God is evil if He has miracles and does not use them.

So it's evil to make your children eat their vegetables. It's evil to prevent a suicide. It's evil to vote for a different candidate than somebody else. What if the victim isn't innocent? Is it okay to rape a murderer?

Sure it does. It's a collective evil. How does that absolve the individuals of complicity in the evil? So there's "evil but justifiable"? Can we say then that God is evil but He is justified in the evil He does?Is there a corresponding "good but unjustifiable"? That statement seems to be treading pretty close to absolute morality. Separating good and evil from justifiable seems to be treading pretty close to absolute morality. If good and evil are truly in the eye of the beholder, then the topic is meaningless.

Of course it does. Don't be silly. Even if it's indirect, it affects you. Neither does firing a shotgun on a crowded bus. But we can't assume that everything else is equal. Some of the people may have dependents. Some may be rapists on their way to discovering a cure for cancer. Now you're getting onto slippery semantic ground. You're lucky I don't use argumentum ad dictionarium. Next you'll be saying that something can be higher without having height. Absolutely? Killing six million people "can be justified" as the lesser of two evils. Words seem to be losing all meaning in your argument.

I can see that you're confused. You seem to understand that morality is subjective and relative, yet you also seem to think that rape is somehow absolutely bad and that allowing rape to occur is evil. Huh? It's society that decides what's good or bad.

But you still seem to think that rape is absolutely bad in that context. No we don't. I'm saying that the good or bad of an action has little or nothing to do with the opinion of the person it's done to. Good or bad is decided collectively, not just by insiders. A rape victim may or may not agree with society's opinion of rape. A rapist may or may not agree with society's opinion of rape and how rapists are treated by society.

So you're refining to the point where the word "absolute" is meaningless: It's absolute if it's absolute. No. Individual cases will still differ. You seem to be suggesting a system in which everybody defines his own absolute morality from his own viewpoint. If everybody is equally corrupt, how does that remove corruption? I might agree that flying pigs would be a good thing (although it would increase the price of bacon) but that doesn't make it possible.

Not at all. It just means that rape isn't absolutely right or absolutely wrong.

And I say that rape is only bad when society says it's bad. The victim's opinion doesn't really enter into it. The victim is, after all, partial.

Then he gets to lobby society to come around to his point of view. It happens all the time - take abortion as an example.Now your turn: What happens when society deems something bad, but an individual deems it good? Take Charles Manson as an example. Well, it does continue, so what's your point? Of course. How do you think slavery changed from "good" to "bad"? Because the slaves thought it was bad?

You ignored my example. Charles Manson didn't leave society. So let's be clear: The society-based system is reality while your individual-based system is pie in the sky. Why wouldn't we switch from fossil-fuel-based transportation systems to flying unicorns? As I said, it was a group of individuals that decided that slavery was bad. That group became bigger until it became society; then society decided that slavery was bad. I repeat, it was not the victims of slavery thinking it was bad that made the difference.

Society is the group that sets the standards, makes the laws, etc. Consensus is what makes a society. It wasn't until there was a consensus against slavery that slavery could be abolished. When people see ice cream and their taste buds inform them that ice cream is good, it isn't the ice cream that's making the decision. So, if the victims of drug addiction don't think drug addiction is bad, there will never be anybody to campaign against drug addiction?

It really is, though. When somebody sees a slave he may think that he wouldn't want to be a slave; he might even want to help relieve the slave's suffering. But it isn't until other people have the same thoughts and feelings that he thinks of dealing with the overall problem instead of the individual symptoms.Group problems need group solutions. One individual can free one slave but only society can end slavery. It's not being decided by the ice cream. The ice cream is only influencing the decision.Edited by ringo, : spelling.

I thought you said it started with the victims, which is nonsense. As I have said, the victims have nothing to do with it. It's only the observers' perception of the problem that leads to a solution.

It's the observer that has the empathy. It's the observer that acts on his empathy to solve a perceived problem.A perceived problem. Only the observer's perception is relevant. There doesn't have to be an actual problem. Hence, the problem itself is irrelevant.There are all kinds of perceived problems with perceived victims and all kinds of busybodies trying to solve problems for "victims" who don't perceive the problem. And my main point is that that system is no good because the "victim" has a vested interest. We have people claiming to be victims and we have observers thinking people are victims when the "victims" don't think they are. A better system than yours is detached objective observation in which the victim's viewpoint may be taken into account but isn't given any special weight.

No. The people who opposed slavery were not the ones who observed it directly - i.e. the Southerners. They were people who heard about it from a guy who heard about it from a guy. In that case, hearsay was more objective. The Southerners subjectively put the thought that they wouldn't want to be slaves behind the thought that they didn't want to pick their own cotton. I'm a victim of the gas company; they make me pay for heat even though I need it to survive. So why shouldn't I decide if the gas company should be punished? Because that would be Bizarro World. Objectivity is a group endeavour.