Detweiler and Sons

pappilon wrote:

pappilon wrote:And who are you to dictate the morality of the universe?

Peregrinator wrote:I don't dictate anything - simply pointing out that morality is objective. Do we debate over whether murder is wrong? That someone thinks it might not be wrong, or not always wrong, or can be justified for some reason, does not in the least bit change the fact that it is wrong.

n7axw wrote:Morality may be objective, but there is no way to avoid the reality that it is subjectively applied.

Don
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Morality is polar. There is only moral and immoral, choosing the good or choosing the bad. The real world is whiter shades of pale. The infamous decalogue sayeth "Thou shalt not Kill." Nowhere doth it proclaim: "Thou shalt not commit murder."

Why is a White cop in Ferguson MO not being charged with murder for shooting an unarmed Black man, yet a Black cop in Mimmeapolis MN being charged for the murder of a White woman? Morality must either be racisr or sexist. Or as a society, we do not have a clear moral compass, or somehow morality is not as clear as we wish it to be.

We I( as a species) have punched all kinds of holes in "Thou shalt not kill." Starting with Moslems do not kill Moslems. Which is not extensed to Christians, Jews, Buddhists or Hindus. Only now it is apparrently, Shi'ites shall not kill shi'ites, but killing Sunni is ok.

We've cut out exemptions for war, capital punishment, abortion, self-defense, accidents ...

So, yeah keep going on about how Morality is objective. It is more a slippery slope called situation ethics.

Your murder examples are really weak. The white cop went through hearings and we found out that the witnesses against him were a long distance away...and the victim was a thug. Killing the guy was still bad since it was not self-defense but there were mitigating circumstances.

For the black cop, it's been a long investigation and the victim was a woman wearing a nightgown who had no criminal record at all and seemed innocent of anything. And he has not been convicted.

But there are a lot of cases and justice is not always perfect. THAT would be a better point. There was recently a guy in Tennessee who spend 31 years in prison wrongfully and got a "big" million dollars in compensation for giving up most of his adult life.

People are flawed. The problem when we deal with morality is that few things are really black and white. Someone who only sees in those shades is usually considered a bit of a nut (except by those who like the particular sentiment).

A better analogy than Christianity would be Bentham's utilitarianism, about good being that which benefits the most people. But even there we have issues. If killing a small number of people (let's say a minority group) would benefit the majority, that could be considered good using that philosophy.
That's how you could defend the Holocaust to use an extreme example).

At any rate, the basic idea of improving mankind is not by itself sociopathic. Using slavery as a front, or actually at all, is evil.

Things are not simple.

Fox2! wrote:

pappilon wrote:
The infamous decalogue sayeth "Thou shalt not Kill." Nowhere doth it proclaim: "Thou shalt not commit murder."

Actually, there is discussion, at least in some circles, that the original text was, "Thou shalt not murder". See, for example the discussion on Wiki at

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

I know, Wiki. Take it with the requisite grain (or train) of salt.

Actually, having studied some Hebrew way back when, I can confirm that the word is murder, the word murder referring to members of your own community.

Don

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Fox2! wrote:Actually, there is discussion, at least in some circles, that the original text was, "Thou shalt not murder". See, for example the discussion on Wiki at

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

I know, Wiki. Take it with the requisite grain (or train) of salt.

It's clearly a reference to murder since the death is the punishment for breaking the commandment (as well as many others). And accidental killings and killing in war would seem to be excluded as well. That leaves murder.

In the Old Testament, God accepted sacrifices from man, comprising the "best" of whatever he had to give to atone for his sins. Until man became so sinful, that nothing he had to give could suffice to wash away his sins. Not his best of anything -- crop, cattle, etc. In the Old Testament it was ok to kill in order to sacrifice. Abraham was about to sacrifice his own child Isaac, until God stopped him. It was simply a test of his faith.

Some critics of the Bible point to the story of Abraham, who laid his son Isaac on an altar and prepared to sacrifice him as directed by God (Genesis 22:1-14). However, in this case, God was testing the obedience and faith of Abraham. God stopped him from actually following through and provided a ram as a substitute sacrifice.

God detested the child sacrifices that were practiced by the Ammonites and Caananites.

In the New Testament, God removed sacrifices altogether, with his ultimate sacrifice of his only begotten Son, Jesus. Because man didn't have anything left worthy to sacrifice for his fatal sins, God made the sacrifice for mankind. As a result, beginning in the New Testament there was to be no more killings of any kind. If animal was not to be sacrificed, nor was man. Killing and murder is a sacrifice of a life for one's own ends.

You can't single out a single notion or passage in the bible without taking it in the context of the entire bible, as some "religious fanatics" do, hence giving Christians a bad name. That is so often pointed out by naysayers.

So don't do it yourself.

[quote="ldwechsler"

Your murder examples are really weak. The white cop went through hearings and we found out that the witnesses against him were a long distance away...and the victim was a thug. Killing the guy was still bad since it was not self-defense but there were mitigating circumstances.

For the black cop, it's been a long investigation and the victim was a woman wearing a nightgown who had no criminal record at all and seemed innocent of anything. And he has not been convicted.

But there are a lot of cases and justice is not always perfect. THAT would be a better point. There was recently a guy in Tennessee who spend 31 years in prison wrongfully and got a "big" million dollars in compensation for giving up most of his adult life.

People are flawed. The problem when we deal with morality is that few things are really black and white. Someone who only sees in those shades is usually considered a bit of a nut (except by those who like the particular sentiment).

A better analogy than Christianity would be Bentham's utilitarianism, about good being that which benefits the most people. But even there we have issues. If killing a small number of people (let's say a minority group) would benefit the majority, that could be considered good using that philosophy.
That's how you could defend the Holocaust to use an extreme example).

At any rate, the basic idea of improving mankind is not by itself sociopathic. Using slavery as a front, or actually at all, is evil.

Things are not simple.[/quote]

My examples may be weak but they illustrate that Murder is not such an "objective" thing as someine posited. And what the cop knew whwn he shot the Black guy, and what we found out about him later are two different sets of circumstance. And if murdering an unarmed black man as h is walking away from you is justifies because "he's a bad hombre, then your morality isn't worth the paper it is written on.

Improving mankind generally is not a bad thing. Unfortunately, what the Detweillwrs is doing is not improving ALL of mankind generally or perfecting each genome to its fullest potential. It is selectively improving specific genomes to specific levels and no more creating a stratified and rigid social order. A caste system, unbreakable and permanent, with scientific testing to prove and solidify it.

pappilon wrote:

pappilon wrote:And who are you to dictate the morality of the universe?

Peregrinator wrote:I don't dictate anything - simply pointing out that morality is objective. Do we debate over whether murder is wrong? That someone thinks it might not be wrong, or not always wrong, or can be justified for some reason, does not in the least bit change the fact that it is wrong.

n7axw wrote:Morality may be objective, but there is no way to avoid the reality that it is subjectively applied.

Don
-

Morality is polar. There is only moral and immoral, choosing the good or choosing the bad. The real world is whiter shades of pale. The infamous decalogue sayeth "Thou shalt not Kill." Nowhere doth it proclaim: "Thou shalt not commit murder."

Why is a White cop in Ferguson MO not being charged with murder for shooting an unarmed Black man, yet a Black cop in Mimmeapolis MN being charged for the murder of a White woman? Morality must either be racisr or sexist. Or as a society, we do not have a clear moral compass, or somehow morality is not as clear as we wish it to be.

We I( as a species) have punched all kinds of holes in "Thou shalt not kill." Starting with Moslems do not kill Moslems. Which is not extensed to Christians, Jews, Buddhists or Hindus. Only now it is apparrently, Shi'ites shall not kill shi'ites, but killing Sunni is ok.

We've cut out exemptions for war, capital punishment, abortion, self-defense, accidents ...

So, yeah keep going on about how Morality is objective. It is more a slippery slope called situation ethics.

ldwechsler wrote:Your murder examples are really weak. The white cop went through hearings and we found out that the witnesses against him were a long distance away...and the victim was a thug. Killing the guy was still bad since it was not self-defense but there were mitigating circumstances.

For the black cop, it's been a long investigation and the victim was a woman wearing a nightgown who had no criminal record at all and seemed innocent of anything. And he has not been convicted.

But there are a lot of cases and justice is not always perfect. THAT would be a better point. There was recently a guy in Tennessee who spend 31 years in prison wrongfully and got a "big" million dollars in compensation for giving up most of his adult life.

People are flawed. The problem when we deal with morality is that few things are really black and white. Someone who only sees in those shades is usually considered a bit of a nut (except by those who like the particular sentiment).

A better analogy than Christianity would be Bentham's utilitarianism, about good being that which benefits the most people. But even there we have issues. If killing a small number of people (let's say a minority group) would benefit the majority, that could be considered good using that philosophy.
That's how you could defend the Holocaust to use an extreme example).

At any rate, the basic idea of improving mankind is not by itself sociopathic. Using slavery as a front, or actually at all, is evil.

Things are not simple.

OMG. You didn't just go there. It is this sort of mentality that is killing innocent black men across the nation. In case you weren't aware of it, thugs have rights too. They may have just joined the gang and have done nothing, yet. They could be impressionable youth wearing the colors and clothes of thugs to fit into their own neighborhood, or to be acceptable by the criminal element so as not to end up targeted as victims of gangs themselves. KKK youth and skinheads were not similarly shot in the streets.

The color black is NOT a license to kill. Facing the color black IS NOT a "mitigating circumstance." Gees!

Ldwechsler, you're better than that.

cthia wrote:And who are you to dictate the morality of the universe?

Peregrinator wrote:I don't dictate anything - simply pointing out that morality is objective. Do we debate over whether murder is wrong? That someone thinks it might not be wrong, or not always wrong, or can be justified for some reason, does not in the least bit change the fact that it is wrong.

n7axw wrote:Morality may be objective, but there is no way to avoid the reality that it is subjectively applied.

Don
-

Morality is polar. There is only moral and immoral, choosing the good or choosing the bad. The real world is whiter shades of pale. The infamous decalogue sayeth "Thou shalt not Kill." Nowhere doth it proclaim: "Thou shalt not commit murder."

Why is a White cop in Ferguson MO not being charged with murder for shooting an unarmed Black man, yet a Black cop in Mimmeapolis MN being charged for the murder of a White woman? Morality must either be racisr or sexist. Or as a society, we do not have a clear moral compass, or somehow morality is not as clear as we wish it to be.

We I( as a species) have punched all kinds of holes in "Thou shalt not kill." Starting with Moslems do not kill Moslems. Which is not extensed to Christians, Jews, Buddhists or Hindus. Only now it is apparrently, Shi'ites shall not kill shi'ites, but killing Sunni is ok.

We've cut out exemptions for war, capital punishment, abortion, self-defense, accidents ...

So, yeah keep going on about how Morality is objective. It is more a slippery slope called situation ethics.[/quote]

ldwechsler wrote:Your murder examples are really weak. The white cop went through hearings and we found out that the witnesses against him were a long distance away...and the victim was a thug. Killing the guy was still bad since it was not self-defense but there were mitigating circumstances.

For the black cop, it's been a long investigation and the victim was a woman wearing a nightgown who had no criminal record at all and seemed innocent of anything. And he has not been convicted.

But there are a lot of cases and justice is not always perfect. THAT would be a better point. There was recently a guy in Tennessee who spend 31 years in prison wrongfully and got a "big" million dollars in compensation for giving up most of his adult life.

People are flawed. The problem when we deal with morality is that few things are really black and white. Someone who only sees in those shades is usually considered a bit of a nut (except by those who like the particular sentiment).

A better analogy than Christianity would be Bentham's utilitarianism, about good being that which benefits the most people. But even there we have issues. If killing a small number of people (let's say a minority group) would benefit the majority, that could be considered good using that philosophy.
That's how you could defend the Holocaust to use an extreme example).

At any rate, the basic idea of improving mankind is not by itself sociopathic. Using slavery as a front, or actually at all, is evil.

Things are not simple.

OMG. You didn't just go there. It is this sort of mentality that is killing innocent black men across the nation. In case you weren't aware of it, thugs have rights too. They may have just joined the gang and have done nothing, yet. They could be impressionable youth wearing the colors and clothes of thugs to fit into their own neighborhood, or to be acceptable by the criminal element so as not to end up targeted as victims of gangs themselves. KKK youth and skinheads were not similarly shot in the streets.

The color black is NOT a license to kill. Facing the color black IS NOT a "mitigating circumstance." Gees!

Ldwechsler, you're better than that.[/quote]

You are right. I AM far better. But your statement goes too far. There are bad people in the world. Some are black. The fact that US media often cover up some facts about them does not change that.

I was shocked by the Trayvon Martin killing. But tucked away in the condemnations was the fact that he had been in constant trouble but the rules that the federal government set up (the ones being discussed about in the Parkland shooting, where troubled and criminal kids are kept out of jail and back in schools) kept him from arrest.

He was up near Orlando, Florida instead of home because of the trouble. Now, that is not an excuse to kill him (although note that it was not in "cold blood" but because an idiot volunteer cop wound up fighting with him) but he was actually rolling on the ground fighting with the volunteer cop and had he killed the man, we probably never would have heard about him.

There are a lot of unjustified killings and some of them are against minorities. I worked as a school administrator in the Bronx for many years and met great minority people there (including my Latina wife) and some not great ones.

But we hear about unjustified white on black violence but almost never the other way.

Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about judging based on content of character rather than skin color. The large media organizations no longer believe that.

So, I only want stones cast at me by those without sin. That way I won't have to worry about my health insurance.

ldwechsler wrote:
You are right. I AM far better. But your statement goes too far. There are bad people in the world. Some are black. The fact that US media often cover up some facts about them does not change that.

I was shocked by the Trayvon Martin killing. But tucked away in the condemnations was the fact that he had been in constant trouble but the rules that the federal government set up (the ones being discussed about in the Parkland shooting, where troubled and criminal kids are kept out of jail and back in schools) kept him from arrest.

He was up near Orlando, Florida instead of home because of the trouble. Now, that is not an excuse to kill him (although note that it was not in "cold blood" but because an idiot volunteer cop wound up fighting with him) but he was actually rolling on the ground fighting with the volunteer cop and had he killed the man, we probably never would have heard about him.

There are a lot of unjustified killings and some of them are against minorities. I worked as a school administrator in the Bronx for many years and met great minority people there (including my Latina wife) and some not great ones.

But we hear about unjustified white on black violence but almost never the other way.

Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about judging based on content of character rather than skin color. The large media organizations no longer believe that.

So, I only want stones cast at me by those without sin. That way I won't have to worry about my health insurance.

Seriously. Its ok to shoot an unarmed person of any color who is walking or running away from you if we find out the next day that "[s]he's a bad hombre?" If that is your idea of morality or your ideal of not really murder, then it sucks.

Even in courts of law, a defendant's record cannot usually be entered into evidence.

I mean, yes if there is a BOLO, or a op makes a traffic stop and then finds out at that time t6hat the subject may be armed, then, maybe, running away from a cop is jurtification for shooting him in the back. That Ferguson MO shooting was appalling. And the cop lied, changed his story, then played the "bad Hombre" card. Then it was justified. Which had no relevance to the situation that led to his murder-by-cop.

pappilon wrote:

ldwechsler wrote:
You are right. I AM far better. But your statement goes too far. There are bad people in the world. Some are black. The fact that US media often cover up some facts about them does not change that.

I was shocked by the Trayvon Martin killing. But tucked away in the condemnations was the fact that he had been in constant trouble but the rules that the federal government set up (the ones being discussed about in the Parkland shooting, where troubled and criminal kids are kept out of jail and back in schools) kept him from arrest.

He was up near Orlando, Florida instead of home because of the trouble. Now, that is not an excuse to kill him (although note that it was not in "cold blood" but because an idiot volunteer cop wound up fighting with him) but he was actually rolling on the ground fighting with the volunteer cop and had he killed the man, we probably never would have heard about him.

There are a lot of unjustified killings and some of them are against minorities. I worked as a school administrator in the Bronx for many years and met great minority people there (including my Latina wife) and some not great ones.

But we hear about unjustified white on black violence but almost never the other way.

Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about judging based on content of character rather than skin color. The large media organizations no longer believe that.

So, I only want stones cast at me by those without sin. That way I won't have to worry about my health insurance.

Seriously. Its ok to shoot an unarmed person of any color who is walking or running away from you if we find out the next day that "[s]he's a bad hombre?" If that is your idea of morality or your ideal of not really murder, then it sucks.

Even in courts of law, a defendant's record cannot usually be entered into evidence.

I mean, yes if there is a BOLO, or a op makes a traffic stop and then finds out at that time t6hat the subject may be armed, then, maybe, running away from a cop is jurtification for shooting him in the back. That Ferguson MO shooting was appalling. And the cop lied, changed his story, then played the "bad Hombre" card. Then it was justified. Which had no relevance to the situation that led to his murder-by-cop.

Are you sure he shot him in the back? The whole "I don't have a gun, bro" was originally sworn to by someone more than a city block away.

And the guy shot was actually a "bad guy". Just as our trusty media was about to proclaim him a saint, video came in of his robbing a store just before this.

Keep in mind the cop was soon off the force.

That's the problem with all of this. Facts are not as simple as the media would have it. The same guys who told us day after day after night that this was a killing and that there were peaceful protests (with shots of flames destroying the homes and businesses of OTHER minority people in the background) have a habit of telling us what THEY want us to know.

I was on a panel in the Bronx dealing with a shooting incident. There was some video about it, reporters asking students. The interesting this is that the shots took place in a girl's locker room while the students interviewed were all boys.

ldwechsler wrote:
Are you sure he shot him in the back? The whole "I don't have a gun, bro" was originally sworn to by someone more than a city block away.

And the guy shot was actually a "bad guy". Just as our trusty media was about to proclaim him a saint, video came in of his robbing a store just before this.

Keep in mind the cop was soon off the force.

That's the problem with all of this. Facts are not as simple as the media would have it. The same guys who told us day after day after night that this was a killing and that there were peaceful protests (with shots of flames destroying the homes and businesses of OTHER minority people in the background) have a habit of telling us what THEY want us to know.

I was on a panel in the Bronx dealing with a shooting incident. There was some video about it, reporters asking students. The interesting this is that the shots took place in a girl's locker room while the students interviewed were all boys.

Now we are drifting inexorably away from just how simple and objective morality is and into the realm of "Enforcement of Morality" ~= The Law. The Law is the reflection of the absolute minimum of morality that a society tolerates.

It may or may not be legal to shoot an unarmed black male walking away from you (regardless if he is facing you or not) But it is morally indefensible. And yes the community (if not the courts) demanded the cop pay for his transgression.

Persons who are in inherently dangerous professions (switching now tothe Minneapolis shooting) should know that danger and should be held to a higher level of accountability vis a vis "I feared for my life). A trained police officer should not be that afraid of an unarmed civilian.

And Yet Again, at the time of the Ferguson shooting, the cop DID NOT have knowlege of the previous incident. Its all about what he knew and when he knew it. You seem to be making a case for ex post facto star chamber executions. Its all right for Zimmerman to shoot Trayvon Martin because we later found out that he was "a bad hombre".

We must also know that Zimmerman was aware of Martin's gang involvement and positively identified him wearing a hoodie at night (dubious in my opinion), in order to justify that shooting. Just like you are making the case in the Ferguson shooting.