Why does god want to cut off women's hands?

[Esquilax]

Not necessarily. Considering pollution, global warming, etc., the world might be better off with far fewer of us, or none at all.

Quite possibly, but this is a bit of a non sequitur given the topic at hand.

Again, the point is that desires do not necessarily generate rights. Here you acknowledge that yourself.

Yes, absolutely. It's a more complex issue than just desires; there's a weighing of the pros and cons of those desires, their impacts on the broader group, and a host of other issues.

Such as people who desire things which you want to forbid. You claim happiness as a basis for rights, but only when you agree with the things that make people happy. Therefore, ad hoc.

You're misunderstanding: I'm claiming happiness as one of many bases for rights. It's the preferred state for human beings, because we understand it as a positive reaction to stimuli in our environment, or from other people, so it informs some of what our rights should be, but it's in no way the totality of them.

For example, that happiness needs to be consistent and spread out; it might cause an individual great happiness to see another come to harm, but we understand that an individual's right to happiness doesn't override the right of the safety of another. We know this because rights need to be applied consistently over an entire community, and allowing people to harm others for their own happiness will be overall detrimental to the cohesion of the group, and its ability to live and function, both as a whole and as a collection of constituent members. So, we don't allow it; in this way, we curtail individual happiness for the sake of providing the best possible lifestyle for the entire group.

But the pursuit of happiness among a subset of activities that are harmless to those around us are perfectly okay; I have my rights to free association, free speech and free expression because they allow me to better obtain personal happiness the way I want to, within given mutually agreed upon limits.

Changes. Again, saying that society is correcting itself implies that there is an objectively ideal state of society. You haven't shown that.

Not at all; I'm implying that there's a progressive state of improvement that can be made. Nothing will ever be perfect, but there are certain choices that can be made, even far reaching ones, that are objectively good or bad; abolishing slavery for one, since that was directly curtailing the freedoms, in a number of harmful ways, of people just like you or I.

That said, not all changes are the right ones, nor is the best possible answer clear from the outset; that's why we make these mistakes that need correcting in the first place. But that doesn't mean there isn't an objectively best path that can be taken.

Considering that there's always a war somewhere or other, and science is continually inventing better ways for us to kill each other, yes, you do need to explain these things.

Well, okay: the presence of death and killing does not preclude the idea that, generally speaking, life is the preferred option. It's why, for example, in those wars, soldiers are equipped with body armor and weapons that make them better at killing others more efficiently, and why having your entire army die is considered a failure state in warfare.

Life is preferable to death in that life is the single objectively confirmable existence that we have, and being so we should preserve it. Pain is not preferable because it's a sense perception specifically designed to warn us about potential bodily damage, and bodily damage is bad. These are simple concepts.

Sure, slave owners don't want to be slaves themselves. So what? Look at nature. There are plenty of species in which the stronger take more than their equal share of food, mates, etc.

Yes, but part of the evolutionary advantage that allowed humans to become the dominant species on the planet is our ability to cooperate, our natural altruism and empathy toward one another- within limits, of course- that allows us to accomplish more.

And even to the extent that you are correct, the principle only applies within the group. We wage war on outsiders if it's in our interest. Biblically the slaves were mostly outsiders.

Your mistake is in assuming that one can only belong to one group. There's two: there's your community group, and there's the larger human group that we all belong to. Granted, occasionally our membership to the former conflicts with our membership of the latter, but nobody in their right mind actually wants war to happen. Even the most gung ho military types are gun ho about their own victory, not necessarily the many deaths that come along with them.

And I have to ask, if this idea of outsiders being fair game is a compelling one to you, would you be okay with slavery in your country, so long as those slaves where foreign? If not, why not?

The answer to the latter question will also be a part of the reason why your objection is nonsensical.

That may be your ideal. Some people are less risk-averse.

Yes, but if I'd just gone with my usual response, which is that empathy and altruism also play a role in this equation, you would have dismissed my post as subjective. Instead, I went with the rational reason why equality is useful... well, one of them. Another is that cooperation is sort of how we've come as far as we have, as a species.

It's neither true nor untrue. It's opinion.

Okay, fine.

If you had been born into a slave-owning family, do you think you'd feel exactly as you do about slavery now?

I don't know. I'd like to think I would, but I honestly couldn't say. You are dodging my question, though.