someone posed this question to me the other day, and i have to say it has really had me thinking.
we were discussing abortion, and they asked me if i would have killed hitler as a baby, knowing what he would do as an adult.
i believe murder is wrong, but do you think it is justified saving others lives?
I agree that Hitler was a product of his times, and someone else would probably have stepped into his place. Even if someone hadn't, I don't think events would have turned out much differently.
In the wide sweep of history, the individual is irrelevant.
Expatbrit
u apostates.... fallen ones..... spiritually weak ones.....whatever u want to call u r selfs make me sick... all u display is hate.
quit u r pathetic crusade to destroy the wts.
u r childish " if i cant have it... no one can" attitude.. apostate 1) " once at a meeting a talk was given and the elder said we should pray for the spiritually weak ones in the cong!!!!!!..
Never argue with people from Suffolk. It's like head-butting a tree.
Expatbrit
wih the permission of simon, i would like to start a thread to act as a collection of thought, quotes and miscellany on atheism and agnosticism.
there are so many other threads on this subject but no one place which one can go to on here.
i have much to share - enjoy and contribute with me please.give me the storm and stress of thought and action rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith.
Undisfellowshipped:
Thanks for your reply. This kind of debate about morality has been going on for at least 2300 years, and probably will go on for the next 2300 too.....lol
From your reply, I gathered pretty clearly that your viewpoint is that God decides what is right and wrong. Using the example of rape, God has decided that rape is wrong.
The next logical question is: why did God decide that rape is wrong?
There are two options to this question:
1) It was an arbitrary decision, the equivalent of God flipping the divine coin.
2) As you said:
God would not say that rape is right because of His Love and Justice
Option 2, though, is just another way of saying that God recognises the inherent wrongness of rape, because of His qualities of Love and Justice. In this case God merely recognises a moral position, and therefore he doesn't determine the moral position.
So, if God doesn't determine morality, who does? Is there an even higher moral power than God? Of course, if it is postulated that there is, then exactly the same argument can be applied to that higher entity. We get into a never-ending spiral of ever higher moral authorities.
This is why I think that there can be no such thing as an absolute source of morality. Instead, everyone determines their own morality, which frequently differs from others.
The real world reflects this. If there was a God as an absolute source of morality, we would expect that there could be no moral questions or ethical dilemmas. The absolute moral code of God would be perfect and cater to every conceivable situation. There would be no moral disagreements possible, and ideas of morality would never change.
If however, everyone determines their own morality, we can expect to see differences in moral opinions, and conflict between different ideas of morality. We can expect to see ideas of morality changing as human society develops (and in some cases regresses).
Looking at the world of human society, it's clear which of the two above scenarios fits reality.
Expatbrit
u apostates.... fallen ones..... spiritually weak ones.....whatever u want to call u r selfs make me sick... all u display is hate.
quit u r pathetic crusade to destroy the wts.
u r childish " if i cant have it... no one can" attitude.. apostate 1) " once at a meeting a talk was given and the elder said we should pray for the spiritually weak ones in the cong!!!!!!..
i stated that u r driven by a pathetic desire to destroy the "EVIL" empire and destroy other people's faith.
That is a statement you should consider before going out in field service next weekend.
Expatbrit
wih the permission of simon, i would like to start a thread to act as a collection of thought, quotes and miscellany on atheism and agnosticism.
there are so many other threads on this subject but no one place which one can go to on here.
i have much to share - enjoy and contribute with me please.give me the storm and stress of thought and action rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith.
Why do you believe that Stealing is wrong?Why do you believe that Rape is wrong?
Why do you believe that Hurting Fellow Humans is wrong?
Undisfellowshipped:
My answer to all those questions is the same: because it is not in the collective self-interest.
However, humans have not always believed the above things to be wrong, nor are all of them universally believed to be wrong on all occasions now. For instance, a war in Iraq will undoubtedly hurt fellow Humans, yet there is a majority in favour of it, viewing it as a justified, necessary, and therefore "good" course of action.
Why is it that sometimes actions that hurt other Humans can be viewed as a good thing to do, and other times that same action can be viewed as an evil thing to do? Self-interest, which governs human behaviour, and thus forms our morals and ideas of "good" and "evil".
In its basic form, self-interest is entirely brutal, a no-holds-barred war between all individuals, and this is the default state of humanity. As society develops, so brute self-interest becomes enlightened, or collective, self-interest, which is based upon co-operation, and thus activities such as the above which are not in the colelctive self-interest become viewed as bad.
Animals too have a limited amount of collective self-interest, banding together in packs and prides etc. Humans are simply the most intelligent of the animals, and have developed the concept further. But there is no fundamental difference in the default state of humans and other animals.
Now here's a couple of questions for you:
Why does God view rape as being wrong?
Did God decide that rape was wrong, or does he simply acknowledge the inherent wrongness of rape?
If God simply aknowledged the inherent wrongness of rape, then why do we need God to set our morals for us?
Assuming that God is the arbiter of right and wrong, then if God had decided that rape was right, would that make it right?
Expatbrit
Edited by - expatbrit on 29 December 2002 0:26:35
just watched an episode of 80s sitcom 'married with children', al & peggy get mixed up with a gay couple, fairly funny stuff!
anyhoo.... there's a neat scene were al, answering his front door, says to himself 'i hope it's a jw cuz i feel like a nice deep chat' (or something like that) & he picks up a baseball bat as he opens the door!!
like i said, fairly funny stuff, but it got me thinking: what other tv shows/movies feature scenes with (or ref to) jws???
In a Spanish movie called Women On The Edge Of A Nervous Breakdown (or something like that), the main character asks her building superintendent to say she isn't there if another character calls.
The superintendent says "oh no I can't do that, I'm a Jehovah's Witness, we have to tell the truth. That's the bad thing about our religion, we can't lie even if we want to."
Then she goes back inside her apartment singing "I love the sound of trumpets on Judgement Day."
Expatbrit
lets say you were born prior to the 20th century and found yourself on the titanic on the night of april 14, 1912. your a male.
all the lifeboats are either going or have gone.
what would you have done in order to try and survive?
my great aunt was one of the 705 people who survived that night (steerage).
Did she do all that funny Irish dancing and have steamy nookey in a quaint old car on the way over ?
Expatbrit
lets say you were born prior to the 20th century and found yourself on the titanic on the night of april 14, 1912. your a male.
all the lifeboats are either going or have gone.
what would you have done in order to try and survive?
I think Titanic was built at the Harland and Wolff shipyards in Belfast, wasn't it?
Anyway, returning to the booze, if wine freezes but spirits don't, this is yet another good reason to drink your martinis dry.
Expatbrit
in the information kit entitled jehovah's witnesses - guidelines for their non-blood medical management the chapter entitled "emergency protocol involving jehovah's witnesses" instructs all hospital doctors and nurses to check each casualty's wallet/purse for a blood card in case the patient is a jw.
yeah, right!
it also states:.
Thanks Ozzie, I'm looking forward to reading your posts on it. It's always useful to know what strategy the WT instructs its operatives to use, especially from non-public WT books.
This info. could be very useful, particularly for those of us with families in the Borg who may not respect our wishes on medical treatment and may try to force medical people to follow JW directives should we be unconcious. Knowing what the HLC's may try and pull can help combat them in advance.
Expatbrit
in the information kit entitled jehovah's witnesses - guidelines for their non-blood medical management the chapter entitled "emergency protocol involving jehovah's witnesses" instructs all hospital doctors and nurses to check each casualty's wallet/purse for a blood card in case the patient is a jw.
yeah, right!
it also states:.
Ozzie!
Is it possible to scan and post (or email) this information kit?
Expatbrit
