Comment by joshuamcginnis
13 hours ago
> That's probably because we have yet to discover any universal moral standards.
When is it OK to rape and murder a 1 year old child? Congratulations. You just observed a universal moral standard in motion. Any argument other than "never" would be atrocious.
You have two choices:
1) Do what you asked above about a one-year-old child 2) Kill a million people
Does this universal moral standard continue to say “don’t choose (1)”? One would still say “never” to number 1?
You have a choice.
1. Demonstrate to me that anyone has ever found themselves in one of these hypothetical rape a baby or kill a million people, or it’s variants, scenarios.
And that anyone who has found themselves in such a situation, went on to live their life and every day wake up and proudly proclaim “raping a baby was the right thing to do” or that killing a million was the correct choice. If you did one or the other and didn’t, at least momentarily, suffer any doubt, you’re arguably not human. Or have enough of a brain injury that you need special care.
Or
2. I kill everyone who has ever, and will ever, think they’re clever for proposing absurdly sterile and clear cut toy moral quandaries.
Maybe only true psychopaths.
And how to deal with them, individually and societally, especially when their actions don’t rise to the level of criminality that gets the attention of anyone who has the power to act and wants to, at least isn’t a toy theory.
>absurdly sterile and clear cut toy moral quandaries.
I don't think it's that clear cut, if you polled the population I'm sure you'd find a significant number of people who would pick 1.
It is exactly that: a hypothetical. The point is not whether anyone has ever faced this scenario, but whether OP’s assertion is conditional or absolute. Hypotheticals are tools for testing claims, not predictions about what will occur. People routinely make gray-area decisions, choosing between bad and worse outcomes. Discomfort, regret, or moral revulsion toward a choice is beside the point. Those reactions describe how humans feel about tragic decisions; they do not answer whether a moral rule admits exceptions. If the question is whether objective moral prohibitions exist, emotional responses are not how we measure that. Logical consistency is.
If the hypothetical is “sterile,” it should be trivial to engage with. But to avoid shock value, take something ordinary like lying. Suppose lying is objectively morally impermissible. Now imagine a case where telling the truth would foreseeably cause serious, disproportionate harm, and allowing that harm is also morally impermissible. There is no third option.
Under an objective moral framework, how is this evaluated? Is one choice less wrong, or are both simply immoral? If the answer is the latter, then the framework does not guide action in hard cases. Moral objectivity is silent where it matters the most. This is where it is helpful, if not convenient, to stress test claims with even the most absurd situations.
new trolley problem just dropped: save 1 billion people or ...
Since you said in another comment that the ten commandments would be a good starting point for moral absolutes, and that lying is sinful, I'm assuming you take your morals from God. I'd like to add that slavery seemed to be okay on Leviticus 25:44-46. Is the bible atrocious too, according to your own view?
Slavery in the time of Leviticus was not always the chattel slavery most people think of from the 18th century. For fellow Israelites, it was typically a form of indentured servitude, often willingly entered into to pay off a debt.
Just because something was reported to have happened in the Bible, doesn't always mean it condones it. I see you left off many of the newer passages about slavery that would refute your suggestion that the Bible condones it.
> Slavery in the time of Leviticus was not always the chattel slavery most people think of from the 18th century. For fellow Israelites, it was typically a form of indentured servitude, often willingly entered into to pay off a debt.
If you were an indentured slave and gave birth to children, those children were not indentured slaves, they were chattel slaves. Exodus 21:4:
> If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free.
The children remained the master's permanent property, and they could not participate in Jubilee. Also, three verses later:
> When a man sells his daughter as a slave...
The daughter had no say in this. By "fellow Israelites," you actually mean adult male Israelites in clean legal standing. If you were a woman, or accused of a crime, or the subject of Israelite war conquests, you're out of luck. Let me know if you would like to debate this in greater academic depth.
It's also debatable then as now whether anyone ever "willingly" became a slave to pay off their debts. Debtors' prisons don't have a great ethical record, historically speaking.
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So it was a different kind of slavery. Still, God seemed okay with the idea that humans could be bought and sold, and said the fellow humans would then become your property. I can't see how that isn't the bible allowing slavery. And if the newer passages disallows it, does that mean God's moral changed over time?
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Have you ever read any treatment of a subject, or any somewhat comprehensive text, or anything that at least tries to be, and not found anything you disagreed with, anything that was at least questionable.
Are you proposing we cancel the entire scientific endeavour because its practitioners are often wrong and not infrequently, and increasingly so, intentionally deceptive.
Should we burn libraries because they contain books you don’t like.