Welcome to the front lines, Nikolaj!

Do you think you could at least hand me some more ammo when I run out?

In an ideal world I would be a pacifist as well.  However with the reality of our planet I believe it is actually immoral to be a pacifist.

If someone was slaughtering your neighbor's family you'd just stand to the side and say, "Hey.  Stop that."?

I flirted with pacifism for awhile and came to the conclusion that it's unworkable.  (Also, the pacifists reminded me too much of religionists.)

To Watcher: Honestly, I'm not really a pacifist. My Grandmother, who was a strong influence on me when I was a child was, what I can only describe as a militant pacifist... Yes, I know, paradoxal, but bear with me.

Her pacifism was more concerned with being anti-war, than anti-violence in general, but really she felt neither was okay, ever, for any reason. And she tried to instill that in me, with almost fanatical vigor (Probaly the closest thing I'll ever get to childhood indoctrination).

Now, as I grew up my admiration for her slowly disappeared, as I found out that she was a very confused and bitter person in many ways, and used alot of passive-aggresiveness against the people she (wrongly) felt had hurt her in her life. As I my opinion of her sobered, I also reconsidered my position on many things she had advocated, including pacifism.

Really, all I can say now is that I've never been confronted with violence in my own life (never been in a fight, even as a kid), and I abhor it, and fear it, and see no useful purpose for it, on a grand scale.

BUT:

If somebody raped my sister, or one of my nieces, or the women I love, I would want to slowly torture him to death with a dull and rusty knife, nothing less would do, not even a bullet to the head (too easy for him). I have thought of such things before, and I can feel my violent impulses surge, even when it is just a thought experiment. So I would never argue that violence is un-natural, and I think anything that is part of our nature should be something we strive to come to terms with, but that's not the same as just accepting it outright (it could be argued that rape is a natural impulse as well, for example, but that CERTAINLY doesn't mean it is okay).

If somebody was hurting other people than someone close to me, I would do everything in my power to stop them, but there are alot of things in my power, so I would try any non-violent option first, if I could think of one.

I will never activaly support war, but I will accept war, if no better solution seems forthcoming. the outcome of WWII for example, seems to have been good. Thank goodness the Allies won. But to think that is not the same as saying, the Allies were okay to do what they did. Think of Dresden for example. It was a tragedy that the war happened, and everyone who died as a result is a tragedy. Nobody "deserves" to die.

Finally, since I've never experienced the horror of violence firsthand, there is a distinct possibilty that my little crack about being a coward from above is in fact true. I HOPE I could pull myself together and defend someone who needed me, but I am scared of violence, and who knows if I won't just freeze up. It would be very new to me if violence all of a sudden was showed in my face. This is not to denegrate myself, I'm just trying to be realistic. But IF I respond with cowardess in a situation where courage is called for, then I have ofcourse failed in my responsability as a human being. I can't call it pacifism afterwards, just to cover my cowardess.

So in conclusion, I feel strongly that nobody DESERVES to die, but offcourse, from that it follows that everyone DESERVES to live, and so, if somebody thinks that they can kill someone THEY think deserves to die, it is my responsibilty to try and stop them, and if that has to be with violence, so be it, but if I feel NO remorse afterwards for having acted violently, then I have deserted my own principles. All I can hope is that I'll never be in such a lose-lose situation.

In principle, there are many things I am willing to die for, but nothing I am willing to kill for.

In praksis (is that the correct spelling?), I will probably kill for the safety of the people I love most, but I don't feel good about that. I hope it will never be nessecary.

Please study these three statements and explain to me how they are compatible with each other.  I detect sloppy thinking in you.  Or maybe we are just hitting a language barrier.

I take my above statement back. People in Denmark ARE scared of religion, just not JV or Scientology or somesuch. THAT we consider harmless nutters, and won't go out of our way to persicute.

But muslims is another matter. A significant minority of the population have become increasingly scared of Muslims, and as a result have started an unfortunate wave of intolorance here. They are significant, but still only a minority, and reasonable people can still hold them down (though, lately, only just). Now, the newspaper that printed the cartoons IS a paper that supports, what can be called "The right" here in Denmark, but the right in Denmark is more to the left than the Democrats are in the US, so it's a bit more complex than just "They are bigoted bastards". There are bigoted bastards in Denmark, and they are part of the above-mentioned significant minority, but the newspaper in question does not represent them. It's not Fox News, just a paper that is to the right in Danish politics.

And indeed, the cartoons where COMPLETELY harmless. They were an expression of a convoluted version of Danish sarcasm/irony/self-deprecation/tongue-in-cheek humor, and could hardly be completely misunderstood by Danish muslims. And they weren't. The SENTIMENT of the newspaper doing the thing in the first place, WAS however misunderstood as being an insult or uncalled-for provocation, but only by some Danish muslims. Now most were just insulted, and left it at that, which, as far as I'm concerned, is completely okay. I'm insulted by alot of things, so I can relate to them, even if I'm not insulted by THIS particular thing.

But there were a few, two Imams in particular (who were really just in it for personal poblicity as far as I can tell), who did NOT just leave it at that. The two Imams toured the Middle East and completely missrepresented the entire case to people there, and that's how the whole business started. Because of TWO Imams, who were sufficiantly insulted (or sufficiently ambitious) to cause a storm in a teacup.

So, Skywolf, there were never riots HERE. Danish muslim were either not insulted at all, or just let the stupid thing insult them, and moved on to more important matters, as any civilized person would do. It was in countries far far away from here that there were riots, and these people don't even know where Denmark is, and probably think we eat muslim children or sacrifice them to Thor and Odin.

So I have no intention to "hit a muslim" for you. If I did then I really WOULD be bigoted and intolerant and hateful, and that would be much worse than the whole of the Middle east THINKING I am, which I'm sure they do.

They aren't. I know that. The problem is, I don't WANT to kill anyone, but I KNOW that that feeling will change if someone hurts someone close to me. But that doesn't make killing people RIGHT. It just makes it natural to want to kill someone who has, or is about to hurt someone I love.

Now, ofcourse, this is a discussion of morals, which is interesting in an atheist-board context, because in a sense, IS there a right and wrong? i don't know that there is, but killing people is WRONG as far as I'm concerned. Obviously this goes for revenge killing, but it also goes for selfdefense. If I kill someone in selfdefense I have done wrong. If I prevented a greater wrong it doesn't make it right. Just less wrong. Will I obt for "less wrong" over "more wrong"? Ofcourse, but I will still not call my choice right.

Jeffrick, it is true that the Danes managed to smuggle most of the Jews in Denmark to Sweden (who remained neutral during the war), during the occupation of Denmark. I don't know the details, but I know that that is true.

The Germans rolled into Denmark without meeting any significant opposition, and certainly this could be perceived as corwardess, but Denmark didn't really have much choice. We had no army to speak of, and could have never hoped for anything other than a symbolic defense which would have caused much more death, so I think they did right. But that's another lose-lose situation.

The only comment I have to offer is: the main time when I considered pacifism was when I was in high school.  That was back when I was religious (...trying to follow the Bible verse about "turning the other cheek&quot and at the end of the day, it didn't really work for me, then.  Now, of course, having deconverted, I am no longer motivated to pacifism.  I haven't really settled on a philosophy, as yet, and I see no need to rush.  On this site, I mostly try to absorb ideas, although every once-in-a-while, I'll toss in whatever commentary I have to offer.

Conor

Hell, I was half kidding myself.  Welcome to the boards.  Always good to have another person to remind us how the civilized part of the world works.

*lifts hands*  I'm just saying...  I get the strong impression that this is a pretty cool person.  But fuck me if I don't challenge someone in the case that I detect an error in judgement.  Only three main possibilities are occuring.  1)  I'm fucked in my thinking 2) They are fucked in their thinking 3) We're both fucked in our thinking.

Whichever it is I want to know.  Now give me your cool flashlight or help you I will not, DDA.

Trouble with that definition is that there is no clear way in which "our society" is defined. It doesn't HAVE to be all of humanity. There is nothing inherent in that world view that says society HAS to encompass absolutely everyone.

Chimpansees are social animals and they generally treat their own group kindly, but meet an outgroup and they will absolutely rip them to shreds, with no hesitation, and no remorse. Now, it does not detract from "my" society that people in Africa are starving, and indeed it might even BENEFIT my society if I went to another country and stole all their food and raped all their women. Indeed, my viking ancestors made quite an afluent and vibrant society based on just that premise.

Secondly, again returning to the chimpansees, even within their groups it doesn't always detract from their society as a whole if some elements within it suffer. Weak chimps are often killed by the others, if, for example, a slightly stronger chimp sees an oppotunity to flaunt his power, so as to gain the respect of the others, and maybe raise its status to leader. And not all the females are willingly mating with the males they come across. They are sometimes raped, but that doesn't detract from the overall welfare of the group, not in the slightest, in fact.

I agree with you that our sense of right and wrong IS DERIVED from our social-animal instincts, but like the above statement indicates, I don't corolate "instinctive" with "right". just because it is our nature it doesn't make it right. I think what comes natural to us, should be considered right, but I think there should be more than that too. If one is willing to "settle" for one definition of right and wrong, and then stop there, then there is a clear and present danger that one might just revert to all the bad sides of our nature. And I think this is what went wrong with religion. Because all the moral questions were "answered", instead of being constantly revisited and reconsidered, people didn't have to think about morals. They could just live their lives without giving any thought to their actions. Like you so rightly point out, the 10 commandments are based on our natural tendensies, and so therefore, it is not so hard to "act natural".

And as far as I'm concerned, people acting natural, is, as David Brin describes it: "In any human society that has invented agriculture and metalurgy, strong men have made weapons, and taken weaker mens women and wheat".

This, I think, is exactly what religion has done. Not because it mandates people to do so directly, but because it claims to answer moral questions. When people think the moral questions are answered they stop considering them, and therefore just live naturally; like animals. Animals that are (to an extent) friendly to their in-group, and ruthlessly barbaric to any out-group.

If, however, you are willing to ask "what is right and wrong?" and compel your fellow humans to do the same, things MIGHT, just MIGHT be different. If you consider morals to be: asking that question at every moral dilemma you are faced with, instead of defining morals once and for all in one all-emcompassing moral philosophy (be it the ten commandments or "People are social animals" ), then maybe the outcome will be different from the one we as humans have seen to be the case up until now (that is, as per the David Brin quote).

Or maybe not... All I know is, I'm not convinced that the "people are social animals" is a strong enough moral philosophy to do the job on its own.

My pacifism includes killing you .... 

  Thanks to our new poster from Denmark

That sounds like it would be entertaining. Maybe you can help the theists with their apologetics, since the arms race at this point is almost completely one-sided.

Welcome!

hi your Willness

Thanks for the welcome.

Well, once I get my act together and get into my studies again (comparative religion), maybe I can do just that

But, really though, I don't think I'll be defending people like the guy who started "what faith you". Mostly I'll probably just be standing in the middle, leaning STRONGLY to "your" side ("your" as in you Rational Responder's usual suspects).

If I'll be playing Devil's advocate it will probably mostly be in discussions where all the participants are atheists.