RE: Is Sam Harris becoming a pariah for the anti-religious cause?
August 8, 2014 at 11:12 pm
(This post was last modified: August 8, 2014 at 11:14 pm by Thumpalumpacus.)
(July 31, 2014 at 1:38 am)Pickup_shonuff Wrote:(July 30, 2014 at 10:31 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Assigning moral value based on sheer numbers ignores the fact that if Hamas had the same weapons, they'd likely try to rack up the same body count. In other words, in matters of intention, the two sides are equivalent; they differ only in efficacy, not morality.
Morality happens inside a man's head.
You're dealing in hypotheticals, I'm dealing in actual body count, and yes, each addition compounds Israel's culpability and the rest of the world's righteous indignation.
No, I'm dealing in morality. There is no moral difference between the Israelis and Hamas. They each strive to kill as many of the other as possible, combatant or noncombatant.
Assigning objective quantifications to a subjective issue doesn't strike me as very useful. The implication of such a quantification of morality is that there is an acceptable number of innocent dead. I highly doubt someone as thoughtful as you seem to be would accede to that point; but it is implicit in your line of reasoning.
