Amen-Moses

Originally posted by Kuu:
The girl originally complained to police that she had been repeatedly punched and raped by Pascoe when he 'took delivery' of her.

The goalposts just moved this is not a cultural issue at all, this is a direct physical assault. Even in Aboriginal culture this is illegal (hey I watched Walkabout! ).

Pascoe served 3 1/2 years for killing his former wife.

And now this condemns the parents, how can you possibly arrange a marriage for you daughter with a wife killer?

Amen-Moses

[ October 18, 2002: Message edited by: Amen-Moses ]</p>

Glory

Only if you assume that I base my morality on the norms of my culture. In, part I do but in many ways I don't. In many ways I base my morality on my experiences, my knowledge and my sense of empathy. On me, not on the prevailing culture and not on some imagined objective source.

[quote]You have NO grounds, not even self-preservation, upon which to state that one culture is better than another when two cultures disagree. So the claim that this person in Australia is wrong is an extraordinary claim that I have not seen you back up with any evidence, extraordinary or not. Why, exactly, is he wrong?[quote]

Because he hurt someone else.

I am not putting my culture ahead of his. I am putting my sense of right and wrong ahead of his. I beleive that I am right and he is wrong. I don't hurt other people and he does. I don't really care about what his culture says is acceptable unless the entire culture is at odds with what I think. There is nothing extraordinary about my claim that it I think it is wrong to hurt people. If someone disagrees with me I will try to convince that I am right but I don't have to convince them to in order to feel justified in taking action to stop them from doing something I think is wrong. I am sure that there are alot of people in jail for rape that don't think they did anything wrong. I am not going to allow them out because I can't point to a universal law in support of my view.



Because she has feelings. Because if it is okay for him to hurt her than it is okay for somone to hurt him. Why don't you ask him why someone should not go into to his home with a gun, shoot him, sodomise him and steal his possessions and leave him to die. There is that pesky self preservation again. Inherent value is irrelevant. Society cannot survive when people act only in self interest and to the detriment of others. Individuals do not need inherent, objective value for this to be true.



Here we come to the crux of our opposition. When have I ever disparaged you for believing in God? I don't think ill of theists. I think ill of stupid people and of assholes. Not all thesits fit into these categories. You, on the other hand, started off by making a sweeping generalization about all atheists, assuming that we all think you are dumb for believing something we don't. The only thing I know about you is that you are a theist and you appear to have somewhat of a persecution complex regarding your religious beliefs. I am no position to judge your intelligence and I would not presume to.



I don't.

Are you saying it is irrational for me to have morals? If it is, then it's irrational for anyone to have morals. I make decisions in an attempt to do the most good and the least harm. I have plenty of data which I use to formulate my premises. I use logic to determine wether or not my premises are true. What's irrational in that?



Of course! Your inability to prove that God exists does not disprove his existence. It does make it less likely, though.



I cannot prove that my husband loves me. I have a good deal of circumstantial evidence that he does, though. He interacts with me directly. God, if he exists, does not. My husband tells me that he loves me. God never has. God has never made the slightest effort to let me know that he exists. He has gone out of his way to hide his existence, in fact. He does not call or write or drop by for a cup of coffee. He made sure that he left no trace of himself anywhere. What rational reason do I have to believe in God?



Lack of evidence is a large part of my atheism. It isn't all of it, though. There is alot of evidence against the existence of God. If the world was designed, it wasn't done very well. Why would God have chosen to allow humans to endanger every other living thing on the planet? Why did God include defects in people. Why did God include traits that perform one function( sickle cell anemia prevents malaria) but ultimately do more harm than good?

Also, I make room for the possibilty that God does exist. I think it is a remote possibility but a possibility none the less. What I reject outright are the world's five major religions. If God exists, he is nothing as he has been described by adherents to those faiths. I have been told over and over again that God lets us know in our hearts that He is with us. Well, I get a sense of something in my gut when I walk into a church or read the Bible or the Koran. I get a sense of wrongness, perversion, and self loathing. If God has let me know anything, it is that Christianity is sick, twisted and cruel as is Islam and Judaism. Eastern religions seem to rely too much on magical thinking for me to take them seriously.



How?



Martin Luther King was a great man who risked his life for what he believed to be the greater good. Rosa Parks was a courageous woman who decided not to be doormat anymore. Neither one of them were martyrs. King did not decide to walk bravely toward the executioner because it was against his conscience to turn away. I have no coubt that he would have ducked if the first shot had missed. He was on the horns of a dilemma. He decided that it was better to risk his life for what he thought was a righteous causethan to be comfortable and safe. Of course, comfort and safety were not really in the cards for a black man in the fifties so amybe it wasn't so much of a dilemma after all.

Pascoe was not acting for the greater good. He was acting against the greater good. Eventually, the majority of people came to agree with Dr. King. This doesn't seem to be the case with Pascoe so I don't see how the gates have been thrown open. Quite the opposite.

We can infer a great deal about an act based on the reactions of the general populace. We can only be as accurate in what we infer as we are knowledgeable about said populace.

Why do you accept one of Pascoe's interests and reject others? To do the right thing is not against one's self interest. To act only in one's self interest to the detriment of others is not doing the right thing. What is so difficult to understand about that? Nice straw man, BTW.

[quote][b]I am simply asking you to back up your beliefs with REASON, not authority. I am asking you to be consistent with YOUR OWN POSITION. That you cannot do so, consistently, should be revealing. That was my (not too subtle) point: you could dismiss the existence moralilty, the worth of persons, and countless other things that we know to exist simply by applying to them the same demands for 100% proof that you demand for God's existence.[quote][b]

Please point out where I have contradicted myself and use quotes. I submit that you are so wrapped up in what you think I am saying because I am an atheist that you have ignored what I have actually said. to recap, morality needn't be based on outside authority, rationality is used in moral decisions, acting in one's self interest need not be at odds with acting morally and it is sometimes necessary to impose your beliefs on someone else in order to be morally consistent. There is such a thing as the lesser of two evils.



Because I have no problem taking responsibility for my thoughts and actions. And there are plenty of rational reasons for for my moral concerns.



You believe God exists independantly of you. Clearly, morals do not exist independently of those who keep them.



I'd like to see your source on that.

Lets review what I said.



What pehenomena in the real world supports the existence of God? A lot of believers? Would you like me to list some of the lies that people have believed and the mistakes that have been made by conventional wisdom?

Lets try this. Morals are an abstract, an intangible. God is literal concept. Something that you assert exists quantitatively. Do you get the difference?



You don't have any objective value. The univers will go on without you and not be much different. You have subjctive value just like the rest of us. You value you. Thus you tend to protect your existence and preserve your self.

You just do is the best explanation for belief in God than any other I have heard. I don't have a problem with your faith. Why do you have such a problem with my lack of faith? How does it affect you? Why are you so intent on convincing me that your faith reasonable. It has nothing to do with me.



Minor is a legal term when used in this context. I don't know Autralian law. I know what minor means. Children are not ready to make decisions about complex matters. Hence they are not held to the decisions they make. Hence, legally, a child cannot make decisions. A child cannot be expected to stand against authority. An adult clearly constitutes an authority figure thus a minor cannot consent to sex with an adult. It is not consent. It is compulsion because a child will often do what an adult tells them to do regardless of wether or not they want to.

This is of course irrelevant to the Pascoe case because the girl did not consent.





Don't be obtuse. Clearly they are not.



Where is integration ileagal?

Laws can be wrong and inadequate. Laws which protect children from molestation and exploitation are not examples of that. What are you saying here? That there is no rational justifcation for calling statutory rape wrong? Yes there is.



Never any adverse consequences? ever? Stay away from absolutes. Your grandparents experience was wonderful. Would it have been any less wonderful if they had waited a year? Might it have been different if your grandmother had been twelve? There are countless examples of people who married young to their detriment, most of them females btw. Young poeple tend to act rashly do they not? Young people tend to think about pleasure today more than practicality for the future. Is this a good thing when getting married? What happens when a teenage bride becomes pregnant? Does she get to finish school? Does her teenage husband get to finish school? In the modern world, for most people, teenage marraige is a one way ticket to poverty. Children need to be protected from themselves sometimes.




Because we can't predict the future. Teenage marraiges most often don't turn out well and the damage can last a life time. They are young. They can wait.




I utterly disagree. Kids don't know what they want and are too often at the mercy of those who would hurt them even though they(the child) may not know it.

I appreciate your closing comments. I have no way to know when you are stating your beliefs and when you are playing devil's advocate. I am still wondering though why you want to attack atheism? What has it got to do with you? Why is it so hard to live and let live?

I have to stop responding to you point by point. It is taking me way too long and I cannot spare such long periods away from daughter. She has been very patient so far but it really is too much for her. I don't wish to discontinue the conversation but I must be more brief in the future. Brevity is a real challenge for me.

Glory

luvluv

Glory:

Glory, none of this changes the plain, naked fact that you have no rational ground on which to say that your morality is right and his is wrong. In fact, if humans have no value as you say, his actions are much more in accord with reality than yours. What makes your experience, knowledge, and empathy so special that he must conform his behavior to your standards and not the reverse?

So what? People have no inherent value. If atheism is correct, the girl is objectively worthless.

Exactly! Everyone's life is equally worthless, so hurting people is a meaningless act, just as all of our acts are meaningless.

But again, why go out of our way to preserve our value-less self? And why should anyone care if society survives? Society is as meaningless and worthless as every human being walking the planet.

And how would your notion of self-preservation ever deal with the suicide bomber?

I don't think this is what I have done. I have simply tried to point out the inconsistency in your position if you

1) Do not believe in God.

2) Believe in the worth of human beings or in any objective moral principle.

3) Claim to temper all of your beliefs to proof.

Anyone to whom 1,2, and 3 apply is inconsistent, and is a hypocrite the day he says that he (or she) tempers his (or her) beliefs to evidence.

If you do not claim any rational basis for your atheism, then you are indeed not a hypocrite or inconsistent. Reason and evidence do not have anything to do with your position. But if you claim that your atheism is rational, you would have to eliminate not only the inherent value of human beings, but ANY objective moral principles, INCLUDING the notion that people should not hurt other people.

Yes.

Absolutely, unless there is an absolute source for them. If morality is a matter of taste, then it is obviously irrational, for rationality has no bearing in matters of taste. I happen to like the color yellow, but I can't give any rational basis that everyone could agree on for preferring that color to all others. If atheism is correct, and if you are correct in assuming that human beings have no value, your distaste for rape is in the same category as my distaste for colors other than yellow.

God works through people. Have you noticed anyone coming to talk to you about God? Or to provoke you to reconsider the possibility of His existence?

I have a question about your husband. If you would not allow him into your life, if you would never speak to him nor give him a chance to speak to you, if you totally shut him out... how would you know he loved you?

How much of this sick, twisted, cruelty is in the Old Testament, and how much of it is in the New?

What, precisely, is sick, twisted, and cruel about the life, work, and ethic of Jesus Christ?

Off topic, but this is not true at all. King predicted repeatedly that he would be assasinated, to his family and his co-workers. He might not have known the exact date and time but he knew that if he continued to work for freedom (and most especially, in my mind, against the Vietnam War) that he would be assasinated.

This is not a straw man. If humans have no value, and if your own morals are without rational basis, then there is absolutely no difference between Pacoe's actions and Martin Luther Kings. In a world with no objective value, all endeavors are absolutely equal. Raping children and feeding the poor are both equally worthy endeavors. They both have the value of absolute zero, and no matter how much we humans attach heroism to one act and villany to the other, such titles are meaningless descriptions of taste.

There emphatically is not. There is not even such a thing as evil.

And how, pray tell, if there is not an objective standard of evil, can we distinguish betwen which act of evil is greater and which is lesser. What standard would we use in measuring that, and why should we use that standard instead of any other one we might think up.

a) You not having a problem with taking responsibilty for your thoughts and actions does not make the prospect "because I say so" one whit more rational than "because Mommy/Daddy?/God said so".

b) There cannot be an objective, rational reason for any moral concern or action. You invalidate self-preservation as a basis of moral when you say that the self has no value. If a person asks you why you value yourself, you will be forced to say "I just do" and your argument will cease to be rational, because a person might just as easily say he does not value himself or anyone else, and he would be nothing short of totally rational in saying so since, by your own admission, humans have no value.

Existence. Why is there something instead of nothing? That's a start.

Sez you. What if, according to the Aboriginee culture, children reach the age of consent at 9? This is just ethnocentrism.

So what? She has no value. The ants I step on everyday don't consent, either. What difference does it make?

Me:

You:

The whole point of this thread is that many of you are advocating that they should be, that Pascoe should be locked up. You claim not to like this situation. Why should I think this dislike differs in any way from my dislike of cheese?

Sorry, I meant to say "otherwise intergration WAS wrong".

Present it.

I agree that in the modern world it's the worst idea on skates. But in the old world, where it's been practiced for thousands and thousands of years, and where it is expected, I don't see an objective moral grounds for saying that people who live in sheepherding country should not be married away at 15 or 16 if that's the norm of their culture. It is often a financial burden for an older couple to care for their daughers into old age, and often marrying them off to young men is a means of avoiding poverty. There are many off-setting considerations which could make marriage at a very young age an appropriate consideration. In this case, I do not believe that marrying at a particular age is an objective wrong regardless of the extenuating circumstances. Despite my argumentative approach, I obviously believe that rape, for example, is wrong regardless of the extenuating circumstances. Marrying young is not a situation like that. I agree with you for most people it is a bad idea but, as you said, I would avoid absolutes in this case. There are probably thousands of marriages in the world every year between people under the age of 18 that work out totally fine.

And this differs from marriages between adults how exactly?

I understand. Thanks for accepting my apology.

[ October 18, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

luvluv

Pomp:

I think you are missing me. I do not dispute in the slightest that your morals exist in your head, even if you are an atheist. What I dispute is that there is any rational basis for them. I would not doubt that your preference for the color green exists in your head, what I dispute is that there is any rational basis for me to like the color green if that preference does not happen to reside in my head.

Arrowman

- And it is my understanding (possibly from the same news article) that the DPP originally supported the 24 hour sentence; that the decision to appeal was only taken after the publicity and public outcry.

Glory

I am getting really frustrated. I have twice written a detailed response to Luvluv's most recent missive only to somehow lose it. The first time my computer froze and the second time I don't know what happened. I'll try again tommorow. When Three's Company comes on I know it's time for bed.

Glory

Glory

Okay, lets see if I can hit the salient points.

Nothing has objective value. Almost everything has subjective value. If you chose to ignore the value your mother places on you because she is not objective, so be it. Do not ascribe such ideas to me, though. All the value and meaning I need comes from myself and the people who interact with me. I am perfectly aware that the world will keep spinning with or without me and that there is no grand plan for my life. I don't need external validation from God. Please get off the life is valueless and meaningless thing. It has been answered. Aceept or reject my ideas and stop putting words in my mouth. That, incidentally, is the straw man I referred to. You have repeatedly stated that I hold people to be meaningless while ignoring the subjective value I put on everything and everyone.

I have also repeatedly explained why self preservation is the basis of morality. You can disbelieve it if you like. I am not going into it again.

Let me ask you a question. If God is the source of maorality why is there so much disagreement as to what constitutes moral behaviour? For every moral act, there is someone who believes that it was immoral. One man's murder is another man's justice. Why is the absolute power in the universe so vague about what is sinful and what is not? If morals are universal we would all know what is right and wrong and there would be no discrepencies from one person to another.

The colour yellow is not detrimental to the well being of women and society, no matter how distastful it may be to you. Rape is.

Rational means based on and in accordance with reason or reasoming. My conclusions are in accordance with all the reason I know of. I have premises which I prove using logic. How is that irrational?

Regarding God: I have always been wary of those who claim to spaek for others. If God wants to talk to me I will make eagerly myself available to him. However, I cannot simply take your word for it that you know what God wants from me. In my experience those who claim to speak for others are almost allways mistaken in their information or deliberately attempting to decieve me. When I was in fifth grade I was approached by some girls who informed me that the three most popular boys in the class "liked" me and wanted to ask me to "go" with them. I was to meet them in the library. I was not popular and I was not stupid. I did not go to the library.

My husband interacted with me directly. God is welcome to do the same.

Regarding the old testament: Are implying that it no longer matters to christians? Why is it still part of the Bible?

Jesus was a great guy provided he actually existed. There is nothing which suggests he is anymore real than Santa Clause. Paul on the other hand was really screwed up. He is responsible for the cruel condemnation of almost all sexual behaviour. He even said that sex between husband and wife was shamful but was preferable to fornication. He made no room for the most basic and normal sexual desires. He is the one who makes sure that all of us are told repeatedly that we are sinful and bad at our very cores. Well I have to reject that idea. I am not sinful and bad and I will never teach such ideas to my children. That is abuse.


Dr King was well aware of the danger in which he had placed himself. Of course he could see the writing on the wall. That is a far cry from predicting the future or accepting asassination as his destiny. This is prime example of counting the hits and not the misses.

Existence is. How and why that is is a mystery. Saying God did it is not answering the question. It simply rephrases the question.



What if, what if, what if? If they rape thier children they must be stopped. Not according to God but according to me and everthing I know. Period.

Oh wait this is irrational! The health of a society is not dependant on the health of its children. Why should it be? There is no evidence that children are harmed by adults forcing themselves on them.

Oh wait, there is! Don't let reality get in the way of cultural freedom.

Lets try to get a few things straight.

Atheists are all simmilar in one way. None of us believe in God. Eevrything else is up for grabs. Some of us are empiricists. Some of us believe in all sorts of unproven things like astrology, alien visitation, and even objective morality. You assume that we are all the same and that atheism is a system of belief in and of itself. This is not true. You must understand that or you will never be able to engage in meaningful discourse with atheists.

You began this discussion by assuming that all atheists are empiricists and by claiming that we all hold your religious beliefs to be ridiculous. This is equally untrue. I urge you to get over that mindset. It does a disservice to your position.

Glory

Arrowman

Which, when you think about it, is pretty much what the Christian proselytisers are saying to you now. Dad, Junior, and Holy Spook are waiting in the library. They like you, Clarice... er, I mean, Glory.

[ October 21, 2002: Message edited by: Arrowman ]</p>

Glory

Bingo!

Glory

And then the Catholics will tell me to eat him and drink his blood!

Glory