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Comment by Bjarne Bjerklund on August 6, 2012 at 4:00pm

Any morality that promotes violence is deeply flawed.

most people subscribing to these kinds of philosophes are trying to justify violence by appeals to a higher power. More often than not by quoting a holy book, or claiming it to be unnatural. What it all boils down to is "These people have no value", which shows a severe lack of empathy and somewhat lazy approach to logic.

Any moral question that is not based on empathy is bound to be psychpathic in nature (in the sense that it lacks empathy). So figuring out which moral codes are valid has to pass a simple test. Does it promote violence, or does it try to restrain it. 

Comment by Texas Roofer on August 6, 2012 at 10:06am

Maybe I did a poor job of asking? Using the "from which I draw my own morality" so another guy has in his moral compass to kill people who xxxxxxx. Then another has no excess allowed so you are to remove the excess of others as your moral obligation, etc.. So again how is it I know their morals are wrong and my morals are valid?

Comment by Bjarne Bjerklund on August 4, 2012 at 3:54pm

Perhaps tenets is a bad choice of words. It probably is. Perhaps it would be better to say that these three ideas a the framework of my morality... Yep, that sound better.

Now I´m open to the idea that I might be wrong, but any way you look at it you need to have some sort of foundation for that kind of duscussion. As an atheist I can´t really say that "this is good because God says so", thus I need other guidelines.

Like any morality, mine has to be based on a core ideal. What a company might call their vision statement, akin to Google´s "do no evil". While it works for them as a company, they then need to define what evil IS, and this is where things get a little bit fuzzy for some people. 

I believe mankind is essentially a force for good, whilst others believe them to be inherently evil.

I believe that "playing God" is a euphemism for creating, and thus that it is a biological imperative rather than a sin.

I believe that there is no moral imperative to force someone to your point of view by threat of violence or use of violence. And, for tose of you subscribing to the dualistic world view of body and soul I would claim this to apply even to threats of a supernatural nature. Example: "If you don´t believe like I do you are going to hell"

I believe being good trumps any reason you have for being good. You can be as fucked up as a banana split in a blender, but if you´re a decent guy I´ll have no problem with it. If you´re a asshole I don´t care if you´ve accepted Jesus as your personal saviour, you´re still an asshole.

With the stuff above, that should bring me up to a dime.

Comment by Texas Roofer on August 2, 2012 at 9:05am

Bjarne

Thanks I to struggle with this issue but I think you were in trouble at "the tenets from which I draw my own morality" so when another opposes your morality which one of you is correct?