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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (74700)	2/20/2000 12:59:00 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Not true- the person who REALIZES that everything is relative should be (imo) less likely to act irrationally on a belief- and of course extremists acting irrationally on their beliefs cause almost all the misery in the world attributable to human actions (I do not wish to attribute the misery coming from natural disasters to humans). I do not believe you can point to any instance of relativists, who believed in nothing absolutely, getting together to massacre anyone, ever. All wars, all massacres, all atrocities are committed by people who believe in SOMETHING, and usually fervorently- so the danger is not relativism, the danger is belief, in anything. Self generated belief is not the problem. Extremism is the problem. And I have found that people who generate their own beliefs, and understand they are generating them, realize that their beliefs are important mostly to them, and have no extrinsic value- save for the value they may have in making life livable for the person holding the beliefs- and these people would not, I think, foist these beliefs on other people by force no matter how tempting that might be. But when values are external, and when one has the opinion that they are "right" and that they are the only "right" way (partly because someone of the "outside" of the self is rubber stamping these beliefs as correct)- one can rationalize using force to foist these "correct" ideas on others.

To: Neocon who wrote (74700)	2/20/2000 6:25:00 PM
From: nihil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Under natural law, as you conceive it, absolutely I believe, does a slave (legally enslaved in Virginia in the early 19th century) have a moral right to kill his master, his master's wife and children, in an attempt to gain his freedom and flee America the land of liberty? Clearly he did not have that right under Virginia or American law. Tell, me o sage, under natural law, do I have a moral right to kill the guards who attempt to hold me on death row in self defense when I have been wrongfully convicted of a crime and am shortly to be murdered by the state. Tell me, or guru, does Madame Schickelgruber-Heidler who believes she has been visited by St. Margaret and told to kill her little son Adolf who is fated to to become a mass murderer have the right to strangle the young brute? Tell me, oh Pope, who is infallible in matters of faith and morals when seated on his curule chair, is it right for me to burn heretics who injure the holy church. The whole idea of moral absolutes is merely parochial bigotry. You or no one else can discover what is globally right or wrong because there are no eternal values, there is no god, there is nothing but six billion human beings cursing, tearing at and killing each other and trying to justify their selfishness and cruelty by ap[peals to myths and superstitions. If all the world were of one opinion except one man, the world would no more be right in silencing that man than he would be in silencing the world. Therefore, the world must always be the battle of each against all until we all become brothers and sisters. Buchanon ain't no brother of mine. En garde!