Also I'm not trying to say that wars have NO political aspects to them. But morality is absolutely involved, especially now and admittedly less so in the past - tho it was at times. I would never say politics was absolutely not involved in world war 2 or civil war, but morality definitely was. That is my only point.
Jonathan Drake
JoinedPosts by Jonathan Drake
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34
There is no right and wrong
by campaign of hate inso i am a little tangled up in this train of thought, as it can go quite deep.. as a jw, albeit fully awake, we are taught that there is right and a wrong.
smoking is wrong.
going on the ministry is right.
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34
There is no right and wrong
by campaign of hate inso i am a little tangled up in this train of thought, as it can go quite deep.. as a jw, albeit fully awake, we are taught that there is right and a wrong.
smoking is wrong.
going on the ministry is right.
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Jonathan Drake
Abolitionist Movement summary: The Abolitionist movement in the United States of America was an effort to end slavery in a nation that valued personal freedom and believed "all men are created equal." Over time, abolitionists grew more strident in their demands, and slave owners entrenched in response, fueling regional divisiveness that ultimately led to the American Civil War.
Strictly moral concern.
A bit of light research yields the information that Lincoln was a member of the National Union Party - a anti slavery Republican Party who's ideology was influenced by, wait for it - Abolitionism.
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34
There is no right and wrong
by campaign of hate inso i am a little tangled up in this train of thought, as it can go quite deep.. as a jw, albeit fully awake, we are taught that there is right and a wrong.
smoking is wrong.
going on the ministry is right.
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Jonathan Drake
Though he personally believed in freedom he nonetheless would have set none of the slaves free if it meant the Union would be preserved.
This is absurd. Abolishing slavery did not need to happen in order to preserve the union and it had no effect at all on the outcome of the war. There was no reason to do it aside from believing it was the right thing to do - a strictly moral concern.
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34
There is no right and wrong
by campaign of hate inso i am a little tangled up in this train of thought, as it can go quite deep.. as a jw, albeit fully awake, we are taught that there is right and a wrong.
smoking is wrong.
going on the ministry is right.
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Jonathan Drake
Also, and I had to look this up before posting.
America was involved before they knew about the holocaust anyway. But again, morality should be in part measured by the reaction. And it was because of the atrocities of World War II that this happened:
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948, was the result of the experience of the Second World War. With the end of that war, and the creation of the United Nations, the international community vowed never again to allow atrocities like those of that conflict happen again.
Clearly, morality was at the forefront of all of this. It was not merely a political concern.
Once the world saw what had happened, and the news was out and verified, THIS is how they responded - with a strictly morality concerned declaration.
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34
There is no right and wrong
by campaign of hate inso i am a little tangled up in this train of thought, as it can go quite deep.. as a jw, albeit fully awake, we are taught that there is right and a wrong.
smoking is wrong.
going on the ministry is right.
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Jonathan Drake
This is a nice idea but it does not support the reality that the powers which primarily fought off the Nazis did not jump into the war at first blush when other weaker nations were falling. They jumped in when it became necessary to jump in.
Britain and the U.S. did a "good" thing in fighting off the Nazis but they did not do it for "moral" reasons. We knew about the persecution of the Jews but refused to accept Jewish refugees. This is not a condemnation on my part but the recognition that governments' first priority is to do what they believe will be of benefit to themselves as well as what they believe their citizens will tolerate or not tolerate.
You're absoluty correct. And again, religion was the reason for the view of Jews in the Christian portions of the world at the time. The affect of the church brewed hatred was so old and well spread into society that even the JW religion felt the need to issue a letter declaring they didn't except money from the Jews.
When you combine this fact with the mistakes that the American media made during World War I concerning the report of German atrocities you get a fact based picture of why America was slow to get involved and it has nothing to do with them not thinking it necessary and everything to do with their ignorance of what was going on and their not wanting to repeat mistakes made in the first War.
The extermination of European Jewry began when the German army invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. The Nazis attempted to keep the Holocaust a secret, but in August 1942, Dr. Gerhart Riegner, the representative of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, Switzerland, learned what was going on from a German source. Riegner asked American diplomats in Switzerland to inform Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, one of America’s most prominent Jewish leaders, of the mass murder plan. But the State Department, characteristically insensitive and influenced by anti-Semitism, decided not to inform Wise.
The rabbi nevertheless learned of Riegner’s terrible message from Jewish leaders in Great Britain. He immediately approached Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, who asked Wise to keep the information confidential until the government had time to verify it. Wise agreed and it was not until November 1942 that Welles authorized the release of Riegner’s message.
Wise held a press conference on the evening of November 24, 1942. The next day’s New York Times reported his news on its tenth page. Throughout the rest of the war, the Times and most other newspapers failed to give prominent and extensive coverage to the Holocaust. During World War I, the American press had published reports of German atrocities that subsequently turned out to be false. As a result, journalists during World War IItended to approach atrocity reports with caution.
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34
There is no right and wrong
by campaign of hate inso i am a little tangled up in this train of thought, as it can go quite deep.. as a jw, albeit fully awake, we are taught that there is right and a wrong.
smoking is wrong.
going on the ministry is right.
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Jonathan Drake
@HMTM
You are confusing the political parts of lincolns letter with his own wishes. I suggest you re read it. He specifically states that it is his "oft expressed wish" that all men everywhere be free. The part that was politics is all the bits before that where he talked about the union and preservation of it. But his last point, the conclusion he chose to wrap it all up, was his personal expressed wishes that all men be free.
Further, the Emancipation Proclamation destroys your notion that it was merely political,
And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.
And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.
And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.
And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.
I am more than willing to admit that religion has had some positive moral effects on society (though far less than bad). But in order for you to really make people believe that freeing the slaves was not a moral concern, you would have to (and apparently have) ignore Lincolns own words in the very letter you reference, as well as his claims of justice in the Proclamation and his deference to God, as well as convince them that these clear religious declarations are not moral in nature but instead political."Judgement of mankind"? Those are his words, do you think he believed their politics were being judged or their morals? Which is God more concerned with?
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34
There is no right and wrong
by campaign of hate inso i am a little tangled up in this train of thought, as it can go quite deep.. as a jw, albeit fully awake, we are taught that there is right and a wrong.
smoking is wrong.
going on the ministry is right.
-
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Jonathan Drake
Jonathan,
You are obviously light years ahead of me as a thinker.
For your above statement " War is absolutely not a means to a political end in all instances" you gave an example of the Civil War in the U.S.
that was a really good example I think.
Most people are going to think slavery is bad and you picked something that is hard to argue against.
Would be harder to argue an unpopular war, or one whose motives are more ambiguous?
Maybe HMTMs take on war is correct in terms of "most" wars?
What about clambakes post (abortion)?
What is the moral stand there?
I will address the last three questions here, and in doing so I think address the first.
First, no I do not agree with the notion of most wars being politically motivated. If there are political motivators they are not the first concern in most cases. The concern of World War II as another example was moral in nature, not politcal. Whole nations spent their money and other assets fighting Nazism, and did so expecting to gain nothing but the end of the oppression of Hitler and his regime.
War is not just a thing, it's alive. It is the faces of all the men and women fighting. When you speak of war, you speak of altruism because your talking about men and women willing to give their all in exchange for NOTHING (because they must accept the possibility of their death) in order to bring about a change for the better. How is this not a moral concern at its core? There is NO soldier who goes to war over a political concern, and few leaders who ever have. It has always been a moral concern, whether misguided morals (often founded in religion) or good ones (end the holocaust, free the slaves, end the tyranny of France, end the oppressive taxes of Britain on the colonies - this latter an endeavor largely engaged in by men who were well off and gained nothing by leading a rebellion).
The only instances that can be listed that are examples of wrongfully motivated war are going to have ties to religion somewhere. Again as an example, the confederates of the civil war could easily use the bible to defend their rights to slave owner ship and they did do this as a matter of fact if I remember correctly. Also as an example, the anti semitism that lead to the holocaust and Hitlers rise to power was directly spread through all of Europe and fed into by the Cathlic church for a very long time. They believed in the Blood Libel, a doctrine that taught people that Jews were after the blood of Christians, especially their first born, in order to ease the plagues brought on them for their murder of the Messiah. It was taught that they used Christian blood as a salve and that both their men AND women menstruated. Such hatred brewed by the church is a direct cause of the holocuast and the support Hitler had. And this is only two examples out of countless more demonstrating why it can be factually shown that religion is by no means a guide to morality or ethics.
Second, in the case of abortion. It's opposition is almost entirely religious in nature. The Catholic Church preaches that it is sinful to use contraception and that abortion is wrong - this results in the suffering of millions of children who their parents couldn't possibly afford to have. Why should these children be brought into the world to suffer horribly? To starve and get sick eating bad food and learn nothing but misery?
Religion says that the unborn child is a conscious person and abortion is murder. Harris in that video uses a quote that states, "in order for something to be conscious there must be something that it is like to be it." Unborn children who do not have a brain or a heart are not conscious. How can it be said that there is anything that it is like to be something lacking a brain? Or something that has been given no sense of self (never been hungry, thirsty, pointed at, called by name, never experienced any sort of thing to make it realize itself)? If there is nothing that it is like to be a thing, and that can be proven, then you aren't killing it you are preventing it from ever being alive. That choice, is nobodies business but the parents and they should have honest and true information upon which to base such choices - not absurd unprovable ones coming from a religion that can (and I've done it here) be shown to be the worst source of any morality at all.
these I believe are the moral situations of both questions.
Also, I wouldn't say anyone is ahead of anyone in terms of thinking. Because this isn't me thinking, it's me presenting evidence. It's not a representation of me in any way. Anybody can do it.
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34
There is no right and wrong
by campaign of hate inso i am a little tangled up in this train of thought, as it can go quite deep.. as a jw, albeit fully awake, we are taught that there is right and a wrong.
smoking is wrong.
going on the ministry is right.
-
-
Jonathan Drake
Vidiot4 minutes ago
In the case of armed conflicts, "right" and "wrong", "ethical" and "unethical", "moral" and "immoral", etc. are often labels placed on the actions after the fact, and usually by the victors.
I highly suggest you watch the video posted on the first page. At one point Sam Harris related an experience in which he asked a person if they thought it was right to throw battery acid in the face of a little girl. The person responded that it depended on why they did it. So he said, "say there's a scripture that says every third child must walk in darkness and they believe this." And the response was, "then you cannot say they are wrong."
Yes, you can say they are wrong. And you can say, BEFOREHAND, and regardless of who the victor is, that fighting and killing this doctrine and any who would die for it is both moral and ethical.
the days of history being written by the victors are long over. What you say in this quote, vidiot is no longer correct in today's society. It's an idea from an ignorant age where reason and truth were non existent and relative perspectively.
The only way the world will again be as you describe is if reason loses and religion regains control.
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34
There is no right and wrong
by campaign of hate inso i am a little tangled up in this train of thought, as it can go quite deep.. as a jw, albeit fully awake, we are taught that there is right and a wrong.
smoking is wrong.
going on the ministry is right.
-
-
Jonathan Drake
War and conflicts are a means to a political end, nothing more.
This is an outrageous statement to blanket all war with.
War is absolutely not a means to a political end in all instances. To state this in such a way is borderline insulting to society. I would absolutely agree that there have been battles and perhaps wars that have been fought for political reasons but by no means have all wars been for this purpose.
I use as just one example the civil war of the United States. This was fought over slavery and the entire point of the war was morality. This was not politically motivated all, as the ownership of slaves and the spread of the practice was a boon for white owners. Fighting it's spread and eventually abolishing it only resulted in the loss of money. This was not fought over political reasons, because a HUGE portion of the United States obviously opposed the repression of slavery. it was an issue of morality. It was about right and wrong.
Further, It may be impossible for religion to go down without something akin to a civil war in this country. Should it come to that it would be an issue of morality. Christianity is why stem cell research is banned, Christianity is the reason why a 100% effective HPV vaccine is banned, Christianity is so deep in our government here that it has its hands on everything. Francis Collins I believe (if I remember right is or was the head of the WHO) has even taken a side opposing any future vaccine against aids based on religious beliefs.
To say that war is strictly political is misguided and ignorant. It is a fact that there are societies on our planet that live in circumstances brought on by a dark ages worldview of their leaders or religious representatives and these people are willing to kill themselves to drag everyone else down to that same level.
If you think it merely a political motivation that drives people to oppose, fight, and die fighting this darkness then I suggest you go live in it for a while and gain a little culture.
war may SOMETIMES be politically motivated, but war ALL OF THE TIME has something to do with morality - whether on the positive or negative side of the spectrum. It is impossible to spread good morality without war against those who would die for the bad. Therefore, war against the bad morality of the world is not only moral, but completely founded on morality - because it's literally a battle between good and evil. No politics involved.
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34
There is no right and wrong
by campaign of hate inso i am a little tangled up in this train of thought, as it can go quite deep.. as a jw, albeit fully awake, we are taught that there is right and a wrong.
smoking is wrong.
going on the ministry is right.
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Jonathan Drake
What you are addressing in your OP is our (that is, people raised as or majorly brought up in the JW faith) ethics and morality. I think possibly what you're realizing is that you now have to work to reprogram your concepts of these.
We have been taught and brought up to believe them to be completely grounded in our faith and the bible. For example, the fruitages of the spirit (love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, you remember) are called, "... of the spirit."
JW doctrine this teaches that without the spirit these characteristics cannot be possessed adequately - and as a nonbeliever in JW dogma you certainly wouldn't have them.
In short: our religion (and indeed most if not all) teaches there is no morality without religion and so coming out of it leads to this inevitable quandary of 'is there right and wrong?'
I've just finished reading several books by Sam Harris and I highly suggest you read one in particular: The End of Faith. I also suggest reading Undeniable by Bill Nye. What you will see discussed in these books (I believe more so in Undeniable) is the subject of altruism and the development of our morality by evolution. Science has shown that ethics and morality developed this way and is absolutely not reliant upon faith to be had.
Harris provides a very good example by a discussion about collateral damage that shows how morality can be measured. In the recent and current battles in certain middle eastern areas the United States may blow up a building targeting a very evil man or group of men. In doing so, it isn't unheard of for innocents to be killed (and he gives an example of this) possibly even children. The United States views that loss of life as a tragedy and regrets very much the loss of innocents. This is called collateral damage. By comparison, a Muslim may strap a bomb to himself and try to blow up an American official but in doing so kill a dozen children and several adults. Unlike the U.S. response to such unintended loss of life, this is celebrated and praised. Further, the man who blew himself up is celebrated joyfully by his neighbors at home and even his parents are happy.
Thus is the difference between collateral damage and terrorism. It's the intent and he subsequent reaction that measure the morality. Attempting to kill an evil Muslim who is intent on slaughtering as many westerners as possible for no reason other than his faith is the moral and right thing to do to save lives, mourning the loss of innocent life in this effort is the moral and right thing to do because it's tragic. The exact opposite can be said of the other side.
Ethics and morality are absolutely not monopolized by, and in fact do not even originate with, faith and religion. The belief that they are is the only reason why anyone would ever view 9/11 as right, in the case of your one examples. This is a fact of reality and one I suggest further reading on immediately.