I am not aware of any American natives doing human sacrifices today. — Lionino

It happened 500 years ago, so what? It's still held up as a good excuse for Christian nations to invade and colonize the Americas.

Yes, but suppose they catch one of the smart guys one day... — unenlightened

Since they never know whether the latest capture is a smart guy, a mule or an innocent bystander, they'll have tortured and maimed two dozen people before they get any useful information, and by then the information is no longer useful.

One ought to assume that sometimes torture is efficacious, otherwise no one would ever be tempted. — unenlightened

Sure. You can get any midwife to confess having sexual congress with Satan, and you can get POW's to babble on whatever tanks or cannon they may have seen going in what direction, and once in a while you catch a spy who can give up the names and locations of other spies, whom you can then trade for your spies that they've captured and tortured. And if it accomplishes nothing except the suffering of the torturee, there are still many torturers who'll volunteer to do for the pleasure.
If torture had been an effective deterrent, uprisings, resistance movements, heresy and political intrigue would have ended five thousand years ago.

It is not immoral to torture people because it is ineffectual; that is an argument of despair one resorts to with the totally amoral, to whom moral arguments have no meaning. — unenlightened

True. It's meant to counter the argument by the righteous that it is "more moral" to use torture than to refrain from using it, when the agony of one person may save the lives of many. (It is a belief held by many cultures, each with a strict moral coda; Christianity itself is predicated on that idea.)

Hurt and harm imposed on another are the basis for calling it immoral. — unenlightened

Yes, but living by that principle is inconvenient. People will find ways around it and still claim moral ascendancy.

Some theists will object that it is impossible, as sin is that which is against god's will. — Lionino

Yes, they love their vicious circles. I especially like when they excoriate the American natives' practice of human sacrifice, without the slightest twinge of irony.

What do you imagine "miss-the-mark" means? — tim wood

Aim incorrectly, possibly at the wrong target; lose sight of the essentials - the phrase is capable of some complexity. In religious societies, getting it right, or hitting the mark, would necessarily include mindfulness of the deity's or deities' requirements. A Mesoamerican ruler would need to pierce his own tongue or whatever body part, to win favour with his gods. So, religious ritual and observance was a very large part of successful kingship.
You still don't see an American president or candidate failing to mention God in a speech, or asking for God's blessing on his nation.

Probably international copyright disputes again. It's a CBC production, can probably be seen on other venues. But never mind, You Tube has a whole bunch of goodies.

Dammit! Stop making me think that I need to read that book. — wonderer1

Or, there is a very nice documentary
While you're in the library, pick up The Earth Dwellers

Well, I thought it was meaningful. That’s why I posted it. I guess I must have misjudged the ambient cynicism. — Wayfarer

My first reaction was very similar to bert1's. But then I realized you're right: just knowing something, or considering it obvious isn't enough to convince people who prefer to deny it. For a very long time, the official stance of the scientific community, as well as the food industry, fur trade, sport hunting, etc., was that all other species exist for us to use in any way we like. That belief is not necessarily shared by people with no personal vested interest in experimentation, meat, fashion or cosmetics businesses - but we choose not to think about it when buying their products - like canned meat, booties and medicine for our pets... We are a species of supremely capable hypocrites and double-thinkers.

It's good to have an authoritative voice speak up for our suffering fellow creatures. Also, a public announcement means it will get some mass media attention. If it helps even a few people adjust their perspective even a little bit, then it helps.

The good king was the king who defeated the enemy and protected his own, and so forth. Failure in these meant he was a bad king. — tim wood

It is not, and never was, that simple. The ancient Greeks were far more subtle in their thinking, far more canny in their understanding of psychology. (Actually, all the ancients were.)
The good king defends his people, yes, but not all by himself: he has to earn the trust and loyalty of his generals and troops; he has to treat people fairly and stay in favour with his gods and bring prosperity. That takes a whole lot more than just military might or clever strategy: that means you have to 'man up' to the job. (That's also what it meant to the Judeans in the OT, why the prophets kept upbraiding their kings for laxity.)
But then, not everyone's a king, yet everyone is capable of sin, of error, and incompetence, hubris, ill intention, transgression - everyone can fail at something : hamartano "go wrong".
.

This consistent with the ancient notion that success was the measure of the man. — tim wood

Success at what? Might it not mean failing at the attainment of virtue, or missing the standard one sets for one's own behaviour?

We have just enough knowledge, it seems, to take us to the precipice. — Tom Storm

That's probably true. Knowledge is not wisdom, or sound judgment or prudence or far-sightedness or justice. Knowledge is nothing more than the acquisition, organization and deployment of accurate information (facts.)

I understand though that many Christians focus quite strongly on Paul's views and place them essentially on par with Jesus's word. — BitconnectCarlos

Above. Moses', too. Jesus tends to get shoved into the background in much of Christian practice.

Perhaps, but then I don't think we have Christianity given Paul's role in spreading it. — BitconnectCarlos

That's an intriguing thought experiment.

Philosophy shows us that everything can be criticized. The very concept of knowledge can be criticized. — Angelo Cannata

Be my guest. Find all the fault you want with knowledge. Just don't expect me to "do" a philosophy that denies its existence. In this thread, I was hoping to explore, not the nature of knowledge, or what may imaginatlively lie beyond the physical universe, but the theoretical limits to humanity's quest for knowledge. If the very concept is suspect, that's fine -- I'm sure there is a place with more light in which to seek certainty.

Thanks; that looks interesting. I can't watch on this computer, but will look for it at lunchtime.

So, at the end, what we can never find out is the meaning of your question itself — Angelo Cannata

That's pretty depressing! I have always relied in human knowledge for safe food, solid buildings, transportation that conveys me predictably from A to B, and medicine that cures my headache and heals my wounds. I can't subscribe to a philosophy that doesn't know what knowledge is; it would be contrary to my daily experience.
But I do believe that the human mind, as well as the the scope of human exploration has limits. I also believe that we, as a species, will run out of time before we have reached those limits.

But fretting over trivial infractions (and confusing etiquette with morality) isn't healthy either. Endless fretting can exhaust people, and hobble their ability to focus on the basics of loving their neighbors. — BC

Very true. It's difficult to maintain a healthy balance. I suppose 'fret' was not the most accurate word I could have chosen. I meant little mean acts, like passing on gossip or voicing a negative comment on someone's demeanour or taste, taking the last cookie, 'forgetting' to clean the catbox, keeping the felt pen that one overlooked in the shopping cart and didn't pay for. I've known a few people who would really feel guilty about those things - me, I'm a small-time but laid-back sinner; I know it was wrong, but if no great harm came of it, I keep truckin.

Rather than keep score, how about we just try to avoid doing whenever possible and do a good turn whenever we can afford to?

Whether by official definitions of sin, or my own expectations for moral behavior, I'm a sinner. I have sinned. Just guessing, but all 8 billion of us fail to meet either an official standard of goodness or our own, whatever that may be. We are flawed creatures who try to be good most of the time, except when we are not. — BC

The most ironic part of that is the people who try hardest to refrain from sinning also set their standard higher than those whose conscience is quiescent and acquiescent. The most decent people I've known tended to fret over every minor infraction, while the most corrupt not only forgive themselves but expect forgiveness from their victims.

You don't believe that one's conscience could lead one to, for instance, retrieve an escaped slave or euthanize something or someone hastily — BitconnectCarlos

Retrieve an escaped slave - possibly, but it's a stretch. Slave-catchers were mostly bounty hunters who did it for money.
Euthanize something or someone - very likely, if something (I assume by this you mean an animal) or someone were in extreme pain and distress. Hastily? Do you mean, while they could still be saved and repaired? Possibly, but that would be due to poor medical judgment rather than conscience. I don't call that an atrocity.

(or not euthanize where it should be done) — BitconnectCarlos

That's much tougher. Many - I mean, really, very many - people still believe in the Biblical god who arrogates all death-dealing to himself alone. They would be afraid to kill anyone who simply desired to be relieved of life. Oddly enough, a large percentage of these god-fearing people are comfortable with the idea of capital punishment - that, too, is in the Bible.
But there is a divide between approving of a deed and doing the deed yourself. Many people who support assisted suicide in theory could not bring themselves to administer the lethal dose. It's not just a matter of conscience; there is also sensibility and courage to consider. It can be a very hard decision.

I don't agree. A lot of people shout, wave placards, attend rallies and say stupid things on camera - the public broadcast media have a prominent role in misinforming them - but actually carrying out the vile deeds falls to a hardy few whose conscience is pushed into the background.

Appeals to the tastiness of meat ("nice")

→ This one seems the most honest, — xorn

But not well informed: there is real meat coming down the technology pipeline that's cleaner, leaner and healthier. https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-cultivated-meat

There's also the ecological impact:

More than two-thirds of all agricultural land is devoted to growing feed for livestock, while only 8 percent is used to grow food for direct human consumption.... LEAD researchers also found that the global livestock industry uses dwindling supplies of freshwater, destroys forests and grasslands, and causes soil erosion, while pollution and the runoff of fertilizer and animal waste create dead zones in coastal areas and smother coral reefs. There also is concern over increased antibiotic resistance, since livestock accounts for 50 percent of antibiotic use globally, according to LEAD.https://woods.stanford.edu/news/meats-environmental-impact

Even if you don't give a damn about causing misery, pain and terror, you might think about whether your grandchildren have a world to live in. Or maybe not...

The way in which animal products are sourced?? Well. That's a can of seytan I wont open. — AmadeusD

Apparently, only one of many.

Several of the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials claimed to be motivated by their conscience. — BitconnectCarlos

The operative word in there is "claimed". I don't doubt that propaganda and indoctrination in youth (not from infancy, in this case, but certainly life-long for religious zealots who commit atrocities) plays a part in people's behaviour. But does it really replace their conscience? Some people who were subjected to the very same influences did act on their compassion and their personal sense of right and wrong - even to the point of putting themselves in danger.
So I wonder... Do people who claim to have been persuaded to act against their own humanity really try very hard to resist the propaganda? Or do they welcome an authoritative leader's permission to do what they desired but feared to do when it was forbidden?

I don't identify as Christian, but I don't believe that is a fair characterisation of their principles. — Wayfarer

He's omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent, or he isn't. I can't be any fairer than that.
If Christians disagree about the degree of their god's power, that's their problem - a very big one, apparently, judging by the rate at which they've been slaughtering one another.

. However, they also maintain that this divine sovereignty does not completely negate human accountability. (Don't ask me why that's not contradictory, but they might have an answer.) — Wayfarer

They have lots of answers - entire big tomes of commentary, encyclicals, etc. All of them contradictory. That's not surprising, given the evolution of Jehovah.

But most other denominations emphasize free will. — Wayfarer

They have to. Without that unshakeable sense of guilt, how could people be persuaded to shell out for huge, elaborate confections in stone to house their god, while they themselves live in hovels? How could the bishops feast on lobster, while the peasants barely have two potatoes to rub together?

If we were simply "puppets on strings," completely controlled by divine will without any agency or choice, then the concept of salvation would be meaningless. — Wayfarer

Sure. So is the concept of original sin and the concept of damnation. That's never stopped people believing in them.

Were you wearing socks with those sandals? — Agree-to-Disagree

With a wedding dress? No. But that reminds me. At City Hall that day, while waiting with our well-dressed friends and relatives, we saw a party of four go in before us: a middle-aged woman in a shapeless dress and sweater and a pouty young man in leather, herding two teenagers in denim - a pregnant girl of about seventeen wearing fallen-down socks with her sneakers and a boy possibly a year older whose pants were too big. It was one of the saddest things I've ever witnessed. I have wondered ever since whether those kids could make a go of life with that kind of start.
(PS I have no idea why I'm reminiscing, except perhaps in an attempt to derail a thread that could get nasty if we're not careful. I don't like nastiness.)

We all 'know' these things on some level, even though we are often unaware or unmindful of them. But they are very difficult to articulate without resorting to poetry or myth.

Right now, I hear DS9, S4 E7 starting. I'm going to get a beer.

The concept of sin far predates the personification of that herder-god who gave his chosen tribe somebody else's fertile country.
The concept of sin goes far deeper than the will of an individual deity, or a moral code. It stems from the idea that every human being has a spirit (soul, anima, essence; whatever you want to call that core personality.) What we do by choice either adds to or detracts from that essential being. A good deed, a positive action, a virtuous choice makes the inner personality better, stronger, more capable of facing challenges. A craven, underhanded, destructive act leaves pock-marks on the soul.
It's an old idea that endures in various guises in various religions.
And we do always know when we're committing an offence against our own best self.

If God wills that one of his creatures commit a sin, then that creature must do so; if He wills that they refrain from sinning, they have no option but resist temptation. If He grants a chosen elite eternal grace, those people either cannot sin or are guaranteed forgiveness. If some are destined for eternal damnation, they cannot help sinning. Big Omni is everywhere, knows all and controls all.

I only ask because as far as I've considered: scientific method has its limitations, — Benj96

But at least the people who use it know not only that it has limitations, but where those limits currently are: that's where the leading edge of research is. When they domesticated laser technology, they learned enough about it to restore the sight of 28 million people in the world. That couldn't happen if the ophthalmic surgeons second-guessed their knowledge every day.
In order to do anything, we have to trust our knowledge of something.

Philosophy is largely speculative and prescriptive. Nobody's life life depends on a philosopher being right in his theories. As for religion, it deals in certainty (assurance, reassurance, moral ascendancy, trust, faith) without knowledge.

Whatever the case may be the limits of trust in the experience and knowledge of others, as with the self, only go so far. — Benj96

If goes far enough to allow individuals, enterprises, cities and nations to function. Maybe not perfectly, but without some degree of confidence in what we're doing, we would be utterly paralyzed.

The rest is in the realm of the unknown, the uncertain. — Benj96

And that unknown will just have to wait patiently until we either figure it out or don't.

Well there's the crux of the situation. How do you know that for absolute verbatim truth — Benj96

Absolute verbatim and exact? Nobody knows that except the omniscient fictitious being. When I'm not sure enough, I check. Most of my life, I have done well enough with a close approximation of what works: have never fallen off a roof or been booed off a stage or poisoned my family with a dinner or caused any grievous harm to patients through misapplication of lab protocol.
It's a bit late to start questioning everything I count on from day to day.

That explains a lot of people. I myself fell down our basement stairs on my wedding day. Metal stair edges, leather sandals, two glasses of wine... I arrived at the buffet table on my elegantly gowned posterior, to thunderous applause and toasts all around. That was a good day.

“I notice a lot of people are falling down stairs.” — Mikie

How very odd! I would be curious as to why this should be the case. I would not demand reasons, but I would certainly wonder about them.
Since I notice no people at all falling down stairs, I have to ask: Does Mikie live or work in a building with exceptionally perilous stairwells? Is there no elevator for the elderly and handicapped? Are the people among whom Mikie lives particularly clumsy, or is there something in the atmosphere that affects their equilibrium? Is he perhaps pushing people down stairs as an experiment or entertainment?

If you subscribe to such a thing as "the will of God", it means you believe in a god. And to believe, you need a specific god. The god you believe in has to be identified, defined and described somewhere. If there is a holy book that tells you about the god you believe in, that book most likely has a list of dos and don'ts listed in it. In the form of commandments, maybe or a book of Leviticus? So you do have access to to the will of your god. (Otherwise, what would be the point of having a god?) Not getting a personal inscribed no-no list of your very own is a lousy excuse for sinning, and any god worth his burnt offerings would catch it.

In a much broader sense, a sin may be considered as any act that diminishes your integrity and self-worth. And we have all knowingly committed at least some minor ones.

Shouldn't the government carve out exceptions for those cases? — RogueAI

Governments do. They condemn torture - except when they condone it for National Security. And they don't call it torture; they call it 'enhanced interrogation'.
The RCC condoned it, too, in order to save the souls of people whose neighbours thought they might be witches, warlocks, Satanists, heretics or believers in other solar systems capable of supporting life.

Suppose government agents catch a terrorist with a nuke in the heart of NY and there's one of those Hollywood digital readouts counting down 30 minutes. — RogueAI

That's a movie. In real life, what they catch is a seventeen-year-old zealot who is suspected of knowing something about a possible plot to place a nuke somewhere in NY sometime. Six years without shoes in a concrete cell and 82 waterboardings later, he still doesn't know.

Further suppose those agents start breaking the guy's fingers and he spills his guts about how to disarm the bomb and they disarm it. — RogueAI

His fingers and toes are all broken, and he still doesn't know how to disarm the bomb, because he didn't make it or arm it. He doesn't know who they are or where they are. The terrorists are smart enough to send an ignorant mule to plant it.
These hypotheticals are Hollywood. Real conflict is not scripted.

Don’t like it, feel free to fuck off. — Mikie

That's the most compelling argument I've read today.
Can't wait to see what pearls of wisdom tomorrow coughs up!

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but they should have reasons for them. And they should be able to state those reasons clearly. — Sir2u

There are 'shoulds' and there are varying degrees of willingness to adhere to them, and varying degrees of accuracy in self-assessment. Sometimes we believe we have made a reasoned argument, but another person either doesn't follow it, or doesn't read it accurately, or categorizes as coming from a particular perspective and rejects it without consideration, or deliberately misrepresents it as meaning or "implying"* something quite different. Sometimes we believe we have made a cogent, convincing argument which in reality is incoherent, implausible, not grounded in reality or simply inarticulate. And sometimes we know in our heads what we intend to convey, but the English translation falls short.

*one of my favourite offensive missiles

You say "excuse for acting like other animals" implying that we are not animals, but creatures that can act like animals. Are we animals or not? — Fire Ologist

It doesn't imply that we are not animals but that we are not like other animals.
We are omnivorous animals with very large, sophisticated brains and opposable thumbs, that have overcome the limitations nature imposed on animals. Therefore, we not only have a greater range of choice in our actions, social organizations and diets, but also the ability to destroy both other species and their environments.
Among ourselves, we set standards of behaviour and accountability. We invent philosophies, ideologies, moral, legal and ethical systems, and hold one another responsible for upholding those standards.

You say people must "claim" — Fire Ologist

I didn't say they must; I said they do. With justification in terms of capability and power, but not on moral grounds.

But many animals torture, kill and eat their meals. — Fire Ologist

The only difference is, they have no choice and don't know any better.

Are you saying it can be perfectly justifiable for a person to eat meat? — Fire Ologist

Justifiable under some circumstance. Perfectly? I wouldn't go that far - but then, I am a hypocrite, like all of my species. We rationalize and compromise and go along to get along, because we're not very good at surviving on our own or at resisting social pressure.

By being unable to specify the acts, — Leontiskos

These acts?

Break quarantine, greet people, — Vera Mont

They look specific to me.

As it turns out, personal hygiene and germs are closely related. — Leontiskos

Certainly. And it's not immoral to become ill due to lack of personal hygiene. It is immoral to make other people ill by having contact with them when one is carrying disease germs.

It's not immoral to be mistaken or to reject information - even scientific information; it's immoral to broadcast disinformation and persuade others to disregard sound advice. It's not immoral to believe vaccines are a means of spying on the citizenry; it is immoral to persuade others to refuse inoculation. It's not immoral to believe that climate change is hoax perpetuated by China, but it is immoral to block mitigation initiatives that will save other people.

I can't make the distinction between risking harm to self and causing harm to others any clearer.

Apparently you are forced to conceive of these two things as entirely different acts, with no overlap, such that the latter act does not involve personal hygiene. — Leontiskos

Nope. Not the acts. The moral judgment.
Stay in your house, alone, be as dirty as you like and nobody condemns you.
Break quarantine, greet people, it doesn't matter how clean your hands are, you're a carrier.

Unless those agree with me. — Lionino

I'll have to remember that. I guess my posts are about get longer and somewhat top-heavy.