What IS good, and how do we determine it?

[abaris]

So we're back to Harvey Milk, is it? A guy that has been killed back in fucking 1978. Well, congratulations, you've found one gay with questionable appetites, who's dead for almost 40 years. Shot at a time when catholic priests were already raping altar boys left right and center.

You really want to walk down that road again to cover your ass because of your despicable attitudes towards slavery.

I don't know why people even bite. He's a one shot wonder. That's all he's got in his arsenal. Apart from pathetic attempts to defend jewish laws on slavery. Same as Randy actually. Ignorant up to his eyeballs, but running his mouth about the wonderful lives slaves had back in good old Israel.

[Esquilax]

You should already know I don't make baseless assertions.
http://atheistforums.org/thread-26392-po...#pid679293

16 is the age of consent where I am. Bit shaky, but I don't find this particularly objectionable on its own, and certainly not enough to label the guy a pedophile. Seems like classic theistic stretching beyond their means to me.

That is both a sentiment I stand behind, and not a defense of statutory rape; GC brought up Milk being a pedophile, which is simply factually incorrect both under the definition of a pedophile, and in my view, morally. Like I said, the age of consent where I grew up is sixteen, which I feel is a sufficiently knowledgeable age, and no less arbitrary than eighteen either; I don't have this automatic assumption that younger folks shouldn't have relations with older ones, it depends largely on the circumstances surrounding the pairing. It's context dependent.

Given this, I don't find myself personally bothered by Milk's actions just presented as they had been in the thread, as nobody had established that Milk's actions were predatory, and so the contention GC had within that thread isn't the hypocrisy he seemed to think. However, this is a separate issue entirely from whether or not Milk was a statutory rapist, which he absolutely was, given the laws at the time of his actions. But whether something is legal is not the same thing as whether something is moral; they're separate questions which you're conflating, either through ignorance or through dishonesty I don't know. From what I know about you, it has even odds of being either one.

I didn't dodge anything, I explicitly addressed that.

You're doing that conflation thing again, only this time I'm pretty sure it's ignorance: I asked you, in a previous post, whether a soldier would be a rapist if he and his army kidnapped all the women of a given group, regardless of their consent, with their virginity being the determining factor of whether they're taken or killed. You responded with the statutory rape thing and nothing else, which is a dodge to avoid answering the question I asked, which you still haven't.

You made the statement: "I remember one of my first interactions with Huggy was on a certain rape-related issue in the bible, and his entire position was that no rape happened because the actual word "rape" was never used in the text, despite the context making it very clear what was happening."

it is YOUR position that a rape has occurred in fact you used the phrase "very clear what is happening".

If it is  "very clear" that a rape occurred yet it is my contention that none occurred because (insert reason here), then by definition I am attempting to justify or excuse the act.

Not if you literally think the act did not occur. Like I said, a person who thinks the holocaust was a huge fabrication is not attempting to justify or excuse the holocaust, because their position is that there's nothing to justify or excuse, period. If I am to take your own words seriously, then you don't believe that the act in question was ever depicted in those passages, and therefore you have nothing to justify either. The context of my statements there was specifically about the ridiculous lengths you'll go to to act as though nothing immoral has ever happened in the bible, not the lengths you'll go to to excuse the immoral actions within it.

[Bob Kelso]

[SteelCurtain]

Because congratulations, you managed to delay having to answer the real contention of the post, that you have no answer for, for a whole one post.

He he.... one post. You're killing me! Comedy gold!

[Jenny A]

That is the most disingenuous comparison I've seen in a while and I've seen some doozies on the forum of late.  The women the Hebrews married were taken captive and hauled away from their homes after all of the men in their village were killed.   Then the Hebrews married them.  Consent?  Sure, after all marriage, slavery, or death is a choice, right?  Kinda like your money or your life.

Oh please! you do realize women didn't have a say in who they married anyway, marriages were arranged... women's consent just wasn't a factor when it came to marriage....

Actually, if you actually read your Bible you will find that for women of "good" family, they were asked by their families.  And a marriage arranged by the family with a husband of similar background is quite different than being taken captive by someone of an entirely different culture who has just killed your family. 

Concubines casually taken like say, Hagar, are rape condoned by the OT god. Either way, it's rape ordered by god, pure and simple.

Also you act like I'M the one that brought up the comparison of "American soldiers".

In extreme contrast, the U.S. war brides were not forced to marry servicemen, they did not immigrate until after they had decided to marry servicemen, and they certainly weren't shipped stateside and told they could either agree to marry servicemen or starve in a foreign country.  Nor were servicemen encouraged to take war brides.  The U.S. military and immigrate policy was strongly against enemy war brides.  Soldiers marrying Japanese and and German women faced significant hurdles in getting the marriages recognized and their wives home.  Without the full cooperation and even determination of the wives it couldn't have been done. http://www.americainwwii.com/articles/war-brides/

The point is, these women chose to marry men who were enemies and could have possibly killed members of their family.

Which women chose?  The women taken by the Hebrews didn't do any choosing.  The women who married servicemen not only chose but often initiated.  The fact that the men they choose had been the enemy doesn't make it anything other than a choice.  The women taken by the Hebrews had no real choice. 

Australian women, who in case you missed out on the WWII section in your high school history class were allies not captives and it's hard to imagine in what way they could have been coerced into marrying servicemen.  The Vietnamese and South Korean women were also allies, not captives.   And again, it was not easy to get the wives home.  And without the wives' full cooperation it simply couldn't be done.

In case YOU missed it, I only emphasized the part about German women.

Your quote included the Australian women prominently.

[Randy Carson]

DO ATHEISTS CONDONE RAPE?

"If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion."

Atheist Sam Harris, Interview at The Sun: The Temple of Reason

Well, your reactions were about what I expected.

As Cthulhu Dreaming is fond of saying, "This forum isn't for the thin-skinned."

Y'all can dish it out, but you can't take it.

[Esquilax]

DO ATHEISTS CONDONE RAPE?

"If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion."

Atheist Sam Harris, Interview at The Sun: The Temple of Reason

Well, your reactions were about what I expected.

As Cthulhu Dreaming is fond of saying, "This forum isn't for the thin-skinned."

Y'all can dish it out, but you can't take it.

You're mistaking "thin skinned," with "unwilling to put up with flat out grandstanding lies in aid of a smug rhetorical point."

[Cyberman]

Well, your reactions were about what I expected.

As Cthulhu Dreaming is fond of saying, "This forum isn't for the thin-skinned."

Y'all can dish it out, but you can't take it.

Ah; trolling, then.

[Jenny A]

DO ATHEISTS CONDONE RAPE?

"If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion."

Atheist Sam Harris, Interview at The Sun: The Temple of Reason

Well, your reactions were about what I expected.

As Cthulhu Dreaming is fond of saying, "This forum isn't for the thin-skinned."

Y'all can dish it out, but you can't take it.

The problem you have with understanding atheism is understanding what it isn't.  I don't care what other atheists think about rape, except to the extent that I would prefer that no one be in favor of rape.  Harris is not my ideal, nor my spokesman.   The fact that the religious regularly appeal to authority doesn't mean the rest of us do.

Beyond that, Harris didn't condone rape, and if you think he did, you aren't really thinking.  If you prefer to have your shin broken to having your kneecap broken are you expressing a fondness for broken knees?

[Ravenshire]

You should already know I don't make baseless assertions.
http://atheistforums.org/thread-26392-po...#pid679293

16 is the age of consent where I am. Bit shaky, but I don't find this particularly objectionable on its own, and certainly not enough to label the guy a pedophile. Seems like classic theistic stretching beyond their means to me.

Once again, Huggies twists words and misrepresents arguments to make a fallacious point.