Is there a non-empirical dimension? — Ludwig V

I don't think so. Therefore, the god of the gaps is immaterial in every sense.

hope is more of a religious thing. — Fire Ologist

Wrong way around. Hope is a human thing and therefore religion. Some religions tried to take out a patent on it, but we still have some.

Ah! So maybe I'll see it, after all. At least part of the process.

If God had no relation to the empirical world, God would have no use for us, and we would have no use for God and no reason to seek God or evidence or any content to refer to in any discussions using the term “god”. — Fire Ologist

That's about it.

One of the perennial questions I pose to nobody in particular is:
What difference does it make whether something you might choose to call God exists in a non-empirical dimension?

Thou shalt not murder. — BitconnectCarlos

That, of course is completely different.... depending on how you define murder. Here's a list of things you not only may but must kill your own tribe members https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Leviticus-Chapter-20/

The OT is full of wars of aggression not merely sanctioned by Jehovah but instigated by him. How did Joshua come into possession of Jericho? Sappers. How did all the other wars come about? Israel was not attacked by all its neighbours.
He was only kidding about that shalt not kill thingie.

Deuteronomy 20:17 But thou shalt utterly destroy them ; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee:

All the mattering qua nattering about ethics was unnecessary. I referred to the distribution of suffering simply to point out that, while we all die, we do not all suffer.

No, I mean by repugnance just the intellectual rejection. — Astrophel

The two words are no more similar than the two attitudes. Why say one when you mean the other? I came by the intellectual rejection of Christianity first and later all organized religions and religious doctrines, through honest inquiry, not from an aesthetic response.

I can't wait to see what that's like. Literally: I have 20 years left on Earth, at maximum stretch. — Vera Mont

That was by way of a sardonic guess at how long it will take for religion to be eradicated from the world. Not the delving into what's been lurking under it.

This is the beginning. — Astrophel

For you. I wish you safe journey. I'm already here.

Here, the term is applied with complete acceptance of the arbitrary nature of our circumstances. Born to suffer and die means born INTO suffering and dying. — Astrophel

Everybody has to die, but the distribution of suffering is quite uneven. But there was still that "why?" attached to the "just this", which renders your acceptance incomplete.

Look, if you want understand atheism (the OP) you need to understand theism, and to understand this, you have to move decisively away from things "theological" that carry significance already assumed and accepted. — Astrophel

Done.

I do appreciate your repugnance for religious thinking — Astrophel

Where have I expressed any such repugnance? All thinking interests me. I reserve repugnance for exploitation and cruelty.

but all I am trying to get across is that when God is, well, put to rest altogether, not a peep, then IN our existence in the world there remains a very important residuum, — Astrophel

I can't wait to see what that's like. Literally: I have 20 years left on Earth, at maximum stretch.

ou can embrace suffering, as Nietzsche did, OR, you can observe suffering for what it is, which is qualitatively very interesting. — Astrophel

The third way: avoid it where possible, inflict as little of it as possible, relieve as much of it as possible.
(It's bloody well not 'interesting'. It's pretty much all the same: ugly, degrading and tiresome.)

So atheism is just a response to theism, and theism is constructed out of irresponsible thinking. Responsible thinking categorically removes these terms to see what is really there, in the world, that is behind it all. This is suffering. Now, one can move further along analytically, but this simple assumption has to be acknowledged. — Astrophel

I see that all my striving at the keyboard has been in vain.
One is free to move right along.

It is not enough, it seems to me, to dismiss the whole business as superstition. — Ludwig V

Not believing it doesn't mean I dismiss it as unimportant. I can both interested in and sympathetic to a belief without subscribing to it myself. What I reject out of hand is that lukewarm admission that there may be some kind of supernatural something behind or underneath of the universe, and that something could be called God - because we can't prove it ain't so. Why should we bother with such a fruitless conjecture? Just not to be called atheist?

Lots of things that are important to people have no basis in material fact, but originate in human groups: nationalism and partisanship come to mind; adherence to leaders who deserve no such loyalty, reliance on luck or fate, etc.

It would be reasonable to suppose, wouldn't it, that religion addresses issues that are still important to us? — Ludwig V

It is and does. Psychological support is one main function of faith, especially when a person is undergoing some difficult ordeal. Social cohesion is another important function of organized religion - a common core around which the community can overcome its personal disparities. Religious tenets encourage good behaviour toward members of one's congregation. It also matters greatly to people who have that all-too-common human craving for a 'higher' purpose, a meaning to their insignificant individual life, a sense of being 'part of something bigger than themselves'.
These functions are not exclusive to religion, but religion is a well established and universally accepted structure on which people rely.

Nor do I dismiss the magical component. The illusion of control - however tenuous and conditional - over that immense threatening universe of natural phenomena. The hope of immortality; the chimera of miracles. These are very, very strong human desires. Of course it's important.
Moreover, I have met sincere believers who did good works just like Christians are supposed to, as well as hypocrites who exploit true believers. I've known a few dozen people who identify as Christian, Jewish or Muslim and found them selective believers: they accept some teachings and ignore others. I assume this is true of the majority of theists. They take from religion what they need and disregard the rest.

There are many themes built in to religion. It addresses human concerns, but also, as Nietzsche so emphatically pointed out, is involved in the power struggles in the new, complex human societies in the new cities. — Ludwig V

How could it be otherwise? The impulse to look for pattern in existence is also the root of philosophy. The fundamental childish questions: What am I? Where did I come from? How do I fit into the big picture? are answered by earliest known origin stories, the established religious texts and the latest philosophical treatises.
I actually don't see the power struggles built into religion itself: the Abrahamic religions are founded in a simple hierarchy of males and the basic structure of the institutions has not changed very much, except for the incursion of women into the lately reformed branches. The churches were always used to prop up the prevailing form of government and vice versa - one leg of the tripod holding a vertical social structure. But that's the institution, not the belief itself. (Of course Nietzsche saw the will to power lurking under every bed and coffee table, so we can take that with a grain of salt.)

Personification of the inanimate in that way is built in to our language. — Ludwig V

I think it might be built into our psyche, and got into the language automatically, through our tendency to make a narrative of our experience. Literature, religion and philosophy all grow increasingly complex as man's knowledge of the world grows.

But consider: you don't think there is a basic problem with our existence that stands outside of, and prior to, the language and cultural institutions that rose up out of a response to this? — Astrophel

Nope.

Why are we born to suffer and die? — Astrophel

We're not born to suffer and die. We're not born for any reason at all. Life begets life, willy-nilly. The universe expands.
Humans would like to find a reason, a purpose, a great big invisible thingie that explains it all and makes us the one special jewel in the crown of creation. I don't subscribe to any of that. I don't believe in magic and don't need it. Being just is. We make the best and worst of it.

Well, it was you who brought up "my internal experiences" — Astrophel

I didn't bring them up. I responded to:

If you say there is no spirit, loosely construed, in the real world, I would ask, what is it that you refer to when the matter of thoughts and feelings and intuitions arises? — Astrophel

Where you take that, I don't quite follow. Is it that you want me to agree that there is some kind of otherness in sentience? Something beyond or behind the processes of the brain? I can't do that, because I do not believe that.

What are external experiences things about vis a vis internal things? — Astrophel

I have no idea: it's your distinction. You have not explained the difference between internal and external experience. Are you just getting all this mileage out my using the word 'internal'? It wasn't essential. It has nothing at all to do with spooks.

Brains are external things, no?

No! Brains are inside the skulls, which are part of the bodies and inside the skin, of sentient organisms. Everything in sensory and conceptual experience is neurological. Everything we know about the inanimate world comes through neurological process. You can't think, intuit, feel, remember or discern any external things without your brain!

Opinion about what? — Astrophel

about

a basic problematic built into existence that gave rise to the worshipping and the rest. — Astrophel

I do not agree with that opinion. I do not see a problem in existence.

This is a question about your reference to "spirit". So when you examine your internal experience, what you find is a kind of content that really doesn't conform to the standards of existence that are generally in mind when one dismisses this concept. — Astrophel

I don't understand. What is the standard that comes to the general mind when [some?]one dismisses the concept of spirit? Is there some reason I should meet that putative standard?

Put it this way: when you say you don't think there is such a thing as spirit, you implicitly draw on some standard of what the world really is that rejects the positing of spirit, and so I am assuming this standard refers to what is not your internal experience, but in your external experience. — Astrophel

Is there a boundary between internal and external experience? How does one discern that boundary? And these very different kinds of experience transmit different kinds of information? Can you give a neurological explanation as how that works?

The point really was to simply say that a human "world" when observed closely, as a scientist would observe, is found to be not a world of objects. An inquiry intent on discovery of the nature of what is "there" in one's "internal experience" will notw above all that this is nothing at all like the external counterpart of this world: the world of shoes, rocks, telephone polls, morning dew, etc. — Astrophel

Sorry. I can make no sense of that paragraph. My best guess is something like: delving into the human psyche reveals that it differs from inanimate objects. That much, I have already stipulated as self-evident. If that difference between life and non-life is supposed to be a "spirit", I accept that as a metaphor, not as a physical entity.

Before there was worshipping, Gods, and all the trappings of these churchy fetishes (I like to call them), there was a basic problematic built into existence that gave rise to the worshipping and the rest. — Astrophel

That's a widely held opinion.

Philosophers — BitconnectCarlos

Didn't they use to be human, before?

But now we're playing the "human behavior game" and not the "philosophy game." In the "philosophy game" one strives for rationality at all times. — BitconnectCarlos

How nice for one! And the subject of this thread is rational?
But then again, who invented the philosophy game - and why?

The idea that because people are necessarily limited, you're allowed to rationally reject, wholesale, the concept of god (not God) is bizarre to me. — AmadeusD

Fair enough. We can be bizarre to each other.

I would ask, what is it that you refer to when the matter of thoughts and feelings and intuitions arises? — Astrophel

My internal experience.

If one is curious or envious, say, this surely is outside of the category of being a couch or a shoe. — Astrophel

Without intelligent makers, there would be no couches or shoes.
Of course some matter is alive, while most matter is inanimate. But what's that to do gods? Zebras and lemurs don't worship anything, and they do all right in what's left of their environments. Human are story-tellers. It's not likely other animals make up stories.... though I sometimes wonder whether cats, dogs and apes star in their own imaginary movies that same way humans do.

So we can act in any number of ways. Maybe we're mad at our child that day and choose to save the other. — BitconnectCarlos

Even if that were the case, the impasse is broken and the rescuer can take action. Morally, it makes no difference whether the tie-breaker is love, anger, fear or chance.

Reasonable action is action in accordance with what we are believing to be true/reflects the nature of reality. — BitconnectCarlos

Maybe so, but I also doubt reason plays much of a part in this example. More likely, the man makes no decision at all; is incapable of a coherent thought, let alone and ethical consideration: he just jumps in and saves his genetic legacy. Once he can think again, he may very well intend to go in after the other kid - in fact, almost certainly will do so, even if reason tells him it's too late.

However, I believe that a father has greater moral duties to his child than a stranger. — BitconnectCarlos

OK. I'm not invested in the moral dimension of a situation that involves a split-second response from an party with a deep vested interest.

If we believe we all have the same exact duties towards all children then why not flip a coin? — BitconnectCarlos

There isn't time. If both drowning children are your own, or both are strangers, the primal impulse is to save both, or failing that, the nearest one. In that situation, you don't weigh odds, and you don't know the result: you simply act.

RCC = Roman Catholic Church? — Ludwig V

Yes; I believe it's the biggest and most powerful religious organization in history.

I don't put much credence in the scary thunder idea. We evolved in the natural environment, including weather. We've been hearing thunder since the development of an auditory organ, and it's always been associated with a certain kind of weather, from which all animals take shelter if they can. I think explanation of cause only gains importance after the concentration of humans in walled cities - after we cut ourselves off from nature and felt we had to master or conquer nature.

However, in native mythologies, it's common to put human-like gods in charge of natural phenomena, where thunder, lightning, wind, rain, fire and heavenly bodies become tools, weapons or vehicles for the use of the gods. These stories are a way of 'taming' natural phenomena: if there is someone made in our image who can control those forces, perhaps we can convince that entity to refrain from using them against us. In some mythologies, of course, the storm or fire is itself depicted as a personality with a human-like mind.

Much more important than stories about the elements are stories about dead people. It's very difficult to accept the loss of people we love and depend on. The idea of ghosts, spirits, transformation into trees or stars or guardian angels - essentially, denial of their death - is a way of coping with grief. From this kind of make-believe come all the rituals of burial, grave decoration, markers, shrines, funeral pyres, feasts in honour of the departed; caverns, pyramids, cemeteries and mausoleums to preserve the remains.

I was commenting on an idea brought up by Benkei that filial relationship is not morally relevant (ought not to be viewed as morally relevant) - thus, one morally ought to show zero bias when it comes to saving e.g. two drowning children with one being a stranger and one being one's own child. — BitconnectCarlos

It's not morally relevant. But if the choice is 1/1, some other factor must tip the balance, else the would-be rescuer is paralyzed by indecision and both children drown.

Perhaps a coin flip ought to decide it. — BitconnectCarlos

How would that be better than letting emotion decide?

Some families can be toxic but I do not believe the dissolution of all families would be something we should strive towards. — BitconnectCarlos

Allowing a natural process with no predetermined outcome to take place and striving toward a goal are very different things.

Apparently you'd consider a father morally blameworthy for saving his child (showing preference) over a random child because it would be immoral to favor one's own kin in moral decision making. — BitconnectCarlos

Who declared it immoral to choose one's own child over another child? If it's a question of being able to save only one from an external danger, making the decision emotionally would be accepted by most people. However, if it's a question of sacrificing an unknown child in order to save one's own (say, with a heart transplant), most people would consider that wrong.

Complete dissolution of the family unit. — BitconnectCarlos

That's not always or necessarily a bad thing. But I very much doubt ethical public decisions would contribute to such a dissolution.

But isn't there something "behind" the stories that a person cannot wimp out on even if she tried? — Astrophel

Sure there is: human psychology. That subject interests me greatly in all its variety and complexity. I'm interested in mythology and anthropology. Obviously, the lure of magic, wish-fulfillment, personification of natural phenomena and all those impulses that begin with ritual and eventually culminate in huge international institutions like the RCC, is very much a part of that interest.
But if you mean some kind of anima or spirit in the real world, no, I don't think there is such a thing.

Isn't bombing an armaments factory where there are no soldiers and knowing you will kill civilians "going after the civilian population itself"? — RogueAI

Not in the arithmetic of military strategy. If it is strategically right to take out a munitions factory, a bridge, a railroad junction or a communications tower, the civilians working there are only one part of the equation. In the example, the consideration is how many lives on our side would potentially be taken by the cannons or tanks bombs or whatever is produced in that factory, compared to the people on their side who produce those weapons. 200 of them is pretty cheap for an effective strike against the weapons that could kill 4000 of us.

The existence or non-existence of "god" - a word for which people have very different definitions and descriptions - was never the issue with atheism. People who rejected the prevailing christian version of a creator/presiding deity were called a-theist (godless) and persecuted. Like other collective pejorative nomenclature, we simply took it over and owned it.
I'm a full-blown unbeliever in any and all of the theist stories, and I will not wimp out with the "maybe there is a supernatural something somewhere" agnostic line.

What the hell are you talking about? where is anything like that mentioned? — Sir2u

just there:

If you had known about roles you would not have made the comments you did about mothers having side hustles as taxi drivers to earn some extra money and selling lawn mowers of dubious quality. — Sir2u

Who said anything about its quality?) — Vera Mont
You did, or do you not remember what you write!
" It's okay for a shopper to pocket the odd can of tuna because prices are too high, and for the seller of alawn mower to lie about its condition to get a better price?" — Sir2u

In response to a previous post, attempting to clarify this:

Personal and professional ethics are quite different. Each role a person plays within a group, the person adopts the ethics of that group. If your are a mother, teacher, shopper, taxi driver for the kids your role dictates the ethical rules you follow.
For example, as a shopper you expect prices not to rise too much and curse the supermarkets when they do, but as a seller you try to get the best possible price for the second hand lawn mower you are selling. — Sir2u

The women's behavior changes depending on the role she is playing. — Sir2u

Behaviour, yes. Ethics, no.

You are the one making broad claims about the laws — Sir2u

Fairly narrow ones, actually, in a different conversation, with links where appropriate.

I will no continue to answer your comments, good bye. — Sir2u

I'll get therapy and hope eventually to get over the loss.

I don't know about quantity, though I seriously doubt "more than anyone else", but if anyone were bored and silly enough to go back over all the relevant threads to check, they would discover that all of my posts were in response to someone else's statement. I never once initiated a discussion regarding events or persons involved in that conflict.

My point remains that the reason for these hostilities leading up to the Civil War was that the Lincoln election spelled an eventual end to slavery and the only way to stop it was to fully remove the South from northern control, which was to remove those votes from influencing southern policies. — Hanover

Lincoln, by his own declaration, was willing let the institution of slavery stand, so long as that tolerance kept the union together, but he was determined to stop it spreading to potential new states and allowing slave states to gain a majority. According to the constitution, the slave owners got extra legislative seats due to the three-fifths compromise.

[Lincoln] did not publicly call for emancipation throughout his entire life. Lincoln began his public career by claiming that he was "antislavery" -- against slavery's expansion, but not calling for immediate emancipation.

If you had known about roles you would not have made the comments you did about mothers having side hustles as taxi drivers to earn some extra money and selling lawn mowers of dubious quality. — Sir2u

Are you saying that a woman who has a child can't also have one or more jobs? (Many single and married mothers, in fact, do.) And she's not allowed to sell her lawn mower? (Who said anything about its quality?)

Your bitching at the super market is caused by the same thing as you wanting a bit more for the lawn mower, looking after yourself and your family. — Sir2u

And neither is an ethical response and neither is a decision to take specific action.

While the mother knows that waiting in line to drop of the kids at school is the correct thing to do she will probably hurry to grab a parking space in the supermarket parking lot. It is a perfectly acceptable thing to do in the supper market, just like changing check out line to get out quicker. — Sir2u

That doesn't become an ethical consideration, nor yet a change to some different set of ethics, as long as the parking space she's grabbing isn't the handicapped one, and changing checkout lanes doesn't involve shoving in ahead of a doddery senior.

I would certainly like to see those laws. — Sir2u

They're as available on line to you as they are to me.

I think I made it quite clear the morality of the person does not change from role to role, but the ethics attached to that role does. — Sir2u

I see no way in which a non-schizophrenic can manage that feat of multiple-think.

Continued harping on WWII, as if had been the only notable event in human history.

You were faster than me
In your example, if someone else had been convicted of, or is currently on trial for those other murders, you would report your new information to the judge, who would then decide whether to reveal it to the police or counsel for the other accused. Innocence at risk clause.
Once they're convicted of a capital offense, prisoners are often bribed to reveal previous crimes, but if you get the guy off this one, he also gets away with the others. So you're in a sticky ethical dilemma. Doctors often are, too.
But it's strictly the job related rules that regulate these things, not one's personal ethics. Basically, when you sign up for the law, or civil service or banking, you promise to leave your own values at home. Some people can go through with that, some can't.

But you do agree that depending on the role the outcome of an ethical decision may be different? — Benkei

If the deciding agent uses a different set of rules, of course. That's why we can't tolerate heads of state with principles: we need them to be morally flexible for every occasion. It's okay for them to be sworn in on a stack of bibles, as long as they don't take the Christian ethic too seriously.

If I would represent a client for murder A and as a result he also confesses murders B and C from 5 years ago to me then as a lawyer I'm prohibited from disclosing B and C. — Benkei

I don't know what the laws are in your country, but in Canada, there are exceptions, where the lawyer is required to divulge information or is permitted to divulge it at his own discretion.

Public safety can trump privilege where a lawyer reasonably believes that a clear, serious and imminent threat to public safety exists.

; in cases of child abuse, intention of harm and or a court order for any of several reasons, client privilege is void.

If the winners were smart they would use the money to create a business that spread the profits to more people, thus lowering the inequality. — Sir2u

I don't really think that giving one person every month getting the $68 million dollar is going to make much of a difference in the overall distribution of wealth. That would be 12 people a year in a population of about 40 million people. — Sir2u

It would, if every jackpot sere that big and every jackpot had a winner. That would be $816,000,000 put back into circulation, rather than being spirited to off-shore bank accounts or tied up in overpriced pictures and jewellery and boats.

And from what I have seen, a lot of them blow it all away in a couple of years. — Sir2u

That's okay, as long as they're blowing it on goods and services that provide jobs to people.

If the winners were smart they would use the money to create a business that spread the profits to more people, thus lowering the inequality. — Sir2u

Yet another small business soon drowned by big business would do no more for inequality than taxing big business and investing in public infrastructure.

But if we really want to look at inequality we should be looking at the companies that run the lottos. — Sir2u

They're actually governments.

The Interprovincial Lottery Corporation, constituted in 1976, currently has as its shareholders the governments of the 10 provinces of Canada. It conducts 3 national lottery schemes: Loto 6/49, Super-Loto and the Provincial. These national lotteries are managed by the 5 provincial organizations within their respective territories.

Incidentally, they also run a bunch of casinos and racetracks. The revenue, after reimbursing retailers and services, goes to local communities, charities, health and sports organizations.

The owners of these thing are richer every day which increases the inequality because most of the money comes from people that cannot afford to be spending the money buying tickets. — Sir2u

Yup. The irresistible lure of the golden ticket. 'Twas ever so. At least they get some of it back in the form of social services and help.

I am from Russia. — Linkey

That gives you a unique perspective on civil war and how it is taught in school a few generations after the fact. I know more about the US one, and how it's been represented in popular media - romanticized, for the most part, endlessly memorialized, fetishized and re-enacted, while it was by all practical accounts by far the most costly of all America's many conflicts in terms of human lives and suffering. I have an idea the Russian one was similar in destructiveness and long-term after-effects.
The American one was completely predictable. The French one was completely predictable. Was the Russian one similar?

And theoretically, it is possible to find a solution to this problem: if each voter, when voting, indicates on a ten-point scale how important this decision is to him personally, — Linkey

Some similar schemes have been proposed for democratic voting procedures, effectively turning every election into a plebiscite on some key issue. The efficacy of such a system depends on voters being fully and accurately informed on the issues, and if that's in the purview of broadcast media, we in North America are toast.

The concept of roles in sociology and psychology is very well know and documented on the internet. — Sir2u

I know about roles. Most people have more than one role to play in society. What I disagree with is the notion that each role has a different ethical principle or standard. Each role may have different concerns and obligations, different hazards and privileges, but no person has more than one conscience.

Everything that's produced is pooled and shared. I'm wondering about whether this is something that dwells in the human potential or not. — frank

Yes, I believe it is, and that something of the kind has been practiced by groups in various settings since the beginning of people. It works in groups small enough to be personally connected, each to each, and doesn't seem to work in large, anonymous ones.
After the apocalypse, it will probably be the only way anyone can survive. Since it's unlikely that the survivors will overpopulate their territory very quickly, those communal habits will probably become ingrained even as the groups grow more numerous. But, I think they'll need to do what the bees and ants do: when the community grows beyond a manageable size, a portion must break off and settle elsewhere. Settlements can still trade with one another, get together for fairs and celebrations and exchange young people in marriage to keep the gene pool fresh.

I'll set aside one class of property for private ownership: clothes, tools, utensils, personal transport and shelter. People thrive better if they have some privacy and favourite things that are unique to themselves. It's possible to pool the care and training of the young, but parents like to hold on to their kids in the domestic sphere. And there will almost certainly be mate-pairing and sexual possessiveness: provision has to be made for handling those social issues.

We could do a lot worse than to educate our own children in the mores and structures of Native American cultures. Their traditional skills wouldn't go amiss, either.

If it's cultural, what kind of culture reinforces the idea. In what kind of culture does ownership become a ghost? — frank

The kind in which every individual is valued and respected.

Each of them have their rules of engagement and they are opposite to each other. — Sir2u

Rules of 'engagement', yes. Two different people in two different roles. So far, no ethical conflict.

So, is it you contention that if a lawyer discovers that his client has raped and murdered several children before the one he's on trial for and that if he's acquitted, he will do it again and again, that lawyer is ethically bound to keep that information from the police and opposing counsel? Should he not consider who will be harmed by his withholding that information?
If the journalist is bound by a higher obligation - not putting people in danger by publishing the jury list - why is the attorney exempt from that higher obligation?

Now, it's unlikely that a journalist practices law as a hobby or vice versa, so the same person probably won't wear those different hats. Maybe each can reconcile his occupational responsibilities with his own civic and personal ones, if not the other person's.
But the mother you mentioned earlier must certainly shop and may earn her living as a teacher and a little extra driving a taxi, and she might even wish to sell her lawn mower sometime.
What ethical conflict would arise among those roles, and how is she to work out such a conflict?

I suggest a hierarchy of principles, wherein secondary loyalties yield to primary ones and superficial considerations are trumped by fundamental ones. I also believe most people are aware of this and are guided by it in their important decisions.
And I see no reason why those principles must be suspended while people are slaughtering one another on battlefields.

It is not my job to educate you and lay everything out so that you can just sit back and relax. — Sir2u

No, of course not. But it would be basic courtesy to back up a broad claim with at least a real-life situation in which it might apply.

I you want to participate in the threads it is your obligation to either ask for clarification of someone's ideas — Sir2u

That is what I was doing when I asked for examples of how someone's ethical decisions would be guided by different principles or standards in that person's various roles.
I respectfully suggest that skepticism regarding a claim may have sources other than ignorance.

Is it legitimate to wage armed conflict though? — schopenhauer1

If people decide it is the legal way to settle their territorial claims or religious differences or political disagreements, of course it's legitimate. This was not even an issue until the 20th century: imperial aggression, crusades and national expansion, as well as local disputes, were simply accepted as perfectly normal.

Is it not silly that conflict has any legitimacy? — schopenhauer1

Sure. What human endeavour on a mass scale is not absurd?
But in reality, the very existence of standing armies is a testament that people do consider the waging of wars perfectly normal.

Should for example, it have been legitimate to make the Nazis totally surrender Germany after they attacked Poland and France, or should the Allied militaries simply have contained the Nazis once their troops had reached the German borders in 1945? — schopenhauer1

That's not a question about the legitimacy of war in general. It is a question about allied strategy after a particular conflict was already underway. Should Poland and France ever have been in jeopardy? Of course not. Should Germany ever have been in the state of national upheaval that spews out a Nazi leadership? Of course not. Could the entire giant debacle have been prevented? Of course.
People create the conditions in which they then make war on one another. Then they say "War broke out" as if it were some natural phenomenon, like wildfire.

Now there is a brilliant idea!
Instead of seducing the poor into wasting their meager resources on a pipe-dream, scare the living crap out of the rich. Maybe let them buy their way off the eligible list with charitable donations.

What is "war"? — schopenhauer1

War is armed conflict between two or more groups with opposing objectives.

Do you think war is can be legitimate? — schopenhauer1

Legitimate is a legal term. Any act that conforms with the pertinent law is legitimate. Laws are drafted and legislated by human agencies constituted for the purpose. If a war falls within the currently accepted international definition, it's legitimate.

Tacitly saying that war is legitimate, means something..but what? — schopenhauer1

Whether you say it aloud or just think it, considering a war legitimate means you agree with its objectives. That may imply - or someone may infer from it - that you accept whatever methods are used to attain those objectives. This could the 'ends justify mean' territory - can't be too sure about implications.

Also, as ssu is at pains to point out, the nature of war changes over time, and looks quite different from ancient times, to the 1200s and Ghengis Kahn, to the 1700s and in the colonial territories, to the 1800s and various imperial wars, or civil wars, to the 1900s with total wars... — schopenhauer1

Yes. And people keep making new rules in futile attempts to cover the changed situations. And people keep breaking those rules.
If they win, they're considered - at least by themselves - justified. If they lose, they're punished.