> Mark Walker writes
>
> This is uselessly confusing IMO. Why not just avoid using the "M"
> word, e.g., never say "That's immoral!!", "we much teach morality
> in the school", etc.? A quite unnecessary (to me, at least until
> you enlighten me) semantic quagmire opens up under us whenever we
> try to discuss the "M" word in the abstract, instead of much more
> usefully attacking the things we dislike or think are harmful to
> people, e.g., adultery, disloyalty, brutality, political correctness,
> divisiveness, racism, diversity, separatism, zenophobia, etc.
>
> I guess I have to go along with those who say that m******* is
> relative, because that's closer to abandoning the term, and
> doesn't allude to something in the universe that no one has
> ever seen.
>
> Lee
>
I agree with the not teaching morality in school point you made, its
unworkable with the public school system, but it would work with a private
one though. On the other hand, failure to identity evil only benefits evil.
There are those of us that believe in an "objective" morality based on
reason. Participants in this philosophy are more then welcome to identify an
evil and explain why it is so. Trying to obscure an immoral act is in effect
immoral. The semantic quagmire you speak of is a problem and I'm not sure
how to get around it as long as people of different base philosophies are
talking. You cant agree on the definition of racism (sound familiar) if you
cant even agree if existence is objective or relative (or on your axioms).
Remember the old saying "Evil triumphs when good men do nothing". Also, you
can get into the semantic quagmire arguing your terms as well, like what is
adultery. Remember the recent presidential fiasco where oral sex wasnt
included in that definition or the LONG thread where we attemped
unsuccessfully to define racism. Eventually, this attempt to dealt with
concepts by working further away from the abstract and more on the concrete
will fail as we try to determine the definition of what "IS" is. Very sad
indeed.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:15 MDT