You have the story of King David and Solomon where their riches are written of positively. — BitconnectCarlos

David was a piece of shit. He impregnated another guy's wife and then sent him to the front line in battle to have him killed.

He excused his son when his son raped his sister.

Among many other things.

I never read him in overly positive light. I mean, he was a good king I suppose, but I'd agree with you. He was not a Jesus like figure. Although Jesus was supposedly from his paternal line, because he Bible says the messiah must be, but Jesus had no paternal lineage, being the son of God and all. I never understood that

Does religion perpetuate and promote a regressive worldview? — Art48

Do you suppose there might also be educated Christians and uneducated atheists?

I think the more appropriate question is, does God learn something new if Mary sees red. It appears necessary that God must learn something new every time a person learns something new, because God must learn that the person has learned. — Metaphysician Undercover

This only works if free will is knowledge itself, but I don't think God can't know everything, including what is not known by any person currently. That is, God wouldn't necessarily know if Mary was ever going to choose to step outside and see red under your argument, assuming that was purely a function of her free will, but he would know what Mary will learn upon seeing red, even if Mary never does see red.

God could know the result of every unrealized hypothetical, though. He just couldn't know which choice we're going to make if you believe pre-knowledge entails determinism and therefore negates free will.

I don't see the critical problem of free will to be how we can make it compatible with omniscience (which is really the free will/determinism debate recast), but how it makes sense at all as an uncaused cause. I also don't see how it makes sense to say we don't have free will either, so I just hold it fundamental to the understanding, like time and space.

The crux of my disagreement is that you make order synonymous with simplicity
— Hanover

It's not my theory. It's Shannon's. — unenlightened

Where you say "Maximal order is minimal total information," it implies information is an element within a system as opposed to an element within a person's understanding. A more correct statement is that maximum order has a maximum level of predictability and therefore requires fewer binary bits of questions to accurately predict outcome, and thus demands less information. That is, the higher the entropy level, the less predictable the next result, therefore a person is less informed of what will happen next based upon the information he has?

It's not that ordered systems are composed of less underlying causes or actions than an entropic one. It's that entropic ones just require more information to predict results of that system.

This is where I think we're disagreeing, which was in what I took (perhaps mistakenly ??) to be meant by your term "simple," as if something inherent in the composition of ordered systems was less dynamic than in entropic ones.

I think it would be accurate to say that an observation of a chaotic event would yield less information to the observer in terms of what is needed for accurate predictability than an ordered one, not vice versa.

This discussion of entropy therefore doesn't lend itself to the evolutionary debate as I think you suggest, which I took to be that evolution was just another iteration of law of entropy in that it revealed more complex systems from simpler ones.

My position is that complexity in evolutionary biology references the organism's higher levels of organization from a functional level and employs concepts like "organization" and "complexity" quite differently. We would not say a human is more complex than an amoeba because the human is more entropic.

What I'm willing to concede is irrelevant. My whole point was that none of us have the authority or power to impose our moral outlook on people who don't share it. — Vera Mont

I didn't make any reference to imposing anything on anyone. I indicated what would and would not be ethical. If you lie, you are unethical. That doesn't mean I have the power to stop you from lying.

Governments and churches can levy taxes and tithes on their membership, and pass laws for minimum civil behaviour. Beyond that, we are pretty much free to decide our degree of participation in the human race. — Vera Mont

And we are free to disobey our governments and our churches and endure whatever consequences result from that. Sometimes we even have to endure penalties from our governments when we've been ethical because our governments are unethical.

Those are exactly the situations in which the state and the community intervene, because collectively, we have decided such an attitude is unacceptable. — Vera Mont

Intervention might or might not have anything to do with morality. It might just be a rule of covention, like we drive on the right side of the road and not the left. None of this has anything to do with what is demanded us of in order to be ethical people, and none of this is what provides the basis for legitimate governmental authority.

And you are entitled to that opinion, as am I, since I happen to share it. Sure, the world would be better if we all cared for one another. The fact remains that neither of us is in a position to impose it on others. — Vera Mont

I'm not sure where we're disagreeing if you're acknowledging that we should help others in need, with "should" designating that which is ethically demanded of us. I've not suggested that a person who watches a child drown ought be arrested. I just think he sucks. Any by "sucks," I mean he's unethical.

At some point this conversation turned from "what is ethical" to "when is authority properly exercised"? I'm just talking about who are good people and who are bad people. Bad people listen idly by while children are raped in adjacent bathroom stalls.

As to whether that obligation extends to people other than one's own family, community or nation, that is a matter of individual world-view. — Vera Mont

This is a subjective ethic though, meaning that you're willing to concede it's ethical to ignore others if that happens to be your own personal viewpoint. If that is the case, I see no reason not to attach that subjectivism to everything, meaning if I personally don't believe caring for my own children is necessary, I don't mind murdering, and I think lying is perfectly fine, then so it is.

My position is that if you are ethically obligated to help others regardless of your worldview.

How this is sorted out will require you adopt some sort of ethical theory. If you're faced with the question of watching a child drown in the pool or bending down to lift him out, some responses might be:

Which response would result in the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people? (Utilitarianism).
Which response should I choose if I were to will it to be a universal law? (Kantianism)
Which response would be most promoting of personal virtue (like courage, kindness, and charity) (Virtue ethics).
Which response would I choose to be most consistent with traditional religious teachings (love thy neighbor, do unto others, etc. (Divine Command theory).

Knowing Euclid's definitions and axioms does not entail knowing Pythagorus' theorem even though it 'follows' from them. The information of the theorem has to be 'unfolded' from the axioms by a particular series of steps that are not specified by the axioms themselves. Similarly, the unfolding of physical processes in time produces new information even if that information is predetermined. If you like, existence is the unfolding of God's omniscience. — unenlightened

Interesting. Would Mary learn something new when she saw red if Mary were God?

I'll have to think about that one. Omniscience entails knowledge of everything and if certain knowledge is only knowable through experience, then we'd have to say that omniscience entails omni-experience, meaning you'd have had to experience everything to know everything, but it seems a limitation on God to require he do something to know something.

As to the logical implications entailed by certain axioms, I do think they'd be immediately known to an omniscient being. I also don't see that as an example of an unfolding because it's just the drawing out of logical deductions, not the revelation through empirical means.

Everything starts simple and gets more complex and order is simplicity. — unenlightened

The crux of my disagreement is that you make order synonymous with simplicity and chaos synonymous with chaos. Under this view, the primordial pre-bang mass woudl be the most perfect example of order and what followed the big bang would be that of increasing chaos. My position is that order is not simple, but within it all possibliites are contained.

What increases with complexity is the amount of knowledge we have because we can learn observable changes as opposed to having to rely upon theoretical extrapolations. Information though does not increase with complexity. All the information within the system was there during a state of equilibrium. The chaos that resulted from the interaction did not increase the information. It simply increased the amount of knowledge the system contained prior to its revealing that to us.

An omniscient being would gain no information from the removal of the barrier because he would know from the layout of the molecules exactly what would occur once the barrier is removed. The information contained in the divided state would therefore be no different from the mixed state because the expected result of the mixture would inform from the divided state.

We learn from dividing an atom the explosion that would follow, but we can also be said to have known some the result prior ot the division. This would seem to be the crux of the intelligent designer's position, which is that impregnated into every simple system is that complexity will emerge, leading some to the conclusion that the result of the interaction was knowable, predictable, and therefore (and this is the questionable part) planned.

Even assuming indeterminism, I think you're still left with the idea that prior to a chaotic state you have the same complexity as a controlled state, simply because we don't challenge that State A (equilibrium) caused State B (chaos), even in an indeterminate way.

I just see State A as describing a predictable pattern of variable interaction and State B as not, but both have just as much information.

I’ve always struggled to understand the appeal for mind altering substances. Whenever I tried it, it just felt like a dream where I wasn’t fully in control of my thoughts, and I never liked it. Why do humans want to escape their mind and avoid reality? How is it an advantage? — Skalidris

You can't discount genetic factors when assessing your reaction to drugs and alcohol. Some find it very pleasurable and addicting and others not. I fall into the latter category. Alcohol does lower my inhibitions, but it isn't relaxing or pleasurable. It mostly makes me tired and gives me a headache. For others, they can't seem to control their intake because it's apparently so wonderful.

I have seen studies correlating ethnicity to alcoholism, where those ethnic groups with early historical exposure to alcohol have lower rates of alcoholism than those with more recent exposure. Native Americans have extremely high rates of alcoholism perhaps due to this recent evolutionary exposure, versus Ashkenazi Jews which have very low rates due to the first exposure being long ago.

This isn't to say your response to intoxicants might not also be personality driven, but I have no question with myself that my physiological response is very different from what is typical.

I suppose it's a good thing, but you won't find me at a party very late. Nothing is more boring than being the sober guy at 1:00 am.

What actually fascinates me even more is the evolutionary role of alcohol in human mating rituals where it is introduced in highly organized ways (in terms of where it is served, to whom it is served, how it is prepared, the time of day it is served, the environment (particularly with music) in which it is served, etc.). Since alcohol is correlated to mating, it has a profound impact on evolution I would think.

This is what I think about at 1:00 am when having to watch drunk people slobber over each other.

Given the limited access people have to 'the truth', what would such a moral obligation even look like? Does answering "I don't know" to every question fulfill the obligation? It would be truthful. — Tzeentch

This comment makes me regret ever having begun this conversation with you. You now don't know what a lie is. Super. I can't be sure there are other minds than mine either. This isn't a profound observation. It's just nonsense.

keep in mind that 'telling the truth' is an action one undertakes, and as I said one bears responsibility for their own actions. — Tzeentch

Your sentence could end with the words "to others," meaning how you treat others matters for ethical analysis, including whether you watch them suffer while you stand idly by.

Maintain a bit of class. Assuming the other side is morally bankrupt is intellectual poverty. — Tzeentch

You said there is no ethical problem with watching a child get raped while eating a bowl of popcorn. If you do that from time to time, you would only be ethically bankrupt if that was unethical, but you've told me it's not.

The truth is I don't think you think that, which means I don't take your position seriously. It's nonsense.

Why society should provide police forces and prosecutors? Your guess is as good as mine. I don't really care either way — Tzeentch

It's not a guess. It has to do with providing public safety. I also don't believe you don't care if your community has law enforcement.

Your arguments aren't persuasive, believable, or even intriguing.

Once a Jew has accepted the divine revelation of Jesus Christ he has placed himself outside of Judaism. — BitconnectCarlos

He'd still be a Jew though, just with really strange beliefs.

If I had to speculate, I would suggest that the language and the Book were central along with a rare tradition of universal learning, (hence 'argumentative'?) aided by a tribal religion with strict rules about marriage and something of an obsession with lineage. — unenlightened

I do think the answer lies in a sociological analysis. Jews are unusual in that they half-way assimilate into the greater culture. They don't remain so insular that they avoid all economic or social interaction with their neighbors, but they do remain seperate in many ways dictated by their religious beliefs. An Orthodox Jew (which really describes all Jews not too long ago) would not eat with non-Jews (because of the rules of keeping Kosher), they would not marry non-Jews, they would only send their children to Jewish schools, and they would live in communities surrounding the local synaguage because they had to be within walking distance (due to rules of keeping the sabbath). None of these decisions were based upon prejudice toward the greater community, but it was due to adhering to their rules.

Add in also the Jews had their own culture that involved distinct dress, distinct language, distinct food, songs, and much else.

Despite these differences, they did involve themselves in commerce, were educated, and could be vocal. And so that made some to think them parasitic or distrusted and that made them subject to scape goating.

The flip side of this is that it made them survive much longer than most, if not all, other sub-groups. It also resulted in a certain amount of disproportionate economic and educational success.

What you see in Jewish culture often reminds me of what you see in the US with regard to recent immigrant cultures, especially Indian and Asian ones. They tend to be insular as well, marry only within, heavily value education, but they still are heavily involved in commerce and that results in economic success. In fact, I had a Asian client who I told that I was Jewish and he said "Oh, you do things like us."

People are responsible for their actions, so they are responsible for their children, so they have moral obligations towards their children. — Tzeentch

You have no moral obligation to me to tell the truth? You didn't create me.

The vast majority of ethical conduct occurs outside family members and it relates to social obligations because you are a social creature living in a social community.

I believe people have a right not to get involved, because without such a right a system of morality simply cannot make sense. — Tzeentch

You have a right to do whatever you want, but the fact you have the right doesn't mean your decision will be moral. I have the right to decide whether to lie or tell the truth to you, but my moral obligation is to tell the truth, and the consequence of my lie is that I will be unethical if I do.

Of course, our use of the term "right" here is not at all the way "right" is typically used when referencing civil rights and things like that.

You believe it is unacceptable to let a drowning man drown. Why do you believe it is acceptable to let people in the third world starve? — Tzeentch

If you see no difference between me sitting on a chair eating popcorn while watching a child slowly die from a fall off a swing and me not flying to Ethiopia to make a meal for a starving child in terms of ethical analysis, then I can't help you.

I also don't think anyone within your community will find your response to watching the baby slowly die very persusive when you tell them they are just as bad as you are because they haven't solved the world hunger problem. The reason they will think you are an unethical person is because you would be, regardless of how blue in the face you argue that they are confused about what makes a person moral and immoral.

In that case 'moral obligation' would be little more than a fancy term for social custom, to make it sound more authoritative. — Tzeentch

A custom and contract are different.

People who claim they have moral obligations and subsequently are not making every effort to fulfill them are just fooling themselves, in my opinion. — Tzeentch

Unless the moral obligation is does not include the requirement we must "make every effort to fulfill them." No one has ever said that other than you (over and over in fact). The rule that I must give to charity can be qualified howerver we determine that moral rule to be, which might be 10%, it might be a certain percentage of discretionary income, it might be limited to helping others after other duties (including those to one's self) are fulfilled.

Your approach to append an impossible standard on the rule is what makes it impossible, but that's only because that's how you've decided to do it. Your system does provide you a convenient way to absolve yourself of all societal responsiblity and to live as selfishly as possible, so it does have that advantage, although your society might fall short of maximizing happiness.

Since you don't think you have a duty to interfere in a child rapist's activities in the bathroom stall next to you, does anyone other than that child's parents have that right? I mean, why should society provide police and prosecutors to interfere in such conduct and impose upon themselves the rights and duties associated with that?

One carries responsibility for their child. Not for their neighbor, at least not by default. — Tzeentch

What is your basis for this rule you just made up?

If you'd like a Utilitarian, Kantian, Biblical, or virtue ethics basis for why I find your rule wrong, I can provide it if you're interested in a philosophical debate.

Other children are not one's responsibility, unless one has voluntarily taken up responsibility to care for them. — Tzeentch

Again, you're just making up rules.

No. It might be a moral good, but it is not a moral obligation. I have already given my objections for why I believe that is. — Tzeentch

No you didn't. You just stated people don't have duties outside their own children, which is just a restatement of your thesis, not a basis for your position.

You are currently aware that many people are suffering in the world, yet you choose inaction towards the vast majority of them. Now you point at a specific instance of suffering and claim that inaction is impermissible. I don't see the basis for it. It seems hypocritical. — Tzeentch

That I can't do everything doesn't mean I am free to do nothing. Again, we all have limitations and all sorts of competing interests, meaning we have to divide our attention among the millions of things that comprise our lives and we can provide reasonable limitations upon what we do.

The ethic you're advancing, which is that we must do everything we can to eliminate all suffering to the greatest extent humanely possible, is not an ethic I subscribe to, nor one that anyone I know does. That is to say, you're presenting a strawman.

Obligation clearly implies coercion - the threat is that of not being an ethical person, which to a lot of people matters a great deal. — Tzeentch

No it doesn't. Obligation and coercion are different concepts even if you don't want to recognize the distinction I drew. I am obligated to tell the truth, but nothing forces me to, so I can lie, oftentimes with impunity. If I am coerced to tell the truth, I am not ethical, even though it was my obligation.

I simply asked you to quantify the obligation, which you couldn't. Your defense was, 'just because I cannot quantify it, doesn't mean it's not a moral obligation'. Well, if you cannot quantify what you consider to be moral obligations, then I cannot take them seriously. — Tzeentch

I never said it was easily done, but in the case of parenthood I think it's quite realistic. — Tzeentch

You can offer specific criteria for what makes a parent a "good" parent to a child, but you can't offer specific criteria for what makes a neighbor a "good" neighbor to a child. Why is that? What is it about parental duty that makes it subject to a differing sort of analysis than neighborly duty? My answer is that there is none. Each is subject to the same sort of analysis, which is a combination of objective factors, probably none of which is absolutely essential, coupled with certain subjective evaluations. That's how we always measure quality. Quality is not reducible to quantitfication, which is precisely what you're attempting to do here. There is not a single set of criteria that assures one they are a good parent or a good neighbor, but there all sorts of variables involved, many of which are subjectively evaluated.

I wouldn't suppose that. It's quite possible for one to do their moral duties in regards to their children without being occupied 100% of the time. — Tzeentch

And the same towards one's duties towards other children. If a parent can satisfy his duty to his own children by spending only a small amount of time doing that, and that parent has a higher duty to his own children than to his neighbor's children, then it follows he could also satisfy his duty to his neighbor's children by only spending a small amount of time doing that.

All you're doing is pointing at a specific instance of refusing to get involved and calling it unethical, when in fact one is doing the exact same thing in less obvious ways. — Tzeentch

My question is whether you have a moral duty to do anything at all when you hear a child being raped in the bathroom stall next to you. Yes or no?

Lastly, I'd like to mention a comment made earlier, which I believe gets at a crucial difference between charity and moral obligation:

Arguing about charitable giving loses sight of the fact that by definition it is voluntary, that is free of moral obligation. If it was obligatory it wouldn't be a charity, it would be a tax.
— LuckyR

When I undertake an act of charity, I do so out of a desire to do good. Not out of fear of being unethical. — Tzeentch

This does not draw a distinction between charity and moral obligation. This draws a distinction between voluntary/discretionary and coerced.

If I perform an ethical act, like telling the truth, that act is ethical if it is "voluntary," but the opposite of voluntary is "coerced." The opposite of coerced is discretionary. So, if I tell the truth with a gun to my head and under such duress that it can be said that I have been relinquished of my free will, so much so that the act is no longer something you will judge me moral or not, then I cannot be said to be moral when I told the truth. The opposite holds true as well, meaning if I lie under the same sort of duress, I would be morally excused from that conduct because it was not the result of my free will.

That I am "obligated" to do something does not mean I have been coerced into doing it. I am obligated to stop at stop signs, but maybe sometimes I don't. When I don't, it has nothing to do with my being coerced to run the stop sign. It might just be that sometimes I choose to be disobedient. The point being, I have the discretion to run the stop sign or not, but I am obligated to stop there, but when I do stop, it is not the result from a loss of free will coercing me to do as I must. That is, an obligation can be accepted or rejected by the person.

As it pertains to morality, I am morally obligated to tell the truth. That is what I must do to be a moral person. It is no coincidence that the ten commandments are commandments, meaning they are obligatory. They are not general guidelines to think about. Kant refers to his standard as the catagorical imparitive. That is, it is what must be done. This is not to say you lack the ability and discretion to do otherwise. In fact, the ability to do otherwise is what makes matters subject to ethical evaluation. If I had no ability but to tell the truth, then I would not be ethical when I told the truth. I'd just be a machine.

agree with that, but the key word here is responsibility. One is responsible for bringing a child into this world, therefore moral obligations may follow from that, and I do believe we could come up with a pretty exhaustive checklist of what that obligation (parenthood) entails. — Tzeentch

You've changed your objection. Your objection was that there was no obligation to help others because I couldn't quantify the extent of that obligation. Here you say my lack of obligation to others is limited to children other than my own, based I suppose on the fact I caused my children to exist. That is, moral obligation at first hinged upon whether that obligation could be quantified, but here it hinges upon one's duty to resolve issues they have personally created.

Your original objection then sort of flutters away and then for some reason becomes easily resolvable. You now claim there will be no difficulty in quantifying one's obligations to one's own children because, well, that's just easily done.

My response is that it is no harder or easier to quantify one's obligations to one's own children as it is to others. In either instance you're going to have to set out what you believe the minimal reasonable requirements are that one has to his own children versus other children, with likely greater responsibility toward one's own than others Since you've now said I do have an obligation to my own children, I suppose I'm immoral because right this second, I'm doing nothing for them. Surely there is some wisdom I might be able to impart that I'm not doing, but yet I fail.

The way out of the quandary for my own children is the same way out for other people's children. I simply come up with what I think is reasonable for the respective children. That you think I have an obligation to persons A, B, and C and not X, Y, and Z is based upon some theory you've not identified, but it is, as I have said, inconsistent with most, if not all, major secular ethical systems and religiously based ones. That is, you stand within a very small group of people who beleive that ethical duty to others ends at the four walls of your house.

You may wish to say that the person who passes by the drowning child without simply bending down to lift him up is ethically neutral, but I don't. I think that person sucks as a human being and is unethical. I recall a case where a man heard a child being raped in the bathroom stall next to him and insisted he was under no duty to do anything at all. Maybe you would see a horrible wreck on an otherwise deserted road and feel no obligation to make an emergency call and then drive home and snuggle up in your bed without any worry about your ethical decision. If that is you, and I really doubt it is, then you are an unethical person.

The best I can discern from what you've written is that you want to limit communal concern to the greatest extent possible and insist that each family unit is entirely responsible for their existence without any expectation from anyone not within their direct blood line. It has this hyper-tribal Randian feel to it, but it's too unworkable to be taken seriously.

If one cannot pinpoint it (or at least give an exhaustive explanation), they have no business calling it a moral obligation. That was my point. — Tzeentch

A standard of reasonableness is a standard even if it isn't quantifiable. That is, I have a moral obligation to care for the children I bring into this world, but because that obligation lacks a specific checklist doesn't allow me to walk away without effort. I must engage in reasonable efforts to fulfill that obligation.

If not, how come you are here writing posts on a philosophy forum rather than fulfilling your moral obligation of helping people who are suffering? There's no shortage of the latter. — Tzeentch

Again, that I can't quantify it doesn't mean I am free not to give to charity. Under Biblical law, there is the law of tithing, which is taken as an obligation that 1/10 of your income goes to charity. Since neither of us subscribe to a divine command theory that provides a diety as the basis for the percentage of charity we must give, we consider 1/10 arbitrary. If you're not going to rely upon God, you must rely upon man, speficially the reasonable man, the hypothetical being that does things in a tempered and thougtful way, for which he can give reasons for his behavior.

Those reasons to give to charity and the amounts considered reasonable can be based upon various logical structures, for example, those provided by the Utillitarians or those provided by the Kantians.

The point though is that we can all agree that moral behavior requires things like kindness, respect, and consideration to others. That my kindness, respect, and consideration of others might look differently than yours doesn't mean it doesn't exist or that I'm free not to be that way.

The person who does less good is worse than the person who does more good, with good and bad being understood in the moral sense. There is some level where we think the person good even if he doesn't give his every ounce of energy to others because he did give a reasonable enough amount of himself to be recognized as good.

On the other hand, should you see a child bobbing up and down in a pool crying out for help, but you don't want to get any water on your new pants, so you let him die, you are a bad person. You had a moral and you breached that moral duty.

While charity is generally regarded as a moral virtue, I think calling donating a moral obligation goes too far.

There are several gripes I would have with that:

- How much should one donate? How often? To what causes?

- What if money can't solve the problem? Am I morally obligated to fly over there and start digging wells?

- What if I am a poor person living in a rich country? Am I obligated to donate? Or are people morally obligated to donate to me?

This idea of donating as a moral obligation raises way too much questions and makes little sense to me. — Tzeentch

Under most ethical theories (Kantianism, Utlitarianism, virtue ethics, most religious based ethical systems), providing some form of charity to others is obligatory. The fact that there is a broad area of choice doesn't diminish that obligation, and it need not be limited to giving money. That you acknowledge charity is ethical (although you think it super-ethical or heroic beyond the call of duty) is an indication that you understand what charity means. That you can't pinpoint the precise amount you might be required to love your neighbor as yourself doesn't mean you are fine to avoid it.

A common idea running throughout this thread is that charity doesn't work, so why give it at all if all you're doing is temporarily postponing the inevitable. I'd just say that because we can't cure the problem is not a reason not to reduce the problem. If we can reduce a person's suffering on Monday only for him to die on Tuesday, I'd think we would be obligated to do that, especially considering how precious and sacred that Monday was, it being his last day.

A step back: do you agree Israel commits war crimes, is illegally occupying land, commits human rights violations or not? You can agree with the facts and not condemn Israel for it because of loyalty, the idea of necessity etc. and I'd disagree but I can find some consistency in it. — Benkei

I'll step it back farther, to better express my fundamental position. A post or so ago, you said I had decontextualized something you said, but what I heard was basically an attempt to offer a justification for Israel's right to the land. You generally fell in favor of Israel having such a right, but the part I found an issue with was that there appears a need at all to provide a justification. Americans, Dutch, Brits and so on don't spend much time thinking about whether they have the right to their land, nor do they believe that their rights to the land are based upon or subject to international approval. If the US explained that it would allow the Dutch their continued occupation of the Netherlands based upon the fact that the Dutch need somewhere to live, that they've been pretty ingenunitive with their dikes, windmills, and daffodils and whatever slew of other justifications the US might think of, I don't think you'd be thankful for its graciousness. You'd actually be concerned that the US thinks it has a say in your continued sovereignty and you'd be especially worried if the US took a single minded focus on Dutch internal politics and how it might be treating its adjacent German neighbors.

What is happening in Israel is child's play when compared to Ukraine. The death toll, the displacements, and the lack of threat Ukraine poses to the Russians pales in comparison with what is happening in Israel. I'm not saying the Russians have been given a pass because there certainly is outrage, but the campus eruptions haven't occured and the marches in the streets haven't occured because no one has any thought that such protests are going to change Putin's mind. He truly doesn't care about international opinion. The same could have been said of the US's reaction to 9/11. Protest as you will, but G.W. was going to be G.W.

The problem is that Israel's existence is linked to international acceptance unlike any other nation on the planet. That's what I have a problem with. The people who protest Israel are doing everything they can to endanger its existence. The only means by which Israel can be defeated is through this political effort. Israel's safety is a matter of Israel's concern, not subject to international approval.

There's no Palestine so no I don't condemn them and in any case, I'm not asking for a blanket condemnation either. I condemn specific behaviour. I condemn Hamas for their last attack. I don't condemn them for wanting to free Palestinians from Israeli occupation - which is a just cause and allows for violent resistance. I don't agree with the repeated claims Hamas still pursues the destruction of Israel and instead that they had a clear change in purpose in 2017. — Benkei

Gaza is occupied by Palestinians regardless of how you want to say the land it titled. The have possession of it and they've chosen Hamas as their representative. Hamas has fired thousands of rockets into Israel and sent in paratroopers for the purpose of not wanting to destroy Israel? I've heard the mantra of freeing Palestine from the river to the sea over and over. Am I misunderstanding that sentiment to mean something other than the removal of Israel from the land?

In any event, I'll take you at your word that you truly think Hamas wants a Jewish state by its side and doesn't want its destruction. I think that's absurd, but we've at least identified that point of disagreement. I think they want to remove every Jew on Arab land, much like every other Arab nation has done.

Before we can have a discussion on this, I need a clear condemnation from you of Israel's ongoing occupation, repeated war crimes, crimes against humanity and illegal settlements. You know, kind of how every discussion with a pro-Palestinian starts with "B-bb-but do you condemn Hamas?" — Benkei

The starting point isn't that we must agree to anything, but it's that we be clear in our positions so that we know where disagreement lies and then being able to offer support for our positions. Neither of us need to prove to the other we have the ethical standing to enter the debate by condemning X, Y, or Z. We have the right to hold contrasting views, even if we find our respective positions deeply offensive to each other.

This thread likely pisses everyone off, but, with the topic, that was pretty much expected.

I made my position clear previously on Israel: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/848309

This is to say, I don't claim Israel without any error, but I don't agree that Israel is an illegal occupier, a committer of war crimes or crimes against humanity, or that they're engaging in illegal settlements, although they push the envelope with the latter.

I don't condemn Israel. Feel free to condemn me for that.

Do you condemn Palestine? You don't have to as a starting point, but you do need to at least tell me if you do and how seriously you do. Do you see them as the warrior rapists and child butchers I do? They hardly dissuaded me from the narrative that they are barbarians with their latest song and dance.

For those interested in the legal precedent for disqualification under the 14th Amendment insurrection clause, see https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-reports/past-14th-amendment-disqualifications/

There were 8 prior instances following the Civil War. It remains debated whether it is applicable to Presidents. The chart lists the mechanism of adjudication, which has included having a state court judge determine eligibility.

If Colorado does remove him, it will only martyr him more, and all for nothing, because Colorado wasn't going Trump anyway.

I place greater moral blame upon those who unnecessarily kill without justification, but I consider self preservation and preservation of one's own people a valid justification.

So, if bombers can destroy a military target from the safety of the sky, they can properly weigh their objective (the eliminatation of the target) against their personal risk of injury against the loss of their enemies' life. That is, it is proper to place one's own safety above one's enemy and it is one's duty to protect one's own people. That is what militaries do. A bomber is therefore not ethically bound to put boots on the ground and go in with an axe in order to achieve his objective even if the result would be to reduce the deaths of opposing civilians if it will (1) place the bomber-turned-axe-wielder at greater personal risk than he'd be in a plane or (2) reduce the efficancy of his campaign to protect his own citizens. I'm assuming the longer the enemy target exists, the more danger is posed.

That is, if the bomber can make his home more safe and not expose himself to great risk, he ethically should bomb and not axe folks.

Supposing one does choose to go at it with an axe, perhaps because an axe is all he has, it would be unethical to axe murder any person unnecessary to achieve their objective in eliminating a target. To the extent a civilian interferes in the axeman's objective, he might rightfully be axed, but then that interferer is hardly just a civilian, but he's now a combatant. An axe wielder in this scenario is particularly unethical if (1) he axes a civilian not in the furtherance of a military objective or (2) his axing has no reasonable way of doing anything militarily, but it is instead just an attempt to evoke terror on the part of the enemy citizenry.

What then might someone do who has only rocks and sticks against an enemy with precision missles? There's not much he can do, but that he's weak doesn't change his moral obligations. If it did, we might just say he can morally butcher, rape, and drag off old ladies as hostages.

Wiki summarizes it into stages well:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_antisemitism

stopped caring about your opinion on this subject a while ago I'm afraid. But nice way of quoting out of context I suppose. — Benkei

Speak among yourselves then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts

So given the centuries of persecution of Jews in Europe and ME, I do think we have a collective responsibility to give them that piece of land for sovereignty. — Benkei

I'd submit that no duty is owed by others to the Jews to give them Israel, but the duty is owed not to intervene in their right to their land. I can't think of any other group of citizens where the world feels it within their authority to decide who gets what land and under what conditions that land can remain in that groups' possession.

If that land is for sovereignty, then it is not subject to reconsideration nor international debate. It is theirs and the expectation should be that it will be defended as unforgivably as one would expect any other sovereign nation to defend their land.

After several decades without major wars, two have begun in the last 2 years. — Tim3003

1998 to 2003 - Second Congo War, 3 million dead.
2011 to present - Syrian Civil War, over 300,000 dead civilians
2003 to 2008 - Darfur Conflict - 300,000 dead
2001 to the US withdrawal in 2010 - Iraq War - over 85,000 civilians dead
2001 to 2016 - Afghanistan War - 30,000 Afgans troops, 31,000 Afgan citizens, 30,000 Pakastani forces dead.
2010 to 2016 - Boko Haram in Nigeria, 11,000 citizens dead and 2 million displaced.
2014 to 2021 - Yemeni Civil War - 375,000 estimated dead, 3 million displaced
2022 - present - Russian Ukraine War, 40,000 Ukranian citizens, 100,000 troups, 200,000 Russians killed, and 1.6 Ukrainians forcibly transferred into Russia.

The Palestinian/Israeli conflict wouldn't make this list as a major war.

But anyway, I do think the statistics show there are fewer deaths from war now than historically, but I don't think they support your thesis that there was a war holiday the past couple of decades.

The universe wouldn't surprise me at all if it is fundamentally incoherent to it's own content (for example observers) which are restricted to experiencing time and space from a falsely standardised pov. — Benj96

I thinks it definitionally impossible for an event to occur outside of time and space, considering an event is defined as that which occurs somewhere at some time. If I were to tell you that Event A exists nowhere and it occurred at no time, we'd just say that Event A never occurred.

The initial singularity was not located "anywhere" nor at "any specific time". Temporo-spatiality applies to the universe as we know it, that is - after the big bang, after expansion, after entropy increased, where those dimensions came into play. — Benj96

Per Kant:

"Space is not something objective and real, nor a substance, nor an accident, nor a relation; instead, it is subjective and ideal, and originates from the mind’s nature in accord with a stable law as a scheme, as it were, for coordinating everything sensed externally. (Ak 2: 403)"

This is also his view of time.

We require that events occur in space and time in order to be coherent, but those attributes are not objective properties but are subjective.

Questions about what happened before there were time or location fail not because they preexisted the physical world, but because they are entirely incoherent.

How long would you have to run this scam to recoup the cost of all those cars? — Vera Mont

The cars are decoys, easily maneuvered with a centralized pully system fully operated remotely by internet from my hidden headquarters, allowing multiple parking lot locations to be take advantage of at once. Duh.

At some places, they have you take a number and wait for it to be called. My idea, and it's a good one, is to get there early in the morning and take all the numbers. I then wpuld sell them to customers who come in, with the higher prices going for the lower numbers.

My other Idea, again a good one, is to take the best parking spots at the most crowded stores and to offer to leave for a price.

I call my business "Dickhead."

The Israeli government could simply upgrade its iron dome and station 40,000 troops at the border with the orders to shoot to kill - Hamas terrorists, motor gliders, drones, etc. — FreeEmotion

The iron dome proved ineffective though from the recent attacks.

But anyway, think about the concept of having to protect your life daily from incoming attacks by shrouding yourself in a cloak of defensive missles, hoping death doesn't find its way to your door.

We've changed the conversation. My question was what you would do if you were Israel, and you've said you'd die the death you deserve. I got my answer to that.

As to whether I'm a hypocrite in holding Palestine to a standard I don't hold Israel to, I could draw all the distinctions between the two, but you'd still disagree. At the most, you'd prove me a hypocrite, not that I'm incorrect about my disgust at the Hamas attacks.

So here's my position: I do not condemn the Israeli response to the Hamas/Palestinian attack and I do not believe the Israelis to be the instigators in this conflict. My stand with Israel is clear here and you can condemn it as you will and find it unsustainable.

But as to your position, do you acknowledge that the recent Palestinian attack on Israel was vile, disgusting, and barbaric? Or, was their response fair game? I'm just waiting for you to tell me that each person involved, from top to bottom, in the planned rape and butchering of innocent children should be located and made to pay the consequences for their crimes just as should occur with the Israelis. But these issues are not mutually exclusive. The same vigor ought be exercised in the correction of injustice regardless of the perpetrator. This would include an insistence that ordinary citizens with knowledge of what occurred and who planned and committed these acts come forward and share the information they have.

That you think I give a pass to the Israelis for the same conduct, means you question my ethical consisitency, but ithat is an aside. The question is whether you accept that you are ethically inconsistent under your same standards you allege I am. If you're not, then let's get to the bottom of who these rapists are. Or, are we just both hypocrites, me siding with the allowance of injustice at the hands of the Israelis and you the Palestinians?

When you shoot this particular pitbull, the whole neighborhood is likely to fall apart. That's why a giant swat team has pulled up along the coast of your house. Does pulling the trigger really seem like a rational solution? — frank

We're getting too deep in this metaphor, so maybe spell out what everything represents the way you're presenting it. I think I'm assigning different entities to different objects than you maybe.

But Israel was more or less safe the day after Hamas' attack wasn't it? — bert1

No, Hamas had no plans just to return to business as usual after having let off some steam. Israel's show of force and dismantling of Hamas is part of a larger longer term deterrent strategy.

As if raping someone on Saturday is excused on Sunday because he tells us he's done.

Even if the analogy were apt (although I disagree with the characterization), your response is on the absurd side.

Drawing it out a bit further:

You have a pit bull tied to a chain in the yard. You underfeed it, you leave it in the cold, you poke it with a stick, and you do all you can to antagonize it. One day it breaks free from its leash, charges into your living room, starts chomping on your children, raping your parents and grandparents, and destroying all your property. No amount of "Down Fido!" seems to do the trick. Fido has arrived to give you the biggest mouthful of comeuppace he can muster and he's not backing down.

Your reponse, as you've indicated it would be, would be to dismantle the chain in the yard and to get the dog and the members in your household to figure out a way to give the dog a nice yard to live in seperate from your household so that the two of you may live peacefully.

The immediate question though seems to be what you are planning to do about the actual dog in the living room. Fido has your kid's leg in its mouth. Do you just say "Fair is fair my son. This dog, violent as he may seem, is just enjoying his just dessert. Justice demands we so endure"?

My response, contrary to your tempered and suicidal approach, is to kill the raging pit bull in my living room. While we may feel different duties to our families, and while I respect your right to let the dog settle all scores past and present on your kin, I think you can at least understand my feeling of duty, which is to eliminate the real and immediate threat threatening my family, which has become apparent through my son's severed and gnawed leg. That is, I would eliminate the dog, even if my kind hearted neighbors were shocked and dismayed because they thought I had earned this healthy dose of dog chomping.

This is to say, even if I were to buy into your argument that Israel represents an antagonizer of a helpless pup, I still don't think your response can be taken seriously. Your response does not give a nod to proportionality, as if to suggest that Israel has a right to a military response but just not as extreme as it has been. Your response is that Israel is entitled to no military response, but that it must lay down its neck and accept its punishment. If that were not your belief, I would think you would have permitted Israel some sort of responsive bombing or military attack, but here you've suggested no military response is acceptable.

to what Israel should do. Israel is reaping what it sowed for years. It should start with dismantling it's apartheid regime and stop it's continuous well documented human rights violations. And getting parties in power that are actually interested in a two state solution, instead of the corrupt turds they have. — Benkei

That'd be your response to your attacks? Seems like you'll be taking in heavy casualties while your dismantling and running elections.

So proportionality isn't a thing? — Benkei

Proportionality is generally associated with retributivism and Kant, where the objective is punishment for the sake of punishment and it should be proportionate to the offense. For example, a person who murders receives 30 years in jail while a shoplifter receives probation, regardless of whether those sentences deter or reform the offender.

Israel's primary obective would be deterrence in trying to stop the ongoing violence. I would view its proper limitation as doing that which acheives the deterrence without violating some higher right or objective.

For example, if I shoot all shoplifters, I will eliminate shoplifting entirely, but I'd be opposed to that response on deterrence grounds not because it's disproportionate to the crime, but because the goal of preserving life is greater than preserving items in people's stores. That is, it's worse to kill people who steal from stores than to allow people to steal from stores without consequence. But that has nothing to do with proportionality. Proportionality would limit the punishment to a just dessert, perhaps providing to the offender a dose of unhappiness equal to what the offender received.

Consistent with this line of thinking is that we would not hesitate to put store owners out of business who sold dangerous products, again because we value people over store items.

So,

If the objective is to deter citizens from murder, rape, and kidnapping, the response will not be limited by the concept of proportionality, but it will be limited to its effectiveness as long as it does not violate some other higher principle. So, using the Israeli example, they may do whatever they need to to protect their citizens lives as long as the rights of their citizens are not of lesser value than what they are destroying. Unless you are going to convince the Israelis that the rights of Palestinians to kill Israelis exceeds the rights of the Israelis to stop Israeli death, you are not going to convince the Israelis their response is ethically invalid, and that's because it's not ethically invalid.

On the other hand, if you could arrive at a way for the Israelis to stop the violence against them that would not entail a similarly violent counter-response, then that would be ideal. What do you propose? How would you defend your home if it were under similar attack?

Anyway, no one is denying the history of antisemitism in the Middle-East. Trying to excuse Israel's treatment of Palestinians in this way is familiar caveman logic. — Tzeentch

The point here is that the Arab nations have been expelling Jews from "their" land historically and during modern times. That clear case of apartheid for some reason is overlooked. What's also overlooked is that while there has been a Jewish presence in Palestine for thousands of years, a large portion of today's Jews are the descendants of refugees from all over the globe. Jews currently exist in their largest numbers (although still very small) in Israel and the US, and then way down the list you come up with France and the UK, but those numbers are very low.

The big picture here, if you're not seeing it, is that this tiny minority is being evicted from everywhere they go, including Israel, one of the only places available. If not for the US, where do you think they'd go?

Israel's treatment of the Palestinians while shocking to you appears to overlook the fact that Palestinians butchered and burnt babies, raped women, and took the very old as hostages. The outrage that followed Israel's supposed bombing of the hospital seems to have been muted as evidence comes forward that it was Hamas. Why not the outrage and protests against Hamas for bombing a hospital? Will you take to the streets if evidence is confirmed it was Hamas?

Palestine suffered human rights violations and crimes against humanity under Israeli occupation. Ethnic cleansing, forced displacement, discrimination, apartheid, etc. — Tzeentch

In 1948, about 80,000 Jews lived in Egypt, in 2016, it was 6. In Iran, in 1948, there were 140,000 to 150,000, in 2019, 8,300. There are 0 in Jordan. At the end of WWI, Lebanon had 3,500, now 29. Libya had 40,000 in the 1940s, now it has 0.

The systematic effort to remove the Jews from the middle east has been largely successful.

When they were expelled from these nations, they immigrated largely to Palestine, but the effort to remove them has been unrelenting. I mean, why can't they just leave Israel once and for all and just go to New York where they can live without bothering people.

Have you morphed into a Democrat? Just curious. — frank

I don't think so, but If Bush, Kasich, Christie, Pence, and Trump are all Republicans, I'm not sure what it means to be a Republican.