What IS good, and how do we determine it?

[Ravenshire]

So we've stretched the boundary a little more.

Would you regard a battlefield killing in wartime to be immoral? What if I were an artilleryman, lobbing shells in support of infantry defending our borders, but not in direct danger myself? I mean, I'm defending another person -- indeed, I'm helping to  defend an entire nation of people.  Is that moral, or immoral?

PT, if the war is in the realm of defense, then I would call this a justifiable war.  This can include a nation defending themselves, or a nation defending another people that are being killed. Personally, I think very few wars fall into this category.

As for the death penalty, yes, I am against it.

So, soldiers defending their units in one of the unjust Bush oil wars are immoral then?!? Those are not examples of war we fought to defend ourselves.

[Ravenshire]

Randy, no one is lying. The bible verse in question has been copied on this forum multiple times.

And now I have shown more of the same book which contains additional provisions for the treatment of women captives. So, while no one MAY have been lying when they were ignorant of that, if they continue to claim that God condones rape, they are lying.

The Israelites destroyed a village and kept the young virgins. Many of these girls were probably just barely 13 or 14, maybe younger.  They probably saw their entire villages destroyed by the men that they were being told to marry.

If you are forced to marry someone who kills your family and have sex with that person, yes that is rape.

Why would the girls be upset that they remained with the Canaanites who were their family members?

Again, why can't American soldiers do this now? Why can't a young soldier see a pretty Afghan girl, kill her family and bring her home for his wife? He would be marrying her, after all.

I agree the times were different but your god is all powerful and all knowing. He is the one who came up with the rules in Deuteronomy. Sometimes Christians like to claim that certain stories are just reporting historical events without judgement. The problem is that in Deuteronomy is a book of god's own rules to the Hebrews.

This is a insanely,  long thread.

Let's make this simple.

1. Was the treatment of women captives specified in Dt. 21 better than the way they were treated before the giving of the Law or by other nations?

2. Given that the women WERE spoils of war, was it better that they be treated as wives than as mere sex toys?

Yes or no.

One treatment was marginally less brutal, therefore it's not rape and it's moral. Sorry, but no, that excuse doesn't hold up.

[Ravenshire]

I don’t agree that there is any universal consensus on anything being good or bad. Not even murder.

What is murder? If it is merely ending another person’s life then it is obviously not universally accepted that this is wrong in any but a personal way.  Most people believe it is wrong for someone else to take their life simply because they don’t want to die. And it was from this unwillingness to die that laws evolved in civilized societies making it wrong to murder. Still, even the most civilized societies  will disagree about what constitutes murder when some redefinition proves convenient.  Civilized societies, for the most part, value ownership because people have found that it is better to have things than to not have things, including life. Where there is no sense of ownership, there can be no theft.  If a group of people are not given ownership of their own lives by society, then their lives cannot be stolen.

Most people on this planet cannot protect what they have so without  law they have no way to keep what they have. Our laws evolved from the realization that without them, banditry and family feuds will rule the day and this makes life and commerce nearly impossible for all of us.

(emphasis is mine)

Many believe the doctors in Oregon and Washington are morally accountable as murderers if they help a terminal patient end their suffering, with said patient's consent. No, there is and can be no consensus on morality. It's all subjective.

[Ravenshire]

Wait what? You just said you think the story is allegorical and that god did not command these men to rape. I pointed out that whether you think the story is allegorical or literal god was clearly commanding the men to rape.

God in the story was commanding them to rape. God in real life, on the other hand, I don't believe ever did this.

As I said before, the OT God is portrayed through the filter of man, who wrote it. The OT was not written by God Himself, and so it is not infallible.

---

The cognitive dissonance is strong with this one. 


That's some world class mental gymnastics you got going on there.

It is what the Church teaches.

The church teaches cognitive dissonance and mental gymnastics?!?

[Catholic_Lady]

PT, if the war is in the realm of defense, then I would call this a justifiable war.  This can include a nation defending themselves, or a nation defending another people that are being killed. Personally, I think very few wars fall into this category.

Actually, wars aren't that clean-cut.  Firstly, every war has an offensive and a defensive side, and what's even funnier, those sides can change from offense to defense or vice-versa at any time in the war.

The German soldiers fighting and dying in 1940 were doing so in order to secure Germany's hold on Europe, with all that implies about that regime's evil policies. And the German soldiers fighting and dying in 1944 were doing so in order to defend (your standard for justifiable war) that same regime. In 1940, the Allies were defending. In 1944, the Allies were attacking. The idea that defense is the only acceptable reason to excuse the killing done by soldiers is clearly silly. All wars fall into this "category", as you put it, of being a defensive war; it is certainly defensie for one side.

Furthermore, the morality of their killing clearly relies upon the circumstances of the battle, the nations and practices they are fighting for, and the time, place, and circumstances of the shots fired.

Shooting an enemy soldier in a fortress and shooting an enemy soldier in your own PoW camp both have the same result: one enemy soldier dead.  Yet you and I both know that the morality of the two acts are entirely different. Shooting a Frenchman defending a parliamentary democracy was entirely different from shooting a German wishing to subjugate a continent. Shooting a German soldier was obviously different from shooting a German civilian.

The principle objection I have to the concept of moral objectivity is that it invariably ignores nuance, and invariably uses a broad brush, just as your pronouncement here that "all killing is evil unless in self-defense" has been shown to be hollow.


So, if you'd do me the favor of answering my question: if all killing is immoral, is the killing done by a soldier immoral?

I never said that all killing is immoral. Killing is not inherently immoral. What I said was the murder is inherently immoral. Murder is already defined as a wrongful killing.

So the answer to your question depends on the circumstances. Can you give me a scenario to go along with it? Was the man he killed trying to kill him and so he had to do it to save his own life?

(edited)

[The Grand Nudger]

That there is a difference between killing and murder, and that the line moves depending on circumstance...is yet another brilliant example of subjective morality.

[Catholic_Lady]

PT, if the war is in the realm of defense, then I would call this a justifiable war.  This can include a nation defending themselves, or a nation defending another people that are being killed. Personally, I think very few wars fall into this category.

As for the death penalty, yes, I am against it.

So, soldiers defending their units in one of the unjust Bush oil wars are immoral then?!? Those are not examples of war we fought to defend ourselves.

The soldiers defending themselves was not immoral. But I do think the decision to go to war was. I don't know all the ins and outs of it, but I remember the pope of the time being very much against it. So chances are I probably would too if I knew.

(edited. sorry, i'm watching a movie)

[The Grand Nudger]

-and when the pope is for a war...or directly calls for it himself?

[Catholic_Lady]

-and when the pope is for a war...or directly calls for it himself?

A pope's opinion on a particular war, or his decision to start a war, is not infallible. So a Catholic is free to disagree with it so long as they are adhering to Church teaching about it to the best of their abilities.

[Ravenshire]

So, soldiers defending their units in one of the unjust Bush oil wars are immoral then?!? Those are not examples of war we fought to defend ourselves.

The soldiers defending themselves was not immoral. But I do think the decision to go to war was. I don't know all the ins and outs of it, but I remember the pope of the time being very much against it. So chances are I probably would too if I knew.

(edited. sorry, i'm watching a movie)

You have previously claimed that killing in a just war is not immoral. Now you want to have your cake and eat it too?