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TheOtherDave comments on Disguised Queries - Less Wrong
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There is a similarity between Christians and many atheists in their moral philosophy, however. Atheists may not believe in God, but I think they mostly adhere to the 10 commandments.
At least Christians can say they follow their moral philosophy because God told them so. What reason do atheists have?
I think you're just trying to say that atheists follow moral expectations of modern Christian-influenced culture, but taken literally, the statement's nonsense.
I mean, look at the Ten Commandments:
The first 4 are blatantly ignored, 6 is famously problematic, 9 and 10 are mostly ignored (via gossip, status seeking, greed and so on) and finally 7 and 8 might be typically obeyed, but minor theft (especial anonymous) is common and adultery has at least 10% base rates.
How is this a "mostly adhered"? (Obviously, Christians and atheists don't really differ in their behavior here.)
In the interests of charitable reading, I took them to mean "atheists adhere to the ten commandments about as well as Christians do".
I looked through them and I was surprised at how little I break them. 4 is way off, of course and I'll honour my father and mother to the extend they damn well earn it (rather a lot as it turns out). The thing is going by the standards that I actually held for following all those commandments when I was Christian I could have expected to be violating all over the place. I'm particularly disappointed with No. 7. I've been making a damn fine effort to be living in sin as much as conveniently possible but since I have yet to sleep with a married woman I seem to be clean on that one. Going by the actual commandment I'm probably even ok with 3. The "swearing" thing seems to be totally blown out of proportion.
Personally I break some of them more often than I'd like, but then again I did so when I identified as an Orthodox Jew as well.
Of course, if I were to take this seriously, I'd get bogged down in definitional issues pretty quickly. For example, I've slept with a married man (married to someone else, I mean), so I guess I've violated #7... or at least, he did. OTOH, given that everyone involved was aware of the situation and OK with it, I don't consider that any of us were doing anything wrong in the process.
But a certain kind of religious person would say that my beliefs about what's right and wrong don't matter. Of course, I would disagree.
I suppose you do technically scrape through in adhering to No. 7 as it is presented in that wikipedia passage based on two technicalities. That it it is only adultery if you sleep with a married woman and that being the partner of the adulterer doesn't qualify. (I'm a little skeptical of that passage actually). Come to think of it you may get a reprieve for a third exception if it is the case that the other guy was married to a guy (ambiguous).
The guy in question was married to a woman at the time.
Agreed about the technicalities.
It's 6, isn't it! (Dexter has that problem too - I recommend following his example and at least chanelling it into vigilantism.)
Well, I kill all the time... most people I know do.
But if we adopt the conventional practice of translating "lo tirtzoch" as "don't murder", and further adopt the conventional practice of not labeling killings we're morally OK with as "murder", then I squeak by here as well... I'm basically OK with all the killing I've done.
I've never actually watched Dexter, but I gather it's about someone compelled to murder people who chooses to murder only people where the world is improved by their death? Hrm. I'm not sure I agree.
Certainly, if I'm going to murder someone, it should be the least valuable person I can find. Which might turn out to be myself. The question for me is how reliable my judgment is on the matter. If I'm not a reliable judge, I should recuse myself from judgement.
Perhaps I should assemble a committee to decide on my victims.
That doesn't sound like a convention that the quite fits with culture or spirit of the holy law in question or of the culture which would create such a law.
Huh? The Israelites were for killing people during wartime, and the various cultures that interpreted that law all bent it to exclude the deaths they wanted to cause.
Oh, of course you take into account what the Israelites considered murder, and whatever meaning they would have embedded into whatever word it was that is translated into murder or kill. But what we cannot reasonably do is plug in our moral values around killing. Being as we are a culture of immoral infidels by the standards of the law in question! (Gentiles too come to think of it.) What we consider moral killings is damn near irrelevant.
In what I've seen of Dexter the most ethically grey kill was of a pedophile who was stalking his step-daughter (and that's a murder I'd be comfortable committing!). The rest were all murderers who were highly likely to kill again.
For my part I would prefer to live in a world in which other people don't go around being vigilantes and also don't want to be a vigilante myself. Because frankly it isn't my problem and it isn't worth the risk or the effort it would take me.
Slightly more specific and slightly less consequentialistic than that. He chooses to kill only other murderers, and usually only cold-blooded murderers who are unrepentant and likely to murder again, (example: one time he stopped when he realized his selected victim had only murdered the person that had raped him in prison).
But it's not about improving the world really, sometimes he even sabotages the police investigation just so he can have these people to himself.
I think the general idea is that by "murder" the concept of 'do not kill people without it being prescribed by the law' is meant -- with the rest of Mosaic law indicating in which cases it was okay to kill people nonetheless.
So killing insects doesn't count (because they're not people), nor being a state executioner counts (because it's prescribed by the law).
Yeah, you're right. I was being snarky in the general direction of my Yeshiva upbringing, at the expense of accuracy.