Reply #158: And I Disagree

[NashVegas]

In other words, I argue that certain basis principles are inherent right at the biological/evolutionary heart of the natural world.

In the natural world, like eats like all the time. Yet, we condemn cannibals. We make jokes about the Roadkill Café.

Going around blowing off all responsibily to act in a morally responsible way by saying "well your reality, my reality, whose reality - its all subjective" is just a copout to excuse to justify any behavior, even if it is morally wrong behavior.

No, it's not a cop-out at all. These are rules we put into place to protect our civilization and sensibilities. *And there's not a thing that's inherently wrong with that.* A species has as much right to self-defense as any individual.

Saying 'my reality differs from your reality, therefore it's okay if I screw you over' is not a cop-out because you're trying to excuse morally wrong behavior, it's a cop-out because you're trying to say 'my reality is superior to your reality,' when in fact we have no objective way to prove it, unless you have some way to travel into the 4th and/or 5th dimension.

So if you go and rape someone, I don't say "hey man - that's your reality, you know it seems wrong to me but you gotta do what you gotta do." I say, "that's wrong. It is always wrong. It is never morally right.

About that 4th dimension: if you were a member of say, a 6th century Viking invasion (were they still plundering about then?), you might be in a time and place where the mores were completely different and would have had a different influence on your moral compass than what they may now.

Similarly, I'm not aware of any popular anti-slavery movements prior to the Enlightenment. I believe that slavery is morally wrong, and if I were around prior to the 18th century, I might also have believed so. But I might not have; I might have simply accepted it as the 'way of the world,' the mores of the times.