Sorry, Flinty, nothing personal
 

But not in a good way.

Sorry, Flinty, nothing personal
 

No. Do you? I believe it is wrong to kill innocent people. For some reason I think it is OK to kill cows, but not to kill people. I don't mind killing serial killers. Hitler thought he was doing the right think when he tried to exterminate the Jews.

Sorry, Flinty, nothing personal
 

Who says I'm upset? I'm mocking you. Not the same thing at all.

Meh. Calling people idiots is hardly a persuasive arguing technique. Almost never works in any way other than to make it clear that you didn't understand the other person's point. If you can't see how your previous USA-centric (let's annex Mexico! they won't mind!) views could be open for mocking here, we should just let this point go.

They certainly wouldn't be better off in their mission if they tried to change it into some sort of "because my God says so" argument. It is like Ty and fringey have repeated to you, far too patiently, already today, so I'm not going to sit here and debate this with you. I care not at all what you think at the end of the day.

Ah, the "when I lived in asia" part was so relevant there. Yes, yes and yes. And who the fuck has made it through (American!) college without writing letters for Amnesty International at some point (other than Hank, who is exempt from the human rights debate, as he has not been proven to be human yet)? I thought it was a prerequisite for a Bachelor's degree here.

Don't presume that you know shit about me, Spankster. I'm not going to pull my dick out* and measure it for you either.





*bigger than taxwonk's, I've heard!

Sorry, Flinty, nothing personal
 

I am having trouble seeing where you are coming from. Some people believe morality is based on selfishness (mainly the Objestivists). I can see how that logically plays out. But if morality is not based on selfishness you just have to make assumption (or irrational leaps of faith). There is just no way around it. You just have to assume killing a person for no reason is bad. It may not hurt you, but it is still bad - just because. There is no rhyme or reason to it.

Sorry, Flinty, nothing personal
 

About as effective as assiging positions to people that they never took, and then mocking them or arguing against them. As far as absorbing Mexico, only an idiot (there I go again) would assume it would be done without their permission. I never said just absord them. I could be wrong, but I think if given the chance most Mexicans would want their country to become part of ours. It would be convincing the Americans that would be the hard part.

If you don't care what I think, why don't you do us all a favor and ignore my posts.

Well yes - the Asia part was relevant - because for some unkown reason you decided that I have problems with Amnesty International. Where this came from - I don't know (maybe it has something to do with the idiocy issue I brought up before).

Sorry, Flinty, nothing personal
 

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=sarcasm

You must be a ton of laughs to hang out with. I never presumed anything about your views on Amnesty Intl. How the fuck would I know? It was a fucking joke. I get that humor is lost on you, which is part of why it is so fun for me to mock you. I'm probably going to continue to do so, so buck up for it. Or put me on ignore. Whatever.

Sorry, Flinty, nothing personal
 

This convo sounds oddly familar. have the two of you had drunken sex in Spanky's kitchen anytime within the last 5 years?

Sorry, Flinty, nothing personal
 

Don't bother. He won't get it.

Sorry, Flinty, nothing personal
 

I don't think we need to rely on the existence of a Creator to reach the conclusion that killing innocent people is wrong.

Sorry, Flinty, nothing personal
 

Why don't you start with The Golden Rule and see where it takes you? I can think of reasons to believe that killing is wrong, quite apart from God Says So.

And saying that it's wrong because God Says So is pretty arbitrary, too. How can you be sure? Why?

Sorry, Flinty, nothing personal
 

Ok. Why is it wrong to kill innocent people? Why should we follow the Golden rule?

Sorry, Flinty, nothing personal
 

1) Can you really not think of a reason, apart from God Says So? If so, that's pretty lame.

2) People don't want to die (and when they do, we generally suspect their capacity to reason). People don't want to suffer. A respect for other people means that we should respect their wishes.

3) You can always respond "why" to any reason I give. If you're not going to bother to engage on the substance, I agree that reason doesn't get you very far. But if I were to say, "because God says so," you could say "why?" or "so?" just the same. What does that prove?

Sorry, Flinty, nothing personal
 

I have been saying that all along. It may be lame but it is the best I can come up with.

People may not want to die. If we kill them we may not be respecting their wishes. When people die their blood flow stops. The brain function stops. Their loved ones get upset. But non of these facts support the idea of why it is immoral to kill them. It just explains facts about their death. You say in order to respect them, we need to follow their wishes. That would only answer the question if we had established that respecting their wishes is moral. But you have not done that, so the fact that killing them disrepects their wishes gets you no where in your assertion that killing them is immoral. You can not make any of your arguments without making the assumption that something is moral with out explaining why.

I can always ask why because your responses go in circles. Its like I ask, how do you know tom is big? Tom is big because he wears shirts. Why do you think wearing shirts makes him big? I ask the why question because you stated something else that does not support why Tom is big. So I have to ask the question - why is Tom wearing a shirt make him big?

If I ask you if something is legal. The answer is it is illegal because there is a law against it. That answers the question. If you say it is illegal because it is bad, that does not answer the question. Bad may have been the reason that the law was passed, but the law itself makes it illegal.

I have asserted over and over that the terms moral, immoral, right or wrong imply a code, or a measuring device, and that the person you are talking to understands that measuring device.

Like I have said from the very beginning, unless we assume there is a common morality code between you and the person you are communicating with, terms like moral, immoral, right and wrong really have no meaning. They are terms that refer to nothing.

Which Angle
 

You know it is interesting because I have posed this dilemma to two friends of mine that are physics Phds from Caltech (clearly a lot smarter than I am). And not surprizingly they are both Atheists. They both immediately conceded that there is no such thing as common morality in a Godless universe. They believe morality is completely relative depending on the culture or whatever. They both think the idea of international human rights as a joke. They both insist, that in the end, all morality comes down to is self interest (as other people on this board insist). So every moral stance they take, or every political position they argue, comes down to self interest. One of them donates to Amnesty international and he gave me what I thought was a very tortured rational of why donating to Amnesty international served his self interest. Trex on the other hand is focusing on (or what I think he is focusing on) is a rational foundation for universal morality (or universal human rights). That a rational argument (that is not based solely on self interest) could be made that supports the idea of international human rights.

Sorry, Flinty, nothing personal
 

I will stipulate that none of this has a meaning, in the sense that you can always ask "why" or "so" in a question for further meaning still. This reminds me of the anecdote told by Clifford Geertz, in one of his books, about the English anthropologist who inquires about the Indian myth that the world rests on the back of an elephant, which rests on the back of a turtle. "What does the turtle rest on?" the Englishman asks. The Indian replies, "Ah, sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down."

So go ahead, and keep asking about the next turtle down.

What confuses me is why you are impressed in some way with the answer, "because God says so." It's has no more explanatory force than the explanations that you reject, and yet it seems to please you.