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@3RU7AL
But how bad does a person have to be for their murder to be justifed? Fred West? Jimmy Saville?
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@3RU7AL
Killing Hitler?Please explain to me when "murder" is NOT "morally wrong"?
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@Stephen
Evidently 'zero'. You may have thought you made it clear, but that isn't the same thing.God knows how many times I have made my position clear
btw: it's never the audience's fault if they don't 'get it' - it just means you have to try harder next time.
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@Tradesecret
I doubt that actually happened!you were correct about certain gifts being given to his family at the age of two by the men who came from the East.
When i wrote that jesus was not a priest or prince I certainly did not mean that there was no royalty nor priests anywhere in his ancestry because that is a logical impossibility!
What I meant - and what I stand by - is that Jesus' genetic/bloodline link to kings and priests was probably not noticeably closer than any other random Jewish male. If he was a king or priest then so was his next-door neighbour and the guy Mary bought camel milk from.
Almost everyone on DA has Chalemagne as a direct ancestor, but none of us can claim to be rightful King of the Franks.
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@Tradesecret
I think being jesus being born to a virgin would rate at least a mention.
if the nativity stories were the same they might have more credibility, they aren't compatible. Matt and Luke agree closely where they are expanding on Mark's orginal effort (probably) but they over the nativity where Mark is silent. One or both just made it up, and, of course it's both!
I would point out that there are hundreds of websites offering reconciliations of Matt and Luke and I've read a lot of them!
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@Tradesecret
I would also point out that I am not interested in calling out Christians for hypocrisy. I do not think Christians should give all their money away!
I want to show that religion is a human construct that reflects the political and social conditions of its time and has nothing to do with non-existent deities. Religions change in response to human concerns.
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@disgusted
Thanks- but I'd add the words 'for them' right at the end if I could change it!
...not the religious fantics who put you in the front line to die for them.
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communism is state sanctioned - compelled mandatory tax (theft - redistribution) - there is no voluntarism about it. In Acts - the church - which is of a private nature not state nature - was done voluntarily as they had the ability to do.
I think you are dead wrong! The collectivism implied in acts 5 has nothing to do with political or Marxist communism. It comes across far more like a end-of-world cult that involved disposing of personal wealth while awaiting an imminent apocalypse, reminscent of the Heavens' Gate and Jonestown cults.
A and S were not killed for hypocrisy but because they showed a lack of unflinching belief that the world was ending.
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@Greyparrot
But if the whole world is muti-cultural what would there be to fight about?
Countries, religions, tribes, clans.... they all exist to divide people into 'us' and 'them'. Why do that?
If Germany had won ww2 I'd probably still be a retired computer programmer today. Who wins a war matters a lot to those who like to pull the levers of power but they don't make much real difference to the mass of people who still get up in morning, go to work, watch TV, sleep and repeat.
When I lived and worked in East Africa most people I met were dirt poor and scraping a living. Having a black President rather than a white Governor general was irrelevant to them. Revolutions change the bosses, but exchanging one elite for another makes no difference to the masses, except a lot of them get killed in the process.
i'd bet you have a lot more in common with an ordinary moderate muslim than you do with a fanatial Christian,but if the barricades do go up you'll be shooting at men with families and mortgages who support their local football team, not the religious fantics who put you in the front line to die.
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Do you honestly believe that a multi-racial society is optimal for a nation?
Clearly not, for most interpretations of the word 'nation'.
The question is whether the concept of 'nations' is optimal for humanity and the planet or if we'd all be better off without 'nations'.
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1. It is possible that a maximally great being exists.2. If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.3. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.4. If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.5. If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists.6. Therefore, a maximally great being exists.
Obiously something is wrong in there but it's hard to identify exactly what!
The problem is that defing god as something 'maximally great' incidentally defines god as necessarily existing because 'neccessary existence' is greater than mere 'existence'. While that is acceptable as a definition, it is problematic to use it as a premise in the OA because it assumes what it sets out to prove.
For purposes of the OA you have to define a god as a entity that is 'maximally great, except it it does not necessarily exist', that is we still allow gods to possibly exist but we remove the hidden assumption their neccessary, certain existence.
Of course that means the OA no longer works.
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@Tradesecret
I am an atheist and my interest is in tracking the development of religious ideas over time. I focus on Christianity because it's historically important and the easiest to research!
I think the very earliest forms of Christianity were very much religions of the proletariat, ie of the impoverished tenant labourer, not his wealthy boss or landlord. We can infer from Acts 5 (Ananias and Sapphira) that it practiced some form communistic collectivism. The early church also held that a new world order was imminent so it had little to say about long-term projects such as raising a family or weath creation - -
But in the supposedly short time before the parousaia it was better to be poor than rich; Luke is explicit:
Lk 6
20 Looking at his disciples, he said:
"Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.....
24 "But woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort.
That hard anti-wealth line became hard to sustain, especially as the promised new order failed to appear. Hence the shift from 'rich is bad' as in the texts mentioned to 'greed is bad'.
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@Castin
One can certainly tell lies, if that counts.
Is being impolite actually a sin?
Matt 5:22
But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother [without a cause] shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca , shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.
I'd say many posters in DA are in serious danger of hell fire - on multiple counts.
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The whole system in Pakistan stinks of religious intolerance, not the kind of faith that is loving.
Muslims and moderate Christians are not so different, but both are very different from their fanatical wings (who resemble each other).
Religions don't have an instrinsic character - it is down to interpretation and practice. i
Over the last few decades an aggessive, assertive and fundamentalist interpetation of Islam has become inceasingly influential and even dominant. I think it is better to concentrate on why that is happening now rather than spouting un-nuanced condemnations of Islam. That only alienates and weakens moderate Muslims who are the main victims of Islamism. Islamists kill many more Muslims than they do Christians.
I am not defending islam - I am saying that things are never black and white.
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@Stephen
As you say it is for the faithful to reconcile the anomalies. i look forward to pga's rebuttal!
I'm am not very interested in rubbing theists' noses in the many, many issues there are in the text. I'd say that Matthew's gospel indicates that early Christians were themselves confused as to which direction to go - were they to be a sect within judaism or something radically new? it seems possible that the judaic faction in jerusalem shunted the radicalist Paul off to do his thing outside Israel where - they hoped - he could do less harm!
Unfortunately the first few decades/centuries of Christianity's development and growth are a documentary desert.
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There of course is only one explanation for Pharaoh believing every shepherd to be an "abomination". It is because the shepherds supported the Ram god of the house of Aries.
It's far from the 'only one explanation', and I don't think it is the most likely one.
I don't think it has anything to do with gods or religion, I would look to this sort of thing as a less fanciful grounds for the cattle-keeping Egyptians to want to keep sheep out.
ie real-world concerns over grazing rights and animal disease.
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@Stephen
i wrote:in case your wondering, i prefer to consider them pure fictions.Stephen wroteI wasn't wondering. And I have never said otherwise.
I just thought you might want to accuse me of not having a view. :)
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@secularmerlin
Yes but if we are forced to agree on a proxy then that is an admission that morality per se is not a thing-in-itself. If we agree to use, say 'harm caused' as the proxy then we would be talking about 'harm caused', not morality itself- and the same for all other possible proxies.
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@secularmerlin
I don't think there is one, which is why I abandoned objective/realist moralism. (ie NOT the faulty 'disagreement' argument!).
What you can do is specify a proxy for morality which might be quantifiable, or semi-quantifible, such as 'resulting benefit/harm' but then you are working with that proxy, not with morality per se, because 'there is no such thing as morality'.
Essetially our brains have evolved to signal some things in a way that enhances 'darwinian fitness'. That signal seems/feels just like detecting a property ('morality') in things so - naively - we are led to believe morality is a real property of things; but I reject the reality of morality.
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@PGA2.0
There is a parallel in Luke 24:
46 and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
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@secularmerlin
If person A thinks that rape is not immoral but that homosexuality is and person B thinks that both rape and homosexuality are immoral and person C thinks that rape is immoral but homosexuality is not then how do we determine which one is objectively right?
If we substitute rape with footballs, moral with spherical, homosexulity with dice and immoral wih cuboid we'd get
If person A thinks that footballs are not spherical but that dice are cuboid and person B thinks that both football and dice are spherical and person C thinks that footballs are cuboid immoral but dice is not cubiod then how do we determine which one is objectively right?
So "how do we determine which one is objectively right? "
Well, unless you discard any semblance that words mean anything you check who is saying footballs are spherical and dice are cuboid! The others must suffer from "faulty shape sensing disease"!
Disagreement is not a disproof of objective morality - disagreements might be because some people misjudge the actual morality of stuff. That is even if rape is objectively evil there's nothing to prevent X judging it to be morally good if his brain is wired up differenty to most people. That might explain psychpaths.
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@Polytheist-Witch
Which poster said it's ok to rape kids? It doesn't strike me as hilarious - if such a post happened.
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@Stephen
I'd say no.And it would take seconds for anyone interested to find out in this age of the internet, now would it.
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@Stephen
So your position is, say, Jesus appeared to walk on water but it was a conjurer's trick?
In your opinion, did he rise from the dead?
in case your wondering, i prefer to consider them pure fictions.
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@Stephen
Can we discuss Islam? Of course we can, but could Muslims discuss Christianity to any great depth? How much do people know about Shia/Sunni split, for instance.
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Whether or not a few named characters were real people or not, the story is 80% strategised propaganda to make you happy to sit back and forgive tyrants as they pillage your family and friends and own you, replacing your flag and values.
That isn't the story of the OT which was - i believe - intended to maintain vigorous hebrew/jewish pride at a very critical time in their history. However i'd agree the NT is politically passivist.
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@Stephen
Mixing truth with lies is the way forward for any organisation or movement to further the cause. In other words and in this case scriptural half truths and half stories to further the cause of christianity, as I have been saying since the day I joined this forum.
We agree on that much! But I presume we differ in our interpretation of the mystical and miraculous elements.
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@Stephen
I am not against all religion, in fact the only religion I can honestly say I am against, is ISLAM.
May i suggest that what is 'wrong' about islam is that its followers take it seriously. What makes Christianity 'nicer' is that it has been secularised and diluted by humanism. I am not sure that a society dominated by Christian zealots would be all that different from an Islamist state..
Imagine a world with Westboro Baptists in charge.
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@Stephen
I have and can see another story hidden below the surface of these scriptures.
So do I - but it's a very different hidden story. I see a story of humans writing propaganda.
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@Castin
Cultural conservatism, i suppose.
I fear this series could be the end of Dr Who for a very long time.
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@Fallaneze
I can agree with almost everything in the above post (#20).
The main reason I recently moved away from moral realism is "Humanity having an inherent purpose as to what they should or should not do is the only way something can be morally wrong independent of our views" but I failed to identify an inherent purpose.
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@Stephen
How do you reconcile Matthew 28?
18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
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@secularmerlin
I get the impression Fallaneze is edging towards full-on idealism.
I'd say idealism is irrefutable but has no interesting consequences. it doesn't seem to matter if it is true or not, unless you're smoking pot around a campfire!
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@Stephen
i'm afraid that equating "racists and fascists" with "anyone who doesn't agree with [me] and has an alternate argument and opinion," is a dishonest reconstruction of what have posted, nor is it how I think.
As no-one else is following this thread and I know what I wrote and what I think, who are you trying to mislead? There is no gallery to play to.
99% of people don't care about Asia Bibi. Wouldn't it be great if her plight was the only thing to worry about on this sorry planet.
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Bizarre, I assume!What evidence do you have for such a bazaar theory?
The scriptures must have been written for some pupose. The OT is a repository of the Hebrews' culture, laws, traditions and legends so I presume that is what was it was intended to be. Recall the 10 tribes lost as a result of the Assyrian Exile - the remaining tribe of Judah wanted to avoid a similar fate due to the Babylonian exile.
The NT has to be considered in its historical context. Traditional YHWHism suited a nomadic, warlike tribe but not an urbanised proletariat under seemingly permanent foreign domination. YHWHism was a this-world based religion - with little hope for respite here Chrstianity promisde it posthumously. But the new religion could not succeed unless it could be packaged compatible with the old.
The theory attempts to explain the existence of the texts in terms of history, politics and psychology - all of which exist,not in terms of divinities that don't. You could say the evidence is that the existence of the texts and their contents.
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@Stephen
I didn't march against what I agreed with, if that's what you mean!I see, anyone who doesn't agree with you and has an alternate argument and opinion.
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@Stephen
Do many people really write to their MP?
I've done my share of marching around carrying placards - mostly against racists and fascists. But these days I'm usually content to watch things unfold.
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What I think happened is that the OT was compiled to preserve Hebrew/Jewish culture and identity by fixing it in written form. That project ended around the 5th century BC. In the very different social conditions of the 1st century AD proto-Christianity arose as a heretical sect. The proto-Christians tried to make the new cult acceptable to Jews by emphasising continuity with Hebrew tradition as embodied in the OT.
By a quirk of history, Christianity proved more successful outside Israel then inside Israel resulting in Christianity diverging ever more from Judaism, but the linkage to the OT scriptures was too ingrained to be abandoned. The result is a bizarre yoking of two very different theological outlooks that Christian theologians have struggled to reconcile for 2000 years.
my favourite theologian is marcion of sinope who gave up trying to reconcile the OT and NT and wrote that there are or were two gods,(ie not one)and threw out the OT entirely. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that he wasn't burned at the stake for it!
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@Stephen
I wouldn't want you banned even if you called me stupid.
I wouldn't want you banned even if you called me conceited, arrogant or egocentric.
Someone’s life is undoubtedly in danger and your response is –“ it's all down to a bit of a cock up” and we can’t do much about it now.
'Can't do much about it now' is your addition. it's a PR cock-up because all that's been achieved is making May's administration appear either callous, weak or scared - or all three. Hardly a PR coup, is it?
It would seem such an easy option to offer asylum that one has to wonder why no offer has been made. I'm not convinced that fear of upsettng a very few Islamic hot-heads here in the UK is the main reason, even if its the one given in public. Pakistan has had to promise its own hot heads (of which it has millions) it will prevent bibi leaving. That country is - by all accounts - on the edge and a credible offer of asylum could push it over the edge. The worst case leaves a hard line Islamist regime in charge of a nuclear power.
I wish I was privy to the thinking behind the refusal to offer asylum, particularly as she is unable take it up. maybe in 30 years the relevant docunets wlll revealed...
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@Fallaneze
There could be 'FOTM' if 'better' was defined properly. If you answer 'better in what way' (eg 'provides more blood flow') you do get a FoTM.There is no fact of the matter on whether it's better to have a heart with clogged arteries rather than not.
Note for if 'better' means 'morally better' that doesn't work because morality isn't a thing! (maybe :)
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@Fallaneze
I refer you to my post on the other thread.
i may or may not post a response to points 1-10 any time soon, but i will be thinking about them!
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@Fallaneze
I'm not a 'moral nihilist' in the sense of 'amoralist'. I've recently moved away from moral realism (which is what people often mean when they say 'objective morality') towards moral anti-realism, particularly 'error theory'. I'm a moral nihilist in that I believe morality per se does not exist (ie morality is nothing) but not in the sense that 'everything goes'.
I recommend you look at section 4 on error theory.
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@Fallaneze
The illusion is that morality is a thing-in-itself.
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@Fallaneze
Okay, so how our brain feels in reaction to certain situations determines whether we judge that situation to be morally good or morally wrong. There is nothing about morality that is actually being described except the feel-good or feel-bad chemistry in our brain when we say that something is morally good or morally wrong.
Very, very close! But that summary suggests there is an ethereal, Platonic 'morality' which is not described. Presumably you'd say it exists but I'm leaving it to one side! But I hold morality doesn't exist.
Apart from that I think you understand the basic idea. I don't require you to accept moral nihilism, but it's something to think about!
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@Fallaneze
Our moral perceptions are concerned with something real, not an illusion. What we perceive is an estimate of the balance between costs and benefits, which are real. The illusion is that morality is a thing-in-itself; ie we are not perceiving how much morality (or how much immorality) is present in some act (ie morality does not exist, again!) but what the likely costs and benfits of the act will be.But why is it more rational to believe that our moral perceptions are purporting something illusory rather than something true? We have basic moral intuitions that nearly everyone share.
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@Fallaneze
If "morally good" is defined in terms of having certain brain chemicals that make you feel good, then my point was that if someone were to sexually abuse young children, provided the young child had had no negative brain chemicals and the abuser had positive brain chemicals resulting from it, this would BE morally good under this framework.
Yes, but that isn't the framework I'm using - it might or might not be what 3RU uses!
If I measure the hormone levels in your brain when you are thinking about a child-rapist and again when you are thinking about someone giving to charity the levels will not tell me how moral rape and charity are - they will tell me what your moral judgements on rape and charity are. Of course I don't usually do chemical assay to do that! I just ask you - your responses will indicate the hormone levels.
You may not be quite grasping that I don't deny the existence of moral judgments or that somethings are benificial and other things are harmful. I am denying the existence of morality as a thing-in-itself.
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@Stephen
I don't think posting on DA would change anything.
I suspect that the British government is in a bind. Having declined to offer asylum once to change its mind would look weak and indecisive and May is already on the defensive on other fronts. Bit of a cock-up on the PR front if nothing else for the governmnent and for Britain. I get the impression that there is very widespread support for Ms Bibi's asylum request in the general population but concern over a disproportionate Islamist reaction has muted any strong opposition to the governments stance.
As a human being I would like Bibi to be offered uk asylum and be able to take it up in peace. But if I were a Prime Minister concerned with 'Real Politick' and the definite possibility more people will die than are saved if things go wrong (as they frequently do) the decision is much, much harder. There is still the problem that Pakistan refuses to allow her to leave, making any offer of asylum moot.
btw, Stephen - you seem to think I have Christian leanings! Nothing could be further from the truth. I am a dyed-in-the-wool atheist; I'm just not the noisy, iconoclastic sort.
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@Fallaneze
Sorry - but I can't respond because I don't understand what you are getting at.
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@Fallaneze
You wrote "wouldn't be immoral and could actually be considered morally good"
I think that indicates how easy it is to conflate 'morality' (be) and 'moral judgement' (be considered).
My position is that morality does not exist, we make 'moral judgements'.
The image I think is faulty is that morality is real, like electric charge. Some people talk as if rape has a negative moral charge and charity has positive moral charge and moral judgements are the result of sensing the moral charge something has.
That image is wrong because electric charge is part of physical reality; ie it exists. However morality is not part of physical reality; ie it does not exist.
When we (ie normal folk!)think about, say, rape it feels as if we can sense the immorality of rape, as if its 'negative moral charge' was real and we are fitted with a 'morality meter' to detect it. That is only nearly true! We can't detect morality because it doesn't exist. What is really going on in our heads is a neural circuit combines inputs from our senses and memories to produce an output that has been honed a million years of evolution to encourage advantageous behaviour and suppress inimical behavour.
According to 3ru, hormones are used to signal the result - I'll take his word for that! The main point is the result appears in consciousness in a way we have all learned to describe using a 'morality scale', thus falling into the trap of thinking that morality is a thing-in-itself.
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@Fallaneze
So if the child is too young to remember the sexual abuse, or wasn't physically harmed by it, and as long as neither of their brains secreted chemicals that would make them feel bad about it, there's nothing to consider immoral about sexually abusing young children?Did you read my post #128?
3RU might not see things as I do. Releasing hormones are how our brains signal its judgement on - or estimate of - the harm/benefit of stuff. That is the brain uses one hormone to encourage certain behaviours and suppress others.
That is when I think about child-rapists my hormone levels produce a feeling of 'mental nausea' which we habitualy interpret as due to child rape being 'immoral'. That is what it means for something to be immoral - it induces negtive mental attitude. It is not so that 'immorality' is some sort of stuff that rape has that giving to charity doesn't have.
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