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

To: Solon who wrote (32314)	10/12/2001 10:27:13 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 82486

You don't get it, do you?. "innocence" is a value judgment. Many people think the witch hangings were "murder". The witches did, eh??? So were the hangings absolutely right? or were they absolutely wrong? or were they just relative? I guess the kids with the rope around their neck simply weren't sure... Assumeing the question of fact that the whiches did not infact attack anyone physically or with any magical powers (and I assume that they had no such powers and that probably no human ever has) then the killing where absolutly wrong. What people? ALL people?? Of course not. I all ready said "not universally agreed on". Earlier you said "They ought to be predominant (if morality is God-derived), but they are non-existent." Are you saying that they have to be predominant if they are to be existent? I don't think you where saying that and if you are I disagree. Tim

To: Solon who wrote (32314)	10/12/2001 10:59:18 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

The definition of morality is the same all over the world, and has not changed. What is moral is what is expedient for us. What has changed, of course, are the definitions of "expedient" and "us". The history of moral evolution traces the development of the perception of expediency from an immediate view to a long-term complex definition, and the development of the perception of "us" from "our tribe" to, ultimately, "all people". Some might take it farther and say "all species". As our definitions of "expedient" and "us" change, our specific perception of morality also changes. But what we see as "moral" is still what we see as expedient for us, no matter how thoroughly we conceal that perception in a haze of mystic gobbledygook. Obviously, people who still live in a tribal society with a very limited concept of "us" and "them" can do things we think horrible and still think themselves eminently moral. Our ancestors did similar things at a similar stage of moral evolution. There were times when God-fearing Christian family men, exemplars of western civilization, thought it perfectly proper to burn Jews, scalp native Americans, or drop flaming gasoline on villages. They were not "us".