RE: Objective Standard for Goodness!
June 14, 2018 at 7:36 am
(This post was last modified: June 14, 2018 at 7:36 am by Fake Messiah.)
Acts are not made good or bad simply by people believing that they are good or bad. Like Hitler's acts of genocide that were morally wrong no matter what anyone happens to believe on the matter. We don't think the concentration camps were wrong merely 'from our current perspective' or some such thing. Even if the whole world suddenly decides, in a fit of insanity, that it was all morally fine it was still wrong. Badness does not depend on anybody's believing it was bad, any more than the existence of dinosaurs depends on anyone believing in them. Inflicting unnecessary pain on someone against their will is wrong in itself, independently of what people happen to believe on the subject.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
