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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg or e who wrote (2288)	10/23/2000 1:56:58 AM
From: E	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 28931

Steven wrote, and you quoted, <<<I don't see why a child molester should take any comfort the notion that people should decide whether acts are permissible or not based on the logically projected or empirically verified consequences of those acts>>> Let me take a stab at replying your question to Steven, since it seems to me you misunderstood. You seem to think Steven's words above imply this: <<<"the logically projected or empirically verified consequences of those acts," Are that you don't get caught, then you can do whatever you want and it's not wrong.>>> But that's not at all what he said or implied. The point is that certain acts, like child molestation, will be concluded by the law-makers of society to be wrong whether for secular ("logically projected or empirically justified") reasons or religiously-framed reasons. Society will condemn, and punish if they can catch, any molesting pedophile. This is done in mainly-secular Sweden and in religious Italy. There are plenty of reasons a society as a whole should decide that child molesting is vile and destructive behavior and forbid it. It is bizarre to think that only a stipulated God-rule counts. The Bible says a father may kill a disobedient child. Society figured out that was a vile and destructive behavior and forbade it, quite effectively for the most part. Steven's point is that child molesters are going to end up in prison if caught whether the society is religious or secular. This is because child molestation is destructive to the society, the family, and children. So the molester can take no comfort in a secular assessment of his behavior.

To: Greg or e who wrote (2288)	10/23/2000 4:22:50 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 28931

E got it just about right, as she usually does. I agree that some people are evil, in the sense that they refuse to place the rules that the community develops for its own protection above their own impulses. What is the history of morality, after all, than an attempt to balance individual expedience with the needs of the group? To expect them to abide by some inane and arbitrary guideline that a bunch of people just made up, is absolutely the most naive thing I've ever heard. People obey the law because they are know that if they are caught they will be punished. It is only the law, that inane and arbitrary guideline of which you speak, and the mechanisms we have created to enforce it, that prevent the evil ones from doing whatever they choose. Fear of violating some absolute moral law, which might or might not be enforced after death, is not going to deter very many criminals.