Was Killing Babies Good?

_{Barry Arrington

February 4, 2019

Intelligent Design}

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I have a question for our materialist interlocutors. As Georgi Boorman summarizes in this article, in many ancient cultures killing certain babies was an acceptable, even lauded, practice. Here’s my question: You say that morality is a social construct; which means that “good” means what the people of a society collectively deem to be good. If that is so, was it an affirmatively good thing when an ancient pagan killed a baby girl because she was a baby girl instead of a baby boy?

Comments

ScuzzaMan, Bob also follows the logic of materialism, as the exchange in this post demonstrates. Holocausts are not Bob's cup of tea, but they are the Nazis' cup of tea. And Bob assures us there is no standard to judge between his and the Nazis' tea preferences. Bob is a teacher. Presumably he is teaching this crap to his students. God help us.Barry Arrington_{February 5, 2019
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Bob, Here is what KF is referring to.Barry Arrington_{February 5, 2019
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Scuzzaman -
In other words, you’re consenting not only to the pagan murder of babies, but you are consenting that they would also be right to kill you for showing insufficient enthusiasm for the worship of their deity.
Again, right by who's standard? Not by mine, certainly. By your standard?Bob O'H_{February 5, 2019
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"To ask again what I asked at 1, by who’s standard?" And to nail that slippery reply to the wall - again - I will point out the following: if the answer depends on whom you ask, then you're answering the question of objective morality in the negative. The necessary implication of your response is that morality is subjective. In other words, you're consenting not only to the pagan murder of babies, but you are consenting that they would also be right to kill you for showing insufficient enthusiasm for the worship of their deity. And since self-negation is the ultimate rebuttal, you once again demonstrate both the practical and philosophical emptiness of your pose. Even as you protested you would be contradicting yourself. "Please don't kill me - I'm just a sincere believer in the subjective nature of all morality!" You're a leaf on the wind, cf. Ephesians 4: 14.ScuzzaMan_{February 5, 2019
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KF - I have no idea what the Leff fallacy is: googling for "Leff fallacy" and searching your link for Leff doesn't help.Bob O'H_{February 5, 2019
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UD Editors: Comment deleted. Hazel said he was refusing to comment on this thread. We are helping him keep his word.hazel_{February 5, 2019
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BO'H: so, it is the Leff fallacy of the grand sez who vs the objectivity of moral knowledge. See the OP: https://uncommondescent.com/ethics/logic-and-first-principles-10-knowable-moral-truth-and-moral-government-vs-nihilistic-manipulation/ KFkairosfocus_{February 5, 2019
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Barry @ 8 -
Yes, we already know that. That was assumed in the question. The question is this: Would you have been right and everyone else wrong?
To ask again what I asked at 1, by who’s standard?Bob O'H_{February 5, 2019
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"re 9: as kf has pointed out, if that definition were true, reform would never be possible. It seems to me, in part from my own internal experience and in part from my empirical knowledge of people and societies, that people draw on an inward source of moral judgment in addition to the cultural views which embody the moral judgments of their society." Hazel, This is a good and trenchant point. And it raises a subsequent question: WHERE did the theory of tabula rasa come from? Because it is the basis of the presumption that right and wrong are merely temporary opinions based on cultural conditions. It is the basis of all the current repetition, shouting, de-platforming, banning, and silencing of dissent against the liberal agenda; the theory being that if nobody ever hears a contrary view then everyone will accept and assimilate and practice the liberal agenda. The problem is that it is simply not true. And the fact is, that the possibility of reform (of "improvement", or "progress") is that it necessarily admits of the AT LEAST equal possibility of deform, of degradation, of regress. Given the second law of thermodynamics, the possibility of regress is actually an overwhelming probability, and the only possibility of reform is by definition a very straight and narrow path. As the geneticists will tell you, there's an amazingly few workable ways to form complex proteins, while there's an incomprehensibly large proportion of ways in which it doesn't work at all, and the organism dies. Death, you should understand, and particularly pertinent to the thought experiment of the OP, is universally understood to be the ultimate regression.ScuzzaMan_{February 5, 2019
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Ed, You have never addressed the question in the OP, much less answered it. You keep going on and on about what you would think about this or that. The question that you steadfastly refuse to face is this: If you had been the only person who believed sex selection baby killing was wrong, would you have been right and everyone else wrong? Prediction: More blithering about what 2019 Ed feels in his viscera instead of answering the question.Barry Arrington_{February 4, 2019
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I have a question for our materialist interlocutors. As Georgi Boorman summarizes in this article, in many ancient cultures killing certain babies was an acceptable, even lauded, practice. Here’s my question: You say that morality is a social construct; which means that “good” means what the people of a society collectively deem to be good. If that is so, was it an affirmatively good thing when an ancient pagan killed a baby girl because she was a baby girl instead of a baby boy?
Much like Bob O'H wrote, it was an affirmatively good thing for them then but it is certainly not an affirmatively good thing for me now. Who is right? As far as I can see, there is no absolute standard against which to measure it.Seversky_{February 4, 2019
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BA
Unlike you, I am able to say unreservedly that sex selection baby killing is wrong in all places, at all times, in all circumstances.
As opposed to when I said
I believe that it is bad under all circumstances, past and present.

You allow that if enough people consider it to be good, it would be, by virtue of that fact, good.
Where did I say that? All I have said is that any of us raised in an ancient pagan society that accepted that sex selective baby killing was good might also be deluded into believing that it is good. If you deny this then you are lying to yourself.Ed George_{February 4, 2019
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Ed at 30. Is it possible that the influences in a person's life could, hypothetically, lead them to commit error? Yes. Here is the difference. Unlike you, I am able to say unreservedly that sex selection baby killing is wrong in all places, at all times, in all circumstances. You allow that if enough people consider it to be good, it would be, by virtue of that fact, good.Barry Arrington_{February 4, 2019
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BA@29, Is it possible that you were not very good at presenting the point of your OP? But, just for interest sake, are you willing to answer my question?Ed George_{February 4, 2019
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Ed
can you honestly say that if you were raised in your proposed ancient pagan times that you wouldn’t believe that sex selecting baby killing wasn’t a good thing?
Can you miss the point of the OP by a wider margin? It's like you are shooting at a target due north of you by pointing your gun due south. *palm forehead*Barry Arrington_{February 4, 2019
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Hazel
Thanks, BB. “theological cat fight”: I like that! ????
Those weren’t my original words. But I thought that mentioning contesting male genital dimensional measurements would drive BA77 into an apoplectic fit. :)Brother Brian_{February 4, 2019
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BA
And yet you toe the materialist time every single time. If you are not a materialist, you will do until one gets here. And I will treat you as such.
How exactly have I towed the materialist line? I would be interested to hear. But getting back to the issue being discussed, can you honestly say that if you were raised in your proposed ancient pagan times that you wouldn’t believe that sex selecting baby killing wasn’t a good thing?Ed George_{February 4, 2019
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Thanks, BB. "theological cat fight": I like that! :)hazel_{February 4, 2019
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BA77
That Hazel did not reference God in her comment is telling.
Yes, it tells me that she didn’t mention God.
Hazel, although she often claims she is not an atheist, has consistently argued for atheistic positions.
Where has she claimed not to be an atheist?
Moreover, Hazel when pressed on exactly what her specific worldview is, has steadfastly refused to directly state exactly what her worldview is.
Which contradicts the previous sentence that she claims not to be an atheist. Which, in itself, is very telling. Is she not entitled to discuss the subjects she is interested in without being forced to get into a theological cat fight?Brother Brian_{February 4, 2019
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Ed
First, I am not a materialist.
And yet you toe the materialist time every single time. If you are not a materialist, you will do until one gets here. And I will treat you as such.Barry Arrington_{February 4, 2019
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Hazel holds that,,,
"that people draw on an inward source of moral judgment in addition to the cultural views which embody the moral judgments of their society."
That Hazel did not reference God in her comment is telling. Hazel, although she often claims she is not an atheist, has consistently argued for atheistic positions. Moreover, Hazel when pressed on exactly what her specific worldview is, has steadfastly refused to directly state exactly what her worldview is. Thus, that Hazel did not reference God in her comment is telling. It tells us that she is basically drawing upon her own moral intuition, and apparently compromising her own moral intuition, when need be, to conform to the society around her, and is not looking to God so as to form the basis of her moral judgments. Again, she stated,,,
"that people draw on an inward source of moral judgment in addition to the cultural views which embody the moral judgments of their society."
That Hazel does not look directly to God as the basis of her morality but looks to her own moral intuition, as well as the morality of the society around her to form the basis of her morality, is a very slippery slope for her to base her moral foundation upon. Indeed, it is downright dangerous,
Proverbs 14:12 There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.
Unlike man's morality, which is fallible, and which is often subject to whatever the prevailing, i.e. 'progressive', cultural whims of the day are, God's morality is absolutely perfect and certainly never subject to change according to prevailing cultural whims. And, as the article that Mr. Arrington highlighted in the OP made clear, only when cultures were finally based on a Judeo-Christian worldview were those cultures finally able to rise above the moral depravity of 'culturally accepted' infanticide. To this day, 'epidemic' infanticide, especially among females, is commonly practiced in China and even in India where it was outlawed. And although it is often falsely taught that the middle ages of Christian Europe were the supposedly 'dark ages' after the Greek and Roman civilizations collapsed, the truth is that Christianity saved western civilization from the 'dark ages' of the moral depravity of the Greeks and the Romans. As the following ancient historian commented, "In my morals and ethics, I have learned to accept that I am not Greek or Roman at all, but thoroughly and proudly Christian."
Tom Holland: Why I was wrong about Christianity - 2016 It took me a long time to realise my morals are not Greek or Roman, but thoroughly, and proudly, Christian. Excerpt: The longer I spent immersed in the study of classical antiquity, the more alien and unsettling I came to find it. The values of Leonidas, whose people had practised a peculiarly murderous form of eugenics, and trained their young to kill uppity Untermenschen by night, were nothing that I recognised as my own; nor were those of Caesar, who was reported to have killed a million Gauls and enslaved a million more. It was not just the extremes of callousness that I came to find shocking, but the lack of a sense that the poor or the weak might have any intrinsic value. As such, the founding conviction of the Enlightenment – that it owed nothing to the faith into which most of its greatest figures had been born – increasingly came to seem to me unsustainable. “Every sensible man,” Voltaire wrote, “every honourable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror.” Rather than acknowledge that his ethical principles might owe anything to Christianity, he preferred to derive them from a range of other sources – not just classical literature, but Chinese philosophy and his own powers of reason. Yet Voltaire, in his concern for the weak and oppressed, was marked more enduringly by the stamp of biblical ethics than he cared to admit. His defiance of the Christian God, in a paradox that was certainly not unique to him, drew on motivations that were, in part at least, recognisably Christian. “We preach Christ crucified,” St Paul declared, “unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness.” He was right. Nothing could have run more counter to the most profoundly held assumptions of Paul’s contemporaries – Jews, or Greeks, or Romans. The notion that a god might have suffered torture and death on a cross was so shocking as to appear repulsive. Familiarity with the biblical narrative of the Crucifixion has dulled our sense of just how completely novel a deity Christ was. In the ancient world, it was the role of gods who laid claim to ruling the universe to uphold its order by inflicting punishment – not to suffer it themselves. Today, even as belief in God fades across the West, the countries that were once collectively known as Christendom continue to bear the stamp of the two-millennia-old revolution that Christianity represents. It is the principal reason why, by and large, most of us who live in post-Christian societies still take for granted that it is nobler to suffer than to inflict suffering. It is why we generally assume that every human life is of equal value. In my morals and ethics, I have learned to accept that I am not Greek or Roman at all, but thoroughly and proudly Christian. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/religion/2016/09/tom-holland-why-i-was-wrong-about-christianity?fbclid=IwAR0QqBmBxdpkHh_iiXlJX-UbwShtej-wnB721Z1eULApM6fuxSUzSjnBJA8
Indeed Christianity, and the presuppositions therein, lay at the founding of modern science, and many other modern institutions that many people in America currently take for granted,
21 Positive Contributions Christianity Has Made Through the Centuries By D. James Kennedy (excerpted from "What if Jesus Had Never Been Born?") (1) Hospitals, which essentially began during the Middle Ages. (2) Universities, which also began during the Middle Ages. In addition, most of the world’s greatest universities were started for Christian purposes. (3) Literacy and education for the masses. (4) Capitalism and free enterprise. (5) Representative government, particularly as it has been seen in the American experiment. (6) The separation of political powers. (7) Civil liberties. (8) The abolition of slavery, both in antiquity and in more modern times. (9) Modern science. (10) The discovery of the New World by Columbus. (11) The elevation of women. (12) Benevolence and charity; the good Samaritan ethic. (13) Higher standards of justice. (14) The elevation of common man. (15) The condemnation of adultery, homosexuality, and other sexual perversions. This has helped to preserve the human race, and it has spared many from heartache. (16) High regard for human life. (17) The civilizing of many barbarian and primitive cultures. (18) The codifying and setting to writing of many of the world’s languages. (19) Greater development of art and music. The inspiration for the greatest works of art. (20) The countless changed lives transformed from liabilities into assets to society because of the gospel. (21) The eternal salvation of countless souls. https://verticallivingministries.com/tag/benefits-of-christianity-to-society/
Thus for Hazel to state that she looks to her own moral intuition and that of the culture around her, instead of looking to God, to form her own personal moral judgments, is for her to be completely ignorant of the fact that she lives in a country whose moral foundations, as well as most all of its major institutions, were laid upon the 'perfect morality' of the Judeo-Christian worldview, and were certainly not laid upon the very fallible moral intuitions of man. Hazel is hardly alone in her ignorance. The universities that Christianity itself established in America, have forgotten, via the false revisionist history of atheists, from whence America and they themselves have come.,,, So much so that Obama himself falsely stated this,,
In His Farewell Address, President Obama Misrepresented the American Founding - January 11, 2017 Excerpt: "One thing he said about the American founding was especially troubling. Mr. Obama traced “the essential spirit of innovation and practical problem-solving that guided our Founders” to the Enlightenment. It was that movement, which he defined as “a faith in reason, and enterprise, and the primacy of right over might, that allowed us to resist the lure of fascism and tyranny during the Great Depression” and build a world order based on “the rule of law, human rights, freedoms of religion, speech, assembly, and an independent press.” This spin is common in the leftist canon, but it is historical revisionism of the highest rank.,,, The wisdom of the Bible and the clarity of natural law gave the founding generation the guidance they needed to frame a government suitable for an imperfectible but dignified humanity characterized by moral self-restraint and “a firm reliance on Divine Providence.” The shout of defiance in the President’s farewell address, that man can be made perfect through human cooperation with the “arc of history,” runs counter to the philosophy of the founding of our country and the text of the Constitution." https://stream.org/in-his-farewell-address-president-obama/ "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." Only eighteen years after the Pilgrims landed in the New World, Harvard College, the first of the Ivy League schools, was established for the sake of educating the clergy and raising up a Christian academic institution to meet the needs of perpetuating the Christian faith. All of the Ivy League schools were established by Christians for the sake of advancing Christianity and meeting the academic needs of the New World. No better summary of this effort can be offered than the one provided by the founders themselves:,,, https://christianheritagefellowship.com/the-christian-founding-of-harvard/
bornagain77_{February 4, 2019
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Hi Ed- Given the scale of abortions today we are as ignorant as those pagans. Given the state of evolutionism in academia, we revel in our ignorance. That is what our not-so-distant descendants will be saying.ET_{February 4, 2019
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ET
The ancient pagan was ignorant and only ignorance can justify the killing of babies, including the unborn.
I don't think that anyone is claiming that the ancient pagans were not ignorant with respect to killing babies. But that begs the question, what will our distant descendants think that we were ignorant of with respect to morality and good and bad? Surely we are not immune from similar ignorances.Ed George_{February 4, 2019
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The ancient pagan was ignorant and only ignorance can justify the killing of babies, including the unborn.ET_{February 4, 2019
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BA
Ed, your honesty is refreshing, horrifying as well, but also refreshing. Most materialists are unwilling to admit that their premises lead inexorably to conclusions, like yours, that whether sex selection baby killing is good is an open question depending on the circumstances.
First, I am not a materialist. Secondly, my conclusion was not that whether sex selection baby killing is good is dependent on circumstances. I believe that it is bad under all circumstances, past and present. My point was that if we lived in those ancient pagan times none of us could guarantee that we would hold the same opinion about baby killing that we hold today. That doesn't change the nature of whether it is good or bad, that is unchangeable, what it speaks to is the fact that we are fallible in what we perceive to be good and bad. And it is these perceptions of good and bad that can change depending on circumstances.Ed George_{February 4, 2019
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Hazel,
I don’t participate in threads where posts are deleted because they are deemed tangential.
Liar. You don't participate in threads where the horrifying consequences of your worldview are exposed for all to see. You use the "deletion" excuse for exiting the thread as a flimsy pretext. You should follow Ed George's example Hazel. Have the courage of your convictions. Barry Arrington_{February 4, 2019
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Ed George
the only honest answer is, “I don’t know”.
Ed, your honesty is refreshing, horrifying as well, but also refreshing. Most materialists are unwilling to admit that their premises lead inexorably to conclusions, like yours, that whether sex selection baby killing is good is an open question depending on the circumstances.Barry Arrington_{February 4, 2019
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FYI: I don't participate in threads where posts are deleted because they are deemed tangential. I would have some things I'd like to say, but not under these circumstances.hazel_{February 4, 2019
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Vmahuna, in regards to your claim that "There is NO fixed, universal “morality” I suggest that you read Mr. Arrington's referenced article, which states among other things,,,
Infanticide Is The Historical Hallmark Of A Pagan Culture Judeo-Christian principles helped to form our culture, and Christianity is deeply pro-life. Until now, restraining evil as Christianity defines it bound Americans together with a common creed. Excerpt: Judeo-Christian Morality (alone) Has Saved Us from Much Evil Excerpt: Northam’s endorsement of infanticide by exposure is only shocking because we have lived in a rare cultural moment in which infanticide is considered abhorrent. This extraordinary development is no accident. A sense of morality about life and death is not the product of evolution over the last 2,000 years. Rather, humanity’s progress out of death culture is due to nothing less than Judeo-Christian influence.,,, Christianity Deeply Shaped the Early Days Of America Infanticide was outlawed in colonial America. The earliest recorded execution for infanticide was in 1648 in Massachusetts. Similar court cases from the 17th and early 18th century are found in Maryland, Maine, Virginia, and New York. Abortion was also a prosecutable offense. Between 1670 and 1807, there were 51 convictions of infanticide in Massachusetts. The seriousness with which our forefathers considered the murder of children was not due to the influence of the “great” philosophizing of Aristotle, Seneca, or Cicero. It was due to the Christian faith. It is Christians who have historically run orphanages, adoption agencies, and pregnancy clinics. It is Christians who advocate most fiercely for heartbeat bills and abolition. It is Christians out on the sidewalk, day after day, begging women not to kill their babies and offering to connect them with church members who are willing to adopt. Christians take seriously the biblical command to “look after the orphan and widow in their distress.” Where the kingdom of God* invades, death flees, both spiritually and physically. Where populations dwell in spiritual darkness, death finds favor. How can I know this for sure? How do I know our contemporary revulsion toward infanticide is not simply the result of human “progress” over the last two millennia? Because when Christianity is aggressively suppressed within a culture, as it has been under Communist and Socialist regimes, society chokes on the stench of death. Recent Godless Regimes Did Not Value Human Life,,, http://thefederalist.com/2019/02/04/without-christianity-we-might-unthinkingly-return-to-the-infanticidal-cultures-of-yore/
bornagain77_{February 4, 2019
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BA
I ask you the same question I asked Bob: Suppose you had lived in an ancient pagan society where killing babies was considered good by nearly everyone. Suppose you were the lone holdout, the only one in the whole society who insisted it was not good. Would you have been right and everyone else wrong?
The February 4 2019 me would say that yes the ancient pagan me was right and everyone else was wrong. Would the ancient pagan me say the same thing? The premise of your question would necessitate that I would. Unless, of course, the ancient pagan me was a pathological liar. But assuming that we don't know what the ancient pagan me would believe, the more interesting question is whether or not the ancient pagan me would believe that killing these babies is wrong. Like everyone here, I would hope that the ancient pagan me would believe that it is wrong, but the only honest answer is, "I don't know".Ed George_{February 4, 2019
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