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[–]Kromulent0 points
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If there's an objective standard for evil, it applies not only to the easy extreme cases, but to the tricky stuff right on the edge between evil and not-evil.
Loading gasoline into barrels and dropping it on people you never met is something we did on a fairly routine basis in the 60s, and we all chipped in to buy the gas, too. There's no objective rule that separates evil from non-evil, it's a gradient, and we all have different opinions about how grey it is at any given point.
If you have a dollar in your pocket and a kid in Africa is dying of diarrhea for lack of a five cent electrolyte packet, a seemingly objective standard becomes very difficult to really embrace.
And how is the objective standard discovered? Do we use logic and moral reasoning? What's the moral reasoning that allows children to die while I enjoy fresh coffee every morning? It's OK because they are far away? Or is there some other excuse that I can explain to him if I ever meet him?
The alternative is that you and I are not evil, and that the African kid, like every African kid, is not our problem unless we choose to accept him as our problem. This is a fairly obvious description of the way most of us actually live, and it does not require that the universe supply us with a cosmic moral code, written just for us.
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[–] Kromulent ago
If there's an objective standard for evil, it applies not only to the easy extreme cases, but to the tricky stuff right on the edge between evil and not-evil.
Loading gasoline into barrels and dropping it on people you never met is something we did on a fairly routine basis in the 60s, and we all chipped in to buy the gas, too. There's no objective rule that separates evil from non-evil, it's a gradient, and we all have different opinions about how grey it is at any given point.
If you have a dollar in your pocket and a kid in Africa is dying of diarrhea for lack of a five cent electrolyte packet, a seemingly objective standard becomes very difficult to really embrace.
And how is the objective standard discovered? Do we use logic and moral reasoning? What's the moral reasoning that allows children to die while I enjoy fresh coffee every morning? It's OK because they are far away? Or is there some other excuse that I can explain to him if I ever meet him?
The alternative is that you and I are not evil, and that the African kid, like every African kid, is not our problem unless we choose to accept him as our problem. This is a fairly obvious description of the way most of us actually live, and it does not require that the universe supply us with a cosmic moral code, written just for us.