Cardinal Pell's no show

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Wonder if old George is sitting there in the Vatican going " I am fucked, I am going to hell "
 
This is in no way a loaded question, but do you believe there are no, or can be, no such thing as moral truths?

Huh? I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that, but yes, I do believe there is a moral truth. That's pretty much what I'd been arguing.
 
TimT said:
This is in no way a loaded question, but do you believe there are no, or can be, no such thing as moral truths?

Huh? I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that, but yes, I do believe there is a moral truth. That's pretty much what I'd been arguing.
Not the vibe I was getting. Probably missing something as we're not sitting a a table drinking.

Ducatiboy stu said:
Wonder if old George is sitting there in the Vatican going " I am fucked, I am going to hell "
Nah.
I reckon Francis has got him down on his knees polishing the papal alter.
 
I think they should all just chill out, go to a church and sit down and contemplate some fine stained glass art work as the afternoon sun shines through and contemplate on the wonder of the Church in our world.

paedophile stained glass.jpg
 
TimT said:
You seem to inadvertently go back to a kind of reductive proof of morality anyway Blind Dog, not a bad one either - an argument by compassion: considering all our actions from the point of view of not only ourselves but the other involved parties.

But I don't think it's sufficient. It strikes me that a lot of commonly-accepted morality must lie outside of this metric - and it, too, falls back on a more basic value: why should we put '[ourselves] in the position of the other person and trying to assess how [we] would feel'? There is no real logical reason for us to do so, no real reason why we should do one over the other - unless we accept the basic proposition that we may make choices regarding the good and the bad, between the ethical and the unethical. It seems to me we fall back on, for want of a better word, faith yet again.
Logically, you put yourself in the position of the other person because there's nothing but random happenstance as to why you are not that other person. That's not faith, karma or anything similar. It's nothing more than an acceptance that we are all essentially the same.

I'd also argue that there is little or no 'commonly-accepted morality'. I've tried and failed to find one that isn't trumped by one special interest or the other. The fact that the special interest commonly has a religious source may, or may not, be informative.
 
When I was studying Philosophy a few years ago at UNE we covered "Altruism" quite thoroughly. Altruism is actually found in animals other than humans - it's wired in somehow and generally involves making sacrifices for other individuals that seem illogical, for example a rodent sacrificing itself to a snake in order to save the life of another rodent that isn't its immediate relative.
However if you sum up the benefits and downsides of that rodent's death it's nearly always resulted in preserving certain genes in the "gene pool" that were also possessed by the altruistic rodent that sacrificed itself and which weren't obvious at first sight.

In modern human society we have extended altruism beyond just the immediate family genes to our various societies we live in. That's why a lost toddler in Rockhampton will command far more news attention and masses of search volunteers that are usually unrelated to the toddler, than a ferry overturning in Bangla Desh killing 350 people including 25 toddlers.

But basically we are still mammals, or in the case of Pell, the odd rodent.
 
Satan was destroyed when Gollum, holding the ring, fell into fires of Mount Doom.

Peoples' poor grasp of history appalls me.
 
TimT said:
Dave, I'd argue if you try to trace back your moral arguments to their core assumptions - eg, 'circumcision' is 'Clearly...objectively wrong' and 'morally abhorrent' then you won't be able to get far. One example might be - 'Circumcision' is arguably wrong because - well, causing 'pain' is wrong. But why is causing pain wrong? It.... just is. And it seems obvious that this is so. Morally right and morally wrong, good and bad - we're back in the realm of faith.

I'm sure philosophers have, are, and will be beating this question around forever: can we truly 'prove' morality? To me the question is absurd, and in most cases probably ends up in some kind of circular reasoning. Nietzsche asked the question somewhere in his genealogy of morals - when people first settled on a set of values.... what were the set of values they relied on to settle those values? In the circumstances it seems no wonder the poor guy went insane....
Life is generally preferable to death.
Health is generally preferable to sickness.
Pleasure is generally preferable to pain.
These are some of the fundamental attributes for morality from an empathic and compassionate society.
I am not sure how faith comes into that. God believing unfalsifiable faith that is. That's what we are talking here. You can't compare that to anything.
We humans (and other species) are social creatures and I think the more moral we are, the more empathy, compassion we have for others, the better societal health we have. This can be shown. Once again, no faith required.

Circumcision and slavery is/was not regarded as immoral by some. People who claim this are just plain wrong. Demonstrably wrong.

It intrigues me that this sort of "morality" is the sort that comes from the bible. The claims are; this is the word of god, everyone gets their morality from god. That's faith. "Because god says so" = Faith.

I have always wondered, if we can only get our morality from god, are things moral because god says so or does god say so because they are moral?
 
TimT said:
As far as the doctrine of hellfire and Satan goes, nobody delivers it in sweeter tones than those .

I prefer these guys...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etAIpkdhU9Q
 
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CmdrRyekr said:
Who was the clown that offered to nab Christopher Skase from Mallorca and drag him home? We need this bloke on the case. I'll chip in a tenner or two!
Kick it off on Gofundme, if you can find him...
 
wide eyed and legless said:
Bobby meets God :)

Don' shite en ma mouth Doreen. Shite en ma mouth. Shite en ma mouth.
 
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This all reminds me of the old nursery rhyme.

Georgie Porgie, Puddin' and Pie,
Kissed the altar boys and made them cry,
When the Royal Commission came out to play,
Georgie Porgie ran away
 
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