What do you find immoral?

[afleitch]

In the strictest sense, only the death penalty.

[afleitch]

A lot of you fail to realize the existence of a process of thought that weighs various things or, can, in fact be knowingly hypocritical. I can knowingly do or want to do a number of immoral things consciously. That certainly doesn't make me a good person, but fact is that my behavior is not the ultimate determiner of what I judge to be right or wrong. Ridiculous.

I just threw up a little in my mouth, because I agree with most of what Cathcon said.  *shudder*

Just because you personally enjoy doing something doesn't make it moral.

I have to say though whoever said teenage sex is immoral just called Mary mother of Jesus a whore.  Congratulations.  The lack of scientific knowledge in America and the western world in general is amazing.  How can someone not even know that human beings evolved to initiate sexual relations in their teens?!  WTF, Atlas?!

It ties with homosexuality. Given both are evolutionary responses, I wouldn't be surprised if the same people voted for both.

[afleitch]

A lot of you fail to realize the existence of a process of thought that weighs various things or, can, in fact be knowingly hypocritical. I can knowingly do or want to do a number of immoral things consciously. That certainly doesn't make me a good person, but fact is that my behavior is not the ultimate determiner of what I judge to be right or wrong. Ridiculous.

I just threw up a little in my mouth, because I agree with most of what Cathcon said.  *shudder*

Just because you personally enjoy doing something doesn't make it moral.

I have to say though whoever said teenage sex is immoral just called Mary mother of Jesus a whore.  Congratulations.  The lack of scientific knowledge in America and the western world in general is amazing.  How can someone not even know that human beings evolved to initiate sexual relations in their teens?!  WTF, Atlas?!

It ties with homosexuality. Given both are evolutionary responses, I wouldn't be surprised if the same people voted for both.

Afleitch, you're pushing it...

I mean in the strictest possible sense. Given that homosexual behaviour has been observed in almost all animals (and I say almost as any inference has to be based on an observation) that procreate (and by extension, are 'sociable') in species separated by up to 200 million years of evolution, then given that it presents itself across species then there must be a reason why it still does, even as animals have evolved.

[afleitch]

I find it curious that in putting my husband above myself I'm somehow 'putting myself ahead of god.'

[afleitch]

Now getting to my main issue: If we are random piles of atoms brought together for a tiny amount of time in some unimportant corner of the universe as the atheists assert, where does morality come from? Why isn't this all meaningless? On what basis can Tony call me morally depraved? What basis does Peter have for asserting that slavery, stoning or sexism is wrong?

If we infer that human morality (which is a very difficult thing to determine) is somehow universal, first of all you are making an objective statement by projecting our understanding of what is morally right and wrong at a very base level as somehow being ‘universal.’ Our own morality is determined by our evolutionary need and cannot extend beyond that domain. We are covering the same ground as this has been discussed on here before (but I am aware that either no one reads nor cares to respond to most of what I talk about on here anyway so I’m not fussed in repeating myself ) So therefore we can objectively state that ‘murder of humans by humans = bad’ (with the usual caveats of course) But we cannot say to an animal that reproduces then kills it’s mate or has it’s young burst from it’s abdomen that because their evolutionary niche requires acts of intra-species ‘murder’ that what they do is morally ‘wrong.’ This is where theists start getting messy fingers too. Gods tend to be the ‘givers’ of human morality and seem to act as we do (or indeed are more capricious and without self restraint at times). What creator god can determine a moral code that is entirely objective given that the ‘morality’ on this planet appears to be relative based on evolutionary drive? What about other worlds? Why should we even assume that concepts of love, justice etc preached by god apply to other beings. Would this god send someone to talk about ‘love’ if love was not a tangible concept in that world? If it wasn’t, what would he talk about? What if for their existence, as some evolutionary function for example; hate was a better thing to embrace than love; would he preach hate because it benefits them more than love? What actions and morals are therefore ‘right’ in the universe as a whole? If everything is relative and god is the ultimate source of that, then how on earth can you infer his will?

[afleitch]

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If that is true, then why have different societies throughout history have had different moralities, different set of ethics?

That's why I said human morality was a difficult thing to determine and therefore we cannot suggest that human morality is therefore 'universal' amongst ourselves, let alone being projected onto the wider universe