jonny vee replied:
Just as the majority (in the US, anyway) decided that slavery was wrong. Like as a collective we decided
that denying the right to vote for women was wrong. Just as the majority decided that the "divine right" of the king
was wrong. Your bible, on the other hand, instructs slaves to be good slaves, but nowhere does it condemn slavery
(to the best of my knowledge; if you have a relevant reference to chew over with me, please feel free to whip it out).
Likewise your bible says nothing that would support full citizenship rights for women, and much that would seem to
indicate that such would be immoral. Being based on the ultimate of alpha-male monarchy, it seems to have nothing
good to say about democracy at all.
The tradition of the bible is for a wise and merciful king to rule with justice and fairness. The history of the world indicates that the people occasionally get a wise and merciful and just and fair king, but more often they get some foolish, ruthless, biased and greedy megalomaniac on the throne, who thinks nothing of murdering, torturing, and lying about his subjects for personal gain or just plain entertainment.
You may think that the absolute standard of the bible is the only proper guide to conduct, but it appears to me that the obviously human-made concepts of democracy, personal liberty, sexual and racial equality, the abolition of slavery, etc. are evidence of a higher ethic than the document that neglected to address those issues.
K Bjarnesson wrote:
If thievery were acceptable, it would mean that our (individual) goods were at risk of theft; hardly
conducive to our personal betterment or the betterment of society. If killing were acceptable, we'd be open to being
killed ourselves.
John Jeanneault replied:
You are arguing that things are "wrong" because they harm people. WHY would it be wrong to harm
innocent people.... especially if the majority had something to gain from this.
jonny vee replied:
Innocent people are harmed to benefit the majority all the time, whether it is migrant farm workers who are
paid far below minimum wage so that you and I can buy artichokes at three-for a buck, or whether it is soldiers who
are sent to defend the national interests or even people whose homes are condemned and razed in order to build a
freeway onramp. Some societies place a higher emphasis on the rights of the individual, some on the security of the
state. Some societies are based on the will of the people (inasmuch as that can be determined) and some are based on
hierarchies and backed up by force. Most, I suppose, are a combination of the two. All of them, however, are the
creations of human beings, and they all have laws that tend to protect the society over the individual in cases where
there is a conflict between the two.
But you were asking why it is considered wrong to harm innocent people. My best quick answer would be that if we did not consider it wrong to harm innocent people, a lot of innocent people would get hurt. It could happen to you; it could happen to me. I don't know about you, but I sure as hell don't want to get hurt, so it is in my best interests to see that the society I live in does whatever possible to prevent me from being hurt. Since it would be pointless to try to get a law passed demanding that no one do wrong to Alonzo Jonathan Vee, and since most if not all other people recognize that it is in their best interests to live in a society that protects them, the most effective thing to do is to support a social standard that discourages doing harm to all of us. It's the logical thing to do.
K Bjarnesson wrote:
The lack of social conventions of this sort would result in anarchy; each doing exactly as he damn well
pleased, with no regard for the feelings of others or of the effects of his actions on others.
John Jeanneault replied:
There are a number of individuals on this echo who see rules of society as limiting their personal freedom
and who advocate anarchism as preferable to democratic rule.
jonny vee replied:
There are also those who see anarchism as the logical extension of democracy. I for one would be thrilled to
not have a government telling me what to do, picking my pocket every April 15, trashing the fourth, fifth, and sixth
amendments under the guise of a "war on drugs," and sending people halfway around the world to kill and die so that
the oil companies can continue business as usual. I could live in an anarchy: I am not a violent person, I have no wish
to deny anyone else their rights, and I am not only trained in conflict resolution, I have moderated bonding arbitration
to the satisfaction of conflicting parties on more than one occasion. A society with no coercion, laws, or taxes would
be fine with me. If such a society were made up of people who tend to act in enlightened self interest, if not plain
altruism, I should consider it as close to Utopia as I could get without being hired to play bass for Todd
Rundgren.
Mr. Bjarnesson is evidently defining anarchy as a social environment where "Each [does]exactly as he damned well pleased, with no regard for the feelings of others or of the effects of his actions on others." The unfortunate truth is that if we did not have some kind of controlling force, a government that acts as Big Brother to some extent or other, this is precisely what would happen -- almost. A lot of people would do as they pleased with no thought for consequences. I happen to think that this is mainly because they were never taught about the consequences of actions, but that's beside the point, the point being that most of us are so lacking in self-control that the external control of government/society is necessary to prevent destructive behavior.
K Bjarnesson wrote:
So, we agree to a basic set of rules, and deem the breaking of these rules "bad" or "wrong". What's so
complex?
John Jeanneault replied:
This means that there is no such thing as an action being intrinsicaly or inherently wrong (immoral).
jonny vee replied:
There is no such thing as an intrinsically immoral act. There are only those things that people agree to be
immoral, whether by supposed fiat of deity or by pragmatic negotiation. All law is the product of human judgement,
and that is not changed by the fact that your lot insist that their mores were handed down from On High.
John Jeanneault replied:
So then if the majority of persons in a particular society, decided to erradicate a certain race, cultural or
religious group, then by your definition of right and wrong, it would be acceptable.
jonny vee replied:
I can't speak for Mr. Bjarnasson or whatever his definition of right and wrong may be, but the Constitution
of this nation states that racial, cultural, and religious groups have a right to exist whether the majority likes them or
not.
In the real world, of course, if your racial, cultural, or religious group rocks the boat too much, you get a rather unpleasant visit from the ATF, but the gentlemen who created this particular republic had the wisdom to provide checks and balances to protect the rights of people who happen to be in the minority just as well as if they were "normal," and for most people, it works.
And for the minority, there is an almost continuous progression of more equal justice for those who were once disenfranchised.
It is not a perfect society, nor is it a particularly Godly society, but all examples I know of where religion has a controlling role in a society are not the kind of places a free man would care to live in.
K Bjarnesson wrote:
Gather food, defend the society, etc, are pro-survival; in the long run, such behaviour will result in a greater
likelihood of survival and propagation of those with these traits.
John Jeanneault replied:
Genocide is an example of how to propagate a certain group or society over another.
jonny vee replied:
It sure worked in America, didn't it?
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