Hitler: “Along with the fight for a purer morality we have taken upon ourselves the struggle against the decomposition of our religion. We have therefore taken up the struggle against the Godless movement, and not just with a few theoretical declarations; we have stamped it out. And above all we have dragged the priests out of the lowlands of the political party struggle and have brought them back into the church.” Documente Zer Kirchenpolitik

Also The Taiping rebellion alone killed as many as World War I, and that was a long time ago. You're not factoring in the countless destruction of cultures around the world deemed Satanic by the puritanical invading Christian armies either. Lastly Hitler was also not a Communist, the communists were his enemies, he attacked the communists, and where do you think the concept of the Third Reich came from? The First Reich was the Holy Roman empire.

Yes, and the common ground here isn't religion. Religion is a symptom of the real problem.

It desn't matter whether you are a Taliban shooting a little girl, or a member of the Red Army killing doctors and teachers--you know, those dangerous edjoomacated people--or a brainwashed 19th-early 20th century expansionist nationalist.

Humans tend to.. not question their beliefs. We become emotionally attached to them. We place way too much value on them. Our beliefs are tribal--We tend to believe what we believe to fit in with our peer groups (when's the last time you were at an outing and someone spewed crap and the rest of the group went along?). We discourage critical thinking, and encourage anti-intellectualism, and encourage far, far too much Authenticity (thinking from the gut) at the expense of reason. It's easy for us to kill. All it takes is a sociopath or narcissist in a position of power to motivate us to do it. Sometimes, not even that much. Our beliefs trump the lives of others. Our beliefs trump the rights of others to live their lives in peace. The problem is humans are arrogant. Religion has nothing to do with it.

I wish I could find the study off the top of my head. It linked a specific gene with a dramatically increased risk for psychosis, and adults without this gene were conversely, at very low risk.. I saw the study a few years ago so it's one of those things where I can't recall any more detail than that. Maybe google..

This seems to be what a lot of research into drugs reveals--that one substance can affect two different people drastically, and sometimes it is genetic. I've read studies linking caffeine with protective cardiovascular effects in one group of people, and damaging cardiovascular effects in others. And there's also been studies linking increased caffeine consumption with reduced chance of cognitive decline and related illnesses later in life.

While we are at it: studies linking marijuana with protective effects in MS patients, compared to studies showing people with certain types of genes (a small percentage of the population) have an increased risk of psychosis after use. Or studies showing potential harm or positives from drinking alcohol.

My hypothesis: it's all a crapshoot, in the end, really.

^Bumped for truth. Sensible post should be modded up.

(I call myself lazy but in reality I've worked 10-16 hours a day for much of my life and after a while simply burnt out. So it depends on how you define lazy.)

I do all of the above because I'm a cheap bastard and only have a few pairs of clothes.. and am too lazy to go down to the local Target. Simplify.

"you only respect individuals. that is the only moral baseline possible

to respect some artificial agglomeration: a religion or a country say, is just a means to introduce respect for a value system and command and control structure that is imperfect and arbitrary"

Oh so anything not purely individual is artificial? An interesting assumption, open to debate. Once again, so much of this ground has been covered in what I sent to you above before and the reason I don't want to get into it is that it is lengthy, because these issues are multifaceted and complex, just like humanity.

If you want to label your subjective moral judgements universal, feel free. After all, if there's one thing nearly universal about humans, it's that nearly everybody does just that.

No, it's not acceptable to me. Nowhere would my questioning the existence of universal morals even begin to justify killing homosexuals, or throwing battery acid on women's faces. This hardly leads me to conclude a universal set of morals exists though. To do so would be a non-sequitur. There's still far too many steps in between A and B.

If 'universal' morals exist, they will only exist in that they are agreed on by humans who work together across cultures to establish them, and how to define them in a way that respects individuals, as well as cultures and localities. After all, the imposition of 'universal' morals is a very damaging act in itself. And yes, we can use logic and reason to get there, with the goal of building a better world to live in, which is rational. I suspect we'll find truly 'universal' morals around the same time we fully understand the universe we live in, including ourselves. And then perhaps we'll discover another intelligent species who came to very different conclusions.

Once again, the link I posted above delves into these issues and links to better written articles on the subject.

'Unyielding, unmoving, perfect'

How interestingly Descartian-esque a dichotomy. The absence of a 'perfect' circle in nature while the 'perfect' circle exists in geometry. The problem isn't that I don't agree with your intent. The problem is that I don't agree with what it is that is being presupposed. The issue has far more complexities and facets to it than 'perfect morals exist because imperfect morals exist'. A does not lead to B. I suspect if you read some of the above links in depth you may come to understand why.

There's a lot of misunderstanding pertaining to the phrase 'cultural relativism' floating about. It's original intent was very specific and had nothing to do with 'moral relativism' either.

A brief intro read on the subject, worth a glance as it leads to other interesting readings. You can indeed arrive at a 'universal' sense of morals through logical processes. However this does not mean that humanity will keel over and accept it. (Slightly off topic even the US has yet to ratify certain wartime treaties that nearly every other country in the world has ratified.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_relativism#Comparison_to_moral_relativism

As a starting point, humanity does share the 'golden rule' as an idea, as it has been observed across cultures throughout recorded history. Of course this rule never applied globally, but only to one's immediate tribe, and still within the confines of that particular culture.

As Bob Page says, "their... ethical inflexibility has allowed us to make progress in areas they refuse to consider." (a quote from the opening of Deus Ex that has stayed with me over the years). As a side note, the military has been using performance-enhancing drugs like dextroamphetamine for decades so in a way there is nothing new here. When it comes down to the crunch, humans will use any enhancement they can get their hands on. Competition driving technological development.

When we have the technology, we've the desire to test it out, see what it can do, see what its effects are. From a purely practical standpoint this would be the driving reason -why-. Much like how in racing, it isn't just skill, it's also the engineering that is being tested.

This may sound strangely immoral, and I agree the morals can be debated, but I don't think the answers will turn out to be as simple as 'doping is always wrong' (queue controversial studies about caffeine and athleticism) or alternately 'well the athletes are consenting' (when you factor in potential societal pressures, long term side effects and other things--for example fighting in hockey is always under debate, as it is an expectation from some of the fans, but is over time being documented as causing a lot of harm both physically and psychologically to the players, aka the hockey suicides over the past couple years).

Laws, legality, morality, perception of right and wrong sadly don't always line up so well. It's true that Facebook and other services give us the illusion of privacy, doesn't mean we actually have it.

The slippery slope, as a fallacy, implies that two unrelated things, X and Y can lead from one to the other through a series of intermediary steps. Gay marriage is about consenting adults having the right to make the choice to marry as consenting adults. Therefore it is fallacious to draw a slippery slope comparison to it leading to necrophila as dead people cannot consent. This slippery slope is usually drawn by people who find homosexuality to be against their moral standards and hence they claim that tolerance of one 'immoral' thing is a slippery slope that will lead to other 'immoral' practices being tolerated. From our perspective, this is fallacious, because the argument is about the rights of consenting adults to live together and look after each other as they wish. From their perspective, they see, moral slippage.

A fallacy is only a fallacy when the conclusion is not supported by the premise. A slippery slope does not always have to be fallacious and does not automatically lose the argument--if it can be proven that all the intermediary steps link. In this case, the poster is only responding to the claim that since private companies do not have to respect our privacy rights, they can do anything they want with our data. This is of course incorrect because one form of communication is protected by law and the other one isn't. I'm not even sure if this is a slippery slope argument.

Both forms of communication are frequently owned by private companies, so one can't argue that private companies can do whatever they want. Private companies can only do what they are legally entitled to do. You might say this brings to light the question: if cell phone communications via private companies are protected, why aren't our chats and emails? And since we have privacy settings, or rather the illusion of privacy, it isn't exactly like it is easily made apparent that our private correspondence is anything but private.

It isn't a slippery slope to point out what happens when one's illusion of privacy is invaded. We've seen countless examples of this over the years.

'company that owns the means of communication'

So Google has the right to monitor your chats and emails?

'the government would be monitoring the service you run as well'

Without a warrant?

..on Facebook outsourcing moderation of content. Chat isn't such a stretch from this.

http://yro.slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=worst+paid+job+on+facebook