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Topic: Prove to me objective "rights" exist. (Read 9552 times)

legendary
Activity: 980
Merit: 1003
I'm not just any shaman, I'm a Sha256man
April 07, 2012, 05:07:48 AM
I thought this guy had a good statement saying that if you had any kind of profound experiences found in most common religions that you would be sent to a mental hospital and be considered crazy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE0sDm5ba-4#t=11m10s
legendary
Activity: 1596
Merit: 1012
Democracy is vulnerable to a 51% attack.
April 07, 2012, 04:34:57 AM
this is so way off-topic...
And it's kind of sad too because the discussion about objective rights was getting interesting.
legendary
Activity: 1050
Merit: 1000
You are WRONG!
April 07, 2012, 03:55:47 AM
this is so way off-topic...
legendary
Activity: 1596
Merit: 1012
Democracy is vulnerable to a 51% attack.
April 06, 2012, 11:12:24 PM
the best way to attack a muslim and convince him/her of your arguments/views is using the Qur'an against muslims. so if the Qur'an says "go kill and take everyone you conquered as slaves" then i will have to answer for that and defend it.
I probably have a lot more experience attacking muslims from a non-muslim perspective than you do. Wink And I don't think that's a terribly effective strategy. The problem is twofold:

First, it's pretty silly for a non-adherent of a religion to try to tell adherents what their own religion means. (For example, when you hear American politicians saying that "real Islam" is a religion of peace, does that make you feel good that they understand your religion correctly? Or do you feel a bit of, "who the hell are they to tell people what real Islam is? How can they know when they don't believe?" In my experience, and justifiably so, it's much more of the latter.)

But second, people who believe in a holy book (whether Muslim, jewish, christian, or otherwise) will always re-interpret the book if it conflicts with what they want to believe. What was once interpreted literally will now be interpreted metaphorically.

To use your example, say I found a section of the Qur'an that said "go kill all non-believers, except for the women which you should take as slaves", what would you do? You have two choices:

1) You can change your beliefs so that you believe you really should do that.

2) You can interpret that metaphorically, so "kill" means "convince" and "slaves" means "friends".

In which scenario is that helpful to me? There's no chance that you'd abandon your belief that the Qur'an is the word of god.

This is effective sometimes when dealing with adherents of other religions though. You can cite, to Christians, sections of the Qur'an that appear to say very bad things and argue "See? Muslims really do believe in an evil religion." It's sometimes very persuasive. But, of course, it's completely dishonest. The Bible says you should kill children who disrespect their parents or farmers who don't rotate their crops properly. Does that make Christianity an evil religion?
legendary
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1001
April 05, 2012, 04:36:21 PM
I've proved that the historical character we call Mohammed did own slaves
no you have not. i don't know whatever he did or not, but you have proven nothing.
please stop trolling the religious guy.

All we know of Mohammed is from the historical record.  From that record, we know if he existed, we know he married some of his slaves.  That means that the historical character we call Mohammed did own slaves.

He's trolling me...if he is a Muslim, he believes Mohammed did own slaves.
no this is half-good proof http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Muhammad#Ownership_of_slaves, because Wikipedia is a generally trusted source.
quoting the Qur'an is better proof, as muslims believe that its gods word, and therefor is the full truth.

you did not prove anything. you just annoyed the guy.

I put it badly - you are right. And its off topic so I'll stop.

legendary
Activity: 1050
Merit: 1000
You are WRONG!
April 05, 2012, 04:03:48 PM
I've proved that the historical character we call Mohammed did own slaves
no you have not. i don't know whatever he did or not, but you have proven nothing.
please stop trolling the religious guy.

All we know of Mohammed is from the historical record.  From that record, we know if he existed, we know he married some of his slaves.  That means that the historical character we call Mohammed did own slaves.

He's trolling me...if he is a Muslim, he believes Mohammed did own slaves.
no this is half-good proof http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Muhammad#Ownership_of_slaves, because Wikipedia is a generally trusted source.
quoting the Qur'an is better proof, as muslims believe that its gods word, and therefor is the full truth.

you did not prove anything. you just annoyed the guy.
legendary
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1001
April 05, 2012, 03:51:59 PM
I've proved that the historical character we call Mohammed did own slaves
no you have not. i don't know whatever he did or not, but you have proven nothing.
please stop trolling the religious guy.

All we know of Mohammed is from the historical record.  From that record, we know if he existed, we know he married some of his slaves.  That means that the historical character we call Mohammed did own slaves.

He's trolling me...if he is a Muslim, he believes Mohammed did own slaves.
legendary
Activity: 1050
Merit: 1000
You are WRONG!
April 05, 2012, 03:48:46 PM
I've proved that the historical character we call Mohammed did own slaves
no you have not. i don't know whatever he did or not, but you have proven nothing.
please stop trolling the religious guy.
legendary
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1001
April 05, 2012, 03:45:48 PM
like I said , start a new topic in Off-Topic section if you wish and we can spam it with links/sources about slavery in islam.

I've proved that the historical character we call Mohammed did own slaves and that slavery is regulated in the Koran.  If you are saying that there are objective rights and that slavery contravenes these objective rights and that Islam has not allowed slavery, you need to provide some evidence.  Its on topic to the thread so here is the place to post your views.

legendary
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1001
April 05, 2012, 03:37:24 PM
i have no superior knowledge, but when you write something about Christianity for example, about jesus torturing or owning slaves and then suddenly also start talking about mohamed, people will think that it says that in the Qur'an, because the other stuff you mentioned about jesus/Christianity is in the bible.

so I could argue mohamed didnt own slaves, because its not mentioned in the Qur'an, then you would google and find some source outside of the Qur'an saying mohamed owned slaves, but i wouldnt take that as evidence.

as for slavery being accepted as normal in the Qur'an , well you can start a new thread on that and we can spam each other with links/sources

Mohammed did own slaves.  If you said otherwise, you would be lying. 

Back on topic, Islam and all major religions have approved of slavery up until about 500 years ago.  You don't disagree with that do you?  So any rights that are negated by slavery are not "objective rights."
legendary
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1001
April 05, 2012, 02:26:29 PM
yes i have seen these websites and can google myself, its just when you write statements like :

"mohamed owned slaves" or "jesus tortured people " or "moses owned slaves" , some people would think its in the quran when it isnt.

though quran talks about slavery, it doesnt mention mohamed/moses owning slaves

as muslims believe quran is word of god, if you told me quran says mohamed owned slaves, i would believe that 100%, since quran is word of god, but it doesnt, so we could argue about the truth of your sources (which says mohamed owned slaves).



Fair point.

I think we can agree that slavery is accepted as normal in the Koran.  Whether or not it mentions Mohammed is a different matter and I bow to your superior knowledge.
legendary
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1001
April 05, 2012, 09:39:26 AM
I mean I want to show that your source that mohamed/moses owned slaves or jesus torturing is not from the Qur'an but from somewhere else.


I understand that.  But the Koran does have a lot about slavery in it.

http://www.answering-islam.org/Silas/slavery.htm

Line 1 page 1 says it as well as I can: "Islam institutionalized slavery.  Muhammad began to take slaves after he moved to Medina, and had power. "

This is not the behaviour of a man who sees a moral objection to slavery is it?

http://www.muslimaccess.com/quraan/arabic/023.asp

I googled this for you.  Slavery is OK in the Koran, including sex with female captives.
legendary
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1001
April 05, 2012, 06:36:18 AM
just want to show, that the quran doesnt say mohammed or moses owned slaves in the Qur'an

Both did own slaves.  Ownership of slaves involves whipping and chaining people.  If there is a God, he is absolutely OK with that.

The topic here is whether or not there are objective rights that are agreed by all people for all time.  My point is that slavery was acceptable for most of human history to everyone who considered ethics.  If any objective rights that are not contravened by slavery exist, I can't think what they would be.
legendary
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1001
April 04, 2012, 05:15:42 AM
If there is a natural law, it appears the natural law been hidden to all who came before us including Moses (a slave owner), Jesus (spoke approvingly of torturing disobedient slaves in the parable of 10000 talents) and Mohammed (a slave owner).
What changed? How come we now have "natural" rights like the right to abortion in the US that are new and the right to own a slave has been lost?

Where does it say in the Qur'an that Moses/Mohamed owned slaves? or Jesus (torturing disobedient slaves) in the Qur'an ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_views_on_slavery#Slavery_in_the_Qur.27an

I'm not sure why you ask me to Google things for you.

that doesnt say mohammed/moses/jesus owned slaves in THE QUR'AN

So what?  You surely are not arguing that he didn't own slaves?
legendary
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1001
April 04, 2012, 04:05:09 AM
If there is a natural law, it appears the natural law been hidden to all who came before us including Moses (a slave owner), Jesus (spoke approvingly of torturing disobedient slaves in the parable of 10000 talents) and Mohammed (a slave owner).
What changed? How come we now have "natural" rights like the right to abortion in the US that are new and the right to own a slave has been lost?

Where does it say in the Qur'an that Moses/Mohamed owned slaves? or Jesus (torturing disobedient slaves) in the Qur'an ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_views_on_slavery#Slavery_in_the_Qur.27an

I'm not sure why you ask me to Google things for you.
legendary
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1001
April 01, 2012, 04:42:36 PM
...snip...

To adhere solely to "today's morality" is simply amoral - even if you don't believe in a God, there are at least some absolutes within humanity that haven't changed during our history or across cultures.

I don't know what those absolutes are.  Genuinely, if they don't include slavery (and they don't) that's the right to life and to bodily integrity off the list.  What absolute rights are there? 

No. I'm not going to play this silly little game where you snip off the part about you misrepresenting opposing viewpoints, and then explain the obvious as if you're being "genuine". Anything I say will just get translated into Hawkerspeak.

I'm done here. Atlas, either continue reading philosophy or end up like this guy. The answers are out there but you aren't going to learn them from forum rhetoric.

That's technically known as an ad hominem argument.  Its logically wrong.  Its often a sign that someone can't find a rational argument so you've done well to quit.
legendary
Activity: 1596
Merit: 1012
Democracy is vulnerable to a 51% attack.
April 01, 2012, 03:04:37 PM
Joel Katz has never believed that morals are different in different societies at different times, but that whatever morals we think of as being 'good' right now have always been 'good' even if everyone at the time got it wrong.
That's not quite precisely correct, or at least it is subject to misunderstanding.

Quote
There'll be a Joel Katz of the distant future that says the same thing about how we treat farm produce, or some other moral judgement that simply doesn't apply right now.
That's entirely possible. Had I lived at a time when the shape of the Earth was not known, I likely would have argued that it was flat because it looked flat. If I lived as the evidence came in that it was round, I would then insist not just that it's round now but that it was always round and that my previous claims were in fact incorrect.

But I'm puzzled what the alternative view is -- that the Earth has no shape and is whatever shape we want it to be? That our conclusion that the Earth is round is no better than our previous belief that the Earth was flat, and hence there's no reason to adjust our beliefs on the basis of new information? That we shouldn't actually believe it's round because for all we know in a hundred years new evidence will come in to suggest it's cubical?

What is your claim exactly -- that it's no better to believe the Earth is round than that it's flat? Or that the Earth really was flat before, because we thought so, and now it's round, because we think so? Or that the possibility that we might change our mind in the future means we don't actually know anything now?

Quote
There's not much point continuing the discussion. A mere mortal has no chance of changing his ideas on morality.
On the contrary, I'm arguing that our ideas can and should change as new evidence comes in and in the process we replace worse ideas with better ones.

(I should point out that nothing I've said about should be understood to mean that morality is not context-dependent. Morality is like addition. Once all the parameters are defined, the result is objectively constrained by the nature of the universe. But the answer to questions like "what do you get when you add 2 to a number?" depends on what number you start with. Just like perceived color depends on ambient light, the nature of human vision, and the actual optical properties of the object whose color we are measuring, so does perceived morality depend on a number of factors other than just the actual properties of the thing assessed.)
hero member
Activity: 950
Merit: 1001
April 01, 2012, 02:34:34 PM
...snip...

To adhere solely to "today's morality" is simply amoral - even if you don't believe in a God, there are at least some absolutes within humanity that haven't changed during our history or across cultures.

I don't know what those absolutes are.  Genuinely, if they don't include slavery (and they don't) that's the right to life and to bodily integrity off the list.  What absolute rights are there? 

No. I'm not going to play this silly little game where you snip off the part about you misrepresenting opposing viewpoints, and then explain the obvious as if you're being "genuine". Anything I say will just get translated into Hawkerspeak.

I'm done here. Atlas, either continue reading philosophy or end up like this guy. The answers are out there but you aren't going to learn them from forum rhetoric.
hero member
Activity: 784
Merit: 1000
bitcoin hundred-aire
April 01, 2012, 02:14:42 PM
...snip...

To adhere solely to "today's morality" is simply amoral - even if you don't believe in a God, there are at least some absolutes within humanity that haven't changed during our history or across cultures.

I don't know what those absolutes are.  Genuinely, if they don't include slavery (and they don't) that's the right to life and to bodily integrity off the list.  What absolute rights are there? 

I can't believe anyone talks about absolute morality/rights anymore.
legendary
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1001
April 01, 2012, 02:06:09 PM
...snip...

To adhere solely to "today's morality" is simply amoral - even if you don't believe in a God, there are at least some absolutes within humanity that haven't changed during our history or across cultures.

I don't know what those absolutes are.  Genuinely, if they don't include slavery (and they don't) that's the right to life and to bodily integrity off the list.  What absolute rights are there? 
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