Those who stand for nothing fall for anything

When I first started questioning the validity of the axioms handed down to me by parents, peers and priests during my Catholic upbringing, I found Wicca, a neo-pagan religion based on supposed ancient practices of witchcraft. To someone who had only been exposed to Catholicism all of my life, Wicca was both exciting and foreign, but upon learning about some of its dogma, I became discouraged because I didn't feel it meshed with me.

Until another wiccan said to me: relax, you don't need to believe all those silly rules and practice the rituals or even workship any gods whatsoever. All you need to do is believe in the Wiccan Rede:

An it harm none, do what thou Will.

I was excited! I found a place I fit in, and there is no dogma! But wait... does this mean that anyone who believes anything is still a wiccan just because they live their life not harming others?

I was confused. The rich culture and symbology of Wicca (and neo-paganism) was lost on me, being watered down to following this ONE rule, which by the way seemed incredibly similiar to the Christian Golden Rule:

And in all, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. For this is the Law and the Prophets.

I soon abandoned Wicca, and continued searching elsewhere...

Often I bump into people (online and off) who claim to be open-minded, tolerant, and free of dogma. They are the ones who take a look at a robber and wonder about his life situation that lead him to steal, rather than condemning the crime. They are also the ones who take a look at some atrocities going on in remote parts of the world, but supporting that we cannot judge them because they have to be analyzed within the context of its own culture.

But how much moral relativism is too much moral relativism? Certainly, some cases can be dismissed as dependent on specific culture, such as the case of a 19 year old buying alcohol in Ecuador is seen as completely normal as opposed to a crime in the United States. But what about things such as murder? Child abuse? Oppression of women?

At what point do we take a stand and say: "NO. This is wrong." At what point is a belief obligatory and axiomatic as opposed to "unneccesary fluff"? Is there a Truth? Or is reality only what we make of it?

At what point do we take a stand and say: "NO. This is wrong." At what point is a belief obligatory and axiomatic as opposed to "unneccesary fluff"? Is there a Truth? Or is reality only what we make of it?

I would aim for something more like -
"in the circumstances and all things considered, this is wrong"

Murder is a nice fun one - Is state, federal, or UN sanctioned murder (police, prisons, or war) less "wrong" than "house robbery gone wrong" murder?
What about if my dog barks, you kill it, so I kill you? are vendettas more or less wrong?
Is there a point in time when "Justice" validates an act?



(I would also shorten one of your examples to just "oppression")

Abstract concepts like morality are not absolute. Concepts like this only exist within the context of a society or as the consensus of a species, thus making them objective realities at best. The fallacy in much of this lies in the fact that things such as morality or the laws of physics do not really exist outside of our own perceptions of them. In my mind, to ask where morality comes from begs the question, “Well, where is it now?” If “it” came from somewhere then “it” must be somewhere now. But to ask where morality is now is nonsensical and thus the original question as to where it came from also becomes nonsensical. It didn’t come from anywhere, it is nothing more than a construct of our own minds over time. These concepts are just abstract properties that our brains treat as existing "out there". In actuality they are representations we use to describe the reality we experience. In that sense, they exist but they exist only as patterns within physics. They are concepts that we use to organize our thinking about the single, physical substance in which we are embedded.

Tsst.

You could call it... "What is required for society"

We make the assumption that somehow society is more "valid" than complete chaos, but we have to make an assumption somewhere - most animals have some sort of society, and mete out justice as required to maintain it -

To use a poor example - when a new leader takes over a tribe, killing or exiling the young of the previous leader to prevent power struggles and disruption of the greater group.

"killing the young" sounds inherently evil - doing it to maintain peace & safe sleeping/forage/hunting grounds for the remainder is perhaps a pragmatic, and arguably moral.

Moral relativism to me is but one of many proposed answers to what I shall for simplicity's sake refer to as "the moral question". Having all of the same lack of justification or sophistication as any other it therefore to me has all of the validity any other would. Morality is a far more complicated question than any of the proposed answers seem to acknowledge, so it would seem to me that being trapped in a plethora of pointless rituals and creeds declared by an authority, call it by the name of your collective or your gods, is every bit as helpful as beeing tied to only a single overarching principle that is just as arbitrary, when it comes to the choices we seem to be faced with.
So when I say I am open-minded, or tolerant, or free of dogma (should I ever say anything so flattering about myself), I'd mean that including moral relativism. I would question the proposition that there actually is such a thing as wrong or evil just as I would question the proposition that every opinion on what those things could be is as valid as every other. I would also question someone who says there is no such thing as wrong or evil, too, and those who say that we'd have no way of identifying it, if there was, and see if they can back any of this up with something that isn't a mere paraphrasing of the proposition.

Note, that this is of course a matter of definition. Harm, for example, is in many a case demonstrable, even quantifiable. If we define moral wrongness as harmfulness, the debate is for the most part settled and over at that point. Yet, we don't have to. Indeed, there may be a case made, that we are better off if we keep the discussion going instead...

Manu wrote: When IAt what point do we take a stand and say: "NO. This is wrong." At what point is a belief obligatory and axiomatic as opposed to "unneccesary fluff"? Is there a Truth? Or is reality only what we make of it?

If you listen there is a little voice inside of you that tells you what is right or wrong.

What's your proposition? Supposing we were to abandon a separate moral focus and fully accept the morals of our culture, I guess we could point and say "that's wrong". But what to do about it? Throwing a child molester in prison doesn't unmolest the child. It just promotes suffering in someone who caused suffering in another person. How is that justice, even remotely? If moral skepticism is bad, why? What punishment, if any, follows the recognition that someone did something wrong?And how is that punishment morally justified? If it's just hurting someone else because they hurt you... that doesn't seem to be legitimate justice to me.

Rickie wrote: If you listen there is a little voice inside of you that tells you what is right or wrong.

If someone else's voice tells them something else, what help is it? If there is a moral truth, only very few of the countless voices can be right about it, all can be wrong, and even with the voices it could still be that there is no moral right or wrong, all independent of whether moral relativism is correct.
Do you also have a second voice inside of you that tells you to trust that first voice? Do you have a third one to back up the second, too?
What if you are like me and you hear no such voices? Am I then "not listening quite hard enough" or just a psychopath? Or maybe both?
Do we draw any lines between the "healthy" hearing voices and the schizophrenic at all? Why or why not?

Do you also have a second voice inside of you that tells you to trust that first voice? Do you have a third one to back up the second, too?
What if you are like me and you hear no such voices? Am I then "not listening quite hard enough" or just a psychopath? Or maybe both?

In response to that Gisteron, Firstly yes I have a voice(voices) inside my head that are there, that I listen to and believe to be a part of myself. BUT. I don't think it's wise to focus on the seperatation of those voices into more than two voices, otherwise I think I will end up going schizo. Listening to the voices as if they're seperate is dangerous I think. It's based off a theorey I have that we have great imaginations and can entertain dialogues in our heads. The more elaborate, the more we lose sense of our identity. In any case, I imagine it'd be nice to have just one voice that tells you what's right or wrong; it probably makes life a little simpler.

And because I do hear voices I can't imagine sorry what it's like to not hear voices as it were. Probably comes with its own advantages and disadvantages? But I don't think you're a psychopath- at least, not anymore than I am!

IN answer to Manu, I'm going to redirect you to 'This is Water'. And yes it talks about 'Truth' with a capital T.

http://bulletin.kenyon.edu/x4280.html

Enjoy. Just one other opinion!

(Post Edit: Or you can listen to it here (short version, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfw2Qf1VfJo or here, long version, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhhC_N6Bm_s)

TheDude wrote: What's your proposition? Supposing we were to abandon a separate moral focus and fully accept the morals of our culture, I guess we could point and say "that's wrong". But what to do about it? Throwing a child molester in prison doesn't unmolest the child. It just promotes suffering in someone who caused suffering in another person. How is that justice, even remotely? If moral skepticism is bad, why? What punishment, if any, follows the recognition that someone did something wrong?And how is that punishment morally justified? If it's just hurting someone else because they hurt you... that doesn't seem to be legitimate justice to me.

Then what is legitimate justice? Sure, tossing the child molestor into prison does not unmolest the child, but it creates a precedent for other pedophiles to resist their urges at least due to fear of punishment. Besides, the secondary purpose of incarceration is to prevent that person from continuing to perform the same evil action again and again. Or would you postulate that in some events pedophilia is not evil?