What does this have to do with atheists?
This is a common "gotcha" argument that floats around the Internet. Essentially, it posits that under the teachings of a given religion (typically Christianity), there is a source of morality which is absolute. That might be the religion's holy text, deity, or the religious authorities of that religion. In either case, there is one authoritative source which dictates what is morally correct and not correct for the entire universe from now until eternity.
So, the argument goes, if one is to reject the teachings of this or all religions, as irreligious people do, it necessarily means accepting that morality is inherently relative and that there is no absolute standard for mortality that is universally applicable. Therefore, as the argument goes, since one would have to accept that morality is relative, it can be framed relative to anything or nothing, and therefore there is no act which can be immoral relative to any reference frames in a context without religion. And therefore, nothing can be said to be immoral because whether it is moral is relative.
That's the end of the argument.
To its credit, there isn't anything wrong with this argument. But I do believe the argument posits that conclusion to be far worse than it really is. Suppose I am an irreligious person. Why is fornication with roadkill immoral? Well, because I think it is. It makes me feel bad and the reward gained isn't worth the risk (the embarrassment of being seen in the act or catching some disease from it). Therefore I don't do it. Is it possible that some person could think that it is moral? Yes, absolutely. But that doesn't matter, because even if relative to one person's moral compass an act is moral, doesn't mean that people in general can't just collectively reject that perspective and condemn the act as a group. In fact, human societies imposing their views on what is and is not moral relative to their own experience describes pretty much the entirety of human history.
Edit: To sum up, my counter argument is that yes, all morality is relative. I don't see how this is a bad thing. Humans have the ability to reason and reject moral viewpoints which they collectively find repulsive. They do not have to accept it just because someone else thinks that way.
I think there are (at least) two things wrong with the argument:
- it assumes that there can be no source of absolute morality aside from religion, ignoring centuries if not millennia of moral philosophy/ethics (which at least tries to answer the question seriously).
- even if nonreligious sources of morality don't exist, the argument assumes that religion is a source of absolute morality. since conflicting religions exist, the religionness-property alone is not enough to validate religion as a source of absolute morality.
It doesn't assume that there is no source of absolute morality. It says that religious people are incorrect to derive their absolute source of mortality from a deity, whether it exists or not
I prefer to frame the argument like this:
"If you found out your God didn't exist, would you go around killing people? Why not?"
It sounds an awful lot to me like Christians want to fuck horses. Or at the VERY least, they spend a concerning amount of time thinking about fucking horses.
Well obviously they don't think about fucking horses, that would just be weird. Children, on the other hand...
More succinctly, the argument is: without religion, there is no source of moral authority other than the disapproval of others. Acts that have no chance of being discovered would therefore not be subject to any moral judgment and must be permissible, even if clearly wrong.
This is a contradiction with those acts being clearly wrong.
There are multiple ways of attacking this naive argument.
This just puts the image in my head of a religious person seeing someone having sex with a dead deer on the side of the road and their first reaction being "Oh my god he's sinning!" and not "Why the fuck is that freak fucking a dead deer on the side of the road"
Morally wrong? No. Disgusting and disrespectful? Absolutely.
Morally wrong? No.
Is it not? I'm not religious, but I still find it morally wrong to have sex with something that didn't consent to it.
Whether the animal is alive or dead, it isn't able to consent. And since the animal cannot consent, it is therefore rape, making it morally wrong.
A dildo also isn't able to consent. A carrot isn't able to consent and is more alive than the roadkill (since it can still reproduce). Ability to consent is something we require from conscious beings, but we generally don't require it from objects, and corpses blur the line.
I definitely get the "ick" feeling from necrophilia, so my knee-jerk reaction is to consider it immoral, but it isn't actually that easy to come up with a consistent justification for that condemnation.
I cannot fucking believe I'm going to participate here...
... but when you're talking to someone about organ donation, you'd typically say something like "You can't take them with you. That isn't you anymore. You're dead. It's just meat now."
... and that's as much as I'm going to say because gross
But this is actually why we decide whether or not we participate in postmortem organ donation while we're alive - we make the conscious decision ahead of time. Which is still then consistent with the consent argument
The one time I saw a post about bestiality and necrophilia, someone was saying it is common for hunters to fuck their kills, because the adrenaline of the hunt and all, makes them horny and crazy. No reason to bring it up here, though, I just want you all to suffer with me.
I've shot a lot of animals through the years. "Horny" is now how I would describe the aftermath.
Mostly it's mild annoyance because now I have to clean it, which is a PITA.
Unfortunate typo lol
Well I have to lave it.
Yeah, my family has hunters, and none of them would in no way describe it as "horny". Though they kill for food, so I do not know how trophy hunter people are. And if someone kills just for their enjoyment, well... they are already kind of messed up, really. I do not think it is common, but I would also not be surprised if someone...
I think someone was messing with you
Oh, I was not even part of that conversation (luckily). I just happened to read it (sadly).
"Look, I'm not saying you should drive around at night time with your high beams on looking for deer to run over. That would be wrong.
BUT
If you're just out, driving along, minding your own business, and you accidentally hit a deer or maybe you find one that's already been run over, well.... I mean, no sense in letting perfectly good deer poon go to waste, right? Like, if it's still warm and everything, it'd almost be rude NOT to fuck it, know what I mean?"
Yea untill accidently one time your driving on pcp and you hit a pedestrian thinking it's a deer and boom you have not just necrophilia charges but rape charges because he wasn't quite dead when you started.
Checkmate atheists!
Dang, you got me there. Good thing you replied before my nightly pcp cruise, I could have done a sin
Fucken christ can you imagine this guy answering the Trolley Problem?
"Okay so there's a trolley"
"I fuck the trolley!"
"No, wait- so there's a trolley and it's gonna run over either one person or three-"
"Oh! I wait for it to run everyone over and then I fuck their lifeless corpses!"
(sigh) I can't believe I have to say this twice on the same site.
Fucking a dead deer is just as immoral and dangerous as fucking a live one. Their bodies will still be host to a variety of potentially dangerous infectious diseases that may cross the species divide and become human-transmissible. This is a threat to your own health as well as public health.
For the love of any god that still might care, do not fuck roadkill. We do NOT need another HIV.
Don't Buddhists use a similar loop hole to eat meat? In theory, they shouldn't be killing and eating animals because of the non-violence. But if they launder it via some other hunter, that's fine.
Please don't fuck dead things. You will likely get an infection. No one else wants to put up with your infected silly bad decisions. That's the morality of it.
Is it moral to continue being part of an organization that rapes children?
Dont let them play distraction tactics.
Why are there so many posts about necrophilic bestiality lately
We finished all the conversations about beans
It ~~not being immoral~~ being moral or immoral has nothing to do with it being dangerous and disgusting. Asking about morality of fucking roadkill is basic strawman does nothing to checkmate anything.
Wtf, do they think necrophilia/bestiality is morally acceptable just because "atheist"?
Because theres no "harm" being done. Its already dead so it doesn't care, nobody is around together traumatised so they dont care.
Its obviously wrong but without Daddy God telling you its naughty its not so easy to explain why. I kinda want to see the Bible passage that says "dont fuck an animal corpse ye faithfulle"
Does this logic also apply to human corpses? Like if I go to a morgue…
corpses are dead and cannot receive a moral injury.
(setting aside the potential to cause a plague outbreak, which is a morality issue IMO)
I'm going to take this shit post seriously for some reason. Sometimes people confuse morality with practicality. Or associate groas factor with immorality, or even things associated with something gross with immorality. Yet, they are all related for a reason.
We have an inherent revulsion to fucking dead bodies. This is because dead things spread diseases, and therefore we instinctually avoid it. Also culturally it is disrespectful and gross. Practically, it is best to decide as a society to not allow that, and shun people who do it. If you practice safe sex with the corpse, and nobody legitimately knows or is hurt by this action, is it morally acceptable? Maybe, but what are truly the chances of a freak who would fuck a corpse wearing a condom because he's concerned for future sexual partners? If he is a necrophiliac, what are the chances that this wouldn't extend to killing to achieve this, or stealing bodies, which would be traumatic for the people related to the people whose bodies he acquired? If he is wired differently and doesn't get this ick factor from fucking dead things the way regular humans do, either his brain is a little messed up, he has gone through some traumatic, personality changing experiences, or he has specifically sought our to desensitize himself from shame. Do you want to trust such a person in society? Or should we perhaps correct deviant behaviors before they become a problem? There's a lot more context than a specific example in a vacuum.
Incidentally, this is what some people don't get about pedophilia/related philias. An ex girlfriend of mine once had a discussion with me that people were obsessed with condemning age gaps online. While true, I didn't agree with her because she went on to say "when I was a teenager, I remember going to a concert for my favorite band and wishing I could fuck the lead singer. If that had happened, I would have been happy and still talk about it today, not yap about how it was abuse." And yeah, maybe, in that instance, it would have been fine. Or maybe he would have pulled a Steve Tyler and became her legal guardian so he could fuck her all the time and been abusive and controlling, and derailed her future by taking her out of school and on tour with him and getting her pregnant then leaving. Is it POSSIBLE to have someone underage consent? Maybe (and a big maybe at that) but really what are the chances that it is a completely healthy and fulfilling relationship that will be positive for both people in the long run? Stigmatizing inappropriate age gap relationships only benefits society. 18 is an arbitrary line, to be sure. Is 17 or 16 OK? Multiple developed countries think so. 15? Not so sure, maybe focus on the actual size of the age gap there, which most countries do. But at some point we have to draw the line as a society to just say "no, sexual activity with this child is not allowed" to not allow for abuse of trust, because kids don't know what is best for them and what they want yet. And is it then morally wrong to violate what society has decided the arbitrary line is? Yes, at least in most cases. Legal does not mean moral, but to completely disregard society is not a way humans are meant to live. So are you going to be a normal guy that can take the "hit" of not dating under 18, or are you going to be the creep flirting with high schoolers and yapping about Romeo and Juliet laws?
This nuance is hard for people to understand. Even in organized religion, where God presumably has all the "right" answers, there is not always an absolute answer. In Christianity for example, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10 to avoid practices that make others uncomfortable or more likely to hurt their conscience, even if God doesn't specifically condemn said practice, and to avoid flexing your "rights" on others if it bothers them. "All things are lawful but not all things are helpful." Mysteriously, this part of the bible tends to not be remembered, and religious people instead veer towards absolutism.
Green is fucking a dead animal afterwards, because it fits greys explanation and is the morally allowed one. That's why green explicitely needs to msntion that they are proud.
Instead of having to contemplate about fucking some poor, deceased deer...how about I dress up as a deer, and you all fuck me instead?
It's more ethical that way.
Well if you ask that to an atheist than because there’s no god that moral injustice no longer exists because an atheist sees that moral injustice as a religious moral injustice that only God believers see. The religious moral injustice being disrespecting life after death.
☝🏻 However, anyone sane would see an animal alive or dead and know that it’s wrong to fuck an animal.
- If you find the dead deer and had no influence in any way on its death, fucking it is moral (or not immoral)
- If you killed the deer (accidentally) it is only moral to fuck the deer if you are a person that wouldn't fuck a dead deer. Because if you are, you were subconsciously less likely to avoid killing the deer.
For all I care fuck a dead deer. We already slaughter and rape animals on an industrial scale. Pretending to have a morale high ground is a hypocrisy. That's why I respect vegans or people who strive to become them as they are only ones somehow consistent without being brainwashed by religion and still against this while religious people only think of it as disgusting but happily participate in torture when they don't see it, because they are brainwashed into stripping other creatures of self.
I feel like im having a stroke deciphering those messages in grey.
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