(October 11, 2020 at 1:29 pm)runewell Wrote:(October 11, 2020 at 2:43 am)Sal Wrote: If you find yourself unable to determine what is right because you lack the moral compass for it (your little notion of recusing yourself, as if it was some legality or something), then by what metric do you determine that god is good™?
Did the Germans have a moral compass when they slaughtered the Jews?
People can do what they think is right or what they want to be right, but that doesn't make it right.
You bring up an important point, by what metric is good defined? If there is no standard of right or wrong and we do as we see fit, there won't be much left to discuss except when differing opinions on what is good eventually clash.
For starters, 'the Germans' didn't slaughter Jews, the Nazis (and particularly the SS) did. Most Germans were unaware of the slaughter while it was happening, and the ones who were aware mostly abhorred it. But yes - the Nazis did have a moral compass which they used to justify the Holocaust.
What people think is right or what they want to be right is EXACTLY what makes actions right or wrong. How people view these concepts changes with time and varies by culture, but 'right' and 'wrong' are exclusively human notions.
Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson