From: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Speaker-to-Minerals)
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
Subject: Re: God and Science: The Ramblings of The Nightstalker
Date: 20 Nov 1992 17:50:42 GMT
Organization: HST Wide Field/Planetary Camera
Distribution: world
Reply-To: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU
NNTP-Posting-Host: sol1.gps.caltech.edu

In article <1992Nov19.171539.18292@onetouch.COM>, jpalmer@onetouch.COM (John Palmer) writes:
>>Well, if we're going to argue by analogy without presenting arguments as to why
>>the analogies might be valid, try this one:
>>	I believe injecting 22 units of insulin every morning is good, but it
>>	might not be good for somebody else.
>
>
>     Actually, StM, that's a bit of a straw man. . . since you neglected to
>mention that there are obvious different circumstances.

My point, made in the sentence you deleted, was that proof by analogy is a
fallacy.  You don't think I'd use an analogy that was actually 100% appropriate
to make that point, do you?  And the "flat earth" analogy was even MORE of a
straw man.

>     If you say, however, that injecting 22 units of insulin might be bad for a
>person living under different circumstances, you have changed the whole 'moral'
>point of the question.

How so?  The question of relative vs. absolute morality is that according to
relative morality, under different circumstances, different actions might be
moral, while absolute morality claims that that's not the case.

>     The one thing that bothers me about relativism is that it seems to be
>demanding that you not judge a PERSON as evil for committting such and such an
>act, and does so by saying that the evil of the act is determined by the
>beliefs of the person.

Not at all.  Or do you have some workable definition of "person" that somehow
divorces "person" from "beliefs"?

>(That is, you can't say if action A was evil, until you know if Person A
>believed that action A was evil.)

That's the most extreme definition of relative morality I've ever heard.

>    I believe it is good not to call people evil without all the facts.  I
>don't see, however, how that makes an action less 'bad.'

Well, let's take your argument a bit further (since you've already attacked a
straw man by extending things to ridiculous extremes, let's see if I can manage
to take it to the ludicrous):  An action is either good or evil depending only
upon the outcome of the action.  Neither intent NOR FORESEEABILITY OF THE
OUTCOME can possibly change that.

>    If killing a person is wrong, it is  wrong, regardless of who does it.
>Whether the PERSON is evil or not depends on their motivation.

How about WHY the person does it?  Please answer the following two questions. 
If your answers aren't "No" and "Yes" respectively, please explain your
rationale for the answers:

	Is it evil to kill somebody who's about to take an action that would
	kill dozens of innocent people in order to prevent those murders, if
	that's the only way to stop him?

	Would it have been evil to kill the same person because you didn't like
	the way he was dressed, and preventing the mass murder was an
	unanticipated consequence?

Now, tell me how you reconcile that with absolute morality.
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