Immanuel Can wrote:So now, you're saying the law is also immoral? Or you're saying "Whatever the law says is always right?" What is the claim you wish to advance?
The law and morality are different things. People have to vote and sometimes fight for the laws they want, because whatever the law says is not always right. As we are constantly discovering, if you leave law making to others, they will make laws that suit themselves, regardless of any morality.
Immanuel Can wrote:All the laws in the pre-Civil War American south were in favour of slavery. Did that make it the right thing to do?
uwot wrote:No, Immanuel; the right thing to do was to change the law. Haven't you heard? That's what happened.
Irrelevant to the question.
It was your question, Immanuel.
Immanuel Can wrote:After all, slavery still exists elsewhere, and now more brutally than at any time in history. That's what happened. But even if it hadn't, the question is whether or not THOSE laws were right. And you've ducked that one.
Really? What do you think the words "the right thing to do was to change the law" mean?
Immanuel Can wrote:uwot wrote:So, Immanuel Can, what exactly does your god say about female genital mutilation?
Nothing direct, since the tradition did not even exist in Biblical times.
You don't know that. We do know that slavery existed.
Immanuel Can wrote:But the whole human rights tradition, including the right of little girls not to be mutilated, derives from thence.
That is simply not true. The bible condones slavery:
The loony responsible for Leviticus 25 wrote:Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.
Immanuel Can wrote:But that's a red herring. The question here is not about FGM in Somalia, which only comes in as an example, but whether or not we can say that ANYTHING, including FGM and slavery, is ever really "wrong."
Without objective morality, we can surely "say" it, but it won't be justifiable by any means.
We cannot rely on the bible in the case of FGM, and according to the bible we shalt have slaves. Your morality does not come from the bible; at most it comes from the parts you have chosen to adopt, to fit the image of a god that you have created yourself. Face it: you are not a moral agent because you do what god says, it is because you make your own decisions.