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corroonb
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21 Aug 2008, 10:57 am

slowmutant wrote:
Because killing is also wrong. Two wrongs do not make a right.


Stoning does not imply killing always. It merely suggests that one would like the person to stop doing something one finds "gross". You can stop someone without killing them or we would not have prisons.

I can only assume if you truly believe that homosexuality (or anal sex) is wrong (judgment), then it would be immoral of you not to try to stop it (stoning, activism etc. NOT KILLING).



slowmutant
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21 Aug 2008, 11:09 am

It is not my place to stop anal sex. :lol: No, that's impossible. And completely impractical. The sodomy laws they used to have defined it as a criminal offence, but how could such a law be enforced? The police can't be in all places at all times, so unless two gents were actually caught in the act of sodomy by police, the law couldn't touch them.

IMO homosexuality shoud be tolerated, but not encouraged.

IMO a balance must be found between tolerance and standards of morality.

And that's all, folks.



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21 Aug 2008, 11:11 am

slowmutant wrote:
crazyllama wrote:
Jesus said, "thou shall not judge".

I'm pretty sure he meant that we shouldn't pass judgement on other people. That means that we do not have the right to say someone is "good" or someone is "bad". That's god's job.

And I'm not even a Christian.


It's okay for us to judge others as long as we remember we're being held to the same standard. If we remember to hold ourselves to the standards to which we hold others, the risk of dishonesty and hypocrasy is much lower. There's human judgement, andn then there's divine judgement.

Wrong wrong wrong. Completely and entirely wrong. It is not "I get to choose the standard, and as long as I live up to that I can judge everyone else on that standard." No. If you insist on holding others to your moral standard, God will insist on holding you to HIS moral standard. It is okay for us to judge others as long as we remember that we're being held to God's standard. The hypocrisy is in judging someone as more sinful than yourself. Well, God can certainly judge you as more sinful than Himself. Crazyllama was right- judging is God's job, and we should leave it up to Him rather than taking it upon ourselves.


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slowmutant
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21 Aug 2008, 11:16 am

So you're saying it is not our place to enforce right and wrong? That no one has any buisiness making any kind of judgement, ever?

That's just not realistic. Realistically, we judge each other all the time. As I'm sure you've judged me. Adam & Eve did not judge anyone because before the Fall, they literally didn't know right from wrong. We do. And that's why we make judgements. It's inevitable now, that we do this.



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21 Aug 2008, 11:25 am

slowmutant wrote:
So you're saying it is not our place to enforce right and wrong? That no one has any buisiness making any kind of judgement, ever?

That's just not realistic. Realistically, we judge each other all the time. As I'm sure you've judged me. Adam & Eve did not judge anyone because before the Fall, they literally didn't know right from wrong. We do. And that's why we make judgements. It's inevitable now, that we do this.

We have the authority to try to prevent people from harming one another, aside from that, no, it is not our place to enforce right and wrong.

I don't know you, how could I judge you? I actually admire your strong faith, even if I disagree with some of your beliefs and reasoning.

The passage quoted wasn't about Adam and Eve- it was direct instructions from Jesus in 1st-century Palestine. I would have to say that that is probably applicable to us still today. It's not about knowing right from wrong, it's about acknowledging that we are all sinners and none of us really has any room to talk in regards to others' wrongs.


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corroonb
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21 Aug 2008, 11:31 am

Orwell wrote:
slowmutant wrote:
So you're saying it is not our place to enforce right and wrong? That no one has any buisiness making any kind of judgement, ever?

That's just not realistic. Realistically, we judge each other all the time. As I'm sure you've judged me. Adam & Eve did not judge anyone because before the Fall, they literally didn't know right from wrong. We do. And that's why we make judgements. It's inevitable now, that we do this.

We have the authority to try to prevent people from harming one another, aside from that, no, it is not our place to enforce right and wrong.




I agree with this. All morality should be about harm, physical or mental. People should not be allowed to harm one another whether mentally or physically. Any behaviour that does not do harm of one sort or another is not a moral issue. I am agnostic btw and my morality is a rational one. I do not believe in harming others.



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21 Aug 2008, 11:35 am

If no one enforced right and wrong, ever, society as we know it could not exist. We can't live without rules, can we? We certainly can't live without morality.



corroonb
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21 Aug 2008, 11:42 am

slowmutant wrote:
If no one enforced right and wrong, ever, society as we know it could not exist. We can't live without rules, can we? We certainly can't live without morality.


What do you mean by right and wrong? You consider anal sex to be wrong but it's legally a right in most countries.

I see morality as being about physical and mental harm. The law is similar in most countries.



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21 Aug 2008, 11:53 am

slowmutant wrote:
I dislike the act the of sodomy more than I dislike homosexuals. It's the act, not the person. How many times must I restate this? How many repetitions do you require? How many variations of this statement must I give? How much more redundancy is necessary?


Likes or dislikes should not play any role in morality. A gay person may feel disgusted when thinking of you having hetero sex, so what one takes as the norm should have no relationship with anyone's personal likes or dislikes. If you base your antipathy on religious dogmas, you can expect strong opposition from people who believe in human rights and freedom of thought.



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21 Aug 2008, 12:15 pm

slowmutant wrote:
If no one enforced right and wrong, ever, society as we know it could not exist. We can't live without rules, can we? We certainly can't live without morality.


But who's morality? It is your opinion that anal sex is wrong, and it is mine that it isn't.

I agree whole-heartedly with corroonb, a "Universal" morality must be based in preventing harm and protecting on people's rights. But when we start to try to hold the world by our own personal morality (think the "family values" campaign), well, that's immoral.


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21 Aug 2008, 12:23 pm

Morality, for the most part, is agreed-upon and tacitly understood. Morality is both universal and relative. Sometimes it is more relative than universal. Beliefs are idiosnycratic by comparison. There's really no rhyme or reason to the various things people believe when looked at as a whole.

What's so immoral about family values? We need family values, right? Right?



Last edited by slowmutant on 21 Aug 2008, 12:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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21 Aug 2008, 12:24 pm

Daran wrote:
slowmutant wrote:
I dislike the act the of sodomy more than I dislike homosexuals. It's the act, not the person. How many times must I restate this? How many repetitions do you require? How many variations of this statement must I give? How much more redundancy is necessary?


Likes or dislikes should not play any role in morality. A gay person may feel disgusted when thinking of you having hetero sex, so what one takes as the norm should have no relationship with anyone's personal likes or dislikes. If you base your antipathy on religious dogmas, you can expect strong opposition from people who believe in human rights and freedom of thought.


slowmutant just can't conceptualize the idea of someone else having a different set of tastes from him rather less different beliefs than his arbitrary beliefs.



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21 Aug 2008, 12:25 pm

skafather84 wrote:
Daran wrote:
slowmutant wrote:
I dislike the act the of sodomy more than I dislike homosexuals. It's the act, not the person. How many times must I restate this? How many repetitions do you require? How many variations of this statement must I give? How much more redundancy is necessary?


Likes or dislikes should not play any role in morality. A gay person may feel disgusted when thinking of you having hetero sex, so what one takes as the norm should have no relationship with anyone's personal likes or dislikes. If you base your antipathy on religious dogmas, you can expect strong opposition from people who believe in human rights and freedom of thought.


slowmutant just can't conceptualize the idea of someone else having a different set of tastes from him rather less different beliefs than his arbitrary beliefs.


No, that's not it at all. You don't give me enough credit.



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21 Aug 2008, 12:27 pm

slowmutant wrote:
What's so immoral about family values? We need family values, right? Right?


I put family values in quotation marks to imply the religious right's extremist views of family values. Homophobia and abstinence may be someone else's family values, but they're not mine (and that's coming from a relatively conservative, chaste heterosexual).


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21 Aug 2008, 12:41 pm

slowmutant wrote:
Phagocyte wrote:
It's funny with all this talk about the "gay agenda" imposing itself on family values. Between this, the Intelligent Design (which is creationism, let's not kid ourselves) debate


The religious extremists bother me as well.


I don't see the reason for a debate. The Intelligent Design/creationism people are trying to pass off a theological why for a theoretical how. It simply doesn't work that way. The only theory I'm aware of that explains how we got where we are is Darwin's natural selection. Not that I neccessarily agree selection is the right word, but that's for another argument.

The ID/creationism people are trying to answer "How did we get where we are today?" with "Because $Diety made us that way." Sorry, but "because" only addresses a "why".



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21 Aug 2008, 12:44 pm

kc8ufv wrote:
slowmutant wrote:
Phagocyte wrote:
It's funny with all this talk about the "gay agenda" imposing itself on family values. Between this, the Intelligent Design (which is creationism, let's not kid ourselves) debate


The religious extremists bother me as well.


I don't see the reason for a debate. The Intelligent Design/creationism people are trying to pass off a theological why for a theoretical how. It simply doesn't work that way. The only theory I'm aware of that explains how we got where we are is Darwin's natural selection. Not that I neccessarily agree selection is the right word, but that's for another argument.

The ID/creationism people are trying to answer "How did we get where we are today?" with "Because $Diety made us that way." Sorry, but "because" only addresses a "why".


You are nit-picking.