Determinism.....

[solarwave]

Tiberius: Well you can only go by what you know, you can't be saying what if Hitler killed people worse than him. Even if he did he still killed millions and also he didn't do it on purpose so it wouldn't be considered good on his part ether way.

I would have thought moral absolutists would save the many.

As for me I would say the end doesn't always justify the means and that morality can be black and white even if it isn't obvious. By that I mean there is a right and wrong action, we just need to figure it out.

Rhizomorph13: We are now in grace (because of Jesus) so not under the Law and so I dont believe God judges people by killing them now. Also the people God used in the bible to judge His people are still not seen as good.

[Rhizomorph13]

Solarwave,

The problem I see with your idea (that God shifted his paradigm) is that God is timeless so there should be no reason to change his interactions with us. How does it make sense that God needed to kill anyone... ever? How does it make sense to avoid the need of killing people by killing himself to appease himself?

Yes, it used to make sense to me too; before Christ came to die for our sins we didn't have the holy spirit as a guide so we needed a giant body of laws to govern our behavior and we needed to destroy stuff for sacrifices to wash our sins away. We needed to use our intellect to understand right from wrong but once Jesus died for us he wrote a new contact and bridged the gap so that we would be in touch with the holy spirit who would guide us directly and since he was the greatest sacrifice, we didn't need to sacrifice anymore. Doesn't that sound nice?

The question I never asked was why would something as powerful as God need any of these demonstrations of obedience? It makes much more sense to realize that PEOPLE think in terms of balancing things by trading value for value and subjecting themselves to parents first then rulers when they get older, so the idea of sacrificing has more to do with relieving guilt and has nothing to do with God.

Rhizo

[Violet]

As for me I would say the end doesn't always justify the means and that morality can be black and white even if it isn't obvious. By that I mean there is a right and wrong action, we just need to figure it out.

Rhizomorph13: We are now in grace (because of Jesus) so not under the Law and so I dont believe God judges people by killing them now. Also the people God used in the bible to judge His people are still not seen as good.

And yet, the only thing that is keeping me from shooting you in the head and taking your purse... is that it wouldn't be 'right' by me.

A serial killer would think otherwise. Morals are completely subjective... but that doesn't make them just... nor does that make them honorable.

[Tiberius]

Tiberius: Well you can only go by what you know, you can't be saying what if Hitler killed people worse than him. Even if he did he still killed millions and also he didn't do it on purpose so it wouldn't be considered good on his part ether way.

Yet moral relativists who subscribe to "the ends justify the means" would argue that the end result was the best possible, and so invalidates any "morality" associated with the means of getting there.

I would have thought moral absolutists would save the many.

No, moral absolutists would say that killing the baby is an immoral act, and you cannot balance immoral acts with a lot of moral acts. Comparing the baby/train example to the Hitler example: Hitler killing millions to save (hypothetically) even more people from the tyrants greater than he is no different to you killing the baby to save the hundred. It's just with bigger numbers. You can use another example: Would you kill 6,000,000 people if you knew that there were tyrants amongst them who would murder billions, and yet you know you cannot know which of them are tyrants before it is too late? For moral relativists the question is a hard one, since they have to justify the murder of innocent people, but some (if not most) would kill the "few" to save the many. Moral absolutists would not be able to make the decision, since both roads lead to immoral decisions.

As for me I would say the end doesn't always justify the means and that morality can be black and white even if it isn't obvious. By that I mean there is a right and wrong action, we just need to figure it out.

There are right and wrong actions, but I hold that they are right and wrong for specific people. A terrorist of one people is a freedom fighter of another.

[Rhizomorph13]

Adrian,

So what you are saying is that killing a bunch of people to eliminate some evil is morally acceptable? I'm convinced man! I am going to start working on destroying the planet so there will be no more evil! YAY! Problem solved! Also, the God problem will be solved too because we would all know whether He exists or not once the nanites are finished digesting the planet and turning everything into hydrogen. Oops, I gave away my plan. Hey Leo, you build robots, you wanna help me?

Rhizo

[Tiberius]

If I had to pull a lever to kill 1 million people who I knew (and we're talking about absolute knowledge here for hypothetical reasons) would cause the deaths of 1 billion otherwise, I would do so. I see the loss of 1 billion people as more tragic than the loss of 1 million.

[Violet]

Kudos for the lolz (@Rhizo). It can be considered morally acceptable. But one must not mistake a necessary evil for good... lest they become that which they tried to destroy.

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If I had to pull a lever to kill 1 million people who I knew (and we're talking about absolute knowledge here for hypothetical reasons) would cause the deaths of 1 billion otherwise, I would do so. I see the loss of 1 billion people as more tragic than the loss of 1 million

But one should note that every one of that billion could be a tyrant... and every one of those million could be the 'savior?' of humanity. (Edit note: ah i misread that. Anyway, perhaps those billion that the million would have killed would have otherwise gone on to kill a billion more. Just providing a counterpoint here. )

[Tiberius]

Indeed, but in these hypothetical scenarios, assumption is disallowed. You are given the scenario, and must make the decision with the information given. Most absolutists I've met try to deny the scenario by stating that it would never happen, but even though this is true, it isn't the point. The entire point of ethical dilemmas is to test various ethical systems under any possible constraint.

[solarwave]

Solarwave,

The problem I see with your idea (that God shifted his paradigm) is that God is timeless so there should be no reason to change his interactions with us. How does it make sense that God needed to kill anyone... ever? How does it make sense to avoid the need of killing people by killing himself to appease himself?

Actually my explaination would be quite different from the one you gave (which I had to delete from this post to make it shorter).

God doesn't change but the way He acts changes. This is because the situation changed. If God didn't change His actions because the situation is different then egypt would still have the 10 plagues on it since God wouldn't realise what He wanted to do had been done. Obviously it is Jesus who changed the circumstances. The point of the Law before Jesus was to show sin for what it is. God is just and the price for sin is death. So the fact that we are here after our sin is by Gods goodness, and so God is justifed in killing someone whenever He wants. By the way the animal sacrificies before Jesus did not save them, they were just a symbol of faith before Him, since they were really saved by Jesus too. Someone had to be judged for the sin, so it was put on Jesus and He took our punishment not us.

As for me I would say the end doesn't always justify the means and that morality can be black and white even if it isn't obvious. By that I mean there is a right and wrong action, we just need to figure it out.

Rhizomorph13: We are now in grace (because of Jesus) so not under the Law and so I dont believe God judges people by killing them now. Also the people God used in the bible to judge His people are still not seen as good.

And yet, the only thing that is keeping me from shooting you in the head and taking your purse... is that it wouldn't be 'right' by me.

A serial killer would think otherwise. Morals are completely subjective... but that doesn't make them just... nor does that make them honorable.

The fact that some people have different morals doesn't prove that some of them arn't wrong because of a absolute moral law.

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Tiberius: Well I am more of an absolutist than relativist and for me I would have to save the many not the few. Killing the few may be bad but isn't it the lesser of two evils.

[Violet]

Tiberius: Well I am more of an absolutist than relativist and for me I would have to save the many not the few. Killing the few may be bad but isn't it the lesser of two evils.

Not necessarily... the few may have been very wise and benevolent leaders, and the many may have been rash and malevolent vagrants.

In general, that would be the lesser of the two evils... but that doesn't mean that it is absolutely less evil...

The fact that some people have different morals doesn't prove that some of them arn't wrong because of a absolute moral law.

??? What absolute moral law? Surely you instead meant that some morals are 'wrong' because they are unjust?