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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (5642)	2/13/2001 6:04:39 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

As usual, you pointed up the distinction perfectly. That is, indeed, the key -- whether because for a time society accepted segregation as acceptable it was morally right, and it only became morally wrong when attitudes shifted and enough people (undefined) decided it was not right. I am clearly and unequivocally of the belief that just because a society thinks things are moral, that doesn't make them moral. The view that morality is only defined by what a given society says it is is, to me, incomprehensible. This means, for example, that if the Germans thought he holocaust was moral, it was. Excuse me, but I don't care how many people believed the holocaust was moral, it still wasn't. This makes the terms "societally accepted" and "moral" synonymous. I believe one poster had an etomology which equated the origin of moral with custom, which would perhaps make this the case. But moral now means something quite different. Morality, according to most dictionaries, has to do with the difference between right behavior and wrong behavior. One dictionary defines it as "based on fundamental principles of right conduct rather than on law, custom, etc." I agree totally. It would be simple to say it's just a matter of definition, but it goes beyond that. Whatever terms you use, the basic question is: are there standards of right and wrong which are immutable, or is all right and wrong merely a matter of custom? Can, to use the example I used earlier, forced adolescent female genital mutilatilation ever be morally right? Does even X believe that it can? (Hello, X, you out there? Care to answer that one?) Was the holocaust morally right as long as enough Germans believed it was, and only became morally wrong when the Allies overran Germany and imposed their moral values on the German people? Not in my world.