Everything below is from a comment posted by UB:
Ed at 34,
[re: Ed on telling the truth]
It is just one of the rules we have to follow if we want to be welcome in society. If I chose to live by myself in a cabin in the hills I would have no obligation to be honest to the rare person that stumbled upon me.
Yes, you’ve been very concise on this feature of your belief system, and we understand you. If you live in a society then you have to tell the truth as a moral obligation to the consensus of that society (who collectively believe that people should tell the truth). But if you live out on your own, then you are your own consensus, and as you clearly say, you ”have no obligation” to tell the truth to some poor sap who might happen upon you.
You’ve made yourself perfectly clear on this.
And if that poor sap who happens to come upon you on your hill also happens to be of the fairer variety, with breasts and a vagina … well tough shit, eh Ed?
I’ve asked you repeatedly if a woman being raped needed the consensus of a group in order to know for certain that the brutalization she feels is actually valid. That is certainly the belief you seem to espouse here. You promote this as the advanced and enlightened view of human life, and judging by your insistence, you apparently think others should follow your lead on the matter, particularly those god-fearers around you who still mistakenly believe that raping a woman is an immoral act whether or not there is even one other ‘effing human being on the entire surface of planet who thinks so.
You’ve understandably refused to answer my question, of course, but you’ve certainly shed some light on the matter now. Whatever happens to that curvy sap who happens upon your hill, she can’t really say that what’s happening to her is “wrong”, per se, she’ll just have to keep in mind that what’s happening to her literally goes with the territory, and in this instance, she was merely on the “wrong” territory. As you say, there is no moral dilemma on your part, having acted on your decision. It’s just a geographic misfortune on her part. Hell, it could even be sheer dumb luck.
But you view this whole thing as a trick question, a “loaded question” as you called it. We all know that you aren’t the type of man so hardened of heart that you would actually ever rape a woman (regardless of when and where she happens upon you). It’s just that you are the type who is hardened enough to think that you decide if it is wrong for her to be raped. It’s a deformity of reason, but I see you come here daily to sell it in public — and you seem to really enjoy it, with that special kind of superior arrogance: Does a woman being raped need the consensus of society in order to know for certain that the brutalization she feels is valid. Yes she does, but a man living by himself on a hill outside society can rape her without any moral obligation whatsoever.