Reply #42: What you call 'morals'; I call

[forgethell]

'mores'. "Ethics' pertains to a formalized system of behavior.

We'll just have to disagree on whether morals are absolute, or not. but I would maintain that if there is no absolute standard, then 'morals' do not exist at all.

It's OK to kill when attacked because in this situation somebody is going to be killed, anyway. Might as well be the aggressor.

Now, you can, of course, approach this from the basis of "God commands this". But there are other bases of approach. For instance, what is best, or what works best, based on human nature. Then, of course, you get into whether human nature is flexible or relatively inflexible. I belong to the relatively inflexible school myself, and I would guess that you belong to the flexible school.

Assuming, just for the sake of argument, that I am correct, I think it could be said that some cultures have practices that coincide with human nature more perfectly than others. All cultures want food, security, family, love, etc. for their members. Yet who has more security: a member of the middle class in America, or the chieftain of a Yanamomo tribe in the Amazon. That is a culture of head-hunters, the 'shrunken head' people. According to what I have read, most of their wars are over the stealing of women. As far as I am concerned, that culture is hardly worth living in. And is an immoral culture.

As I said, I do not think that we are going to come to an agreement. Culture differ, yes. What one culture considers 'moral', another may not. Yes. I consider this to be "mores". Somewhere out there there is an absolute standard of morals, just like the universe actually is governed by some distinct set of laws. It is our obligation, I think, to try to discover them. Religion and theology and philosophy and even bull-shitting, like we are doing, may be useful. Just like experimentation in science.

We seem to have wandered far from the original statement about how to "baffle a conservative". You may have baffled one or two, but I think you need cultivate a higher class of conservative. Just like us, there are dumb ones, and very,very smart ones.

Peace