) * Stealing -- "to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as an habitual or regular practice" (Merriam-Webster) There are more, but I don't have enough time to list any more. -
plmkrzy
I too have trouble understanding under what situation unwanted and/or forced sexual contact could be considered
Sorry if someone has already mentioned this as one possible situation, but it has to do with our culture. Obviously all of us (so it seems) are from a basic like culture where this is considered immoral. There are however cultures that have a different view point.
There are cultures still where men will take a child, a child in my opinion, as a bride or concubine and what the young girl wants is not an option.
As far as I am concerned, this is rape. As far as most societies are concerned, it is rape as well.
Not long ago a man was arrested for kidnapping a young girl from her home and took her to Utah and married her then raped her. He had several wives and the wives even helped him kidnap her and prepared her to be raped by this guy.
We can easily say they are all nuts, but nuts or not, there are cultures out there that are not ruled by the same standard of morality as most of us are.
Before anyone jumps all over me due to not understanding my post, I personally think sex with a minor is immoral under any and all circumstances. There are cultures alive that believe otherwise. They might consider us all nuts. We are free to consider them barbaric.
As for the statutory rape, I don’t think that counts because that is a matter of law not morality. In addition, “statutory” infers that there was mutual consent but one was a minor.
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plmkrzy
OK Scratch my post after scanning the last 2 pages I see that peacefulpete and BigTex are debating it.
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obiwan
After the borg I don't think there are any ablolutes in life....like we were led to believe.