RE: Atheists only vote please: Do absolute MORAL truths exist? Is Rape ALWAYS "wr...
February 19, 2015 at 3:57 pm
(This post was last modified: February 19, 2015 at 4:28 pm by The Reality Salesman01.)
I'm skipping through quite a bit here so forgive me if it's already been said...
Absolute as in, even in the absence of conscious beings?
Does it even make sense to say that rape is wrong no matter the conditions? I don't think so. Especially if the conditions for rape, namely-beings capable of either giving or denying consent are nonexistent. Moral values seem entirely dependent on the existence of conscious beings. I can't think of a moral conflict worth reflecting on that doesnt in some way concern consciousness or a potential state of consciousness.
Before rape can even be considered to be "rape" it's often necessary to determine the alleged victim's/attacker's level of consciousness as well as any impairments that could have prevented them from giving what a reasonable person would consider consent. And if you're asking me whether or not it's always wrong to force another conscious or potentially conscious person to engage in sexual acts, against their will or without their consent, then the answer is yes. It's intuitively wrong because we recognize how valuable freedom is to ourselves. If I am able to recognize how important my freedom is to me, then I can understand why it is the right of no other person to take it away. To say that something is morally wrong is to recognize that there are better and worse qualities of life and that the outcome of the decision in question has negative consequences on the potential quality of life experienced by another conscious being. And in this case, rape is an assault on autonomy and freedom. It is wrong because those are extremely crucial aspects of what constitutes a good life, and the goal of making the right moral decisions is maximizing the state of well being which in turn leads to expanding the potential for a good life.
Making the wrong moral decisions and failing to recognize the value of freedom and autonomy lead to a very different quality of life and a brief look at history will point to objectively lower states of wellbeing. Questions of right and wrong may not always have a single right answer but, there are certainly better and worse answers to each question. In this case, it's not all that complicated.
I don't think many people would disagree with this. But, since the OP is asking this question with the goal of sorting it's answers into either a Theistic bin or an Atheistic bin, I get the feeling that there's an underlying question such as; Can Atheist say rape is wrong if they don't have a God to tell them? Hopefully I've answered both questions. By the way, the question in reverse is an interesting one as well. If The Bible said it was pious to have slaves, would they consider it to be so? Euthyphro and many others have tried to wiggle out of this one LONG before Jesus came along. I find questions like these to be cute attempts to shift a burden...
"Society" is the entirety of it's individual members, and any one position held by any fraction of the members is not right or wrong based only on the amount of people that hold it. The amount of people who believe something says nothing about the validity of their belief.
Absolute as in, even in the absence of conscious beings?
Does it even make sense to say that rape is wrong no matter the conditions? I don't think so. Especially if the conditions for rape, namely-beings capable of either giving or denying consent are nonexistent. Moral values seem entirely dependent on the existence of conscious beings. I can't think of a moral conflict worth reflecting on that doesnt in some way concern consciousness or a potential state of consciousness.
Before rape can even be considered to be "rape" it's often necessary to determine the alleged victim's/attacker's level of consciousness as well as any impairments that could have prevented them from giving what a reasonable person would consider consent. And if you're asking me whether or not it's always wrong to force another conscious or potentially conscious person to engage in sexual acts, against their will or without their consent, then the answer is yes. It's intuitively wrong because we recognize how valuable freedom is to ourselves. If I am able to recognize how important my freedom is to me, then I can understand why it is the right of no other person to take it away. To say that something is morally wrong is to recognize that there are better and worse qualities of life and that the outcome of the decision in question has negative consequences on the potential quality of life experienced by another conscious being. And in this case, rape is an assault on autonomy and freedom. It is wrong because those are extremely crucial aspects of what constitutes a good life, and the goal of making the right moral decisions is maximizing the state of well being which in turn leads to expanding the potential for a good life.
Making the wrong moral decisions and failing to recognize the value of freedom and autonomy lead to a very different quality of life and a brief look at history will point to objectively lower states of wellbeing. Questions of right and wrong may not always have a single right answer but, there are certainly better and worse answers to each question. In this case, it's not all that complicated.
I don't think many people would disagree with this. But, since the OP is asking this question with the goal of sorting it's answers into either a Theistic bin or an Atheistic bin, I get the feeling that there's an underlying question such as; Can Atheist say rape is wrong if they don't have a God to tell them? Hopefully I've answered both questions. By the way, the question in reverse is an interesting one as well. If The Bible said it was pious to have slaves, would they consider it to be so? Euthyphro and many others have tried to wiggle out of this one LONG before Jesus came along. I find questions like these to be cute attempts to shift a burden...
(October 30, 2014 at 7:05 pm)Tsun Tsu Wrote: Is it true even if society deemed that rape was perfectly acceptable?This question is irrelevant and I just wanted to clarify why.
"Society" is the entirety of it's individual members, and any one position held by any fraction of the members is not right or wrong based only on the amount of people that hold it. The amount of people who believe something says nothing about the validity of their belief.
