There is only one God, right?
-Egypt's envoy in Iraq killed CNN Thursday, July 7,2005
"We, the al Qaeda in the land of the two rivers,announce that the verdict of God against the ambassador of the infidels, the ambassador of Egypt, has been executed, praise be toGod"The politically correct view these days is that there is only one god and that everyone in the world worships that same god. If, for the sake of argument, we take that as an axiom (which is my way of saying that it need not be true) then the folks who killed the ambassador of Egypt believe they are doing this because God told them to. Now who are we to say that they are wrong about that? But, on purely humanistic grounds we can say that taking the life of another human is unethical, irrespective of what one believes in terms of gods. The reason is that every person has the right to live as they chose. But why does each person have that right? One person cannot know what another person requires. Therefore it is false for one person to claim to know how another should live. The only way to avoid a false claim is to allow the other to live as they chose. Clearly if one person choses to harm another, they are infringing on that other person's choices and so are taking their actions on a false basis. So murder is based on a false claim. By keeping truthful, one would not claim to know how someone else should live (or not) and therefore one would not murder. One will then have respect for the other. The people who killed the Egyptian ambassador have made a false claim: that they knew how the ambasador should live. Since they could not know that, their actions were wrong.
posted by Tom Schneider @ 7:27 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Only fools argue that everybody actually worships the same God, just in different ways. PC or not, it is a ridiculous, self-contradictory belief. It is not representative of anybody with any real theological knowledge/reasoning or anybody with half a brain. Unfortunately, stupidity knows no boundries.
Oh, and I would make the arugment that if there is nothing after death then everything, absolutely everything in every way and at every time, is completely meaningless. If you preclude the possibility of an afterlife then you cannot argue that killing somebody is wrong. It is impossible.
There are no "requirements" that people have that are in any way important without an afterlife--you die anyways. It is all ultimately irrelevent. What does it matter if you die now or later? It makes no difference. Life is meaningless.
Therefore, in order to make the claims you are making while still maintaining consistency with your other beliefs, you must admit the possibility of an afterlife (in some way/shape/form, i suppose that includes reincarnation). Otherwise you're being illogical, and you wouldn't want to be illogical, now would you? That's what those RELIGIOUS people are, right? ;)
> Only fools
Ad Hominem. This makes you look bad.
> argue that everybody actually worships the same God, just
> in different ways.
Many religions claim there is only one god. You seem to think
they are fools.
> PC or not, it is a ridiculous,
Ad Hominem.
> self-contradictory belief.
No, it is the claim of the religions. Of course they are indeed full
of contradictions.
> It is not representative of anybody with any real theological
> knowledge/reasoning
There is no 'real' theological knowledge. The reasoning I've seen (eg
by so called intelligent designer types) is so bad that to rebut their
errors generally takes twice the text of what they wrote.
If there were 'real' theological knowledge, then most people would
agree, just as we agree about the double-helical, base-paired
structure of DNA. If you don't agree, then read the original papers
(beware, there are by now thousands relevant!) and repeat their
experiments. If you get a different result, repeat the experiments
until either you find your mistake (likely in this case) or you
demonstrate that DNA does not have that structure. Publish, submit,
rebut all the reviewer's counter arguents - not always so easy! - and
write followup material as needed. If you succeed, you get a nobel
prize.
That's real knowledge. It is well founded. Theology is a bunch of
guesses based on no evidence and disproven ideas (read genesis).
> or anybody with half a brain.
Ad Hominem.
> Unfortunately, stupidity knows no boundries.
Certainly.
> Oh, and I would make the arugment that if there is nothing after
> death then everything, absolutely everything in every way and at
> every time, is completely meaningless.
That does not follow. If there is "something after death", then
everything is still meaningless!
> If you preclude the possibility of an afterlife then you cannot
> argue that killing somebody is wrong. It is impossible.
No, you got it completely backwards. If there is an "afterlife" then
death is just stepping through a doorway - no big deal. So killing
someone just pushes them through the doorway sooner than they might
have gone. (That's unethical if they did not desire to go through
though.)
If there is NO "afterlife" then death is the end and killing someone
robs them of all and everything they have. So 'thou shalt not kill'
is a much stronger statement if there is nothing after death!
You are also missing the relevant biology. Killing members of one's
own species (or tribe, pack, family, etc) can lead to the extinction
of that line. So there is evolutionary selection against killing.
It's generally more pleasant that way too. People who disagree with
the last sentence are eliminated by everyone else (eventually).
So from a biological viewpoint (preservation of one's species, line or
tribe) killing is 'wrong'. The concept 'wrong' is a biological
concept, and it applies on a per species basis. (So are 'right' and
'happiness' among others.)
> There are no "requirements" that people have that are in any way
> important without an afterlife--you die anyways. It is all ultimately
> irrelevent. What does it matter if you die now or later? It makes no
> difference. Life is meaningless.
So? Evidently that is the case. Build a philosophy starting from
that.
> Therefore, in order to make the claims you are making while still
> maintaining consistency with your other beliefs,
You don't know what I believe. It's not a good idea to pretend that
you do because it weakens your arguments.
> you must admit the possibility of an afterlife (in some
> way/shape/form, i suppose that includes reincarnation).
Of course it's a possibility, but it has no solid evidence, and plenty
of new evidence that things like tunnels of light are brain phenomena.
> Otherwise you're being illogical, and you wouldn't want to be
> illogical, now would you? That's what those RELIGIOUS people are,
> right? ;)
I don't mind being wrong or having my logic corrected. But your
arguments fail to demonstrate, and there is no evidence that there is,
this illogical concept 'life after life'. You seem to building your
philosophy by what you want to be true. This has never worked for
anyone. I imaging that people who want to be able to fly without
wings have jumped off cliffs ...
Post a Comment
<< Home