I’m saying that there’s no such thing as universal right and wrong when it comes to morality.
I wasn’t.
I don’t care about readings, I care about what Christians actually do. Don’t give a shit if they say “turn the other cheek” in some book when we know what they actually do, and they do what everybody else does - they persecute and punish those who threaten them.
It wasn’t a factor? So, let me get this straight…
Christians invade foreign lands, completely disrespecting the rights and laws of the native system - you don’t have a problem with this part
Christians kill pagan natives in their lands - all fine there
Christians destroy European pagan temples and desecrate their lands - okey dokey
Christians establish their own system with rights and laws which conveniently makes the protection of their own buildings the ‘innocent, peaceful’ status quo, whilst making any pagan attempt at reclaiming their lands illegal, and they enforce this with threats of violence, doing violence upon anybody who disagrees - nothing wrong here
Pagans decide to fight back and destroy some Christian temples (churches) - DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY AND DEATH OF ONE PERSON, INCARCERATE THE DANGEROUS MONSTER THIS INSTANT
So, my point is… why didn’t you complain about any of the first four steps if you are truly impartial?
Say you and I are stranded on an island alone, and you find a delicious fruit. I then proceed to punch you and take your fruit and then claim that it was mine to begin with and that you would be immoral to punch me and try to reclaim the fruit. Would you buy that? If some third party observed all of that occur and decided not to do anything while I punched you and took your fruit, but the second you tried to reclaim it they intervened on my behalf, would you consider them impartial? Would you not suspect them to be biased in my favor like I suspect you to be biased in favor of Christians?
Does nothing exist except the present? Why do Christians deserve to have THEIR buildings in that particular portion of physical space any more than pagans do? Why would I deserve to have the fruit you find anymore than you? Why would we forget or ignore how Christians violently conquered lands from others and how I violently punched you for the fruit, but the moment the people try to reclaim their lands or you try to reclaim your fruit, violence is all of a sudden immoral? Why was it not immoral before?
phyllo, you still do not get my point. I don’t give a shit, myself. I’m an atheist, skydaddy Yahweh or skydaddy Odin, same fairytale wishful thinking nonsense to me.
What I point out is the hypocrisy of both of these groups - how they will claim that violence is what they have a problem with, when they really don’t have a problem with violence itself since they too have to use violence to enforce their own order, but when violence is used to undermine things they value is when they actually have a problem with it, like everybody else.
So, as I said, Christians destroying pagan temples is no more right or wrong than pagans destroying Christian temples (churches).
Life is a struggle for survival, a will to power. And yes, hypocrisy can be very useful when it comes to maintaining your power. Perhaps then you should continue lying about this because it is beneficial to you? Perhaps since accepting certain harsh truths can sometimes hinder survival, we should just lie to ourselves and be hypocritical because it makes us more powerful? But then, what is the point of doing philosophy, if philosophy is, among other things, about truth? Or is lying and pretending one does philosophy just a part of this clever ruse to maintain one’s power?
You’re awfully concerned about rights for somebody who doesn’t believe in them. You’re accepting the argument of the person who does believe in rights; namely, that rights are the reason we don’t have anarchy and brutality. Accepting that, and denying rights, leads you to accept the consequence, but it’s still the argument of the right’s proponent. Whether rights are real or not, it remains the case that people want to live in the best society possible, and that is generally not a society in which we fucking murder each other over every little thing.
If there’s no rights or rules or laws, what’s so great about doing things the ‘honest’ way, anyway? OK, rights are bullshit. It remains the case that a society in which we pretend there are rights works out better than one in which we acknowledge that there aren’t, so aslong as there’s no rules, I’m not breaking a rule by faking rights, right?
This part is obviously true, but it’s not because the people acting violently are somehow more ‘honest’ than those that aren’t. It’s just more of a strain to help people or support people who aren’t like you, that’s all.
A guy I used to be friends with burned a church. He went to jail. I had already stopped being friends with him before that because he was a moron. So when he burned the church, I was just like well…figures. He also drove a car into the front of some kind of nursing home.
Your ideas about “fighting to resolve disputes” applies to more than religious disputes.
I think that’s the most interesting part of the OP. How did you talk yourself into such an unworkable “solution”?
But you don’t quote representatives of either group, so all we have is your opinions as to their motivations and attitudes. Are they really hypocritical?
I’m pretty sure that in 1990s Norway, a Christian would be condemned by other Christians, and sent to jail, if he burned down a synagogue or mosque.
People have done all sorts of nasty things in the past but what’s important is our moral position in the here and now.
Then there is the question : does VV represent “Odinists” or is he just a punk?
Can a pyromaniac legitimize his arson simply by saying that he is part of some group which is fighting for “a just cause”?
There are many possible motivations behind violence and destruction.
One truth seems to be that there are legitimate and illegitimate uses of force. Philosophy permits us to understand the issues and to decide how much force is appropriate on a case by case basis.
What solution? I don’t recall proposing a solution to anything.
I was interested in what people think about the issue so I browsed random discussions people had on the subject. I had nobody specific in mind.
What I discovered is that Christians typically appeal to the current legal system to justify their disapproval of the burning (illegal) as well as modern morality (intolerance, blah blah)
Pagans mostly appeal to the PREVIOUS system which was overthrown by Christians, and say they are merely reclaiming what is rightfully theirs.
It isn’t exactly too relevant to the discussion, but yeah, VV was and still is definitely an odinist.
What does it mean to “legitimize”? Make legal? Justify to somebody? What is a “just cause”?
As much as it would be flattering to me to think that my principles are the “just” ones, whereas all others are not, I simply don’t think that’s the case. Yeah, some principles can be based on lies more than others, but that doesn’t necessarily reduce their effectiveness - it can even improve it. Justice is a human moral/social construct typically used to justify a particular set of principles by implying their superiority. It isn’t something that exists outside of human intersubjectivity no more than “rights” do, and it can be anything depending on which system needs to be justified. It doesn’t exist outside of society. Or, alternatively (and I think you’d disagree with this understanding of justice) - you could call natural selection justice and thus everything that happens is just.
Everything you write makes me think you’re under the delusion that morality is not something constructed by subjective entities (humans) to facilitate survival, but that it is something that exists outside of human subjective minds and in nature/reality, where the correct moral solution awaits to be discovered, correct independently of any subjective entity - which is bullshit, it is bullshit because morality evolved precisely TO facilitate the survival of subjective entities, thus it cannot exist outside of them or precede them.
Thus objective morality/universal right and wrong and similar concepts are just nonsense.
Uccisore, I don’t have a problem with rights/the law in and of themselves, I only have a problem with the kinds of laws/rights being imposed upon me which result in the promotion of things I dislike.
Just because I would accept some kind of a state (law and order, rights) governing me doesn’t mean I would have to accept ANY state governing me, such as a liberal/cuckservative state which I vehemently reject and refuse to support.
And not only that, I would be betraying my own principles if I did support a liberal/cuckservative state, because the laws/rights of such a state are in contradiction with those of my ideal state.
Hardly an astonishing discovery. Where is the hypocrisy?
What did you expect them to say?
You’re using one person to represent the Odinist group. I’m wondering if he is a reasonable representative. Maybe he just likes starting fires and stabbing people.
So subjective morality “facilitates” objective survival … some particular actions chosen subjectively then translate into an objective result. Where, when or how does that happen? Where,when or how does the subjective action stop being a subjective action and becomes an objective effect?
Christians are hypocritical when they pretend to care about “violence” in and of itself, when the only reason there is a church there in the first place is because of their violence
Odinists are hypocritical because nothing is rightfully anybody’s in reality outside of human society, and they themselves had to conquer that land from somebody else just like Christians conquered before them.
The guy in the video I linked is Vikernes and as far as I know he writes books, makes videos and music about Odinism so yeah, I’m fairly certain he didn’t just use it as an excuse or justification or something.
All subjective actions and their effects happen in an objective world.
There is one set of moral principles which facilitates survival. A different set of principles does not facilitate survival. If both sets are subjective, then what makes one better than the other (in an objective world)?
Are you going to argue that the set which facilitates survival is no better than the other set?
I’ve talked about this extensively with the chimp. What is objectively better can be determined only after you decide on some goal, but the goal itself is subjectively chosen.
If you choose survival as a goal, as something you value, then yes, a set of principles facilitating survival is better. If you value self-destruction and seek to kill yourself, then a set of principles facilitating survival is objectively worse for you.
So the goals in morality are subjective but the principles and the actions they inspire are objective in the context of the goals.
Is that the difference between your views and the views of subjectivists who would say that all of morality is subjective?
Okay, now consider this … evolution has filtered out (most) people who subjectively chose not to survive. They did not pass on their genes. The “survivors” have genes and/or physical chemistry which predisposes them to pick survival as a goal. A physical trait must be objective so the survival goal can be considered objective.
Like I said, subjective and objective do not exclude each other since all subjects are necessarily objects. I do not consider subjective and objective to be contrary to each other and objective morality to me is simply an impossibility for reasons I stated above. Moral rules cannot apply and have validity independently of humans because they are dependent upon humans for their very existence - they are constructed and maintained by humans, and they die with humans. Morality is basically a set of oughts (and ought nots), and oughts cannot be correct or incorrect independently of a particular human’s judgment (which I presume you mean by objective) in the same way statements of what is can be. And the reason statements of what is can be so is that they refer to something outside of human subjective desires and projections, they refer to the objective world.
Obviously we are talking about ‘human morality’. That does not mean that it’s not objective. We can discuss ‘human biology’ and nobody would think it’s astonishing to call it objective. Human biology will also “die with humans”.
As for considering something “constructed and maintained by humans” as somehow outside the realm of the objective … humans can construct a wooden bridge and it will eventually rot and disappear. That doesn’t mean that it was somehow subjective.
BTW, all social animals seem to have some kind of morality, so it’s not entirely restricted to humans. It seems to be an evolutionary adaptation.
When you write stuff like this, you sound like Iambig. This is basically his dasein philosophy. I’m not sure what the difference is between the two of you.
That’s Iambig’s distinction between objective fact and subjective value judgements/identity.
Is there only one morality that people adhere to on this planet?
And even if it were the case on this planet, would it also hold true on another planet? Is it a human thing? A self and socially aware cognitive functions thing?
Was there a universal morality among man in the past?
Will there be one in the future, when man has finally stopped changing because all have fallen to dust?
If we find a universal morality, will it have to be so non-distinctive, such a grand principle of all life forms that it’s ultimately not a morality but a simple observation about living organisms.
Like oxygen is good.
No wait, there might be some bacteria who don’t need oxygen.
Like self-ordering is good.
To me as a layman it would seem that morality has to change if a group wants to survive as the environment changes.
Like if there is a metaphorical cadaver of a civilisation then it’s good to be a maggot and to a maggot cadavers and dead flesh is good.
For the non-maggots there will be different moral frameworks which arise to handle the situation.
But then again maybe morality is to someone else something ideal, something platonic so to speak. Something out there to be discovered like an idea-thing.
