I’d be a lot more okay with Christianity if it didn’t so often imply such noxious positions about human rights or whatever.
I find it interesting that atheists begin by condemning religious people over human rights. However, when they start working out their own theory of ethics, they’re perfectly willing to disregard human rights as long as they can find a “rational” reason for it.
I smell a false dichotomy. Condemning religion (or some particular set of religions) on human-rights grounds and then advocating a theory of ethics which disregards or doesn’t contain a notion of human rights is of course inconsistent, but it’d take a remarkable lack of introspection to do that.
Inconsistency’s a common symptom of naive ethics, of course, but for the sake of clarity let’s restrict ourselves to talking about people who’ve put actual thought into their ethical opinions. In that case, it seems more likely that the horns of the alleged contradiction don’t coexist but rather belong to non-overlapping sets of beliefs, which simply happen to share the trait of nontheism. Perfectly reasonable: religious disbelief doesn’t require you to subscribe to notions of human rights, much less a single consistent set of human rights, and there are plenty of nontheist schools of thought that don’t. Nor does it require you to endorse the ethical opinions of all other atheists.
Atheism is not a unified ideology. Treating it as one leads to some extremely wrong conclusions.
Condemning religion (or some particular set of religions) on human-rights grounds and then advocating a theory of ethics which disregards or doesn’t contain a notion of human rights is of course inconsistent, but it’d take a remarkable lack of introspection to do that.
Read the sequences on cognitive biases. People, including yourself, are a lot less introspective then you seem to think.
Atheism is not a unified ideology.
The problem is people making atheism part of their identity, and therefore being reluctant to criticize fellow atheists. And then going no true Scotsman on the ones that are obviously wrong, so you don’t have to learn from their mistakes.
A certain lack of introspection in the general population doesn’t make blanket accusations of hypocrisy any more reasonable, particularly when the opinions at issue are entirely irrelevant with regard to the class you’re accusing. If Alice the Atheist believes in a particular inalienable human right, accuses theists of ignoring it, and goes on to espouse a moral philosophy which rejects that right in some circumstances, that makes her either a bad rights theorist or a bad moral philosopher, but not a bad atheist—and I remain unconvinced that there are many well-informed Alices out there.
Sure, there’s some some arguments-as-soldiers thinking going on among atheists. That’s never too hard to find in a closely fought ideological battle. But there’s a vast gulf between “atheists identified as such are unlikely to call each other out on their particular ideological inconsistencies” and “atheists, as an unqualified class, are hypocritical in this particular way that has nothing to do with atheism”.
I’d be interested in discussing the matter with anyone who did so. It doesn’t seem to me that either depression nor a lack of wonder follow from atheism, so I’d be curious about their inferential path.
I’d be interested in discussing the matter with anyone who did so. It doesn’t seem to me that either depression nor a lack of wonder follow from atheism, so I’d be curious about their inferential path.
Well a lot of people have that impression of atheism, not entirely without justification as the OP demonstrates.
Religion is also not necessarily boring, although a lot of people have that impression.
Ey said condemning, not disagreeing with. Their moral errors tend to be much more dangerous than their epistemic ones, though that could easily change.
That’s because the more rational amongst us have stopped putting up with people killing other people on purely religious grounds.
Is apostasy still a crime punishable by death? It used to be. So was homosexuality.
Thousands of innocent women were tortured and some even burned at the stake for so-called religious “crimes”.
People were still killing each other for reasons they’d consider “rational” back then too… but getting rid of any reason for irrational killing is, I think, a step in the right direction—one brought about by rational, enlightenment thinking.
When we can get rid of the rationalised, non-religious reasons too, then we’ll really be onto something good.
That’s why we argue against thing like communism and fascism in addition to thing like Christian and Islamic fundamentalism. The danger posed by religion are discussed here more often because the average LessWronger meets Christian fundamentalists more often than communists or fascists and because studying Bayesian epistemology makes us especially able to see the flaws in many common religious arguments.
The danger posed by religion are discussed here more often because the average LessWronger meets Christian fundamentalists more often than communists or fascists
So how many people were killed by Christian fundamentalists during the last century?
Not all Christian, but see http://whatstheharm.net/religiousfundamentalism.html : 2370 people are known to that website and there are surely many more who have been unable to access medical treatment, killed themselves, been killed, etc. because of Cristian fundamentalists.
However, while your question asked about people being killed by fundamentalists, that is not the biggest problem. After all, the million of Ukrainians who starved to death in the USSR were not killed by communists, but by communism.
Christian fundamentalism preaches a general distrust of science and scientists. This seems like it would reduce the number of people who become scientists. I was going to look up a statistic to see if exceptionally fundamentalist groups were exceptionally underrepresented in science, but I found something even more strongly supporting of this idea. From that article: “Among scientists, as in the general population, being raised in a home in which religion and religious practice were valued is the most important predictor of present religiosity among the subjects. . . . It appears that those from non-religious backgrounds disproportionately self-select into scientific professions. This may reflect the fact that there is tension between the religious tenets of some groups and the theories and methods of particular sciences and it contributes to the large number of non-religious scientists.”
How many people were killed by every invention not created, every disaster not predicted, and every disease not cured by all the children of fundamentalists who did not study science?
Upvoted for evidence, but it appears to me that the figures given at the top of the page are a running tally for all sources of harm the site tracks, not for religious fundamentalism in particular. The same numbers show up if you look up, say, GPS devices.
Would you count people who contracted HIV because their religion forbid condom use?
Can you think of any such scenario that doesn’t involve other actions forbidden by the same religion?
(The only thing I can think of would be spouses of patients who contracted HIV via transfusion and who would have used condoms if it hadn’t been for the religious prohibition. But how many of those have there been?)
However, there are people who’ve contracted HIV because condoms were forbidden, and personally didn’t do anything contravening the religion’s rules.
Catholics are not generally considered fundamentalists. ETA: now that I’ve read more of the thread, it seems that you’re using “fundamentalist” to mean people who don’t care about the effects of their beliefs. Is there a difference between that and being a consistent deontologist?
Can you think of any such scenario that doesn’t involve other actions forbidden by the same religion?
Yes:
1) a totally innocent married woman who has kept herself “pure” with only her husband… and contracts HIV because he is unfaithful
2) a woman who is raped by an HIV positive person (religious or otherwise)
3) a man who kept himself “pure” for marriage, only to discover that his now-wife hadn’t “kept herself for her husband” and contracted HIV during her own pre-marital sex
4) a person who converted to the religion later in life… and had unprotected sex before they converted
5) some poor young thing who contracts it during unprotected oral sex because they’re told that “it’s not really sex” and therefore not considered “impure” by their religion’s standards
6) a person who shares needles with somebody else… no prohibition against opiates in the bible mate
...I’m sure I could go on.
Argument from personal incredulity is generally not a strong stance to take.
It seems like you misunderstood my question. I asked about examples of HIV transmission scenarios that: (1) would be prevented by the use of condoms, and (2) don’t involve any actions (by any of the parties involved) that are also prohibited by all the major religions that prohibit condom use. I don’t see a single item on your list that meets both conditions.
I’m not sure how useful it is to search for sexual transmission scenarios within a reference class populated entirely by the chaste.
Well, originally I suggested one scenario that would seemingly fall under this. I’m genuinely curious if someone can think of any others. Your suggestion of the Shiite temporary marriages is a good one, though based on some casual googling I just did, it appears that condoms are permitted by this particular religion.
Actually I disagree. scenarios 1 through 5 are all about sexual acts that do not involve condom-use, but through which an otherwise “innocent” person could contract HIV.
Scenario 6 involves a person who contracts HIV and could then go on to spread said infection to his/her otherwise innocent partner due to the restrictions on condom use, but yes, does not directly describe the infection due to forbidden condom usage. I should have mentioned Mr 6′s wife instead—at which it too becomes relevant.
AFAICT, they are all relevant to the current question.
As to part 2:
The fact that some of the acts involve other people who are not following the “purity laws” of the religion makes no difference—in each scenario, the person getting infected has followed all the laws correctly. That’s the point.
Forbidding condom use does not necessarily protect the people that follow the rules.
Surely the ‘any actions (by any of the parties involved)’ isn’t relevant for casting blame/responsibility here? Christianity recognises, or rather emphasises, that people do constantly fall short of the values, and encourages repentence and continuing to follow the same rules.
I don’t know whether churches would advise a repentent person who had cheated or had sex before marriage to then be celibate within their marriage. But if they tell them to keep having sex without protection then that specific action can be blamed for the results. A system of behaviour that relies on being universalised to make any sense is flawed. One encouraged by a religion that is fully aware that people constantly fall short of its commandments could be regarded as culpable.
I don’t know whether churches would advise a repentent person who had cheated or had sex before marriage to then be celibate within their marriage. But if they tell them to keep having sex without protection then that specific action can be blamed for the results.
Only if they tell them to keep having sex without protection even if you have an STD. Or, perhaps, forbid testing for STDs.
It wasn’t my intention to make or imply any value judgments and blame assignments in this context. I just asked if someone can think of a scenario that meets these conditions, as a mere question of fact and logic.
As in somebody gets AIDS from their first partner (who gets it from whatever, depending on how far back we count as ‘parties involved’: perhaps a cheating grandparent or if that still counts then transfusion etc.)
Only if you let me count the people who contracted HIV because they disregarded religious prohibitions against homosexuality on other side of the equation.
(Though I don’t expect it to make much relative difference either way, it would probably also be a good idea to include lynchings of homosexuals, if only to preempt the obvious complaint.)
Here are some numbers. Note the incidence among children and women, for whom the predicate “disregarded religious prohibitions against homosexuality” evaluates to false in, I’d expect, nearly all cases.
Only vaguely relatedly: in my callower youth, I enjoyed asking biblically inspired homophobes what grounds they had for sanctioning lesbians, since the go-to verses (Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13… also Romans 1:27, though that’s less relevant for Jews) were so clearly targeting behavior among men. The sheer bewilderment in their responses was oddly enjoyable.
I count a lesbian couple with one child among my best friends.
I remain doubtful that there is a large incidence of female HIV positives who would not have been positive had they adhered to religious strictures against homosexuality. The HIV-homosexuality links is (according to this page) specific to the US, not to the rest of the world. There is a base rate fallacy at work.
Sure, but I’m guessing that Morendil was alluding to the lack of explicit prohibitions on female-female sexual acts in holy texts among the Abrahamic religions. This does not, of course, stop them from being considered a sin and the practitioners punished accordingly.
All three of them had a “sex == penetration with penis” mindset which made even acknowledging lesbians an “outside the box” problem.
The Christian bible, at least, does not have any explicit prohibition against female homosexual acts, just warnings against sexual immorality without female-female acts given as a specific example (Romans 1:26-27 would probably be the closest). I believe the same holds for Judaism and the Torah, with the Talmud and other rabbinical rulings against it (though nowhere near the same degree as male homosexuality—no death sentences). AIUI, The Quran is in a similar position to the Bible -- 4:15 can readily be read to condemn female homosexual acts, but the words are somewhat generic so it can also be read instead as condemning other female sexual immorality. Hadith is practically silent—it condemns “effeminate men” and “masculine women”, as well as those who wear clothing traditionally used for the other sex, but again no explicit prohibition. There is a large body of Islamic jurisprudence however, and although the mentions of female-female sex are still rare, it is clear that it is forbidden under Sharia as it has been interpreted most places.
(Though I don’t expect it to make much relative difference either way, it would probably also be a good idea to include lynchings of homosexuals, if only to preempt the obvious complaint.)
I pointed out to you before that this was people taking him daring to consider a lose-lose hypothetical (a trolley problem) and then using the fact he’d answered a lose-lose hypothetical against him. You didn’t answer further at the time.
Hm. Well, I’m certainly a person on this blog who has argued—recently, even—that human life isn’t a terminal value.
But it isn’t clear to me that I’m someone “perfectly willing to disregard human rights as long as they can find a “rational” reason for it.”
And if I were convinced that not terminally valuing human life reliably leads to disregarding human rights, that would encourage me to rethink my stance on the terminal value of human life. (Though I have to admit, I find such a connection implausible.)
Can you unpack the relationship a little more clearly for me?
Not to mention all the number of people on this blog arguing that human life doesn’t have terminal value.
There are many who don’t consider it the only terminal value. That is, there are other things that can be traded off against maximizing human life. (This is in accord with most religious treatments too. What price life on Earth if it prevent going to heaven?) Those few who don’t consider it a terminal value, often have very important instrumental values for the protection of human life. Is this distinction that important when it leads to largely the same actions and decisions?
No idea who this person is… but it doesn’t actually answer the question—I think we were after examples where rationality causes people to disregard human rights, not just an example of a person who may have rationalised something to themselves.
Also—don’t forget that rationalisation != rationality. There are a lot of posts on this site about that very misunderstanding.
Not to mention all the number of people on this blog arguing that human life doesn’t have terminal value.
Sorry I don’t understand what you mean by that sentence. Perhaps you could explain?
AFAICS the people on this blog argue quite strongly that life is very important and that we should try very hard to improve and prolong human life.
I haven’t seen anything that would fit that description, so far as I can remember.
Are you referring to all the people who think the value of a human life has more to do with the mind contained in it than the base pairs of its DNA? That’s not really the same as saying “human life doesn’t have terminal value”.
I find it interesting that atheists begin by condemning religious people over human rights. However, when they start working out their own theory of ethics, they’re perfectly willing to disregard human rights as long as they can find a “rational” reason for it.
I smell a false dichotomy. Condemning religion (or some particular set of religions) on human-rights grounds and then advocating a theory of ethics which disregards or doesn’t contain a notion of human rights is of course inconsistent, but it’d take a remarkable lack of introspection to do that.
Inconsistency’s a common symptom of naive ethics, of course, but for the sake of clarity let’s restrict ourselves to talking about people who’ve put actual thought into their ethical opinions. In that case, it seems more likely that the horns of the alleged contradiction don’t coexist but rather belong to non-overlapping sets of beliefs, which simply happen to share the trait of nontheism. Perfectly reasonable: religious disbelief doesn’t require you to subscribe to notions of human rights, much less a single consistent set of human rights, and there are plenty of nontheist schools of thought that don’t. Nor does it require you to endorse the ethical opinions of all other atheists.
Atheism is not a unified ideology. Treating it as one leads to some extremely wrong conclusions.
Read the sequences on cognitive biases. People, including yourself, are a lot less introspective then you seem to think.
The problem is people making atheism part of their identity, and therefore being reluctant to criticize fellow atheists. And then going no true Scotsman on the ones that are obviously wrong, so you don’t have to learn from their mistakes.
A certain lack of introspection in the general population doesn’t make blanket accusations of hypocrisy any more reasonable, particularly when the opinions at issue are entirely irrelevant with regard to the class you’re accusing. If Alice the Atheist believes in a particular inalienable human right, accuses theists of ignoring it, and goes on to espouse a moral philosophy which rejects that right in some circumstances, that makes her either a bad rights theorist or a bad moral philosopher, but not a bad atheist—and I remain unconvinced that there are many well-informed Alices out there.
Sure, there’s some some arguments-as-soldiers thinking going on among atheists. That’s never too hard to find in a closely fought ideological battle. But there’s a vast gulf between “atheists identified as such are unlikely to call each other out on their particular ideological inconsistencies” and “atheists, as an unqualified class, are hypocritical in this particular way that has nothing to do with atheism”.
In my experience, atheists usually ‘begin’ by condemning the religious on epistemic grounds.
I prefer condeming them on fun theory grounds. Even if they’re right, it would still be boring.
Well a theist could just as easily condemn atheism on fun theoretic grounds for being to depressing, or for removing the wonder from the world.
which i regard as valid.
I’d be interested in discussing the matter with anyone who did so. It doesn’t seem to me that either depression nor a lack of wonder follow from atheism, so I’d be curious about their inferential path.
Well a lot of people have that impression of atheism, not entirely without justification as the OP demonstrates.
Religion is also not necessarily boring, although a lot of people have that impression.
Ey said condemning, not disagreeing with. Their moral errors tend to be much more dangerous than their epistemic ones, though that could easily change.
Well during the last century atheist and secular philosophies, i.e., communism and fascism, have done a lot more damage then religions.
That’s because the more rational amongst us have stopped putting up with people killing other people on purely religious grounds.
Is apostasy still a crime punishable by death? It used to be. So was homosexuality. Thousands of innocent women were tortured and some even burned at the stake for so-called religious “crimes”.
People were still killing each other for reasons they’d consider “rational” back then too… but getting rid of any reason for irrational killing is, I think, a step in the right direction—one brought about by rational, enlightenment thinking.
When we can get rid of the rationalised, non-religious reasons too, then we’ll really be onto something good.
That’s why we argue against thing like communism and fascism in addition to thing like Christian and Islamic fundamentalism. The danger posed by religion are discussed here more often because the average LessWronger meets Christian fundamentalists more often than communists or fascists and because studying Bayesian epistemology makes us especially able to see the flaws in many common religious arguments.
So how many people were killed by Christian fundamentalists during the last century?
Not all Christian, but see http://whatstheharm.net/religiousfundamentalism.html : 2370 people are known to that website and there are surely many more who have been unable to access medical treatment, killed themselves, been killed, etc. because of Cristian fundamentalists.
However, while your question asked about people being killed by fundamentalists, that is not the biggest problem. After all, the million of Ukrainians who starved to death in the USSR were not killed by communists, but by communism.
Christian fundamentalism preaches a general distrust of science and scientists. This seems like it would reduce the number of people who become scientists. I was going to look up a statistic to see if exceptionally fundamentalist groups were exceptionally underrepresented in science, but I found something even more strongly supporting of this idea. From that article: “Among scientists, as in the general population, being raised in a home in which religion and religious practice were valued is the most important predictor of present religiosity among the subjects. . . . It appears that those from non-religious backgrounds disproportionately self-select into scientific professions. This may reflect the fact that there is tension between the religious tenets of some groups and the theories and methods of particular sciences and it contributes to the large number of non-religious scientists.”
How many people were killed by every invention not created, every disaster not predicted, and every disease not cured by all the children of fundamentalists who did not study science?
Upvoted for evidence, but it appears to me that the figures given at the top of the page are a running tally for all sources of harm the site tracks, not for religious fundamentalism in particular. The same numbers show up if you look up, say, GPS devices.
Oh yeah. Thanks for pointing that out.
Would you count people who contracted HIV because their religion forbid condom use?
CronoDAS:
Can you think of any such scenario that doesn’t involve other actions forbidden by the same religion?
(The only thing I can think of would be spouses of patients who contracted HIV via transfusion and who would have used condoms if it hadn’t been for the religious prohibition. But how many of those have there been?)
However, there are people who’ve contracted HIV because condoms were forbidden, and personally didn’t do anything contravening the religion’s rules.
Catholics are not generally considered fundamentalists. ETA: now that I’ve read more of the thread, it seems that you’re using “fundamentalist” to mean people who don’t care about the effects of their beliefs. Is there a difference between that and being a consistent deontologist?
NancyLebovitz:
What concrete scenarios do you have in mind?
Spouse of someone with HIV. Raped by someone with HIV. Born to someone with HIV.
Yes:
1) a totally innocent married woman who has kept herself “pure” with only her husband… and contracts HIV because he is unfaithful
2) a woman who is raped by an HIV positive person (religious or otherwise)
3) a man who kept himself “pure” for marriage, only to discover that his now-wife hadn’t “kept herself for her husband” and contracted HIV during her own pre-marital sex
4) a person who converted to the religion later in life… and had unprotected sex before they converted
5) some poor young thing who contracts it during unprotected oral sex because they’re told that “it’s not really sex” and therefore not considered “impure” by their religion’s standards
6) a person who shares needles with somebody else… no prohibition against opiates in the bible mate
...I’m sure I could go on.
Argument from personal incredulity is generally not a strong stance to take.
It seems like you misunderstood my question. I asked about examples of HIV transmission scenarios that: (1) would be prevented by the use of condoms, and (2) don’t involve any actions (by any of the parties involved) that are also prohibited by all the major religions that prohibit condom use. I don’t see a single item on your list that meets both conditions.
I’m not sure how useful it is to search for sexual transmission scenarios within a reference class populated entirely by the chaste.
(Actually, the Shi’a practice of nikah mut‘ah seems to qualify, but that’s rather obscure by the standards of this discussion.)
Well, originally I suggested one scenario that would seemingly fall under this. I’m genuinely curious if someone can think of any others. Your suggestion of the Shiite temporary marriages is a good one, though based on some casual googling I just did, it appears that condoms are permitted by this particular religion.
Actually I disagree. scenarios 1 through 5 are all about sexual acts that do not involve condom-use, but through which an otherwise “innocent” person could contract HIV.
Scenario 6 involves a person who contracts HIV and could then go on to spread said infection to his/her otherwise innocent partner due to the restrictions on condom use, but yes, does not directly describe the infection due to forbidden condom usage. I should have mentioned Mr 6′s wife instead—at which it too becomes relevant.
AFAICT, they are all relevant to the current question.
As to part 2: The fact that some of the acts involve other people who are not following the “purity laws” of the religion makes no difference—in each scenario, the person getting infected has followed all the laws correctly. That’s the point.
Forbidding condom use does not necessarily protect the people that follow the rules.
Surely the ‘any actions (by any of the parties involved)’ isn’t relevant for casting blame/responsibility here? Christianity recognises, or rather emphasises, that people do constantly fall short of the values, and encourages repentence and continuing to follow the same rules.
I don’t know whether churches would advise a repentent person who had cheated or had sex before marriage to then be celibate within their marriage. But if they tell them to keep having sex without protection then that specific action can be blamed for the results. A system of behaviour that relies on being universalised to make any sense is flawed. One encouraged by a religion that is fully aware that people constantly fall short of its commandments could be regarded as culpable.
Only if they tell them to keep having sex without protection even if you have an STD. Or, perhaps, forbid testing for STDs.
It wasn’t my intention to make or imply any value judgments and blame assignments in this context. I just asked if someone can think of a scenario that meets these conditions, as a mere question of fact and logic.
Oh, fair enough: I was reading back to the ‘how many people were killed by Christian fundamentalists’ question… Sorry!
On your question, am I missing something obvious or would widows/widowers be a real and all-too-likely possibility?
What exact scenario with widows/widowers do you have in mind?
As in somebody gets AIDS from their first partner (who gets it from whatever, depending on how far back we count as ‘parties involved’: perhaps a cheating grandparent or if that still counts then transfusion etc.)
Yes, you’re right, that would be another possibility.
Only if you let me count the people who contracted HIV because they disregarded religious prohibitions against homosexuality on other side of the equation.
I would like to see those numbers.
(Though I don’t expect it to make much relative difference either way, it would probably also be a good idea to include lynchings of homosexuals, if only to preempt the obvious complaint.)
Here are some numbers. Note the incidence among children and women, for whom the predicate “disregarded religious prohibitions against homosexuality” evaluates to false in, I’d expect, nearly all cases.
Upvoted for data.
(You know there are female homosexuals, right?)
Only vaguely relatedly: in my callower youth, I enjoyed asking biblically inspired homophobes what grounds they had for sanctioning lesbians, since the go-to verses (Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13… also Romans 1:27, though that’s less relevant for Jews) were so clearly targeting behavior among men. The sheer bewilderment in their responses was oddly enjoyable.
I count a lesbian couple with one child among my best friends.
I remain doubtful that there is a large incidence of female HIV positives who would not have been positive had they adhered to religious strictures against homosexuality. The HIV-homosexuality links is (according to this page) specific to the US, not to the rest of the world. There is a base rate fallacy at work.
Sure, but I’m guessing that Morendil was alluding to the lack of explicit prohibitions on female-female sexual acts in holy texts among the Abrahamic religions. This does not, of course, stop them from being considered a sin and the practitioners punished accordingly.
All three of them had a “sex == penetration with penis” mindset which made even acknowledging lesbians an “outside the box” problem.
The Christian bible, at least, does not have any explicit prohibition against female homosexual acts, just warnings against sexual immorality without female-female acts given as a specific example (Romans 1:26-27 would probably be the closest). I believe the same holds for Judaism and the Torah, with the Talmud and other rabbinical rulings against it (though nowhere near the same degree as male homosexuality—no death sentences). AIUI, The Quran is in a similar position to the Bible -- 4:15 can readily be read to condemn female homosexual acts, but the words are somewhat generic so it can also be read instead as condemning other female sexual immorality. Hadith is practically silent—it condemns “effeminate men” and “masculine women”, as well as those who wear clothing traditionally used for the other sex, but again no explicit prohibition. There is a large body of Islamic jurisprudence however, and although the mentions of female-female sex are still rare, it is clear that it is forbidden under Sharia as it has been interpreted most places.
Sure, I doubt those are above the double digits.
A straight reading of the question clearly indicates no.
Examples?
Well Peter Singer is probably the most prominent recent example.
Not to mention all the number of people on this blog arguing that human life doesn’t have terminal value.
I pointed out to you before that this was people taking him daring to consider a lose-lose hypothetical (a trolley problem) and then using the fact he’d answered a lose-lose hypothetical against him. You didn’t answer further at the time.
Hm. Well, I’m certainly a person on this blog who has argued—recently, even—that human life isn’t a terminal value.
But it isn’t clear to me that I’m someone “perfectly willing to disregard human rights as long as they can find a “rational” reason for it.”
And if I were convinced that not terminally valuing human life reliably leads to disregarding human rights, that would encourage me to rethink my stance on the terminal value of human life. (Though I have to admit, I find such a connection implausible.)
Can you unpack the relationship a little more clearly for me?
There are many who don’t consider it the only terminal value. That is, there are other things that can be traded off against maximizing human life. (This is in accord with most religious treatments too. What price life on Earth if it prevent going to heaven?) Those few who don’t consider it a terminal value, often have very important instrumental values for the protection of human life. Is this distinction that important when it leads to largely the same actions and decisions?
The history on the 20th century isn’t encouraging on that being true.
No idea who this person is… but it doesn’t actually answer the question—I think we were after examples where rationality causes people to disregard human rights, not just an example of a person who may have rationalised something to themselves.
Also—don’t forget that rationalisation != rationality. There are a lot of posts on this site about that very misunderstanding.
Sorry I don’t understand what you mean by that sentence. Perhaps you could explain?
AFAICS the people on this blog argue quite strongly that life is very important and that we should try very hard to improve and prolong human life.
Unfortunately, they’re very hard to tell them apart when you’re doing them.
Amen to that :)
I haven’t seen anything that would fit that description, so far as I can remember.
Are you referring to all the people who think the value of a human life has more to do with the mind contained in it than the base pairs of its DNA? That’s not really the same as saying “human life doesn’t have terminal value”.
I mean things like this and especially this.