Biblical Israel Reaches Out to Pres. Bush [Archive]

humus_sapiens

03-19-2003, 01:09 AM

Originally posted by sharonbn
There are a few things I don't understand...

I suggest you read the whole petition and sign it if you find it worth of your support or don't if you don't.

1. Before 1948, Judea and Samaria were not "Jewish" so why do you separate these 19 years from the 30 years of British and 400 years Turkish rule over the same area?

Hello! "Judea", "Jewish". Jewish roots. Works for me.

In fact, the biblical state of Israel ceased to exist more than 2,000 years ago. Why does this ancient state give the Jews ANY precedence over the Palestinians?

Maybe because the Jews lived there for 2 millenia before the Arab settlers came and built al-Aqsa in al-Quds? Jews never left the land willingly, they were forced out. State or no state, the Jews never ceased their presence there. I only support peoples living side by side in peace. But if the guests abuse the hosts or even try kill them, time to show them the door.

Jews can settle freely in the state of Israel. Judea and Samaria are not considered part of this state, not even in the eyes of the state of Israel itself.

So, are they considered Palestinian Arab territories? Since then?! Where are the borders of these Arab territories? The armistice line of 1967? LOL.

2. Who are the Jews you refer to as were killed "by the thousands" by the Jordanian army? There was not a single Jew living in Judea and Samaria at the said time period.

If you refer to the 1948 and 1967 wars, then its war time, and Arab casualties also occured at that time.

If you refer to the terror attacks from Jordan, they were not carried out by the Jordanian army, but by the Palestinians. There is a distinction there, just like the distinction we all make between Baruch Goldstein and IDF soldiers.

Agree. Curiously, the Arabs fight together against Israel. However, when they lose, the poor Palestinians conveniently "forget" participating in and supporting the agression.

3. If Jordan had a "no Jews" policy in its land,

What do you mean "if"? They always had. They still do. Check out the fate of ancient Jewish communities in the ME: www.jimena-justice.org

that does not speak about the future Palestinian state. The Palestinians stated several times in the past that Jewish settlements may exist under Palestinian rule.

Ha! I can only imagine. Can you?

sharonbn

03-19-2003, 04:31 AM

Originally posted by humus_sapiens
I suggest you read the whole petition and sign it if you find it worth of your support or don't if you don't.

nice way to develop a discussion, humus.

This petition presents a unique historical point of view of Israel in general and the occupied territories in particular. All I wanted was to question this pov by presenting another one, and see if they may be bridged or otherwise discussed.
Unlike you, I consider myself a skeptical person. I question any cause brought before me, try to look at it from more than ONE angle.

Originally posted by humus_sapiens
Hello! "Judea", "Jewish". Jewish roots. Works for me.
What is this?? now you employ semantics?? you'll have to do better than that.
Remember, by this line of thinking, Samaria belongs to the Samaritons. (they do exist)

Originally posted by humus_sapiens
Maybe because the Jews lived there for 2 millenia before the Arab settlers came and built al-Aqsa in al-Quds?
So what??? I don't try to be provocative. I really don't understand.
I don't say Jews don't have a natural right over the land. I am a Zionist by choice. I'm saying I don't understand why this takes precedence over the Palestinian claim for the land. In my eyes the Palestinian claim for the land is valid because they are living on it for the last 1,500 years. The fact that Jews have some presence in the land that is longer - that does not invalidate the Palestinain claim. In any case, the final solution will be based on practical issues, sucj as land ownership, security, etc. rather than historical/ideological/theological emotions.

I want to sharpen some points here:

1. According to the bible, the Jews themselves conquered the land from the Hiti, Yevusi, Cananite and other people who lived there. To say the God promised the land to the Jews is a pure Jewish claim, that may be invalid in the eyes of others.

2. The Arabs did not conquer the land from the Jews, they took it from the Romans (a.k.a Byzantines). In fact, the Jews did live in peace and prospered undr the Khalifa rule. Until the 20th cent. Jewish persecution occured almost exclusively in Christian Europe.

The Arabs also did not destroy the temple. Al Aqsa mosque was not built on the temple, it was built on the RUINS of the temple. again, the work of the Romans.

3. The Zionist movement and the founding of the state of Israel were driven by two equally essenatial factors: The hidtorical link of the Jewish people to Israel and Erupean persecutions, that intensified in the 19th and 20th cent. Without EITHER factors, I seriously doubt that the state of Israel would be established.

Now, you cannot seriously blame the Arabs for the misfortune of the Jews in the diaspora.

Originally posted by humus_sapiens
So, are they considered Palestinian Arab territories? Since then?! Where are the borders of these Arab territories? The armistice line of 1967? LOL.
The Palestinian ideology states that all of Israel is historical Palestine (this is something I believe that is incorrect.) However, they understand that this claim is both unrealistic and morally problematic, since it was them who refused the UN partition plan. They claim that since Israel initiated the 67 war (another problematic statement) it should withdraw to the situation before the war.
I say, even if the 67 war was provoked by Egypt and the Arab states, that does not give ANY moral or legal validation what-so-ever to Israeli occupation of GS and WB. Germany initiated WWII without a doubt, and yet, no one claims Germany should be annexed to Britain.

Originally posted by humus_sapiens
Agree. Curiously, the Arabs fight together against Israel. However, when they lose, the poor Palestinians conveniently "forget" participating in and supporting the agression.
It is always the civilian population who pays the most in wars.

Originally posted by humus_sapiens
Ha! I can only imagine. Can you?
You're right. Given the fanatic, racist, violent nature of the settlers, it would never work. hell, WE can't handle these hooligans....

richcrassus

03-19-2003, 07:07 PM

WHat is Yesha??

richcrassus

03-19-2003, 07:07 PM

WHat is Yesha??

humus_sapiens

03-19-2003, 08:18 PM

Originally posted by richcrassus
WHat is Yesha??

A Hebrew acronim of "the territories" (Yehuda, Shomron, Aza).

humus_sapiens

03-19-2003, 08:50 PM

Originally posted by sharonbn
nice way to develop a discussion, humus.

All I meant was different people listen to different drummers. I liked the most of the petition and have signed it.

What is this?? now you employ semantics?? you'll have to do better than that.
Remember, by this line of thinking, Samaria belongs to the Samaritons. (they do exist)

Would you argue that Judea is the heart of Biblical Jewish land?
That anywhere you dig, you find Jewish artifacts? Maybe some don't care, but I do.

In any case, the final solution will be based on practical issues, sucj as land ownership, security, etc. rather than historical/ideological/theological emotions.

Was it based on in N. America? It is all (not so long ago) occupied land, you know.

Now, you cannot seriously blame the Arabs for the misfortune of the Jews in the diaspora.

I don't. IMHO, the Jews demonstrated more than enough tolerance and good will towards living together. OTOH, the Arabs "never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity" to peaceful coexistence. Don't you think it's about enough burying our children, while quetly choking on our tears? Do you seriously think all they want is the state of Falastin side-by-side of Israel and the 120-year old terror campaign against the Jews will stop? And 50 year-old attempts to annihilate Israel will stop also?

I say, even if the 67 war was provoked by Egypt and the Arab states, that does not give ANY moral or legal validation what-so-ever to Israeli occupation of GS and WB. Germany initiated WWII without a doubt, and yet, no one claims Germany should be annexed to Britain.

As a matter of fact, you should learn what happened after WWII to the Sudetes. It was annexed by Czechoslovakia, and 10 million of ethnic Germans who lived there for millenia were transferred to Germany. Many were massacred, unfortunately.

You're right. Given the fanatic, racist, violent nature of the settlers, it would never work. hell, WE can't handle these hooligans....

Are you blaming the Israeli setllers or the Arab settlers? :confused:

I am David

03-31-2003, 08:33 PM

The Hebrews/Jews were forced off their land by the Romans 2000 years ago. This was unrightous, and obviously did not make Israel morally not the home of the Jews. It was still the homeland of the Jews, no matter how few Jews were on the land after the Roman ethnic cleansing. Thus, the Arabs, who evenually became known as the Palestinians, who moved on the land when the Jews were gone, were not actually morally entitled to that land. Neither sadly, are Palestinian descendants who live there now. Yes, they have nothing to do with the actions of their ancestors, but you have to own up to the mistakes of the past and correct them where necesary, sorry but that's just the way life is.

That is why the Jews have a right to the land of the West Bank and Gaza, that is why they have a right to settle there.

I'm not saying the Palestinians should be kicked off, or that individuals should have their land confiscated, no not at all. I'm saying that the land is not their "nation", not something that is morally theirs for the taking for making into their own nation. That right of the land belongs to the Jews.

sharonbn

04-01-2003, 04:46 AM

Originally posted by I am David
The Hebrews/Jews were forced off their land by the Romans 2000 years ago. This was unrightous, and obviously did not make Israel morally not the home of the Jews. It was still the homeland of the Jews, no matter how few Jews were on the land after the Roman ethnic cleansing. Thus, the Arabs, who evenually became known as the Palestinians, who moved on the land when the Jews were gone, were not actually morally entitled to that land. Neither sadly, are Palestinian descendants who live there now. Yes, they have nothing to do with the actions of their ancestors, but you have to own up to the mistakes of the past and correct them where necesary, sorry but that's just the way life is.

1. You're forgetting that the Jews themselves conquered the land from the Hiti and Yevusi people and others that were here prior to the Israeli invasion from Egypt.

2. I will say this again: The Arabs did not conquer Israel from the Jews. The Arabs took the land from the Byzantines. They did not see the little sign by the side of the road "This land belongs to the Jewish people". Seriously, What were they supposed to do? call the Jews back? They took it from the Romans and settled in the land. It is rightfully theirs from that point of time.

did you hear the Hebrew phrase "to steal from a thief is not stealing"?

Also, when they built Al Aqsa mosque, they didn't destroy the Jewish temple, it was already destroyed.

Originally posted by I am David
That is why the Jews have a right to the land of the West Bank and Gaza, that is why they have a right to settle there.
Sorry, I still don't get it. The land is legally not part of modern state of Israel. archeological escavations ther found remains of past Jewish settlemtns, but also remains of Roman and Arab settlements. In Jericho, remains of urban settlement were found that predates the Jewish period.
btw, prehistoric remains were found in caves in the Carmal mountain - so what???

I am David

04-01-2003, 11:35 AM

1. No, the Hebrews conquered the land from the caananites, who no longer exist, thus, they are not part of the picture and are not to be considered of whos land it is.

2. No one asked the Arabs to "call for the Jews to come back". But the fact of the matter is, they are back now, and just because the Arab's ancestors settled on land that was not theirs does not mean that just because they use it it is theirs for the taking (no I am not talking about individual property ownership). Just because something was stolen from someone, and that property passed through many people, even to those who obtained it innocently, and used it well, does not mean it still does not belong to the original owner.

3. The Jews have a right to settle on the West Bank and Gaza, because it is morally theirs, wether or not the land is part of Israel. The time when the land was stolen from the Jews is real and tangible, a momorable crime, not some prehistoric event that no one can put their finger on or be reasonably sure that it even happened, or who it happened to. That's why its just like a modern day theft, except on a larger scale. The land WAS stolen and its rightfull owners ARE back that is why it is the Jews'.

To steal from a theif is to steal, you know why? Because if you know it is a theif, and do not return it to the original owner(or try to), then it is just as if you had stolen it originally.

Originally posted by sharonbn
1. You're forgetting that the Jews themselves conquered the land from the Hiti and Yevusi people and others that were here prior to the Israeli invasion from Egypt.

2. I will say this again: The Arabs did not conquer Israel from the Jews. The Arabs took the land from the Byzantines. They did not see the little sign by the side of the road "This land belongs to the Jewish people". Seriously, What were they supposed to do? call the Jews back? They took it from the Romans and settled in the land. It is rightfully theirs from that point of time.

did you hear the Hebrew phrase "to steal from a thief is not stealing"?

Also, when they built Al Aqsa mosque, they didn't destroy the Jewish temple, it was already destroyed.

Sorry, I still don't get it. The land is legally not part of modern state of Israel. archeological escavations ther found remains of past Jewish settlemtns, but also remains of Roman and Arab settlements. In Jericho, remains of urban settlement were found that predates the Jewish period.
btw, prehistoric remains were found in caves in the Carmal mountain - so what???

sharonbn

04-03-2003, 02:29 AM

Originally posted by I am David
1. No, the Hebrews conquered the land from the caananites, who no longer exist, thus, they are not part of the picture and are not to be considered of whos land it is.

I have two things to say about this
1 You're arguing that if a nation conquers a land and totally annihilates the previous owner – it can declare itself the new owner? That sounds reasonable to you? You really think this is the moral grounds on which the Jews can claim Israel?
I guess you don’t really think so.
The Jews came to Israel because they claim that their God gave them this land. The Jews have to accept that other people don’t have the same conviction. In their eyes, the Jews are just one of a string of nations that conquered the land by force and settled in. In this respect, the Jews are no different than whoever came after them.

2 One of the claims that were made against the Zionists is that they are not the direct descendents of the Biblical Hebrew people. For instance, the Arabs claim that the European Jewry is the remains of the Khazar empire, whose people converted to Judaism sometime in the 7th cent. You may of course believe that today’s Jews are actually direct descendants of the Biblical nation, but you have to accept that this claim may be disputed.

Originally posted by I am David
2. No one asked the Arabs to "call for the Jews to come back". But the fact of the matter is, they are back now, and just because the Arab's ancestors settled on land that was not theirs does not mean that just because they use it it is theirs for the taking (no I am not talking about individual property ownership). Just because something was stolen from someone, and that property passed through many people, even to those who obtained it innocently, and used it well, does not mean it still does not belong to the original owner.

you mean to tell me you seriously believe a Jew can come to an Arab whose family lived in Israel for more than 1,000 years and tell him that this land does not belong to him? And you’re not joking??

”just because the Arab's ancestors settled on land” ???
As I said above, the Jews cannot conveniently ignore 2,000 years of history, 1,500 years of continuous Arab presence in Israel and say that Israel belongs to them and to them only. They just can’t say that and expect this claim to be taken seriously and with good faith by the Arabs.

Originally posted by I am David
3. The Jews have a right to settle on the West Bank and Gaza, because it is morally theirs, wether or not the land is part of Israel. The time when the land was stolen from the Jews is real and tangible, a momorable crime, not some prehistoric event that no one can put their finger on or be reasonably sure that it even happened, or who it happened to. That's why its just like a modern day theft, except on a larger scale. The land WAS stolen and its rightfull owners ARE back that is why it is the Jews'.

Morality is THE most subjective term in the human terminology. What’s moral to one person is immoral to another. I will say this again: The Jews have to accept that their conviction regarding the promise of their God is their own conviction and is not shared by other nations. If you’re basing your “morality” on historical reasons, then again, you can’t claim something because you owned it 2,000 years ago, ignoring all that has happened since.

You're also making injustice comparing a biblical event to "modern day theft". You need to assess a historical event in the cultural context of the time. The rule of ancient times was that a loser cannot claim what he lost. The winner gets all the spiols. The historical fact remains that the Jews lost Israel to the Assyrians some 2000 years ago. When they lost it – they lost it.
btw, the Jews lost Israel because of internal division, so its entirely their fault.

Originally posted by I am David
To steal from a theif is to steal, you know why? Because if you know it is a theif, and do not return it to the original owner(or try to), then it is just as if you had stolen it originally. [/B]
I don’t how’s your Hebrew but I will say this
äâåðá îâðá ôèåø
Every Israeli kid knows this....

I am David

04-03-2003, 10:58 AM

1 You're arguing that if a nation conquers a land and totally annihilates the previous owner – it can declare itself the new owner? That sounds reasonable to you? You really think this is the moral grounds on which the Jews can claim Israel?
I guess you don’t really think so.

This is not an issue of what's "reasonable", it is an issue of what is morally relevant to the issue. Simply put, the caananites slowly died away after the Hebrews conquered the land, at which point the Hebrew people continued to live on the land where their descendent's direct responsibility for the conquest of the land disapeared. At this point you couldn't have said to them "You stole the Caanites land", because they obviously didn't, and it would be pointless to kick an entire people off the land just to make up for a moral injustice when it would benifit no one.

2 One of the claims that were made against the Zionists is that they are not the direct descendents of the Biblical Hebrew people. For instance, the Arabs claim that the European Jewry is the remains of the Khazar empire, whose people converted to Judaism sometime in the 7th cent. You may of course believe that today’s Jews are actually direct descendants of the Biblical nation, but you have to accept that this claim may be disputed.

Sure the Jews may not be the direct descendants of the Hebrews, and the Modern day English may not be the direct descendants of Anglos and Saxons but in fact a a mixture Chinese and extraterestrial aliens. We can all believe what we want, sure, but we must realize when it dwelves into the realms of ridiculous :)

you mean to tell me you seriously believe a Jew can come to an Arab whose family lived in Israel for more than 1,000 years and tell him that this land does not belong to him? And you’re not joking??

:eek:

I thought I had mentioned twice already, that I was not talking about individual land ownership. Mabye you didn't see it.

”just because the Arab's ancestors settled on land” ???
As I said above, the Jews cannot conveniently ignore 2,000 years of history, 1,500 years of continuous Arab presence in Israel and say that Israel belongs to them and to them only. They just can’t say that and expect this claim to be taken seriously and with good faith by the Arabs.

What would they be ignoring? Yes the Arabs have lived there a while, I'll grant them that. But that's it, they've lived there a while. If they want their own nation, then they can move to the 10 other or so Arab/Muslim nations. If they want to keep living where they are, then they can. End of story.

Morality is THE most subjective term in the human terminology. What’s moral to one person is immoral to another. I will say this again: The Jews have to accept that their conviction regarding the promise of their God is their own conviction and is not shared by other nations. If you’re basing your “morality” on historical reasons, then again, you can’t claim something because you owned it 2,000 years ago, ignoring all that has happened since.

Oh sure, morality is subjective, I'll grant you that. Just like some say that killing an innocent intentionally is wrong, some say it is right. And this is just applicable to theft. Some say stealing from others is wrong, some say it's right. What can ya do? ;)

You're also making injustice comparing a biblical event to "modern day theft". You need to assess a historical event in the cultural context of the time. The rule of ancient times was that a loser cannot claim what he lost. The winner gets all the spiols. The historical fact remains that the Jews lost Israel to the Assyrians some 2000 years ago. When they lost it – they lost it.
btw, the Jews lost Israel because of internal division, so its entirely their fault.

You are confusing issues. Yes stealing land was more acceptable back then, but it was no less immorall. The only difference back then from now is that such an act was not punished, but now is. The moral injustice of the event/act does not change just because it was a while ago. That immorall injustice lives on today no matter how "acceptable" the act was then. Since you are so keen on Israel not belonging to the Jews or Arabs ("When they lost it, they lost it", or "It really belongs to the Caanites!"), why don't you move out of the country?

btw, the Jews lost soveirgn control of the country because of internal division, but it they were still living on it, but the Romans expelling them is what really made them lose the land.

I have two things to say about this
I don’t how’s your Hebrew but I will say this
äâåðá îâðá ôèåø
Every Israeli kid knows this....

I repeat, stealing from a known theif is no better from stealing from the original owner, because what is the difference between taking something from its rightfull owner, and taking it from a theif who was the first one to take it from the rightfull owner? Because either way the rightfull owner isn't getting his property! You can argue about sayings all you like, it doesn't make it logical.

sharonbn

04-06-2003, 01:04 AM

Originally posted by I am David
This is not an issue of what's "reasonable", it is an issue of what is morally relevant to the issue. Simply put, the Canaanites slowly died away after the Hebrews conquered the land, at which point the Hebrew people continued to live on the land where their descendent's direct responsibility for the conquest of the land disapeared. At this point you couldn't have said to them "You stole the Caanites land", because they obviously didn't, and it would be pointless to kick an entire people off the land just to make up for a moral injustice when it would benifit [b]no one

To me, something that is unreasonable to the common sense is also immoral.
Also, I don’t understand this picture you draw of the Canaanites “slowly dying away”, which distances the Hebrews from taking a responsibility for that people’s fate. People don’t “slowly die” by themselves as long as they’re prolific. You have to be proactive for this scenario to occur. The Jews themselves are a testimony to that fact.

If you judge the Arab conquest of the land of Israel as immoral, you have to explain why the Jewish conquest of Israel is moral. Practical resons (i.e. it would benefit no one) does not give moral justification.

What you say is that had the Arabs annihilate every single Jew that lived in Israel when they conquered Israel – that would make their takeover moral? The fact is that the Arabs respected the Jews who lived under their rule (something that cnnot be said for the Christians). The Jewish “Golden Age” in Spain occurred under Arab rule.

I cannot see your logic for excusing Jewish conquest of Israel while at the same time condemning Arab one, just because the Jews were more “successful” in annihilating the previous owner of the land.

Originally posted by I am David
Sure the Jews may not be the direct descendants of the Hebrews, and the Modern day English may not be the direct descendants of Anglos and Saxons but in fact a a mixture Chinese and extraterestrial aliens. We can all believe what we want, sure, but we must realize when it dwelves into the realms of ridiculous :)

Oh I see, and claiming that modern Jewish people are direct descendants of a people who lived in Israel 2,000 years ago is not ridiculous?
The historical fact is that the Khazar people, who were a European empire in the middle ages, did indeed convert to Judaism. The empire collapsed sometime in the 13th or 14th cent. What happened to all these people? It is still an unaccounted question.
No one can prove the Jewish claim of a link to the biblical nation. So its left (once more) to the eye of the beholder.

Originally posted by I am David
I thought I had mentioned twice already, that I was not talking about individual land ownership. Mabye you didn't see it.
But you justify Jewish settlement in the occupied territories based on “national” reason. This settlement often contradicts land ownership by Arabs.

Originally posted by I am David
What would they be ignoring? Yes the Arabs have lived there a while, I'll grant them that. But that's it, they've lived there a while. If they want their own nation, then they can move to the 10 other or so Arab/Muslim nations. If they want to keep living where they are, then they can. End of story.
One's gotta love your semantic manipulation. 1,500 years are “a while”? That period does not grant any moral ownership of the land?
The homeland of the Palestinian people is Israel. It is not the other Arab/Muslim nations, just like the homeland of the Egyptians is Egypt, not Saudi-Arabia. You cannot regard the Arab countries as a vast parking lot, where people can swap places at will. The Palestinians are descendants of the Arabs who came here 1,500 years ago and this place is their homeland.

Originally posted by I am David
Oh sure, morality is subjective, I'll grant you that. Just like some say that killing an innocent intentionally is wrong, some say it is right. And this is just applicable to theft. Some say stealing from others is wrong, some say it's right. What can ya do?
What I’m saying is that if we agree that morality is subjective, then the Jews must accept that their justification for settling in the occupied territories is something that may be disputed by the Arabs and that the Arab argument may be valid in their eyes.
Its left to the fact that Jews settle in the territories because they conquered that land by force. No other reason. This land is not part of the state of Israel and legally belongs to the Palestinian people because it was them who lived in it before the Jewish settlement began in the 70s.
Claiming ownership of the land “by historical reasons” is unacceptable because Jews did not live in these places for hundreds of years.

Originally posted by I am David
You are confusing issues. Yes stealing land was more acceptable back then, but it was no less immorall. The only difference back then from now is that such an act was not punished, but now is. The moral injustice of the event/act does not change just because it was a while ago. That immorall injustice lives on today no matter how "acceptable" the act was then. Since you are so keen on Israel not belonging to the Jews or Arabs ("When they lost it, they lost it", or "It really belongs to the Caanites!"), why don't you move out of the country?
I will say this again: You differentiate Arab conquest from Israeli one just because the Israelites annihilated the previous owner. Just because the previous owner is not around does not change the MORALITY of the occupation. If any, it makes it less moral.

I myself do not live in disputed land. I am third generation of Israelis and Israel is my homeland. I live in the state of Israel that was recognized by the world nations in 1947, and by the Palestinians themselves in 1998. I don’t go settle in the occupied territories despite governmental incentives in the form of tax exempt and lower cost of living. I don’t go there for ideological reasons.

I believe the state of Israel has a sound moral basis for its foundation and existence.
I don’t believe Israelis have any right whatsoever to settle in any land that was occupied after the 1948 war.

I am David

04-06-2003, 01:32 AM

To me, something that is unreasonable to the common sense is also immoral.
Also, I don’t understand this picture you draw of the Canaanites “slowly dying away”, which distances the Hebrews from taking a responsibility for that people’s fate. People don’t “slowly die” by themselves as long as they’re prolific. You have to be proactive for this scenario to occur. The Jews themselves are a testimony to that fact.

If you judge the Arab conquest of the land of Israel as immoral, you have to explain why the Jewish conquest of Israel is moral. Practical resons (i.e. it would benefit no one) does not give moral justification.

Where on earth did I say it made it moral? I will explain this very simply once more. Although the Hebrews conquered Canaan from the canaanites, this act is immoral, however the immoralcy simply doesnt effect the issue, between the Jews and the Arabs. Now if the exact same hebrews that conquered the land were still around, I would say take that land away. Unfortunatly that time slipped away years even before the Kingdom of Israel apeared. So you are going to take the land away from the next to most rightfull owners, the innocent Jews, just because their ancient ancestors did some immorall thing(take the land)? No, the modern Jews inherited the land from their ancestors, and since they are still around, they are there to claim their property. The story would obviously be different if the Canaanites were still around, but of course they are not.

What you say is that had the Arabs annihilate every single Jew that lived in Israel when they conquered Israel – that would make their takeover moral? The fact is that the Arabs respected the Jews who lived under their rule (something that cnnot be said for the Christians). The Jewish “Golden Age” in Spain occurred under Arab rule.

I cannot see your logic for excusing Jewish conquest of Israel while at the same time condemning Arab one, just because the Jews were more “successful” in annihilating the previous owner of the land.

Explained above. There isn't the smallest hint of excusing any of the Jewish actions that were wrong. This nonesense about me claiming that act of conquering Canaan is ok because the Jews were succesfull is entirely your own fabrication.

Oh I see, and claiming that modern Jewish people are direct descendants of a people who lived in Israel 2,000 years ago is not ridiculous?

That question is asked as if it points out something ridiculous in my own argument, kindly point out what that is. No, there is nothing ridiculous about claiming that Jews are descended from *gasp* the Jews! Though also known as Hebrews, they Hebrews were Jewish.

The historical fact is that the Khazar people, who were a European empire in the middle ages, did indeed convert to Judaism. The empire collapsed sometime in the 13th or 14th cent. What happened to all these people? It is still an unaccounted question.
No one can prove the Jewish claim of a link to the biblical nation. So its left (once more) to the eye of the beholder.

If you can't say what happened to those people, it doesn't sound like it lends itself to much credibility. I have not heard one ligitamite(nonbaised) source even allude to this possibility.

But you justify Jewish settlement in the occupied territories based on “national” reason. This settlement often contradicts land ownership by Arabs.

It doesn't have to. This is a problem that is of no serious consiquence.

You gotta love your semantic manipulation. 1,500 years are “a while”? That period does not grant any moral ownership of the land?
The homeland of the Palestinian people is Israel. It is not the other Arab/Muslim nations, just like the homeland of the Egyptians is Egypt, not Saudi-Arabia. You cannot regard the Arab countries as a vast parking lot, where people can swap places at will. The Palestinians are descendants of the Arabs who came here 1,500 years ago and this place is their homeland.

Fine and dandy. Unfortunatly they jumped on the badwagon all too quickly, possibly not have knowing that the only other real existent owner was pushed off the land. This land didn't belong to them. Sorry, but just because you claim something as your own when it isn't and get away with it doesn't really make it your own. Sure, some made it their home, but that's like making your home in a house that was left vacant when its rightfull owner kidnapped from it and never came home. Sure you can live on it, but when the owner comes back, it just isn't yours. (not trying to say Jews can push Palestinians out of their houses at will)

What I’m saying is that if we agree that morality is subjective, then the Jews must accept that their justification for settling in the occupied territories is something that may be disputed by the Arabs and that the Arab argument may be valid in their eyes.
Its left to the fact that Jews settle in the territories because they conquered that land by force. No other reason. This land is not part of the state of Israel and legally belongs to the Palestinian people because it was them who lived in it before the Jewish settlement began in the 70s.
Claiming ownership of the land “by historical reasons” is unacceptable because Jews did not live in these places for hundreds of years.

"if we agree that morality is subjective". We never agreed on that. The only thing we agreed on is that morality is subjective IF you want to be a loony bin and be unfair and unjust (aka "killing innocent people is GOOD! Morality is subjective wah! WAH!"). Frankly if other people don't think that the Jewish claim to the land is justified (aka it was stolen from theirs, thus it is theirs by right because they did not willingly part with it), then it really isn't relevant. Sure the Arabs can disagree, and claim "you take land by force, you have no good reason, blah blah blah!" all they want. The fact remains, what actually happened is, it was stolen from them, it's still theirs.

I will say this again: You differentiate Arab conquest from Israeli one just because the Israelites annihilated the previous owner. Just because the previous owner is not around does not change the MORALITY of the occupation. If any, it makes it less moral.

I myself do not live in disputed land. I am third generation of Israelis and Israel is my homeland. I live in the state of Israel that was recognized by the world nations in 1947, and by the Palestinians themselves in 1998. I don’t go settle in the occupied territories despite governmental incentives in the form of tax exempt and lower cost of living. I don’t go there for ideological reasons.

Oh hoho!!! So you differentiate yourself from the settlers because the peice of land you live on just happened to be internationally accepted as Israel, and because you were succesfull (your family) in living on the land for 3 generations. It's funny how the argument just falls apart when it's turned around on yourself :rolleyes:

I believe the state of Israel has a sound moral basis for its foundation and existence.
I don’t believe Israelis have any right whatsoever to settle in any land that was occupied after the 1948 war.

Yeah but, morality is subjective isn't it? You're going to have to accept the fact that, the Arabs may not think your land is that of Israel's, just because the IDF managed to take more land in the 1948 war, JUST BECAUSE THE LAND WAS TAKEN BY FORCE! Blah blah blah....

humus_sapiens

04-06-2003, 03:15 AM

Originally posted by sharonbn
Oh I see, and claiming that modern Jewish people are direct descendants of a people who lived in Israel 2,000 years ago is not ridiculous?

Doesn't look ridiculous to me at all. I saw some genetic research proving that. Of course, the genotype of Jews and the Arabs is very close if not the same... Aside from ethnicity, the religion and national identity is a strong argument for this too. Another is the Jewish written history, because of very high rate of literacy.

The historical fact is that the Khazar people, who were a European empire in the middle ages, did indeed convert to Judaism. The empire collapsed sometime in the 13th or 14th cent. What happened to all these people? It is still an unaccounted question.

The pro-Arab sites are full of this "Jews = Khazars" hypothesis. Anything to disprove the Jewish links to Israel. I'd like to understand why do you repeat after them? Do you realize that _you_ doing it make much stronger case for that myth?

The Palestinians are descendants of the Arabs who came here 1,500 years ago and this place is their homeland.

...And also thousands upon thousands of those who recently came here from the neighboring countries after the Zionists (who called themselves Palestinians, BTW!) have turned the swamps and deserts into gardens. The British encouraged the Arab immigration, at the same time shutting down Jewish immigration.
Why you don't make any distinction?

I don’t believe Israelis have any right whatsoever to settle in any land that was occupied after the 1948 war. [/B]

The message you are sending here: "the aggression and terrorism works".
What about the Hebron massacre of 1929? Give it up?
What about 1967? The Egyptians started the war.
Even more, what about Americans, Canadians living on an occupied land?
What about the lands that were taken from Germany after WWII and given to Poland and Czechoslovakia?
How about the Albanians who were recently settled in Serbian and Croatian lands, with the help of NATO?

All illegal and immoral occupation? Should all this land be given back? Or only the land "occupied" by the Jews, because the "proud" Arab cannot live under Jewish flag? He simply explodes...

Finally, the main point you and other Mitzna supporters continue to miss: the issue is not about the land. Isn't it obvious already the Arabs are unable to tolerate any Jewish presence in the Middle East? Isn't it obvious they are unable to compromise to find a way to coexist peacefully?

I am afraid, the Arabs won't appreciate your friendly position towards them, but rather use it as a trampoline for their "final solution to the Jewish question".

ibrodsky

04-20-2003, 12:15 PM

Originally posted by sharonbn
I myself do not live in disputed land. I am third generation of Israelis and Israel is my homeland. I live in the state of Israel that was recognized by the world nations in 1947, and by the Palestinians themselves in 1998.

On this issue, there are three types of Arabs (1) those that recognize Israel's right to exist, (2) those that don't recognize Israel's right to exist, and (3) those that try to give the impression to Westerners that they recognize Israel's right to exist but do so only as a tactical ploy to extract concessions.

Given this, I don't know how you can feel you are not living on "disputed land."

I believe the state of Israel has a sound moral basis for its foundation and existence.
I don’t believe Israelis have any right whatsoever to settle in any land that was occupied after the 1948 war.

Your own formulation of this point shows it is not so simple. What makes land captured in 1948 immune to dispute?

A couple of points worthy of notice:

* None of Israel's Arab enemies were interested in negotiating any sort of compromise until Israel began building settlements.

* They don't merely call for Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders, which they never recognized anyway, they demand that Jews get out of the West Bank and Gaza.

Part of a genuine peace would be willingness to form a Palestinian state with a Jewish minority, just as Israel is a Jewish state with a sizable Arab minority.

sharonbn

05-04-2003, 05:59 AM

The argument here is discussed on two separate levels: moral/philosophical and practical/political. I am david agrees with me that morally speaking, the Jewish conquest of Israel is the same as the Arab one.
Originally posted by I am David
Although the Hebrews conquered Canaan from the canaanites, this act is immoral, however the immoralcy simply doesnt effect the issue, between the Jews and the Arabs
He states that since the Jewish conquest came before the Arab one – that makes the Jews the rightful owner and the Arabs the thieves. I disagree for two reasons:

1) The Arabs did not take the land from the Jews – they took it from the Romans. The Arabs where not the ones who caused the Jews the historical injustice and are in no way “bound” to correct that injustice.
You have to remember we are talking about a vastly different period in history than the present. Its not like the world was already neatly divided into nations and countries and everyone knew their place. This is a period when the same nations and cuontries were actualy formed so the notion of "national land ownership" was still taking shape.
For instance - at the same period, the Vikings were turning into Normans and also English (through conquest), Vikings also played a role in the creation of the Russian nation - again through conquest, etc.

2) After 2,000 years of absence, Jews cannot just appear and claim “what’s theirs”, conveniently ignoring 1,500 years of Arab residence in the land. These 1,500 years give the Arabs a claim on the land at least as legitimate as the Jewish one.

Now, in line of the above (that both people have some legitimate claim on the land), I move to the practical side: the present status quo, also acceptable by the Palestinian leadership in 1998, is the borders created after 48 war. I guess the reason is that pre 67 is the most recent situation where a more-or-less total separation was achieved between Jews and Palestinians (assuming Arab Israelis are indeed Israelis, not Palestinian citizens – this is a different issue). This is indeed far from a just and perfect solution, but seems like a reasonable compromise between What’s right and what’s feasible.

Now one needs to ask oneself is it worth it to “implement” Jewish right over the land: Will this step further complicate the already impossible entanglement? Is the price in human suffering worth it?

I say (as you might expect) that the present complicated situation merits Jewish settlement in the occupied territories fruitless. I don’t believe (anymore) that Jews and Palestinians can live together in piece. Not in the foreseeable future. A separation, as total as possible, needs to be implemented for piece to exist. This means that either Jews or Palestinians will have to move away from the land as part of the permanent agreement. In my eyes, it is both more just and more practical that Jews will be the ones who will have to leave.

Regarding the differentiation I make between the state of Israel and the occupied territories:

The differentiation is not my invention. It comes from the perception of the Zionist goal. I am a Zionist, a true believer of the Zionist cause and its moral justification (and I don't call myself Palestinian...) The Zionist goal was NEVER the restoration of biblical Israel with its biblical borders. Zionism is about the Jewish people – giving that people a home and refuge. The sovereign state of Israel serves that function. That state draws its legitimacy from the recognition of the world nations, as well as the Palestinian leadership since 1998.

This is as undisputed as you can get here. There will be individuals who will dispute everything. Palestinian leadership accepted Israel in its pre 67 borders, the same way Israeli governments accepted Palestinians right for statehood on the occupied territories.

I am David

05-04-2003, 12:02 PM

Sharon your argument makes no decent sense. "1,500 years give the Arabs a claim on the land at least as legitimate as the Jewish one"? Why does it? Why do you think you have the authority to define the amount of time it takes for one group of peoples claim to the land overides anothers? You say 1,500 years is enough, well would you say 2 years is enough? No doubt you will say that is much to little. Well guess what, in my OPINION, one just as valid as yours I might add, 1,500 years is not enough to overide the original owners right to the land. In my opinion, it has to be at least 5,000 years. It is of my opinion that the right of ownership of land (as a nation) for a certain people, is no small thing that can be overidden by a few thousand years. It must be more significant, say, 5,000 years :).

What if the Jews ethnically cleansed the West Bank of Arabs, moved in more Jews, and let that sit for 100 years. Is that 100 years enough to overide the Arabs 'claim' to the land? So all one has to do in order to give themselves a 'right' to the land, and for his people, is commit a crime against humanity, and then just wait a while? Is that really what you think?

And no, I don't care, and nor does the commonly accepted code of morality, that the Arabs took the land from the Romans, rather than the Jews. That makes no difference. It's like saying that if you were given a car by someone, but that someone stole that car from its rightfull owner, then you found out about the car and its real owner, but did not give the car back, then you would still have a 'moral' right to the car, just because you had it for a month. That's ridiculous, but the same kind of argument that you are proposing.

I also don't care for you jumbled together argument about 'neatly divided nations' and not 'neatly divided nations'. Just because there isn't a standard political boundary does not mean there are not hundred of thousands of people living on the land (who would be the Jews, who as of now are the ONLY rightfull owners left to be considered, lest you go back to the tired argument of saying that the Jews stole it from the Cannanites :rolleyes: ). Besides, can you explain to me how the boundaries of Israel proper (non empiracal) were not well defined, after it was taken over by invaders?

And on a last note, your differentation between biblical and modern Israel did not have to do with Zionism, because we are not discussion Zionism, we are discussion the Jews moral right to live and have a nation on ANY of the land where the Palestinians lived, because the Jews resettled after they had lived there. If you say it is morally right to live in Israel, then minus the double standards, you must say the same for the West Bank and Gaza.

BTW it would be nice if I didnt have to wait a month practically for your reply.

sharonbn

05-05-2003, 02:37 AM

Originally posted by I am David
Sharon your argument makes no decent sense. "1,500 years give the Arabs a claim on the land at least as legitimate as the Jewish one"? Why does it? Why do you think you have the authority to define the amount of time it takes for one group of peoples claim to the land overides anothers? You say 1,500 years is enough, well would you say 2 years is enough? No doubt you will say that is much to little. Well guess what, in my OPINION, one just as valid as yours I might add, 1,500 years is not enough to overide the original owners right to the land. In my opinion, it has to be at least 5,000 years. It is of my opinion that the right of ownership of land (as a nation) for a certain people, is no small thing that can be overidden by a few thousand years. It must be more significant, say, 5,000 years :).

I personally draw the line at the third generation, roughly 70-100 years. This is for two reasons:

1) From personal experience, I can say that this third generation really knows no other home. These people share no link with original home of their ancestors. You may say this for their parents but then comes my second argument:

2) The displaced people need also some time to accept the new situation and adjust to their new home. Again, from my experience, the first two generations of immigrants endure much hardship and prejudice before the third generation may be accepted as indigenous by the host nation.
This leaves the displaced people a “chance” of some 100 years to attempt to recapture or otherwise claim their old home back. After that time, its my belief they lost this privilege since other people now call the land “my home”

Of course these numbers are not written in stone. In some cases, like the Jewish people, they were never accepted by the host nation (partly by their own intention – that’s a different story).

Take the case of Tibet. It is now 60 years under Chinese (brute) occupation. The Chinese government have vigorously engaged in policy of displacing the Tibet people and settling Chinese instead (sounds familiar?) I believe that some 50-100 years from now, demographically and culturally speaking, Tibet will indeed become home to a lot of Chinese people and Tibetans will lose their right to claim their land back. They will have to either adjust to their new home, or conquer Tibet from its new rightful owner and then settle there for 100 years... you get the picture.

Everyone draws his/her lines at when a conqueror becomes the rightful owner as his/her conscience and point of view dictates.

And yes, I believe that somewhere in the 2050-60s, Israel can claim the occupied territories as its land by virtue of continuous residence. By that time, it is expected from the Palestinian refugees to settle and built their lives in their new home. The question is if Israel can carry out a settlement plan as comprehensive as the Chinese, bearing the Palestinian and resistance and internal conflict.

By your standards, I am David, who’s the rightful owner of America? who’s the rightful owner of California? who’s the rightful owner of Australia?

Originally posted by I am David
What if the Jews ethnically cleansed the West Bank of Arabs, moved in more Jews, and let that sit for 100 years. Is that 100 years enough to overide the Arabs 'claim' to the land? So all one has to do in order to give themselves a 'right' to the land, and for his people, is commit a crime against humanity, and then just wait a while? Is that really what you think?
But isn’t this what the Jews did when they migrated from Egypt to Israel some 5,000 years ago? They came into the land, mass murdered or mass transfered all the indigenous population, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Yevusies etc. and just settled in and waited long enough for this crime to be forgotten and they could claim ownership?
You agree that the Jewish conquest of Israel is immoral. Then you say this is irrelevant in the argument between Jews and Arabs because the Jewish ethnic cleansing was successful.
Sounds pretty twisted to me.

Originally posted by I am David
And no, I don't care, and nor does the commonly accepted code of morality, that the Arabs took the land from the Romans, rather than the Jews. That makes no difference. It's like saying that if you were given a car by someone, but that someone stole that car from its rightfull owner, then you found out about the car and its real owner, but did not give the car back, then you would still have a 'moral' right to the car, just because you had it for a month. That's ridiculous, but the same kind of argument that you are proposing.
Your analogy is incorrect (imo).
You are mixing moral/historical ownership of land and legal/property ownership of land. Like you yourself said before, one should not be switched with the other or override it. These two concepts carry different rules and attitudes. In the case of legal ownership, morality pays no role, since (usually) its not a question of emotional attachment, but rather of monetary value (for instance, the original or new owner of the car may be compensated with money.) In the case of land claim from moral/historical reasons, there are no established rules to determine who’s right and who’s wrong, and, consequentially multiple people can claim the same piece of land, each one with its own conviction and reasoning and usually there is no one absolute answer. Also, since we’re talking about ownership by virtue of history, time does bare a significant and even crucial role in the argument - as we saw, different people regard different lengths of time as legitimate claim - there is norule that says how long...

that's what I meant when I said morality is subjective. It is not because "I say moral is subjective and murder is moral boohahaha" or similar cr*p that was thrown here, but beacause the issue of moral claim of land depends on personal interpretation of history. whether or not 1,500 years of residence is "strong enough" or not - its subjective.

I believe the following analogy is more close to the issue at hand:
Say an infant was taken by force from his mother, (for whatever reason – say she was declared unfit) and adopted by a childless family. The match does not go well and the child is given to yet another family. This time the new parents raise the child with love and care and she grows up like a normal child with normal family. The mother do misses her child but makes no attempt to claim her until 15 years have passed. The girl is now a teenage who all her life knew one pair of parents. Now the mother claims her child was unjustly taken from her and files for custody.
The parents claim that they should be viewed as the true family of the child since she was raised by them from infancy and has no emotional ties to her biological mother.

There is no one absolute truth here. Both parties have a morally (and possibly legally) legitimate claim. The court will probably rule based on practical considerations (best for the child, etc.) but morally – there will be some who will side with the biological mother that did not relinquish her child voluntarily, and others who will side with the adopting parents who developed a true family ties with the child.

Originally posted by I am David
I also don't care for you jumbled together argument about 'neatly divided nations' and not 'neatly divided nations'. Just because there isn't a standard political boundary does not mean there are not hundred of thousands of people living on the land (who would be the Jews, who as of now are the ONLY rightfull owners left to be considered, lest you go back to the tired argument of saying that the Jews stole it from the Cannanites :rolleyes: ). Besides, can you explain to me how the boundaries of Israel proper (non empiracal) were not well defined, after it was taken over by invaders?
I was not talking about political borders. I was raising the point that national land ownership is a relatively new invention from around 18th cent with the enlightenment movement. That was the first time that people accepted the notion that a historical connection of a people to a land gives them right for self govern. Before that, this notion did not exist. IMO, It is historically and morally incorrect to apply 20th cent. cultural ideas and moral standards to the dark ages and ancient times.

Originally posted by I am David
And on a last note, your differentation between biblical and modern Israel did not have to do with Zionism, because we are not discussion Zionism, we are discussion the Jews moral right to live and have a nation on ANY of the land where the Palestinians lived, because the Jews resettled after they had lived there. If you say it is morally right to live in Israel, then minus the double standards, you must say the same for the West Bank and Gaza.
I was misunderstood: I don’t say that Jews don’t have a moral claim for the occupied territories. I say this claim does not invalidate the Arab one. Two nations may claim the same piece of land with equal conviction. The solution will probably be a compromise based on practical terms.
The differentiation I made was that the state of Israel was founded not on the basis of the historical right of the people (or at least this is not the main cause), but as a refuge for this people from persecution and annihilation. The case of the Jewish people on the occupied territories is not the same, since the refuge problem is already addressed. The case is solely based on subjective historical view.

I am David

05-05-2003, 09:03 AM

But isn’t this what the Jews did when they migrated from Egypt to Israel some 5,000 years ago? They came into the land, mass murdered or mass transfered all the indigenous population, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Yevusies etc. and just settled in and waited long enough for this crime to be forgotten and they could claim ownership? You agree that the Jewish conquest of Israel is immoral. Then you say this is irrelevant in the argument between Jews and Arabs because the Jewish ethnic cleansing was successful. Sounds pretty twisted to me.

I think I've explained this to you at least 3 times. Are you just ignoring me on purpose or do you really not understand it? Please tell me now so I don't have to keep repeating myself. No, I don't say it is irrelevant because the Jewish conquest was succesfull, but becauase the Cannanites are not a party to be considered in practical solutions because they don't exist to be considered at all! There please read that over again so mabye I don't have to write it again!

Though, it's odd, you say it sounds 'twisted', yet you yourself say in the same post, that all it takes is for a people to be rightously in ownership of land, is to be succesfull in displacing a people, (aka Chinese, Israel, America), wait 100 years, and then the land is rightoulsy that of the conquerrors! So it's 'twisted' for my argument but not for yours.

Your analogy is incorrect (imo). You are mixing moral/historical ownership of land and legal/property ownership of land. Like you yourself said before, one should not be switched with the other or override it. These two concepts carry different rules and attitudes. In the case of legal ownership, morality pays no role, since (usually) its not a question of emotional attachment, but rather of monetary value (for instance, the original or new owner of the car may be compensated with money.) In the case of land claim from moral/historical reasons, there are no established rules to determine who’s right and who’s wrong, and, consequentially multiple people can claim the same piece of land, each one with its own conviction and reasoning and usually there is no one absolute answer. Also, since we’re talking about ownership by virtue of history, time does bare a significant and even crucial role in the argument - as we saw, different people regard different lengths of time as legitimate claim - there is norule that says how long...

No, my analogy is perfectly correct, while yours is misleading and an innacurate analogy. Firstly, My analogy was not meant to get you to look at the legal side of things, in fact my analogy works just as well when the country the situation takes place in has no laws at all. The analogy is based solidly on morals, I.E. who is the truely rightfull owner of the car? Who DESERVES the car? Oh and btw, many a law are based 100% on morality. Illegal to kill, STEAL, rape etc. Laws ARE made for moral issues because civil human society seeks to prevent moral injustice. (which goes against your claim that morality is subjective btw). Your analogy is misleading and incorrect because it is not really an analogy, IE the different aspects of the situation are not equivilent to the argument's situation (Israel and the Jews). For example, you say the baby was taken from the mother, and you simply say "for whatever reason!", as if that has no bearing whatsoever on the analogy. Too bad it does. A peice of land cannot be treated badly (or wont care if it is), So the Jews cannot be forced off their land rightously because they were mistreating THEIR own land. A baby however, can be mistreated, and can be rightously taken from its parent because it doesn't deserve to be mistreated. You don't say in your analogy if the mother was mistreating the baby, you leave that undisclosed. This makes your analogy an innacurate representation of the Israel-Palestinian issue because it does not correctly establish if the action of taking the object/property away was unrightous or not, since it was obviously unrightous with the Jews.

Your analogy is also incorrect because it places the importance on what people think, and not what the actual truth is. Those are two different issues. You show how morallity is subjective by showing how the mother can think she deservers the baby, and how the foster parents can think they deserve the baby. This is not the issue, the issue is who is actually deserving the baby/kid! What people think and the truth is are two different things. Thus, your analogy is incorect because it places the importance on what people think, rather than what the truth is.

Either way, the kid, no longer a baby, has a mind of its own, and is one to be considered when choosing its next home (with foster parents or biological mother). Sadly for your analogy, land does not have a mind of its own, and the only choosing gets done by those who WANT the land.

My analogy is perfectly correct on the other hand, the car, just like the land, is chosen and does not choose, and it correctly represents the Jews unrightfull expuslion from their own land, IE the car was stolen from its rightfull owner.

This brings us to your argument of how 100 years of succesfull occupation of land that is not occupiers, suddenly and magically becomes the occupiers because they could hold on to it for enough generations. I agree that 3 generations is the time it would take to get a family to feel truely belonged in the land, but I disagree that this has anything to do with an issue at all. Yes, those people who moved onto anothers land for 3 generations may feel like it is their land, just like you may feel like the car that was given to you by a theif is yours after a month of blissfull ignorance of its true owner, but that does not make the land morally theirs, just like it does not make the CAR morally yours. You are mixing up two different issues here. You are mixing up A.) The unlucky feeling that people get that they belong on a land and that that land belongs to them even though it doesn't, and B.) The true morall owners of that land. Face it, life is tough, sometimes you feel like something is yours through bad luck, but it turns out it isn't. Just because you feel that it is yours does not make it so. Yet that is what you are trying to say with the Palestinians.

As long as the Jews were unrightsly ripped from their land that was theirs, and as long as they longed to return to it, then it remains theirs, even if 10 different other peoples comes and settles on the land, each one of them thinking it belongs to them.

...

I was not talking about political borders. I was raising the point that national land ownership is a relatively new invention from around 18th cent with the enlightenment movement.

LEGAL land ownership is a recent 'invention', but a peoples moral right to what they collectivly own existed since humans were fully evolved, IE 1 million years ago or more, certainly enccompasing ancient Israel ;)

danholo

05-05-2003, 10:35 AM

You know, after the Jewish conquest of Canaan, the Hebrews didn't mass murder and expel people... at least all of them. Canaanites lived there with the Jews. Most Jews after a couple of hundred years started worshiping Baal like the Canaanites, thanks to Canaanite seduction. I hope that our ancestors didn't start sacrificing humans for these "Gods", like the oh so poor Canaanites did.

sharonbn

05-06-2003, 03:01 AM

Originally posted by I am David
I think I've explained this to you at least 3 times. Are you just ignoring me on purpose or do you really not understand it? Please tell me now so I don't have to keep repeating myself. No, I don't say it is irrelevant because the Jewish conquest was succesfull, but becauase the Cannanites are not a party to be considered in practical solutions because they don't exist to be considered at all! There please read that over again so mabye I don't have to write it again!
You are, again, mixing apples and oranges.
On one hand you claim Jews have a moral right over the land in question. On the other hand, you dismiss the Jewish conquest based on a practical reason. moral/historical debate is not about practical solution to the present conflict. Similarly, the ultimate solution, once reached will not take into account rights by “historical virtue”. It will deal with legal land ownership, defense considerations, water distribution and other non-moral related issues.

That's why you must understand: If the Jews took the land of Israel by force - that action alone bears moral judgment regardless of what happened to the losing side. Same for the Arab. If you seek a practical solution, then the motives, considerations, even the type and pace of debate is different.

Originally posted by I am David
Though, it's odd, you say it sounds 'twisted', yet you yourself say in the same post, that all it takes is for a people to be rightously in ownership of land, is to be succesfull in displacing a people, (aka Chinese, Israel, America), wait 100 years, and then the land is rightoulsy that of the conquerrors! So it's 'twisted' for my argument but not for yours.
OK I will clarify myself: I do approve, morally-wise, of the Jewish conquest of the land, same as I do for the Arab one (you said it was immoral, not I), since I judge these actions in the historical context of the standards and customs of the period. I judge the Israeli occupation of the territories with different standards because the standards have changed significantly over the period of 2,000 years and will probably change in the future.
What was twisted in my eyes was the differentiation you make between Jewish and Arab conquest. They are the same, morally speaking. The fact that the first occurred before the other does not give the earlier conqueror any superiority or advantage. Especially since the events occurred so long ago.

Regarding my analogy – its an analogy – not an example (I hope you know the difference) the differences you point out (the reason the child was taken away, the child having a mind of its own vs. the land, etc) are irrelevant here. The point I was making is this:
Strong Emotional attachment that stretches over a long period of time gives the “conquerer” a moral right over the desired object, regardless of the history of the object and the “conquest”. In these cases, there may be two claims over the object that are both valid morally: the original owner and the new one.[/u]
The stress here is on the quarrel between the two parties, not the object of desire.

The solution, who will eventually take possession of the child/land/object/whatever will take into account differentconsiderations – the judge will not attempt to decide who DESERVES the object. The judge will not attempt to decide how much the object is loved by each party. The judge will not address the moral issue AT ALL. The judge will take into account other desiderations that are particular to the case: the best for the child, legal land ownership, etc.

Morally speaking, I believe the Palestinian right of return is justified. Practically speaking, I cannot accept that claim, since I wish Israel to remain a Jewish majority country.

Originally posted by I am David
Your analogy is also incorrect because it places the importance on what people think, and not what the actual truth is. Those are two different issues. You show how morallity is subjective by showing how the mother can think she deservers the baby, and how the foster parents can think they deserve the baby. This is not the issue, the issue is who is actually deserving the baby/kid! What people think and the truth is are two different things. Thus, your analogy is incorect because it places the importance on what people think, rather than what the truth is.
When it comes to moral issues, what people think is all that matters. THERE IS NO ONE TRUTH that everyone agrees on. You attempt to “declare” the one truth but it is only your personal interpretation of the history of the region – NOTHING else. My (equally personal) interpretation and any other person’s interpretation are just as valid. We are not dealing with a legal issue of ownership where rules tell us who is the owner, we are dealing with people’s feelings of attachment because they say “this is my home”. So people’s thoughts and feelings is all that counts.

If a Brit comes along and claim that Israel belongs to him since it was under
British rule for 30 years, we will all dismiss his claim since in our eyes British history on Israel is not enough to merit such a claim. Had the British settled in Israel and lived there for a century or so raising family, fighting invaders, developing a local culture and folk – then the “Israeli Brits” call Israel “my home”. They don’t call Britain “my home”. They will, at that time, be morally entitled to Israel, regardless of how or why their ancestors came in the first place.

I am David

05-06-2003, 10:57 AM

Sharon your arguments are very weak this time, simply because you don't give reasons for your beliefs.

You are, again, mixing apples and oranges. On one hand you claim Jews have a moral right over the land in question. On the other hand, you dismiss the Jewish conquest based on a practical reason. moral/historical debate is not about practical solution to the present conflict. Similarly, the ultimate solution, once reached will not take into account rights by “historical virtue”. It will deal with legal land ownership, defense considerations, water distribution and other non-moral related issues. That's why you must understand: If the Jews took the land of Israel by force - that action alone bears moral judgment regardless of what happened to the losing side. Same for the Arab. If you seek a practical solution, then the motives, considerations, even the type and pace of debate is different.

What on earth are you talking about? I do not 'dismiss' the Jewish conquest of the land for any reason. When I say it is irrellivent that the Jews also conquered the land originally, I do so because the Arabs do NOT have moral right to the land, even though the Jews may not either. So even if the Jews should not be on the land by moral issue, it is pointless to kick them off because who they conquered no longer exists. And simply put, it is not up to another conqueror to say that the original conqueror has no rights to the land (or even a third party).

Furthermore, the crux of your argument is at fault, for one can mix moral and practical issues when trying to find an overall practical solution to a problem. When one looks for a practical solution to a problem, they often think "what is the MOST moral solution I can come up with, while still being practical?" There is nothing anywhere that says it is incorrect logically to mix morality and practicallity when looking for a solution to a problem/When looking for the most moral solution. So your whole argument is down the drain by default.

Regarding my analogy – its an analogy – not an example (I hope you know the difference) the differences you point out (the reason the child was taken away, the child having a mind of its own vs. the land, etc) are irrelevant here. The point I was making is this: Strong Emotional attachment that stretches over a long period of time gives the “conquerer” a moral right over the desired object, regardless of the history of the object and the “conquest”. In these cases, there may be two claims over the object that are both valid morally: the original owner and the new one.[/u] The stress here is on the quarrel between the two parties, not the object of desire.

The point you were trying to make is irrellivent in itself, and THAT is the point I was trying to make, not just the fact that it is not an accurate analogy (which could be the cause of the former, but either way...) Your point is supposedly 'Strong Emotional attachment that stretches over a long period of time gives the “conquerer” a moral right over the desired object, regardless of the history of the object and the “conquest”.". Well please, give me a reason for this belief, one at least, or just don't argue it anymore. If you became emotionally attached to that car that was given to you by a theif, but then found out it was unrightfully stolen from the person who bought it with his hard earned money, would you still feel that your emotional attachment to the car gives you a right to it that overides the original owners right to it? Do you really think that your simple usage of the car for a period of time overides the rights of the first owner who took about a year of his lifes wage for the car? Is that the concept that your argument is based on? That an unlucky, yet unfair 'attachment' to an object/property is all it takes to magically give you moral rights to the object/property over its true and rightfull owner?

The solution, who will eventually take possession of the child/land/object/whatever will take into account differentconsiderations – the judge will not attempt to decide who DESERVES the object. The judge will not attempt to decide how much the object is loved by each party. The judge will not address the moral issue AT ALL. The judge will take into account other desiderations that are particular to the case: the best for the child, legal land ownership, etc.

This is simply false. As I explained earlier, most laws are based on morality, and judgment of breaking them as well. Laws are mostly meant to prevent a moral injustice (well a lot of them, others just issues of taxes and whatnot), and correct them as best they can when they do happen. Just because the court is technically a 'legal' place does not mean it is nothing but boring paper work over taxes and bills. And yes, many court decisions are made based on who deserves an object, ie who is its original owner, the means of possesion for the second owner, the actions of both the first and second owner, etc, all to determine whats morally right.

When it comes to moral issues, what people think is all that matters. THERE IS NO ONE TRUTH that everyone agrees on. You attempt to “declare” the one truth but it is only your personal interpretation of the history of the region – NOTHING else. My (equally personal) interpretation and any other person’s interpretation are just as valid. We are not dealing with a legal issue of ownership where rules tell us who is the owner, we are dealing with people’s feelings of attachment because they say “this is my home”. So people’s thoughts and feelings is all that counts.

The weakest argument that is so common is when someone says 'everyrthing is relative' or 'all morality is subjective' because it is just a cheap way out of saying they are downright wrong. Morality is not subjective, at all, I am sorry. Yes it is subjective to a select few who think murdering and stealing is rightous and who think a house will belong to them if they illegally live in it and become attached to it while its owners are on a two year vacation ( ;) )

But in all honesty, you cannot say that killing an innocent when there is no reason to is right, even if .1% of the population says, just as you cannot say the same for stealing when you have no need for what you stole. The only thing you can say is that the different sides of an issue/argument feel differently about what the solution should be, simply because they often have no care for morality and only what will benifit them most, no matter how wrong their opposition is (so that is what you mean by morality being subjective, eh?). But let me get this straight before you say that is agreeing with you...That does NOT mean that morality is subjective because that is not what morality is. When a judge gives his final say in a court despute between two parties, he gives his best solution for what is ACTUALLY moral, for what is MOST moral and rightous, not just to the side that thinks they are the most right, because they only care about bettering themselves. The judge looks at who is deserving of what, who wronged who in what, who did what when, what its cause was, and gives the most RIGHTOUS and MORAL solution he can. The judge has a mind of his own and that mind in determining what is right is not influenced by what one of the conflicting parties thinks is right. His mind is focused soley on what IS moral and what IS NOT.

Morality is only subject to those who want to escape it.

sharonbn

05-07-2003, 04:32 PM

Originally posted by I am David
What on earth are you talking about? I do not 'dismiss' the Jewish conquest of the land for any reason. When I say it is irrellivent that the Jews also conquered the land originally, I do so because the Arabs do NOT have moral right to the land, even though the Jews may not either. So even if the Jews should not be on the land by moral issue, it is pointless to kick them off because who they conquered no longer exists. And simply put, it is not up to another conqueror to say that the original conqueror has no rights to the land (or even a third party).
If, as you admit, Jews (and Arabs) have no moral right over these territories, why does Israel deserve to annex the occupied territories? Jews make up less than 13% of the population in the occupied territories.

The "point" behind dismantling Jewish settlements in the occupied territories is that, by your own admition, these settlers had no right to go there in the first place, plus the settlements are blocking the way for peace (more on that later)

Originally posted by I am David
Furthermore, the crux of your argument is at fault, for one can mix moral and practical issues when trying to find an overall practical solution to a problem. When one looks for a practical solution to a problem, they often think "what is the MOST moral solution I can come up with, while still being practical?" There is nothing anywhere that says it is incorrect logically to mix morality and practicallity when looking for a solution to a problem/When looking for the most moral solution. So your whole argument is down the drain by default.
I thoght we are discussing who deserves the land. This is a phylosophical question. Answering this question one way or another will not get us close to an end to the Israeli Arab conflict.
If you want practical real solutions, then there are two possible ones, presented by the two political ideologies, right and left:

The right say: Jews have a moral right to settle in all areas controlled by Israel, incl' GS and WB, becuase the land of Israel morally and historically belongs to the Jewish people and to that people alone. We should implement our moral right by establishing settlements all over the place.
The Palestinian people may either live in peace under Israeli rule, or be kicked out if they resist this rule.

The left say: Who deserves to inherit the land? I don't know and the answer is irrelevant to the practical solution, since no side will voluntarily give away its moral claim. This means that if Jews want to implement their moral right to settle in the occupied territories - they will be met with Palestinian resistence.

If bloodshed is to be avoided, the practical solution will have to abandon the moral question, and seek a compromise that caters for the critical needs of the two people, whice are:
1) Israel must remain a state with a solid Jewish majority.
2) The Palestinians, as a people, have the basic right for self rule.
The solution will also take into account the following consideration:
Jews and Palestinians cannot live together in the same state because the long bloody conflict resulted in hate and mistrust on both sides. A separation, as total a possible, should be reached.

Given the above, a two-states solution seems the best answer.
It also seems logical to draw the borders of the two states around concentrations of Israeli and Palestinian populations. The last time a total separation existed between the two pwoplw was before the 67 war, so the borders will more-or-less go along the green line, with some modifications, so as to allow Jewish settlers to be concentrated along the border.

Israel compromises its claim to GS and WB, while the Palestinians compromise their claim for "right of return" - this is regardless if any of the above claim is "morally" rightous.

Originally posted by I am David
The point you were trying to make is irrellivent in itself, and THAT is the point I was trying to make, not just the fact that it is not an accurate analogy (which could be the cause of the former, but either way...) Your point is supposedly 'Strong Emotional attachment that stretches over a long period of time gives the “conquerer” a moral right over the desired object, regardless of the history of the object and the “conquest”.". Well please, give me a reason for this belief, one at least, or just don't argue it anymore. If you became emotionally attached to that car that was given to you by a theif, but then found out it was unrightfully stolen from the person who bought it with his hard earned money, would you still feel that your emotional attachment to the car gives you a right to it that overides the original owners right to it? Do you really think that your simple usage of the car for a period of time overides the rights of the first owner who took about a year of his lifes wage for the car? Is that the concept that your argument is based on? That an unlucky, yet unfair 'attachment' to an object/property is all it takes to magically give you moral rights to the object/property over its true and rightfull owner?
I'm sorry, but to me, emotonal ties as moral basis seems natural as common sense.
FYI, most Jews (myself among them) claim that Israel belongs to the Jewish people not because, as you say, "we were here first", but rather by moral right because the Jewish people has an evident strong emotional connection to the land. The Jewish faith believes God promised the land of Israel to the Jewish people. Jewish prayers often mention Jerusalem and other holy places (remember what the groom says just before he breaks the glass?) Even though Jews were all but absent from the land for 2,000 years, they never ceased yearning to return to it. If they believed they had no moral right over the land - they would have forgotten it by now and assimilated into their host societies.
The Zionist movement rejected all alternative places for the Israeli state because it believed Jews will not come to the state of Israel unless it was founded in the land of Israel (and this was proved to be true).

and I beg you to drop the car analogy. You take it so far it becomes absurd. Emotional attachment to a car? pleeease. Yes, I know sometimes people say they love their car. But I'm talking about the kind of emotions you get from remembering the stories your grandmother told you about your grandfather building the house you live in. Of childhood memories of your house, of having the conviction that God himself gave your ancestors the land. People have fought and died over these convictions and beliefs. You compare that to a car??

and please remember that as much as the original owner put "about a year of his lifes wage for the car", so did the new buyer. you so easily dismiss his hardship to get the car as bad luck?

Originally posted by I am David
The weakest argument that is so common is when someone says 'everyrthing is relative' or 'all morality is subjective' because it is just a cheap way out of saying they are downright wrong. Morality is not subjective, at all, I am sorry. Yes it is subjective to a select few who think murdering and stealing is rightous and who think a house will belong to them if they illegally live in it and become attached to it while its owners are on a two year vacation ( ;) )
Do we live on the same planet? I wonder.
Don't you know there exist in the world (my world, at least) countless moral questions where there is no one true answer?

How about the death penalty? Who is the "select few, who think murdering and stealing is rightous"? those for or against the death penalty?
How about abortion? Who is the "select few"? pro life or pro choice?
How about social classes? Who is the "select few"? western society which advocates classless society, or Indian society, which maintains a rigorus cast system?

Even the questions of murder, theft and rape are moral questions that have many answers. Is murder wrong no matter what? if not, when is murder justified?
Do you remember the movie "A Time to Kill" with Samuel Jackson (an adaptation of a John Grisham novel)? It tells of a black father whose daughter is brutally raped by two white hooligans. He shoots both of them before they go to trial, believing they would be acquited. Is his action justified? Grisham believes it is. I blieve its not. Is there one "correct" answer here?

How about Robin Hood, the thief who led a gang of pirates. He stole from the rich and gave to the poor - Does this excuses his crime? Is he a hero or hooligan?

I am David

05-07-2003, 05:54 PM

and I beg you to drop the car analogy. You take it so far it becomes absurd. Emotional attachment to a car? pleeease. Yes, I know sometimes people say they love their car. But I'm talking about the kind of emotions you get from remembering the stories your grandmother told you about your grandfather building the house you live in. Of childhood memories of your house, of having the conviction that God himself gave your ancestors the land. People have fought and died over these convictions and beliefs. You compare that to a car??

Before you had asked me if I knew the difference between an analogy and an example. Now I am forced to ask if you know what an analogy is at all. You say my car analogy is invalid because I am comparing the emotional attachments of a car to that of where you live/family/your own history. The emotional attachment to a car is definitly not on the same scale as that to family, your home etc, nor is it usually even the same kind of emotional attachment. Nor does it even matter.

An analogy is meant to show how a concept works, with all the factors in relation and of importance to the concept being in equal propertions to each other on each side of the analogy. The emotional attachment to a car does not need to be equal in absolute terms to the emotional attachment of home/family, it just needs to be equal in relative terms based on the concept. The analogy is meant merely to represent the concept of how an owner of property still deserves that property and it is still morally his rightously, even if someone else has emotional attachment to it after they unrightously (or unluckily) recieved it. It doesn't matter the extent or degree of the emotional attachment. I hope you can understand this.

Jesus, I find myself explaining to you how a simple analogy works, and I think I can get you to understand issues of morality intertwined with practicallity? :( Of course I did not know it would turn out like this. :(

You say 'most Jews claim that Israel belongs to the Jewish people not because the Jewish people has an evident strong emotional connection to the land'. I don't think you can really use that argument here. If I were asked, never having had this argument, why Jews claim the land, I would very likely say the same thing, not assuming that my casual and quickly thought out answer would contridict that the Jews also deserve the land by historic and moral right. Evidently, I'm sure that the Jews have an emotional attachment to the land, because we have a historic, moral right to it as well? And not to mention, that can be a reason for the Jews' claim to the land, but not the only one, or the whole answer as explained before.

Jewish prayers often mention Jerusalem and other holy places (remember what the groom says just before he breaks the glass?) Even though Jews were all but absent from the land for 2,000 years, they never ceased yearning to return to it. If they believed they had no moral right over the land - they would have forgotten it by now and assimilated into their host societies. The Zionist movement rejected all alternative places for the Israeli state because it believed Jews will not come to the state of Israel unless it was founded in the land of Israel (and this was proved to be true).

I'm looking for the part where this should prove me wrong, at least partially. OBVIOUSLY the Jews beleive Israel is their land and act accordingly, for [/i]many[/i] reasons. Zionist did reject other places for a Jewish state, yes indeed. But that works just as much for my argument as it does for yours.

If, as you admit, Jews (and Arabs) have no moral right over these territories, why does Israel deserve to annex the occupied territories? Jews make up less than 13% of the population in the occupied territories.

No, I do not 'admit' the Jews have no moral right to the territories, I admit the original act of conquering the Canaanites was immoral. The two are very different. It was immoral to conquer Canaan, but the Jews expelled by the Romans could be not be blamed for that immorality, as it was already ancient history, and the Romans were no less wrong in expelling the Jews because the ancient Hebrews conquered Canaan on that same land. The Jews living during Roman times could not be blamed for the ancient injustice, and being that Caanintes were no longer existent, or in an considerable numbers that could recopy a significant portion of Israel, there is NO immoral sin that can be left as 'unsolved', and on the shoulders of the Jews living during Roman times. Thus simply put, in Roman times, the Jewish community was not wrong in living there and having their lives there because they were not wronging anyone, because there was no one TO wrong! And those Jews certainly were not the ones who conquered Canaan, so the land was wholy and fully theirs. However, when the Arabs stole the Jews land, when they built their houses and farms on land that was lived apon by Jews just a short while before, and continued to do so untill the present day, when the Jews still are around, and clamouring for a homeland, it is not morally or rightously theirs in any way, because those who were wronged are still around!

That is why it is the Jews' land :)

Don't you know there exist in the world (my world, at least) countless moral questions where there is no one true answer?

There is a 'one true' answer, thought it probably wouldnt be as simple as you would expect, or perfectly fair. But probably why you think there is not 'one true answer' is because it is hard to judge without knowing almost everything about the situation, and 'one' situation is oftent many.

How about the death penalty? Who is the "select few, who think murdering and stealing is rightous"? those for or against the death penalty? How about abortion? Who is the "select few"? pro life or pro choice? How about social classes? Who is the "select few"? western society which advocates classless society, or Indian society, which maintains a rigorus cast system?

Is the Death Penalty right or wrong, is Abortion right or wrong? Who said the answeres were that simple, as simple as right and wrong? Just because there are near absolutes in morality does not mean that in a complicated situation with an arbitrary question is going to have a very simple answer. Example: Abortion is not one thing, it is many things, but by your arbitrary question, you make it as one. 'Abortion', as if it were a single situation. There is first, second, and third trimester abortions. There is first, second, and third trimister abortions when the mother was raped, when her life could be in danger, or when the fetus is believed to be deformed. Each on of these is a possible situation into itself. It is hard to argue that a third trimister abortion is rightous unless the mothers life is in danger, because a third trimester fetus is practically the same thing as a newborn baby. But even there it is not so simple, because f the mothers life is in danger, then it may be morally right to kill the fetus. If the mother was raped for the fetus it has, it may or may not be morally right to kill the fetus, depending on how much greif the mother will have in bearing the baby, and how much it would ruin her life. Possibly one of the reasons why you think abortion is so "subject" to peoples personally interpetations is because you have never taken the time to realize that 'abortion' is not one issue but many, just as it is with the death penalty. This goes for almost all issues of morality.

sharonbn

05-11-2003, 03:39 AM

Originally posted by I am David
An analogy is meant to show how a concept works, with all the factors in relation and of importance to the concept being in equal propertions to each other on each side of the analogy. The emotional attachment to a car does not need to be equal in absolute terms to the emotional attachment of home/family, it just needs to be equal in relative terms based on the concept. The analogy is meant merely to represent the concept of how an owner of property still deserves that property and it is still morally his rightously, even if someone else has emotional attachment to it after they unrightously (or unluckily) recieved it. It doesn't matter the extent or degree of the emotional attachment. I hope you can understand this.
Your analogy is still not correct.
This is because what matters is not whether or not emotional attachment exists, but is it used to claim ownership. In the car analogy, both the original and new owner don’t claim ownership by virtue of the “history” (e.g. personal experience) they had with the car. They don’t even claim ownership by virtue of who owned the car first. They have to present legal proof of ownership in the form of legal notes (e.g. car registration, purchase papers, insurance papers, etc.)
Without such hard evidence, None of the car owner can expect to win in court. Unsubstantiated claims such as “but I did own the car a few years ago” will simply be ignored.

Where is this analogy correct? It is the same as if we’re talking about a specific piece of land, where two individuals are quarreling over its ownership. They both may have emotional attachment, but that is irrelevant. Nor is who were there first. Their claim in court must be backed by hard evidence such as purchase deeds, government registration, etc. The judge will decide ad hoc according to the legal notes and other practical considerations.

All this is regardless of which people has the right to settle on the land – this is a quarrel on a different level. On this level, claims are unsubstantiated by legal notes and are based on emotional attachment and interpretation of history over centuries.

In the aforementioned quarrel over the piece of land, neither owner will come to court saying “I’m a Jew/Arab and my people has the historical right over the land, so I am the righteous owner.” Same for the car analogy.
However, in the baby analogy, the parties often do make claims of emotional attachment that are not backed by legal notes and hard evidence. The court does take into considerations the history of the parents with the child.

Originally posted by I am David
Is the Death Penalty right or wrong, is Abortion right or wrong? Who said the answeres were that simple, as simple as right and wrong? Just because there are near absolutes in morality does not mean that in a complicated situation with an arbitrary question is going to have a very simple answer. Example: Abortion is not one thing, it is many things, but by your arbitrary question, you make it as one. 'Abortion', as if it were a single situation. There is first, second, and third trimester abortions. There is first, second, and third trimister abortions when the mother was raped, when her life could be in danger, or when the fetus is believed to be deformed. Each on of these is a possible situation into itself. It is hard to argue that a third trimister abortion is rightous unless the mothers life is in danger, because a third trimester fetus is practically the same thing as a newborn baby. But even there it is not so simple, because f the mothers life is in danger, then it may be morally right to kill the fetus. If the mother was raped for the fetus it has, it may or may not be morally right to kill the fetus, depending on how much greif the mother will have in bearing the baby, and how much it would ruin her life. Possibly one of the reasons why you think abortion is so "subject" to peoples personally interpetations is because you have never taken the time to realize that 'abortion' is not one issue but many, just as it is with the death penalty. This goes for almost all issues of morality. [/B]
I do admire your perseverance :)
With each and every specific case of the Death Penalty, a public argument rises. The argument is almost always about the concept of the Death Penalty and not about the specific criminal. Those who oppose the Death Penalty say that the concept of “the Death Penalty” is morally wrong, no matter what the specific crime is. They argue about the irreversibility of the punishment (“what if we discover that the executed did not commit the crime?”) They argue that people have no right to “play god” and decide to terminate a person’s life, etc. Those who favor the death penalty argue about the deterring factor, about “an eye for an eye” – all these arguments speak about the concept of the death penalty – not about a specific crime.
Same kind of arguments with same level of generalization, are brought up in the case of abortions. The people who demonstrate in front of abortion clinics are not concerned with the specifics of one case. They oppose abortion as a concept.

Mediocrates

05-11-2003, 06:43 AM

Not all of us. My specific objection to the Death Penaly is based on reliable outcomes. We're simply not smart enough or perfect enough to make those decisions. There are too many places to make mistakes, lack the proper insight or be just enough. So if it's going to be arbitrary then we need to not do it at all.

But what you say has merit. For example there are posters here who hate Israel and probably are antisemitic on purely philosophical grounds. The facts, the existence or non existence of any specific reality is completely irrelevant. No amount of 'reasoning' will make any difference.

I am David

05-11-2003, 09:39 AM

Your analogy is still not correct. This is because what matters is not whether or not emotional attachment exists, but is it used to claim ownership. In the car analogy, both the original and new owner don’t claim ownership by virtue of the “history” (e.g. personal experience) they had with the car. They don’t even claim ownership by virtue of who owned the car first. They have to present legal proof of ownership in the form of legal notes (e.g. car registration, purchase papers, insurance papers, etc.) Without such hard evidence, None of the car owner can expect to win in court. Unsubstantiated claims such as “but I did own the car a few years ago” will simply be ignored. Where is this analogy correct? It is the same as if we’re talking about a specific piece of land, where two individuals are quarreling over its ownership. They both may have emotional attachment, but that is irrelevant. Nor is who were there first. Their claim in court must be backed by hard evidence such as purchase deeds, government registration, etc. The judge will decide ad hoc according to the legal notes and other practical considerations. All this is regardless of which people has the right to settle on the land – this is a quarrel on a different level. On this level, claims are unsubstantiated by legal notes and are based on emotional attachment and interpretation of history over centuries. In the aforementioned quarrel over the piece of land, neither owner will come to court saying “I’m a Jew/Arab and my people has the historical right over the land, so I am the righteous owner.” Same for the car analogy. However, in the baby analogy, the parties often do make claims of emotional attachment that are not backed by legal notes and hard evidence. The court does take into considerations the history of the parents with the child.

Your comments are completely irrellevant. The important thing is that, both the Jews before the Palestinians came, and the original car owner, both had a right to their property, it being land for the Jews and a car for the original owner in the analogy. The analogy is meant to illustrate how someone who obtains property that is rightfully someone elses through immoral means, does not own that property in anyway, morally or other, just because he uses it and acts like it is his, and while the original owner is still around to even care. It doesn't matter what that property is, or why it rightously belongs to one person or another, it's just important that it does it is property and it does belong to someone. The distinctions you draw between real life and the analogy purely artificial, as I explained the differences you pointed out do not effect the owner - non owner relationship concept which is the heart of the analogy.

I do admire your perseverance With each and every specific case of the Death Penalty, a public argument rises. The argument is almost always about the concept of the Death Penalty and not about the specific criminal. Those who oppose the Death Penalty say that the concept of “the Death Penalty” is morally wrong, no matter what the specific crime is. They argue about the irreversibility of the punishment (“what if we discover that the executed did not commit the crime?”) They argue that people have no right to “play god” and decide to terminate a person’s life, etc. Those who favor the death penalty argue about the deterring factor, about “an eye for an eye” – all these arguments speak about the concept of the death penalty – not about a specific crime. Same kind of arguments with same level of generalization, are brought up in the case of abortions. The people who demonstrate in front of abortion clinics are not concerned with the specifics of one case. They oppose abortion as a concept.

So? Just because I said that morality does not change per-person does not mean I said that every person understands what they are talking about when they speak of morality. Morality is a very difficult issue because when discussing it and forming opinions about it it is hard to see how much effect an action/situation will have on one person, and thus how much punishment/reward the maker of that action/situation deserves, and so on. But the point is, just because some people think the situation will have this much or that much effect on one person or another does not change the real effect it has. People who disagree with abortion as a concept do so because they disagree with pretty much all abortion cases, and thus can make on be all end all statement refering to it. Yes they believe this but that doesn't mean they are right in this belief.

Morality is not really subjective, for one reason, because the people a situation effects on people does not change, no matter anyones opinion of it (as stated above). Tell me, does a person thinking that killing an innocent is rightous/moral change in anyway the misery brought on the family of the decieced innocent, or the many years of that innocent's life left unlived?

No it does not. Nor does all the many opinions on abortion change what the situation actually is. It's just that a lot of those opinions (most) don't really understand the true implications of their beliefs, nor even if they did would I trust them to form fair solutions for those situations which would equalize justice and injustice.

sharonbn

05-11-2003, 12:03 PM

Originally posted by I am David
Your comments are completely irrellevant. The important thing is that, both the Jews before the Palestinians came, and the original car owner, both had a right to their property, it being land for the Jews and a car for the original owner in the analogy. The analogy is meant to illustrate how someone who obtains property that is rightfully someone elses through immoral means, does not own that property in anyway, morally or other, just because he uses it and acts like it is his, and while the original owner is still around to even care. It doesn't matter what that property is, or why it rightously belongs to one person or another, it's just important that it does it is property and it does belong to someone. The distinctions you draw between real life and the analogy purely artificial, as I explained the differences you pointed out do not effect the owner - non owner relationship concept which is the heart of the analogy.
Well then, you and I simply differ in our opinion of rightful ownership. I believe that there is "stature of limitation" on claiming property that was not claimed for a long time. I personally put the line at 100 years.

I believe there is no moral justification for claiming any property after 2,000 years, conviniently ignoring generations upon generations of residents. I also believe that there is no legal justification as well: If a Jew would present an ancient legal note from his ancestors that describes a piece of land as the family property, it will not be accepted by the court and will not be sufficient cause for evicting the current residents. The reason will be stature of limitation.

I come back to the distinction that I make between "national" owndership over territory that is unsubstantiated in legal notes, vs. legal ownership over a piece of land or property, where emotional or historical links are disregarded, and legal proof is sought.
I understand from previous posts that you don't condone "redistribution" of Palestinian land by the state of Israel (correct me if I'm wrong here). But the land, all of it, was indeed Jewish before it was Arabic so why not? Why not correct a historical injustice, take land from the Arab thieves and give it back to the Jewish rightful owner?

Originally posted by I am David
So? Just because I said that morality does not change per-person does not mean I said that every person understands what they are talking about when they speak of morality. Morality is a very difficult issue because when discussing it and forming opinions about it it is hard to see how much effect an action/situation will have on one person, and thus how much punishment/reward the maker of that action/situation deserves, and so on. But the point is, just because some people think the situation will have this much or that much effect on one person or another does not change the real effect it has. People who disagree with abortion as a concept do so because they disagree with pretty much all abortion cases, and thus can make on be all end all statement refering to it. Yes they believe this but that doesn't mean they are right in this belief.
You are wrong about the Death penalty and abortions. The death penalty is either legal or illegal in some countries, meaning the legistlative made an overall decision regardong the issue, without getting into specific cases. Same goes for abortions. It is either legal or not.
Who is to say if the death penalty should be used or forbidden? Who is to say if abortions should be used or not?
Who is the authority on moral issues? the court? the government? Different judges and Parliament members hold different opinions on moral issues. Of course they do, they're human beings.

Originally posted by I am David
Morality is not really subjective, for one reason, because the people a situation effects on people does not change, no matter anyones opinion of it (as stated above). Tell me, does a person thinking that killing an innocent is rightous/moral change in anyway the misery brought on the family of the decieced innocent, or the many years of that innocent's life left unlived?
Its very easy to take a concensus issue, murder, and present it as a case of moral absolutism. Yes, murder is a moral issue and a subjective one. Most probably, more than 95% of the human population believe murder to be immoral. That does not make the answer objective.

How about a more controversial issue? How about a teenage girl who slept with her boyfriend and got pregnant. He wants to marry her and keep the baby. His parents want her to marry and keep the baby. Her parents want her to marry and keep the baby. But she doesn't want to keep it because she says she's too young, she doesn't want to marry and doesn't want the responsibility.
Is she morally "allowed" to abort the child? Do you seriously believe there is a right and wrong answers here??

Originally posted by I am David
No it does not. Nor does all the many opinions on abortion change what the situation actually is. It's just that a lot of those opinions (most) don't really understand the true implications of their beliefs, nor even if they did would I trust them to form fair solutions for those situations which would equalize justice and injustice.
who does understand the true implications? You?

I am David

05-11-2003, 01:38 PM

Well then, you and I simply differ in our opinion of rightful ownership. I believe that there is "stature of limitation" on claiming property that was not claimed for a long time. I personally put the line at 100 years.

I believe there is no moral justification for claiming any property after 2,000 years, conviniently ignoring generations upon generations of residents. I also believe that there is no legal justification as well: If a Jew would present an ancient legal note from his ancestors that describes a piece of land as the family property, it will not be accepted by the court and will not be sufficient cause for evicting the current residents. The reason will be stature of limitation.

The fact that you base your argument on your personal opinion of what is enough time to 'moralize' a peoples ownership of a land should illustrate your overall weakness in this argument. You say 'I believe there is no moral justification for claiming any property after 2,000 years', and 'I personally put the line at 100 years.' Yes, you personally put it at 100 years. Who the heck cares what you personally would put the number of years at? I personally would put the number of minutes of driving a car that is not ones own that it would take to become yours at 30 minutes, so that I could claim this nice car that I am borrowing is simply mine because I have used it for the amount of minutes that I personal think is enough to claim its mine. But just because I personally think that 30 minutes is enough time, does not mean that the car is morally mine. Is it? I mean I believe that 30 minutes is enough for that car to be mine, just as much as you believe that 100 years is enough to erase any prior claim to a peice land. So really, this car, that I just borrowed, is mine! Because I had it for 30 minutes and my opinion is that 30 minutes is all that it takes! Give me a break. That is pathetic.

You say 100 years is enough eh? 100 years is nothing. I say it needs to be 5000 years. Does that make me right? Does that make you wrong? But you say its 100. Does that make me wrong? No, it is neither, simply because this is not the determining factor, not an individuals opinion of what is enough time. The determining factor is the descendents of the Jews who were expelled did not have a home, were in foreign lands being persecuted, all the while a bunch of Arabs decided they wanted a change of scene and took land that was not theirs, and was still someone elses. This is immoral, wether or not the Arabs thought it was. What they thought does not matter, the act was still immoral. All the subjectivness in the world can not change that it was immoral. And no, 100 years is not enough to erase the Jews claim to the land, as they were/are still around.

You are wrong about the Death penalty and abortions. The death penalty is either legal or illegal in some countries, meaning the legistlative made an overall decision regardong the issue, without getting into specific cases. Same goes for abortions. It is either legal or not.

What am I wrong about concerning this? Are you trying to say that Abortion is one single definition, that there are not, first, second, and third trimister abortions? Are you trying to say that a first trimister abortion is not different than a third trimister abortion, enough that it can be considered a different situation? Answer the question. Are you trying to say, that just because a country's laws have one law for all abortion, that a first trimister abortion is not different than a third trimister abortion? No I am not wrong. You are.

Who is to say if the death penalty should be used or forbidden? Who is to say if abortions should be used or not? Who is the authority on moral issues? the court? the government? Different judges and Parliament members hold different opinions on moral issues. Of course they do, they're human beings.

Who is to say if the death penalty should be used or forbidden? At least someone who understands everthing about it, and knows what is truethfully right or wrong. And by the way, if the death penalty were to be legal, it would have to be administered on a case by case bases, so as to be as fair as possible.

Its very easy to take a concensus issue, murder, and present it as a case of moral absolutism. Yes, murder is a moral issue and a subjective one. Most probably, more than 95% of the human population believe murder to be immoral. That does not make the answer objective.

So tell me, because some people think murdering an innocent with no good reason is morally right, and a good thing to do, that means you can't say "That was wrong to kill that person, that was immoral", and be right? You mean you are aren't right in saying that? You mean that killing of an innocent without reason isn't really 'wrong', it wasn't unjust, just because a few wackos think that it was a good thing to do? So you someone can kill a member of a family you for no good reason at all, yet they haven't actually done a bad thing, and I couldn't say "Hey, that was wrong", and be right? You mean what that person did wasn't wrong at all?

Your argument becomes more ridiculous with every paragraph you write.

How about a more controversial issue? How about a teenage girl who slept with her boyfriend and got pregnant. He wants to marry her and keep the baby. His parents want her to marry and keep the baby. Her parents want her to marry and keep the baby. But she doesn't want to keep it because she says she's too young, she doesn't want to marry and doesn't want the responsibility. Is she morally "allowed" to abort the child? Do you seriously believe there is a right and wrong answers here??

You are again simplifiying. I never said that in all moral situations there was a definite right or wrong. In some cases either option could be morally equal, or one a 'little bit' more moral than the other. But it doesn't mean the morality of those options is subjective based on any person who takes 1 minute to voice his poorly thought out opinion on the matter.

who does understand the true implications? You?

I understand the implications of some moral issues, but not all. Others understand the ones I don't. Just because there is not a single person who understand everything does not mean its somehow subjective. :rolleyes:

abu afak

05-11-2003, 06:53 PM

Sharonbn ..

You have some BAD (but classic) misconceptions about the Current situation.

First .. "That Jews may be Khazars".. NO they MayN'T.

""... A series of analyses was performed to address whether modern Jewish Y-chromosome diversity derives mainly from a common Middle Eastern source population or from admixture with neighboring non-Jewish populations during and after the Diaspora. Despite their long-term residence in different countries and isolation from one another, most Jewish populations were not significantly different from one another at the genetic level. Admixture estimates suggested low levels of European Y-chromosome gene flow into Ashkenazi and Roman Jewish communities. A multidimensional scaling plot placed six of the seven Jewish populations in a relatively tight cluster that was interspersed with Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations, including Palestinians and Syrians. Pairwise differentiation tests further indicated that these Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations were not statistically different. The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora....""

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/12/6769

and MANY others -- just ask
There is also much Social research disproving this Red Herring.

------------------------------------------

Second: "That Arabs have been living here for 1000 Years":

"......Greeks fled the Muslim rule in Greece, and landed in Palestine. By the mid-seventeenth century, the Greeks lived everywhere in the Holy Land--constituting about twenty percent of the population-and their authority dominated the villages.3

Between 1750 and 1766 Jaffa had been rebuilt, and had some five hundred houses. Turks, Arabs, Greeks and Armenians and a solitary Latin monk lived there, to attend to the wants of the thousands of pilgrims who had to be temporarily housed in the port before proceeding to Jerusalem.4
"In some cases villages [in Palestine] are populated wholly by settlers from other portions of the Turkish Empire within the nineteenth century. There are villages of Bosnians, Druzes, Circassians and Egyptians," one historian has reported. 5
Another source, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911 edition (before the "more chauvinist Arab history" began to prevail with the encouragement of the British), finds the "population" of Palestine composed of so "widely differing" a group of "inhabitants" -- whose "ethnological affinities" create "early in the 20th century a list of no less than fifty languages" (see below) -- that "it is therefore no easy task to write concisely ... on the ethnology of Palestine." In addition to the "Assyrian, Persian and Roman" elements of ancient times, "the short-lived Egyptian government introduced into the population an element from that country which still persists in the villages."

. . . There are very large contingents from the Mediterranean countries, especially Armenia, Greece and Italy . . . Turkoman settlements ... a number of Persians and a fairly large Afghan colony . . . Motawila ... long settled immigrants from Persia ... tribes of Kurds ... German "Templar" colonies ... a Bosnian colony ... and the Circassian settlements placed in certain centres ... by the Turkish government in order to keep a restraint on the Bedouin ... a large Algerian element in the population ... still maintain(s) [while] the Sudanese have been reduced in numbers since the beginning of the 20th century.
In the late eighteenth century, 3,000 Albanians recruited by Russians were settled in Acre. The Encyclopaedia Britannica finds "most interesting all the non-Arab communities in the country . . . the Samaritan sect in Nablus (Shechem); a gradually disappearing body" once "settled by the Assyrians to occupy the land left waste by the captivity of the Kingdom of Israel."6
The disparate peoples recently assumed and purported to be "settled Arab indigenes, for a thousand years" were in fact a "heterogeneous" community 7 With no "Palestinian" identity, and according to an official British historical analysis in 1920, no Arab identity either: "The people west of the Jordan are not Arabs, but only Arabic-speaking. The bulk of the population are fellahin.... In the Gaza district they are mostly of Egyptian origin; elsewhere they are of the most mixed race." 8

and Much more with notes at http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~peters/mixed.html

Also, the land had been largely abandoned, with the desolation reaching it's apex in the Early-Mid 19th Century (more on this too).
The Arabs and many other groups following the Money and economic opportunity created with the Return of the Zionists near the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th.

Here's your Native Tel Aviv in 1909:

http://www.palestinefacts.org/images/telaviv_founding_1909.jpg

Notice all the "Displaced Arabs"

(and please see sign off quote under all my posts)

sharonbn

05-12-2003, 04:55 AM

Originally posted by I am David
The fact that you base your argument on your personal opinion of what is enough time to 'moralize' a peoples ownership of a land should illustrate your overall weakness in this argument. You say 'I believe there is no moral justification for claiming any property after 2,000 years', and 'I personally put the line at 100 years.' Yes, you personally put it at 100 years. Who the heck cares what you personally would put the number of years at? I personally would put the number of minutes of driving a car that is not ones own that it would take to become yours at 30 minutes, so that I could claim this nice car that I am borrowing is simply mine because I have used it for the amount of minutes that I personal think is enough to claim its mine. But just because I personally think that 30 minutes is enough time, does not mean that the car is morally mine. Is it? I mean I believe that 30 minutes is enough for that car to be mine, just as much as you believe that 100 years is enough to erase any prior claim to a peice land. So really, this car, that I just borrowed, is mine! Because I had it for 30 minutes and my opinion is that 30 minutes is all that it takes! Give me a break. That is pathetic.
Time and time again you mix legal issues with moral ones.
The question of who owns a car after 30 minutes has a legal answer in the low book So the thief may scream his lungs out about the morality of his claim – he will still go to jail.
The question of who owns a car after 30 minutes has no moral answer. This is because car thief’s conviction on the moral justification of his claim may still stand.

There are countless examples in history where people went to jail for standing against what they believed to be morally wrong. Remember Rosa Parcks? Was she morally right or wrong to break the law? You’ll get different answers from different people (hell I don’t know the answer to this one.) If you find this hard to tackle (I can see you jump “of course she was morally right!”), then I remind you of the example I gave regarding the movie “Time to a kill”. Half my friends thought Samuel Jackson had moral right to kill the rapists of his daughter, and half though he should have gone to jail. People have moral conviction regardless of the popular opinion or the law – and no one person can say if that moral conviction is right or wrong. The court only decides what is legally right or wrong. There is no one person in the world who can decide on moral controversies.

I don’t understand why the difference is so hard to grasp.

Originally posted by I am David
You say 100 years is enough eh? 100 years is nothing. I say it needs to be 5000 years. Does that make me right? Does that make you wrong? But you say its 100. Does that make me wrong? No, it is neither, simply because this is not the determining factor, not an individuals opinion of what is enough time. The determining factor is the descendents of the Jews who were expelled did not have a home, were in foreign lands being persecuted, all the while a bunch of Arabs decided they wanted a change of scene and took land that was not theirs, and was still someone elses. This is immoral, wether or not the Arabs thought it was. What they thought does not matter, the act was still immoral. All the subjectivness in the world can not change that it was immoral. And no, 100 years is not enough to erase the Jews claim to the land, as they were/are still around.
The question of which nation has a historical right to a region of land has no answer in the low book If I say 100 years is enough to claim moral right over the land, if you say 100 years is “nothing” WHERE is the answer written? Like the popular say goes “who died and made you authority on moral issues?”
Who’s to say how much time, if any, is enough to claim a region of land by virtue of historical link?

Originally posted by I am David
What am I wrong about concerning this? Are you trying to say that Abortion is one single definition, that there are not, first, second, and third trimister abortions? Are you trying to say that a first trimister abortion is not different than a third trimister abortion, enough that it can be considered a different situation? Answer the question. Are you trying to say, that just because a country's laws have one law for all abortion, that a first trimister abortion is not different than a third trimister abortion? No I am not wrong. You are.
First of all, afaik, abortion is not feasible after the 11th week or so. After that time, the fetus needs to be killed and the mother has to “deliver” the dead body. This is not an abortion ans is not called by that name.
To answer the moral question, in my eyes a baby becomes a person upon birth, not before. So when the technology becomes available, abortion is morally allowed until one day before the delivery.
This is my personal opinion – who’s to say I’m wrong? You? Excuse me for doubting your authority on the matter. Popular opinion? I already showed how popular opinion is not to decide in moral questions. So who is it?

Originally posted by I am David
Who is to say if the death penalty should be used or forbidden? At least someone who understands everthing about it, and knows what is truethfully right or wrong. And by the way, if the death penalty were to be legal, it would have to be administered on a case by case bases, so as to be as fair as possible.
Who is this person? Can you give me his name or title?
Is it the judge in the trial? Or the one in the supreme court? Do the judges in the supreme court know “more” about “what is truthfully right or wrong”?
What if all these wise people are wrong and send the wrong person to his death? After all we’re all humans, no?
It is not so long ago that homosexuality was considered a moral wrong and people were sent to jail for this offense (Oscar Wilde was one of them) – and all these wise men –Parliament members, judges, lawyers – everyone believed they know the right answer. I bet if you and I lived in these times, we also would’ve think the same.
Now, I believe today the consensus in western civilization accepts alternative sexual tendencies. So 100 years ago – where was this authority on moral issues? Why did it let poor Mr. Wilde to go to jail?
Can you imagine what moral standards will be consensus 100 years from today? Maybe the issues of abortion, death penalty, homosexuality, etc. will have different answers? So who can say today what’s right and wrong? Who is it that knows “what is truthfully right or wrong”?

Originally posted by I am David
So tell me, because some people think murdering an innocent with no good reason is morally right, and a good thing to do, that means you can't say "That was wrong to kill that person, that was immoral", and be right? You mean you are aren't right in saying that? You mean that killing of an innocent without reason isn't really 'wrong', it wasn't unjust, just because a few wackos think that it was a good thing to do? So you someone can kill a member of a family you for no good reason at all, yet they haven't actually done a bad thing, and I couldn't say "Hey, that was wrong", and be right? You mean what that person did wasn't wrong at all?
When the first suffragists started advocating women’s right to vote, they were considered wackos. When the first students started protesting the Vietnam war, they were considered wackos. When the first Israeli mothers started protesting the Lebanon war, they were considered wackos.
The list goes on and on – whenever popular opinion is challenged – the advocators are NEVER treated seriously. They are always called “wackos“ and are scorned.

Originally posted by I am David
You are again simplifiying. I never said that in all moral situations there was a definite right or wrong. In some cases either option could be morally equal, or one a 'little bit' more moral than the other. But it doesn't mean the morality of those options is subjective based on any person who takes 1 minute to voice his poorly thought out opinion on the matter.
I ask again – who’s to decide?????

Originally posted by I am David
I understand the implications of some moral issues, but not all. Others understand the ones I don't. Just because there is not a single person who understand everything does not mean its somehow subjective. :rolleyes:
In the moral question at hand, the right for the occupied territories, who is it that “understand everything”? You? Ariel Sharon? Who?

sharonbn

05-12-2003, 05:09 AM

Originally posted by abu afak
6
The disparate peoples recently assumed and purported to be "settled Arab indigenes, for a thousand years" were in fact a "heterogeneous" community 7 With no "Palestinian" identity, and according to an official British historical analysis in 1920, no Arab identity either: "The people west of the Jordan are not Arabs, but only Arabic-speaking. The bulk of the population are fellahin.... In the Gaza district they are mostly of Egyptian origin; elsewhere they are of the most mixed race." 8

First of all, even if these "mixed race" people are not Arab they ae also not Jewish, right?

Second, I do not dispute Israel's right to exist. The state of Israel did not form as a result of war and forced occupation.
I dispute the notion that after forced occupation of territories, some Jews claim moral and historical right for these territories, disregarding the wishes of the people living there.

Mediocrates

05-12-2003, 06:22 AM

Originally posted by sharonbn
Second, I do not dispute Israel's right to exist. The state of Israel did not form as a result of war and forced occupation.

You say that like it's unique or particularly at variance with any other modern history. There are two types countries in existance. One - formed by agression and the other, coming apart from pressures brought on by 'unnaturally' mixing different groups together.

sharonbn

05-12-2003, 06:52 AM

I was pointing out the reason for the difference in reference to the state of Israel and the occupied territories.
This difference is also appearant by the simple fact that despite 30+ yeas of occupation, Israel did not legally annex the teritories (only Jerusalem municipality was annexed)

I am David

05-12-2003, 08:24 AM

Time and time again you mix legal issues with moral ones. The question of who owns a car after 30 minutes has a legal answer in the low book So the thief may scream his lungs out about the morality of his claim – he will still go to jail. The question of who owns a car after 30 minutes has no moral answer. This is because car thief’s conviction on the moral justification of his claim may still stand.

Do no hide behind legality. As I have mentioned many times, legality is often based on morality. But that is aside the issue. The point is that my analogy is meant to illustrate the ridiculousness of any one person thinking he has the authority to claim the amount of time it takes for property to be inherited, and thinking that because he says it hes right, even though his 'time' argument ignores all other moral issues of the situation. If you have trouble ignoring legality, then pretend the analogy takes place in a country where there are no laws, but the society as a whole was still equally civil as the US/Israel/whatever. Are you happy now? Now you can't complain about legality, and the analogy is still the same. Stop ignoring the issue, and argue the analogy.

The question of which nation has a historical right to a region of land has no answer in the low book If I say 100 years is enough to claim moral right over the land, if you say 100 years is “nothing” WHERE is the answer written? Like the popular say goes “who died and made you authority on moral issues?” Who’s to say how much time, if any, is enough to claim a region of land by virtue of historical link?

That's the same question I asked...

Arguing against yourself won't help ;)

Just to clear things up, I was arguing about the Jews right to the land despite time, at least while the Jews are still around. I was the one arguing that your opinion of 100 years being the time is ridiculous, as you thought that that was some kind of valid argument.

First of all, afaik, abortion is not feasible after the 11th week or so. After that time, the fetus needs to be killed and the mother has to “deliver” the dead body. This is not an abortion ans is not called by that name. To answer the moral question, in my eyes a baby becomes a person upon birth, not before. So when the technology becomes available, abortion is morally allowed until one day before the delivery. This is my personal opinion – who’s to say I’m wrong? You? Excuse me for doubting your authority on the matter. Popular opinion? I already showed how popular opinion is not to decide in moral questions. So who is it?

First of all, as far as you know, you are wrong, and abortion is anything when the fetuse's life is terminated before birth. This includes one day before birth would have occcured.

As far as the moral issue, your personal opinion is one covering many different situations that shouldnt be grouped and considered one. Is the fetus endangering the mothers life? Was the mother fertilized by a rapist? Does the baby have an unusually high change of total mental retardation? These situations all have different answers, so you can't act like they are one. That is why abortion is so complex and people have such a hard time arguing it.

I have a question, what is so different from a fetus(think baby) that is one day from birth, then a baby that is one minute after birth? Do you think they are any different? What is it in the few hours that makes one so much more deserving of life than the other? Hmm?

Who is this person? Can you give me his name or title? Is it the judge in the trial? Or the one in the supreme court? Do the judges in the supreme court know “more” about “what is truthfully right or wrong”? What if all these wise people are wrong and send the wrong person to his death? After all we’re all humans, no?

I don't see what's so trying about your questions. They are simple. Yes judges usually have a much higher understanding of morality than your day to day person(non judge). Although that doesn't mean they can't be fooled by the lawer who twists the situation/case in his favor. Yes they are human, and so what if they make mistakes? They can, and it doesn't change the laws of morality at all.

It is not so long ago that homosexuality was considered a moral wrong and people were sent to jail for this offense (Oscar Wilde was one of them) – and all these wise men –Parliament members, judges, lawyers – everyone believed they know the right answer.

Usually, as the world progresses, more and more of human society becomes morally correct. Yes they believed that then, and they were wrong. Yes they were wrong. Homosexuallity is not a moral wrong, unless you force it onto others. But unless you can tell me what is morally wrong about being gay, keeping it to yourself (or finding a willing partner) then those people were flat out wrong. It doesn't matter that popular opinion thought it was wrong, because that didn't change the nature of the situation. Just because killing of innocents and ethnic cleansing was the standard in wars in ancient days does not make the acts any less morally wrong. Does it? I hope you say no.

When the first suffragists started advocating women’s right to vote, they were considered wackos. When the first students started protesting the Vietnam war, they were considered wackos. When the first Israeli mothers started protesting the Lebanon war, they were considered wackos. The list goes on and on – whenever popular opinion is challenged – the advocators are NEVER treated seriously. They are always called “wackos“ and are scorned.

Stop dodging, answer the question....

So tell me, because some people think murdering an innocent with no good reason is morally right, and a good thing to do, that means you can't say "That was wrong to kill that person, that was immoral", and be right? You mean you are aren't right in saying that? You mean that killing of an innocent without reason isn't really 'wrong', it wasn't unjust, just because a few wackos think that it was a good thing to do? So you someone can kill a member of a family you for no good reason at all, yet they haven't actually done a bad thing, and I couldn't say "Hey, that was wrong", and be right? You mean what that person did wasn't wrong at all?

Now Sharon, I would like to point out your argueing 'stragety'. You keep pointing out how different people think different things on moral issues, and how general opinions of moral issues change over time, and then ask the question "who is to say who is right?", as if that shows that there can be no absolute right or wrong. That is a weak arguing strategy, because it doesnt show that. If one person thinks that putting a CD in the drive label side up works, and another thinks that putting the CD label side down works, does the fact that there is a disagreement over the issue prove that neither method works at all???

Well that is your strategy, and although you may argue that science does have absolute truths, while morality doesn't, my point is that your strategy for arguing that position doesn't prove that at all, as my analogy shows, and you are left with an unsuported position.

So I ask you, come up with a different argument, or just keep repeating yourself in vain. :)

sharonbn

05-13-2003, 05:37 AM

Originally posted by I am David
Just to clear things up, I was arguing about the Jews right to the land despite time, at least while the Jews are still around. I was the one arguing that your opinion of 100 years being the time is ridiculous, as you thought that that was some kind of valid argument.
As I understand, you yourself put the stature of limitation on 5,000 years. So I naively thought we agree on the concept of "stature of limitation" and are arguiung on the amount of time.
Am I wrong?

You know, the concept of "stature of limitation" applies to most criminal offenses, theft be one of them. Why do you discard this notion when it comes to the issue at hand?

The law indeed does not state stature of limitation for historical claim on land. However, the law does not even recognize the legality of such claim. As I said, no one can come to court and claim they have a right to settle in the occupied territories by virtue of history. I guess people will call them wackos :rolleyes:

Originally posted by I am David
As far as the moral issue, your personal opinion is one covering many different situations that shouldnt be grouped and considered one. Is the fetus endangering the mothers life? Was the mother fertilized by a rapist? Does the baby have an unusually high change of total mental retardation? These situations all have different answers, so you can't act like they are one. That is why abortion is so complex and people have such a hard time arguing it.
I asked you before: what if the fetus does not endanger the mother's life, and the intercourse was not forced (I said the boyfriend wants her to keep the baby and wishes to marry her, remember?), and the baby is healthy, its the 8th week of pregnancy - everything is fine and dandy except for one and only one thing - the mother, an 18 y.o teenager, doesn't want the baby - does this situation has one answer?

Stop dodging...

Originally posted by I am David
I have a question, what is so different from a fetus(think baby) that is one day from birth, then a baby that is one minute after birth? Do you think they are any different? What is it in the few hours that makes one so much more deserving of life than the other? Hmm?
There is no difference in the baby. The only difference is that before the birth it is called an abortion, while after it it is called murder. In my eyes, Until the delivery, the mother's interest take precedence over the child's ones. So if, for whatever reason, the mother does not wish to deliver the child – she may abort. After birth the scale reverses.
If they invent a pill tomorrow that allows mothers to abort a child at whatever stage of pregnancy - I'm all for it.

Originally posted by I am David
I don't see what's so trying about your questions. They are simple. Yes judges usually have a much higher understanding of morality than your day to day person(non judge). Although that doesn't mean they can't be fooled by the lawer who twists the situation/case in his favor. Yes they are human, and so what if they make mistakes? They can, and it doesn't change the laws of morality at all.
Well, if you put the judicial system as the authority of the moral question of who has a right to settle in the occupied territories, than you should know that such a claim is not considered valid in court.

Originally posted by I am David
Usually, as the world progresses, more and more of human society becomes morally correct. Yes they believed that then, and they were wrong. Yes they were wrong. Homosexuallity is not a moral wrong, unless you force it onto others. But unless you can tell me what is morally wrong about being gay, keeping it to yourself (or finding a willing partner) then those people were flat out wrong. It doesn't matter that popular opinion thought it was wrong, because that didn't change the nature of the situation. Just because killing of innocents and ethnic cleansing was the standard in wars in ancient days does not make the acts any less morally wrong. Does it? I hope you say no.
First of all, there is no such thing as "human society". There are human societies, in plural. You obviously refer to secular capitalistic western civilization. Other societies have other standards than this one.
For instance (I believe this is another example I already presented) One of the fundamental characteristics of Indian society is the rigid cast system. It is upheld to present date. This contradicts present western ideal of “all men were born equal”.
Another example is religious societies. I believe if you ask the question of the morality of homosexuality to a religious person (be it Jewish, Christian or Muslim) you'll get the answer that this lifestyle is immoral because this is not the way God intended humans to behave. Religious Jews even believe it is immoral to masturbate. While this person may not condone sending gay people to jail, he will also disapprove of gay couples having the same rights as normal couples (e.g. marriage, adoption, inheritance, etc.). In fact, afaik, the vast majority of US states don’t recognize gay marriage. Why is that?

Second, even when "society" progresses, it deos not mean it has higher moral standards than waht was before it - remember the Nazis?

We agree that human moral standards have changed over the course of history. The process will likely remain in the future. I believe it will never cease, as events and evolution will always shape human belief and tendencies.
This means that our actions and beliefs today will be judged by standards we cannot comprehend today - this is true for every point in time, past or future. so we know any answer we give today (indeed not just to moral questions - but to ANY question) may turn out to be wrong in the future. So how do we know when we're right? Each one of us can only know what’s right for him/her.

Originally posted by I am David
So tell me, because some people think murdering an innocent with no good reason is morally right, and a good thing to do, that means you can't say "That was wrong to kill that person, that was immoral", and be right? You mean you are aren't right in saying that? You mean that killing of an innocent without reason isn't really 'wrong', it wasn't unjust, just because a few wackos think that it was a good thing to do? So you someone can kill a member of a family you for no good reason at all, yet they haven't actually done a bad thing, and I couldn't say "Hey, that was wrong", and be right? You mean what that person did wasn't wrong at all?
Yes. I believe I cannot say that ANY action, even murder, is absolutely wrong. I can only say it if it is legal and I can only state that it is wrong according to my personal standards.
If multiple answers are correct in one question (as you yourself admitted) than it is true for all questions.

Originally posted by I am David
Now Sharon, I would like to point out your argueing 'stragety'. You keep pointing out how different people think different things on moral issues, and how general opinions of moral issues change over time, and then ask the question "who is to say who is right?", as if that shows that there can be no absolute right or wrong. That is a weak arguing strategy, because it doesnt show that. If one person thinks that putting a CD in the drive label side up works, and another thinks that putting the CD label side down works, does the fact that there is a disagreement over the issue prove that neither method works at all???
1,000 years ago everybody knew the word was flat.
100 years ago everybody knew the atom is the smallest particle in nature.
10 years ago everybody knew that black holes do not exist in our galaxy.
You believe you know today the only correct way to insert a CD ROM ...

Originally posted by I am David
Well that is your strategy, and although you may argue that science does have absolute truths, while morality doesn't, my point is that your strategy for arguing that position doesn't prove that at all, as my analogy shows, and you are left with an unsuported position.
I don’t say science has absolute truths. I say I accept science authority in answering scientific questions. I don’t believe there is such a consensus authority on moral disputes in general, and specifically no one has the answer as to which people has the right for the occupied territories. The only answer I accept is of legal ownership of a given piece of land, according to legal documents.

I am David

05-13-2003, 11:42 AM

As I understand, you yourself put the stature of limitation on 5,000 years. So I naively thought we agree on the concept of "stature of limitation" and are arguiung on the amount of time. Am I wrong?

I said that to show you how my claim of years is just as valid as yours, (and it is), and thus to show how your opinion of 100 years means nothing.

You know, the concept of "stature of limitation" applies to most criminal offenses, theft be one of them. Why do you discard this notion when it comes to the issue at hand?

Uh, mabye because its a different situation, involving different kinds of parties over different periods times? You act as if one situation has an answer, that answer applies to ALL. The world and its workings are bit more complex than that...

The law indeed does not state stature of limitation for historical claim on land. However, the law does not even recognize the legality of such claim. As I said, no one can come to court and claim they have a right to settle in the occupied territories by virtue of history. I guess people will call them wackos

There is no court in the world that can judge on this kind of case (Jews' claim to the land vs Arab claims). They don't have laws concerning the ownership of ancient land. Thus we must decide on the morality of the issue on our own, and not say "oh well because no court has laws about this that means we can't talk at all about who has a right to the land!" That is really is a lame argument. Hypocritically, you say someone would be called a wacko if he said he has right to the land by virtue of historial right, yet just before you said the court also doesn't reconize land ownership by virtue of 'stature of limitation'. So someone with your argument would also be called a wacko. Haven't gotten very far have you?

It is pointless to show how courts cannot rule on an issue like this, and I ask you to drop the issue. If you cannot come up with a different argument than one so obviously wrong then mabye you should admit defeat. By the way, although courts aren't really meant to judge on cases like this one, they do offer analogous cases, such as the car one I mentioned, or a similar house/property one. Say a family leaves their house empty for 4 years, deciding to live in another country for a while, they come back, and find the house taken over by another family, who has no claim to the land other than the claim that they have an emotional attachment to it (about 4 years, enough time to become emotionally attached to a house and property.) Who would the judge say has a right to the house/property? Yes the original owners, and yes because by legal right, but also by moral right, because those kinds of laws are often based on morility. They have a legal right because the land is morally theirs because they did not relinquish their claim to the house nor did the length of 4 years do anything to their claim of it. The law(s) that the original owners still own the house is based on the same morality that I speak of, so don't try to draw the destinction because this has a legal answer and the Jew/Arab one doesn't.

I asked you before: what if the fetus does not endanger the mother's life, and the intercourse was not forced (I said the boyfriend wants her to keep the baby and wishes to marry her, remember?), and the baby is healthy, its the 8th week of pregnancy - everything is fine and dandy except for one and only one thing - the mother, an 18 y.o teenager, doesn't want the baby - does this situation has one answer? Stop dodging...

I am not fit to answer that because I don't know how developed the fetus is at that point/how many human properties it has yet. Is it conscious? Does it feel pain? Can it move? I don't know, so I don't know the answer.

There is no difference in the baby. The only difference is that before the birth it is called an abortion, while after it it is called murder. In my eyes, Until the delivery, the mother's interest take precedence over the child's ones. So if, for whatever reason, the mother does not wish to deliver the child – she may abort. After birth the scale reverses. If they invent a pill tomorrow that allows mothers to abort a child at whatever stage of pregnancy - I'm all for it.

No, I asked, why do you find it acceptable to murder a 9 month old fetus, yet a few hours later, not acceptable to murder a new born baby? I asked you why the new born baby, only a few hours older than the 9 month old fetus, is so much more deserving of life even though there is no different in terms of humaness between the two.

Well, if you put the judicial system as the authority of the moral question of who has a right to settle in the occupied territories, than you should know that such a claim is not considered valid in court.

Well hate to brake it to you, but I never said that. There goes that argument...

First of all, there is no such thing as "human society". There are human societies, in plural. You obviously refer to secular capitalistic western civilization. Other societies have other standards than this one. For instance (I believe this is another example I already presented) One of the fundamental characteristics of Indian society is the rigid cast system. It is upheld to present date. This contradicts present western ideal of “all men were born equal”. Another example is religious societies. I believe if you ask the question of the morality of homosexuality to a religious person (be it Jewish, Christian or Muslim) you'll get the answer that this lifestyle is immoral because this is not the way God intended humans to behave. Religious Jews even believe it is immoral to masturbate. While this person may not condone sending gay people to jail, he will also disapprove of gay couples having the same rights as normal couples (e.g. marriage, adoption, inheritance, etc.). In fact, afaik, the vast majority of US states don’t recognize gay marriage. Why is that? Second, even when "society" progresses, it deos not mean it has higher moral standards than waht was before it - remember the Nazis?

I was refering to human society as a whole, even though it also consists of many smaller societies. All of humanity can be considered a single society, so it is correct to refer to it as one if you want to. But I was refering to the state of human morality as a whole over the course of time. It has got better, overall with the progression of time, with exceptions of course(nazis).

We agree that human moral standards have changed over the course of history. The process will likely remain in the future. I believe it will never cease, as events and evolution will always shape human belief and tendencies. This means that our actions and beliefs today will be judged by standards we cannot comprehend today - this is true for every point in time, past or future. so we know any answer we give today (indeed not just to moral questions - but to ANY question) may turn out to be wrong in the future. So how do we know when we're right? Each one of us can only know what’s right for him/her.

The change of human moral standards over time does not mean the what is rightous/unrightous/inbetween changes as well. Its true the standards judged by in the world may change, but so what? If it is legal in the future to kill an innocent without reason, does that make it any less wrong? DOES IT?

Yes. I believe I cannot say that ANY action, even murder, is absolutely wrong. I can only say it if it is legal and I can only state that it is wrong according to my personal standards. If multiple answers are correct in one question (as you yourself admitted) than it is true for all questions.

I hope one day you realize the absurdity and sickness of that statement. Can someone brutally torture and then murder an innocent girl playing with her friends, and you will stand there over her dead, mutilated body and say simple to her parents 'what the murder did was not wrong at all, it was not unjust, it was not evil, it was not anything bad at all. Some say that murder like this is good, some say bad, so it can't be wrong!!!'??? Yay good for you and your subjectivness of morality!

The murder of that girl is what it is, and all the different opinions of the morality of that murder do not change the torment of the family for losing their daughter, and of her friends, and all the years unlived by that girl...

By they way, if you think you cannot say the murder was wrong, then why do you find it acceptable for the judge to punish him? If he is neither wrong nor right, then why should he be punished for something that wasn't wrong?

If multiple answers are correct in one question (as you yourself admitted) than it is true for all questions.

What? You misunderstood me.

1,000 years ago everybody knew the word was flat. 100 years ago everybody knew the atom is the smallest particle in nature. 10 years ago everybody knew that black holes do not exist in our galaxy. You believe you know today the only correct way to insert a CD ROM ...

Ok quit the nonsense, if you put a game cd into your cd drive with the label side facing the ground, is it going to work??? If you have a standard cd drive, then it wont. It's as simple as that. You wont be able to install the game, you wont be able to play it. Now go back and answer the question.

Continued...

I am David

05-13-2003, 11:44 AM

I don’t say science has absolute truths. I say I accept science authority in answering scientific questions. I don’t believe there is such a consensus authority on moral disputes in general, and specifically no one has the answer as to which people has the right for the occupied territories.

Science does have absolute truths. 1+1=2 is an absolute truths as far as any human is concerned. The correct way to insert a CD into a standard consumer drive has an absolute truth (as far as the correct way to make it work)

The only answer I accept is of legal ownership of a given piece of land, according to legal documents.

Why? If there is no true owner of a peice of land (a person halfway across the world from belgium may think the whole country belongs to him, and thus it is just as much his as the several million people already living there), then how can you trust even legal doccuments to bybass your oh so glorious 'subjectivness of morallity'? Why, if there isn't a definite answer to anything, is it fair TO pass a definite answer on someting (aka legal laws)? Hmm?

sharonbn

05-13-2003, 03:45 PM

Originally posted by I am David
I said that to show you how my claim of years is just as valid as yours, (and it is), and thus to show how your opinion of 100 years means nothing.

In the future, I suggest you take the bother (as I did) and scroll back to the post where you mention 5,000 years, before rushing to answer.

As it so happen, you did not mention 5,000 as a response to my 100 years opinion. In fact, I first give the number 100 as a response to your statement.

This is what you wrote:

Sharon your argument makes no decent sense. "1,500 years give the Arabs a claim on the land at least as legitimate as the Jewish one"? Why does it? Why do you think you have the authority to define the amount of time it takes for one group of peoples claim to the land overides anothers? You say 1,500 years is enough, well would you say 2 years is enough? No doubt you will say that is much to little. Well guess what, in my OPINION, one just as valid as yours I might add, 1,500 years is not enough to overide the original owners right to the land. In my opinion, it has to be at least 5,000 years. It is of my opinion that the right of ownership of land (as a nation) for a certain people, is no small thing that can be overidden by a few thousand years. It must be more significant, say, 5,000 years

If I'm to understand what you wrote, you claim 5,000 years or more are enough for one claim to override another. I do believe your opinion is as valid as mine. I also believe my opinion is as valid as yours.

I need an answer: are 5,000 years enough for one claim to overide another or not??
because if it is, its like the Bernard Shaw story: we already agreed on the concept, and just argue over the length of time.
If its not, then your opinion means nothing.

Originally posted by I am David
There is no court in the world that can judge on this kind of case (Jews' claim to the land vs Arab claims). They don't have laws concerning the ownership of ancient land. Thus we must decide on the morality of the issue on our own, and not say "oh well because no court has laws about this that means we can't talk at all about who has a right to the land!"
But this is exactly what I say: there is no authority that can and will give an answer for this question, "Thus we must decide on the morality of the issue on our own". Each has a valid opinion as the next one, and no one to judge who's morally right and who's wrong.

to qoute you:
Arguing against yourself won't help ;)

Originally posted by I am David
By the way, although courts aren't really meant to judge on cases like this one, they do offer analogous cases, such as the car one I mentioned, or a similar house/property one. Say a family leaves their house empty for 4 years, deciding to live in another country for a while, they come back, and find the house taken over by another family, who has no claim to the land other than the claim that they have an emotional attachment to it (about 4 years, enough time to become emotionally attached to a house and property.) Who would the judge say has a right to the house/property? Yes the original owners, and yes because by legal right, but also by moral right
again, you argue against yourself.
Yes, there is no leagl stature of limitation on ancient land claim, but courts "do offer analogous cases". The stature of limitation in Israel on theft of property up to 500,000 NIS (~$100,000) is 18 years. Beyond that, the stature of limitation stands at 32 years.

Originally posted by I am David
I am not fit to answer that because I don't know how developed the fetus is at that point/how many human properties it has yet. Is it conscious? Does it feel pain? Can it move? I don't know, so I don't know the answer.
First of all, FYI, a fetus is not fully developed until it passed the 12th week (this is from the famous BBC series "the human body").

Second, if I understand you correctly, fetus condition is what makes or breaks. So why bother asking about danger to the mother, rape situation, etc.

Third and most important, even though I gave as much details as I could think of - you still state you don't know enough to give an answer or even hint on your tendecy. Before you pass judgement on this specific case you need to know if this specific fetus has wax in his ears and is already thinking dirty thoughts.

That's strange, because I now understand you say you know EXACTLY what the situation was in the land of Israel in any given point of time for the last 2,000 years. You know EXACTLY the race, nationality and favorite rock star of EVERY person living in the land, you know the family tree of EVERY family for generations upon generations...
oh yes and I guess you know what happened to the Khazar people as well.
You don't know all this, your knowledge is based almost exclusively on the bible, written - how conviniently - by the Jews but you still feel confident enough to give a solid 100% proved answer on who's morally right and who's wrong.

Originally posted by I am David
I was refering to human society as a whole, even though it also consists of many smaller societies. All of humanity can be considered a single society, so it is correct to refer to it as one if you want to. But I was refering to the state of human morality as a whole over the course of time. It has got better, overall with the progression of time, with exceptions of course(nazis).
I don't know where you took these ideas of yours. I can give you the origin of mine:
First lesson in "Introducton to Sociology and Anthropology" course (second year business school, Hebrew University, Jerusalem) is:
1) Generalizations are not allowed. Each human society should be viewed as a separate case in the context of its own history.
2) Don't judge other civilizations by your standards (i.e. prejudice)

Originally posted by I am David
The change of human moral standards over time does not mean the what is rightous/unrightous/inbetween changes as well. Its true the standards judged by in the world may change, but so what? If it is legal in the future to kill an innocent without reason, does that make it any less wrong? DOES IT?
Like I said, if you and I lived 100 years ago, we would belive homosexuality is immoral. If you and I lived 1000 years ago, we would belive killing is moral.
People living 100 years in the future, will have different views on moral issues then the ones we hold today.

Galileo Galilei was trialed and sent to lifelong imprisonment because he said the earth revolves around the sun. He was publicly condemned and his books banned. He was treated as a criminal of the worse kind. TODAY we know who's right. Do you honestly believe history will not repeat itself in the future, and things you know and believe in today will turn out to be false?

Maybe there is one answer to everything - I honestly don't know. How do you know? maybe we both got it all wrong?

Originally posted by I am David
I hope one day you realize the absurdity and sickness of that statement. Can someone brutally torture and then murder an innocent girl playing with her friends, and you will stand there over her dead, mutilated body and say simple to her parents 'what the murder did was not wrong at all, it was not unjust, it was not evil, it was not anything bad at all. Some say that murder like this is good, some say bad, so it can't be wrong!!!'??? Yay good for you and your subjectivness of morality!
Please come off that high tree, and go back and re-read my answer.
I explicitly said I believe murder is morally wrong. I believe every murderer should be put behind bars for the rest of his/her life. OK?
I admit this is my personal conviction and don't hold is as the absolute truth.

Once again, I am presented with an example of how quickly you jump to moral conclusions in this case, without the need to know the reason or circumstances.

I ask you, for the third time, about the movie (or novel) "A time to a kill". Samuel Jackson committed murder in this case. is he a murderer or an avenger?
please stop D-O-D-G-I-N-G

Originally posted by I am David
By they way, if you think you cannot say the murder was wrong, then why do you find it acceptable for the judge to punish him? If he is neither wrong nor right, then why should he be punished for something that wasn't wrong?
Because he broke the law.

Originally posted by sharonbn
If multiple answers are correct in one question (as you yourself admitted) than it is true for all questions.
Originally posted by I am David
What? You misunderstood me.
I qoute you:
"You are again simplifiying. I never said that in all moral situations there was a definite right or wrong. In some cases either option could be morally equal, or one a 'little bit' more moral than the other. But it doesn't mean the morality of those options is subjective based on any person who takes 1 minute to voice his poorly thought out opinion on the matter."
by the way, this is an "answer" you gave to the question about the teenage pregnant mother. I put answer in qoutes since you still didn't state your personal opinion (I guess you don't know all the facts of the matter, right?)

continued...

sharonbn

05-13-2003, 04:37 PM

Originally posted by I am David
Ok quit the nonsense, if you put a game cd into your cd drive with the label side facing the ground, is it going to work??? If you have a standard cd drive, then it wont. It's as simple as that. You wont be able to install the game, you wont be able to play it. Now go back and answer the question.
I tried to answer the question with some intelligence, but maybe this is not your favorable kind of answers.
When I first came upon this question, I thought to myself: "what did David mean when he asked this? he meant that in some cases there are absolute answers. So I will give him examples were "absolute" answers turned out to be false.
I will try to be more obvious from now on.

Yes, there is only one way to put a CD ROM in the drive.
What does this answer proove? that there is an absolute answer to everyting?
I would like, once again, to qoute you:
"Uh, mabye because its a different situation, involving different kinds of parties over different periods times? You act as if one situation has an answer, that answer applies to ALL. The world and its workings are bit more complex than that..."
Maybe the world is a bit more complex than a CD ROM???

Originally posted by I am David
Science does have absolute truths. 1+1=2 is an absolute truths as far as any human is concerned. The correct way to insert a CD into a standard consumer drive has an absolute truth (as far as the correct way to make it work)
There we go again, jumping to conclusions, thinking we KNOW the absolute truth, same as our fathers knew the earth is flat.

I strongly recommend you reading the excellent book "Fermat's Last Theorem" by Simon Singh.
Singh tells there of a project that started in the end of the 19th cent. Leading mathmaticians took upon themselves to check all the mathematical knowledge that was accumulated at that time. They went back to basics and examined all the axioms, and re-prooved the proofs.

An example is "the scope of numbers". It was "known" that the positive, negative, irrational, imaginery numbers and zero encompass all the numbers that exist. However this was never proven. Many mathematical sentences rely upon this axiom, whch needs to be proven or else all that is built upon it collapses.

To their dismay, they found it is impossible to proove even themost basic assumptions and axioms.
It was Bertrand Russell, a British logician that found a paradox that cannot be solved and collapses the foundations of mathematics.
Russell himself was so horrified by the prospect that mathematics is based on uncertain axioms, that he spent the next decade figuring out how to work around the paradox.
in 1910, he tought he had it. He published a book that explains how the paradox may be worked around. in 1930, Russell retired from work, believing his precious science field was safe and prooved.
Then, in 1931, a 25 y.o. annonymous mathematician by the name Kurt Godel, published an article that forced all mathematicians to agree that mathematics will NEVER be logically perfect.

btw, all Godel prooved was that the foundations of mathematics can never be prooved. They may still be right, but we can never know this for certain.

Originally posted by I am David
Why? If there is no true owner of a peice of land (a person halfway across the world from belgium may think the whole country belongs to him, and thus it is just as much his as the several million people already living there), then how can you trust even legal doccuments to bybass your oh so glorious 'subjectivness of morallity'? Why, if there isn't a definite answer to anything, is it fair TO pass a definite answer on someting (aka legal laws)? Hmm?
If there is no true owner of a peice of land (e.g. no man's land) then any person may claim it by settling on it. This is, btw, how Israel was founded: the Zonists didn't "claim" the land by virtue of hitorical link. They either purchased land from the Arab owners, thus becoming the legal owner, or went and settled in no man's land (e.g. the swamps of the Hula valley).

The person "halfway across the world" may believe as he sees fit. I don't chalenge his claim since I don't know if he's right or wrong.
Legal documents don't "pass by" morality. Legal documents establish claim on a piece of land. period. Regardless of any other unsubstatiated claim. The legal claim is upheld by the legal authority, i.e. the court. Sadly, courts don't rule on historical claim and there's no equivelant moral authority (you may seek answers from your local Rabbi if you accept his authority.)

I am David

05-13-2003, 04:53 PM

In the future, I suggest you take the bother (as I did) and scroll back to the post where you mention 5,000 years, before rushing to answer. As it so happen, you did not mention 5,000 as a response to my 100 years opinion. In fact, I first give the number 100 as a response to your statement. This is what you wrote:

No, even there I was showing how my opinion was just as valid as yours, and thus the 'time' argument is meaningless.

But this is exactly what I say: there is no authority that can and will give an answer for this question, "Thus we must decide on the morality of the issue on our own". Each has a valid opinion as the next one, and no one to judge who's morally right and who's wrong. to qoute you: Arguing against yourself won't help

Again you misunderstand. I was not saying that the ownership of Israel is morally subjective and that anyones opinion how how many years it takes for Israel to become the Arabs is equally valid. My point was that the number of years is not thee or a judging factor in the issue to begin with, so that yes, all opinions on the number of years are equal, because they all are wrong. The judging factor on if it is moral or not simply isn't based on time, that's the point.

again, you argue against yourself. Yes, there is no leagl stature of limitation on ancient land claim, but courts "do offer analogous cases". The stature of limitation in Israel on theft of property up to 500,000 NIS (~$100,000) is 18 years. Beyond that, the stature of limitation stands at 32 years.

So? :confused:

First of all, FYI, a fetus is not fully developed until it passed the 12th week (this is from the famous BBC series "the human body"). Second, if I understand you correctly, fetus condition is what makes or breaks. So why bother asking about danger to the mother, rape situation, etc.

First, I was not asking about fully developed, I was looking for specific properties, like feeling of pain/consciousness at all.

Second, if it wasn't obvious, I asked about the state of the fetus AFTER you had said the situation did not include danger to the mother, rape, or other complication factors. Remember? I was only talking about the state of the fetus because in response to you, the other factors were not rellevent.

Third and most important, even though I gave as much details as I could think of - you still state you don't know enough to give an answer or even hint on your tendecy. Before you pass judgement on this specific case you need to know if this specific fetus has wax in his ears and is already thinking dirty thoughts.

I only ask for factors that matter. I mean you have to admit, even with your obsession with subjectivness, that if the fetus can feel pain and is conscious is at least an important factor when determing the morality of abortion, while earwax and dirty thoughts aren't really. How does earwax relate to morality? Hmm? It just doesn't matter. I think I stated almost all of the important factors on the morality of abortion (danger to mother, rape, possible mental/physical of the fetus, and the human properties of the fetus) Also the childs future upbringing is a factor to consider. Earwax isn't.

That's strange, because I now understand you say you know EXACTLY what the situation was in the land of Israel in any given point of time for the last 2,000 years. You know EXACTLY the race, nationality and favorite rock star of EVERY person living in the land, you know the family tree of EVERY family for generations upon generations... oh yes and I guess you know what happened to the Khazar people as well. You don't know all this, your knowledge is based almost exclusively on the bible, written - how conviniently - by the Jews but you still feel confident enough to give a solid 100% proved answer on who's morally right and who's wrong.

Well now that you know I am not concerned with the EXACT situation, and only the important factors, I hope you realize I don't care what the race, nationality, and favorite rock star is of 'EVERY' person, or their family tree. I know enough to correctly determine who has moral right to the land. I know the Jews were living peacefully on the land before they were invaded multiple times, as well as expelled fully by the Romans. I know that the Arab settlers after that had no important historic claim to the land as a people, and I know the Jews were around from then till now. I also don't think you will find too many real historians who disagree with me on these facts (at least the majority won't, there are alot of people in the world) Those are the things that are needed to determine who has a right to the land. I may have left out some, but if I did it is known. That info isn't also based on the bible, but on many proffessional historical ventures.

I don't know where you took these ideas of yours. I can give you the origin of mine: First lesson in "Introducton to Sociology and Anthropology" course (second year business school, Hebrew University, Jerusalem) is: 1) Generalizations are not allowed. Each human society should be viewed as a separate case in the context of its own history. 2) Don't judge other civilizations by your standards (i.e. prejudice)

I get my ideas from, much reading up on all of history and common sense? Also about not generalizing, what kind of generalizations are not allowed? Of course generalizations have to be allowed, otherwise talking about anything would be impossible. Otherwise you couldn't say 'The roman armies under the republic were well trained', because a few hundred troups during that time did not recieve good training. I suppose they meant generalizations of human society? I would like to read that lesson. I suppose they say in their that each 'human society' is completely seperate from eachother and they don't share any properties in common? Also I am not judging civilizations by my standards, I am only judging properties of those civilizations. That is different than making an overal rating of an individual civilization.

Like I said, if you and I lived 100 years ago, we would belive homosexuality is immoral. If you and I lived 100 years ago, we would belive killing is moral. People living 100 years in the future, will have different views on moral issues then the ones we hold today.

I think I have answered this argument several times. Just because personal beliefs on certain issues vary and change does not mean that the trueth also changes, or that there is no truth at all. Remember, despite one person thinking that a CD will work upside down, it actually doesn't. Just because he thinks one thing and another person thinks differently, does not mean that there is no definite truth on how to make the CD work. That goes for your galileo story as well. Despite the fact that what was done to him is different than what we would do now, that does not prevent me or most people from saying that what was done to him was morally wrong. He was an innocent man, not harming anyone, doing what he wanted to, and should not have been treated that way. Not very hard to understand...

Please come off that high tree, and go back and re-read my answer. I explicitly said I believe murder is morally wrong. I believe every murderer should be put behind bars for the rest of his/her life. OK? I admit this is my personal conviction and don't hold is as the absolute truth.

I know you find this morally wrong, that was not the question. I asked if you would say in that situation, if you would hold your ground and shout that the girl being murdered was not actually wrong, and that there was absolutly nothing morally wrong with the murder of her (despite your 'personal' opinion of it)

Once again, I am presented with an example of how quickly you jump to moral conclusions in this case, without the need to know the reason or circumstances.

Hello, I GAVE you the circumstances. I gave all important factors, the girl was innocent, not endangering/harming anyone, and the killer had no reasonn to kill her. No one needed the girl dead. That is enough.

Because he broke the law.

This is dodging again. But just to make you happy, say that same murder took place in a country with no official laws at all. None, Yet society was on the whole pretty much the same as it is in the US etc... Would the murder be undeserving of punishment? No not based on your moral opinion, I'm asking you if you and your subjectivness think that the murderer, since there was no laws that he broke, is any less deserving of punishment than in the US. Eh?

I qoute you: "You are again simplifiying. I never said that in all moral situations there was a definite right or wrong. In some cases either option could be morally equal, or one a 'little bit' more moral than the other. But it doesn't mean the morality of those options is subjective based on any person who takes 1 minute to voice his poorly thought out opinion on the matter." by the way, this is an "answer" you gave to the question about the teenage pregnant mother. I put answer in qoutes since you still didn't state your personal opinion (I guess you don't know all the facts of the matter.)

I took your 'if multiple answers are correct' to mean multiple answers that are only the opinions of people, and that the multiple answers can change based on who thinks what. That is different then saying there are a set number of solutions to a particular situation that are all morally equal.

Cont...

I am David

05-13-2003, 05:20 PM

I tried to answer the question with some intelligence, but maybe this is not your favorable kind of answers. When I first came upon this question, I thought to myself: "what did David mean when he asked this? he meant that in some cases there are absolute answers. So I will give him examples were "absolute" answers turned out to be false. I will try to be more obvious from now on. Yes, there is only one way to put a CD ROM in the drive. What does this answer proove? that there is an absolute answer to everyting? I would like, once again, to qoute you: "Uh, mabye because its a different situation, involving different kinds of parties over different periods times? You act as if one situation has an answer, that answer applies to ALL. The world and its workings are bit more complex than that..." Maybe the world is a bit more complex t
han a CD ROM???

You don't understand what that analogy was for? This was my original argument about it...

Now Sharon, I would like to point out your argueing 'stragety'. You keep pointing out how different people think different things on moral issues, and how general opinions of moral issues change over time, and then ask the question "who is to say who is right?", as if that shows that there can be no absolute right or wrong. That is a weak arguing strategy, because it doesnt show that. If one person thinks that putting a CD in the drive label side up works, and another thinks that putting the CD label side down works, does the fact that there is a disagreement over the issue prove that neither method works at
all???

... The purpose of that analogy was to show that your argument of why morality is subjective is invalid. Your only argument for your belief seems to be showing me how people's opinions on a situation vary from person to person and over the course of time. Then you always ask in one way or another the question 'How can you say anyone is right???'. My point was this argument is invalid, simply put, because varying opinions or beliefs on an issue do not somehow prove that there is not an absolute truth. Thus, the CD analogy. Despite one person thinking CDs work upside down, and another saying they work right side up (relative to the label), there still is only one way that it does actually work.

There we go again, jumping to conclusions, thinking we KNOW the absolute truth, same as our fathers knew the earth is
flat. I strongly recommend you reading the excellent book "Fermat's Last Theorem" by Simon Singh. Singh tells there of a
project that started in the end of the 19th cent. Leading mathmaticians took upon themselves to check all the mathematical knowledge that was accumulated at that time. They went back to basics and examined all the axioms, and re-prooved the proofs.

An example is "the scope of numbers". It was "known" that the positive, negative, irrational, imaginery numbers and zero
encompass all the numbers that exist. However this was never proven. Many mathematical sentences rely upon this axiom, whch needs to be proven or else all that is built upon it collapses. To their dismay, they found it is impossible to proove
even themost basic assumptions and axioms. It was Bertrand Russell, a British logician that found a paradox that cannot be
solved and collapses the foundations of mathematics. Russell himself was so horrified by the prospect that mathematics is
based on uncertain axioms, that he spent the next decade figuring out how to work around the paradox. in 1910, he tought he had it. He published a book that explains how the paradox may be worked around. in 1930, Russell retired from work, believing
his precious science field was safe and prooved. Then, in 1931, a 25 y.o. annonymous mathematician by the name Kurt Godel,
published an article that forced all mathematicians to agree that mathematics will NEVER be logically perfect. btw, all
Godel prooved was that the foundations of mathematics can never be prooved. They may still be right, but we can never know
this for certain.

Well to tell you the truth, the truths of morality is more reliable than those of science/math. This is because people are what they are and feel what they feel now, whereas we can't be sure what the universe is or how it works. Actually science and morality are very similar. The truths out there about the universe exist (however weird and twisted they may be), and that is equivilent to the truths about morality. They exist. However, people's beliefs on morality (which can be incorrect, and vary based on person and time period) are equivilent to the beliefs of of science (which can be incorrect, and vary based on person and time period.) Thus this leads me again to how your argument is invalid. Just because humans may not be sure of the truths about science/math, or scientists disagreements about them, does not prove they don't exist. Which is the same as how people disagreeing about morality does not show that morality does not have truths.

If there is no true owner of a peice of land (e.g. no man's land) then any person may claim it by settling on it. This is, btw, how Israel was founded: the Zonists didn't "claim" the land by virtue of hitorical link. They either purchased land from the Arab owners, thus becoming the legal owner, or went and settled in no man's land (e.g. the swamps of the Hula valley).

But Jews already had a moral claim to the land...

The person "halfway across the world" may believe as he sees fit. I don't chalenge his claim since I don't know if he's right or wrong.

I'm giving you the situation, I'm telling you he has absolutly no connection the land that anyone would ever say was claim to the land. Now answer the argument. Also I would like to point out, you said you didn't know if he is right OR [/i]wrong. Right or wrong sounds like absolute truths to me

Legal documents don't "pass by" morality. Legal documents establish claim on a piece of land. period. Regardless of any other unsubstatiated claim. The legal claim is upheld by the legal authority, i.e. the court. Sadly, courts don't rule on historical claim and there's no equivelant moral authority (you may seek answers from your local Rabbi if you accept his authority.)

But why do we even bother with claims to land? What's the point? I will tell you. The point is, Most of Western societies today want to be moral. So they have a legal system to make their community civil and morally rightous. Not every law is purely based on morality, and some are wrong, but overall, laws are meant to keep society civil/moral. This is why they have claims to lands, so that those who do have a moral right to the land, can [I]claim it, and so it can be official theirs, with no worries, because it should be theirs.

Revkha

05-13-2003, 05:32 PM

Originally posted by I am David

But Jews already had a moral claim to the land...

Interesting thread.

At the end of World War I, Sharif Al Hussein, the leader of the Hashemite family and governor of Mecca said, when he saw the Jews returning to Palestine that he was seeing what was foretold in the Koran. When others settled in Palestine the land stayed barren, but now the land recognized its original sons and was now producing.

Land deeds or no land deeds - The land belongs to the Jews.

sharonbn

05-17-2003, 09:26 AM

Originally posted by I am David
Again you misunderstand. I was not saying that the ownership of Israel is morally subjective and that anyones opinion how how many years it takes for Israel to become the Arabs is equally valid. My point was that the number of years is not thee or a judging factor in the issue to begin with, so that yes, all opinions on the number of years are equal, because they all are wrong. The judging factor on if it is moral or not simply isn't based on time, that's the point.
Who's to say what is the valid crietria in determining historical land ownership? aaybe there's more than one way to determine this? What's the authority to give us the answer?

Originally posted by I am David
So? :confused:
What don't you understand?
You say courts give "analogous cases" from which we can derive answers to moral quiestions. You give the example of the car theft as "judicial analogy" to the question of historical land ownership. However, the law concerning theft also determines sature of limitation on this specific crime. Now all of the sudden this part of the law cannot serve as "analogous case"?

Originally posted by I am David
First, I was not asking about fully developed, I was looking for specific properties, like feeling of pain/consciousness at all.
stop inventing obstacles. Make the necessary assumption for the sake of argument. "Assuming the fetus is at the development phase where it has no human characteristics...".
stop D-O-D-G-I-N-G

Originally posted by I am David
I only ask for factors that matter. I mean you have to admit, even with your obsession with subjectivness, that if the fetus can feel pain and is conscious is at least an important factor when determing the morality of abortion, while earwax and dirty thoughts aren't really. How does earwax relate to morality? Hmm? It just doesn't matter. I think I stated almost all of the important factors on the morality of abortion (danger to mother, rape, possible mental/physical of the fetus, and the human properties of the fetus) Also the childs future upbringing is a factor to consider. Earwax isn't.
OK, I'll refrain from using humor in my responses, as obviously it goes over your head.
The point I was making was that in this case you are unwilling to give an answer or even a hint of one unless you know all the the determining factors, while this does not seem to bother you in other questions. You know we are not living in a perfect world and more often than not, we don't have all the answers before making the decision. This is why some people are better than others in decision making. its really not a big deal to make the decision when you know everything. Decision making is tested when you're facing an uncertain environment.
Judges are frequently forced to make decisions when they don't know all the determining factors. Like when the boy says "we had concensual intercourse" and the girl says "I didn't want to". their testimonies may contradict each other and no one knows the truth. So the judge makes the decision if there was rape based on the knowledge he has at the moment. He may get it right or wrong and we may never know the truth.

Let me correct the assumption I gave above, lets say that we are at the 8th week, and the doctor tells the mother he cannot determine how well developped is the fetus. He does not know if it feels pain/conciousness, etc. He can only estimate with 75% certainty that it is not developped. it means that for 1 out of 4 prenancy cases, the fetus development is abnormally fast or slow, and the doctor cannot say what is the real condition (not without endangering the fetus' life anyway)

Originally posted by I am David
Well now that you know I am not concerned with the EXACT situation, and only the important factors, I hope you realize I don't care what the race, nationality, and favorite rock star is of 'EVERY' person, or their family tree. I know enough to correctly determine who has moral right to the land. I know the Jews were living peacefully on the land before they were invaded multiple times, as well as expelled fully by the Romans. I know that the Arab settlers after that had no important historic claim to the land as a people, and I know the Jews were around from then till now. I also don't think you will find too many real historians who disagree with me on these facts (at least the majority won't, there are alot of people in the world) Those are the things that are needed to determine who has a right to the land. I may have left out some, but if I did it is known. That info isn't also based on the bible, but on many proffessional historical ventures.
and what if historians got it wrong? as I showed you time and time and time again, scientific knowledge changes over time. known facts are refuted and discarded all the time. there are alternative history views on the issue (I'm not talking about holocaust deniers). For instance, there is an alternative history view that the dark and middle ages did not stretch over 1000 years, but rather 100 years, and the Roman empire existed until 13th cent. (I read an article about this in Haaretz newspaper.) Of course popular history view discards this alternative view as nonsense. So? that's what they said about Copernicus, about Harvey, about Galilay...

It is imerative that you understand that popular opinion does not mean it is the truth. It means it is regarded the truth for practical purposes, but we all need to accept the fact that we might be wrong.
For instance, for day-to-day practical purposes, people and mathematicians accept the equation 1+1=2 as true. It does not mean that it is true. This question remains uncertain at the moment. This philosophycal paradox was already described and discussed by Hume and Berkeley and Kent and Decart some 400 years ago. Go read a book for christ sake.

btw, do you know that to date, after more than 100 years of extensive excavations all over Egypt, no one found the two cities, Raamses and Pithom, built by the Israelits? There are some assumptions (i.e. intelligent guessing) but no certain answer.

Originally posted by I am David
I know you find this morally wrong, that was not the question. I asked if you would say in that situation, if you would hold your ground and shout that the girl being murdered was not actually wrong, and that there was absolutly nothing morally wrong with the murder of her (despite your 'personal' opinion of it)

I would say I believe that this act is immoral and afaik, its illegal. If someone asked me why do I believe this, I would tell them its my personal conviction based on personal concious. If someone refutes my belief, I would listen and try to understand the reason for the alternative belief. Ultimately, I don't know if I'm right or wrong. Furthermore, I don't apply these characteristics to moral questions.

Originally posted by I am David
This is dodging again. But just to make you happy, say that same murder took place in a country with no official laws at all. None, Yet society was on the whole pretty much the same as it is in the US etc... Would the murder be undeserving of punishment? No not based on your moral opinion, I'm asking you if you and your subjectivness think that the murderer, since there was no laws that he broke, is any less deserving of punishment than in the US. Eh?
First of all, I don't regard the American society as moral. Your president just went to war, killing dozens of innocent civillians for no apearant reason, other than to restore the dignity of the family (or preserve American dominance in the oil market, or Americam dollar dominance, or to test the latest generation of smart bombs - take your pick.) Same as America went to war in Vietnam for no apearant reason, other than the fabrication about the Domino effect, Same as America remains the only nation in human history to apply the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, the Atomic bomb. In all above cases, no leader was trialed for crimes against humanity, no official commity investigation, not a single person was forced to take responsibility for the unmeasurable human sufferuing America has so casually inflicted upon nations that did not even pose a direct threat.

Second, I gave the above answer to the question why do I accept the judge's decision on murder. In the society you describe (whch is anarchy, btw) there would be no trial and no judge's decision. Since there is no judge, no law enforcement and no prison, it is likely the murderer would either go unpunished, or be murdered himself as a revenge (not justice making) by the family of the victim - causing an even greater injustice.

not to be accused of dodging, I will state that my belief is that murder is an immoral and inexcusable act. If the wife is abused by her husband for 20 years until she can stand it no longer and she stabs her husband - she deserves to go to jail. If the father shoot the two youths who raped and brutalized his daughter (Time to a kill - fourth time mentioned without an answer) - he deserves to go to jail. whether or not he was temporarily insane is not for me to say and makes no relevance to the morality of his action.
btw, I accept the judicial decision in this matter (they let the murderer go) because I accpet the notion of temporarily insanity as a legal argument. It remains is my belief that the father's action is immoral.

Cont...

sharonbn

05-17-2003, 10:18 AM

Originally posted by I am David
The purpose of that analogy was to show that your argument of why morality is subjective is invalid. Your only argument for your belief seems to be showing me how people's opinions on a situation vary from person to person and over the course of time. Then you always ask in one way or another the question 'How can you say anyone is right???'. My point was this argument is invalid, simply put, because varying opinions or beliefs on an issue do not somehow prove that there is not an absolute truth. Thus, the CD analogy. Despite one person thinking CDs work upside down, and another saying they work right side up (relative to the label), there still is only one way that it does actually work.

The point I am making time and time again is this:
The question of whether or not an absolute truth exists for any given question, cannt be answered by any person. Not in the past, present or future. Thus, it is futile to bang our heads trying to find the absolute truth.

The only thing we can do is accpet scientific authority for scientific questions, military authority for security questions, judicial authority for legal questions, etc. We must rememeber that the answers we are given may be wrong, but it is sufficient for practical reasons.

There is no agreeable authority for moral questions (not for secular people, at least). Thus these questions may remain unanswered. All that can be done in these cases is give an answer that fits your concious and faith.

As I mentioned before (and you conviniently disregarded) religious people maintain the opinion that homosexuality is an immoral lifestyle. vast majority of coutries don't accpet gay marriage or legal rights for gay couples.
The question of whether or not homosexuality is legal was answered in most countries.
The question of legality of homosexual marriage remains highly controversial to this very day. .
The question of whether or not homosexuality is moral remains highly controversial to this very day.
Just because something was made legal or illegal does not answer the moral dillema.
what popular opinion will say about homosexuality and gay marriage in the future? I honestly don't know. No one knows.
When you stated that homosexuality is moral - you stated your personal opinion, nothing more.

Originally posted by I am David
Well to tell you the truth, the truths of morality is more reliable than those of science/math. This is because people are what they are and feel what they feel now, whereas we can't be sure what the universe is or how it works. Actually science and morality are very similar. The truths out there about the universe exist (however weird and twisted they may be), and that is equivilent to the truths about morality. They exist. However, people's beliefs on morality (which can be incorrect, and vary based on person and time period) are equivilent to the beliefs of of science (which can be incorrect, and vary based on person and time period.) Thus this leads me again to how your argument is invalid. Just because humans may not be sure of the truths about science/math, or scientists disagreements about them, does not prove they don't exist. Which is the same as how people disagreeing about morality does not show that morality does not have truths.
oh, I see, you thought you had an "ace" with the 1+1=2 equation. Now you see this was refuted already so you attempt damage control by diminishing the importance of the whole field.
nice strategy. I will adopt this when it suits me.

to the mater, I beileve I already answered the question of the existence and detection of absolute truth.

Originally posted by I am David
I'm giving you the situation, I'm telling you he has absolutly no connection the land that anyone would ever say was claim to the land. Now answer the argument. Also I would like to point out, you said you didn't know if he is right OR [/i]wrong. Right or wrong sounds like absolute truths to me
this is tiring. I believe I answered all of this.
Lets try to refrain from hypothetical absurd examples. I can employ the same strategy and throw ridiculous hypothetical examples to present my argument.
I don't believe answering such hypothetical absurd examples will benefit the discussion, since the intended analogy that underlines these examples can never be agreed upon. I ask you to stick to real life examples and analogies, and I wll try to answer these as I can.

Originally posted by I am David
But why do we even bother with claims to land? What's the point? I will tell you. The point is, Most of Western societies today want to be moral. So they have a legal system to make their community civil and morally rightous. Not every law is purely based on morality, and some are wrong, but overall, laws are meant to keep society civil/moral. This is why they have claims to lands, so that those who do have a moral right to the land, can [I]claim it, and so it can be official theirs, with no worries, because it should be theirs.
I already answered this. To date, no case of land ownership was brought before a court of law where one party argued land ownership by virtue of moral/historical link. I suspect the reason is probably because the lawyer tells his client that the judge will tell the lawyer that there is no law concerning historical land ownership and without substantiated documentation there is no justification to grant ownership.

I also believe if Israel annexed the occupied territories, claiming it implements its historical right to rule these regions - this argument will not be accepted by the international community, contrary to the recognition international community showed to the formation of the state of Israel.
of course, this is my personal prediction and I may turn out to be wrong.

I am David

05-17-2003, 11:27 AM

Who's to say what is the valid crietria in determining historical land ownership? aaybe there's more than one way to determine this? What's the authority to give us the answer?

You know you're losing (or lost!) an argument when...

A) In order to squirm out of a moral argument you must say that morallity is subjective and thus no one can be right or wrong (thus you are 'prevented' from being wrong)

B) You say logic is subjective and the fact that you need an argument to prove something that isn't already proved is subjective.

Give me a break. You need an argument to prove your point. You don't have a valid one. Thus, you are left with an unsuported claim and you have gotten nowhere.

What don't you understand? You say courts give "analogous cases" from which we can derive answers to moral quiestions. You give the example of the car theft as "judicial analogy" to the question of historical land ownership. However, the law concerning theft also determines sature of limitation on this specific crime. Now all of the sudden this part of the law cannot serve as "analogous case"?

I have spent countless paragraphs explaining why my argument was morrally valid, only at the very end did I mention the analagous cases. You think just pointing out an analogous case is going to prove your point? Nope, it is also up to you to explain why the real situation is valid itself, aside from analagous court case. But you have not done this, and the only thing you have done is whine and complain that morallity is subjective so you don't have to even answer my arguments like in a real debate.

stop inventing obstacles. Make the necessary assumption for the sake of argument. "Assuming the fetus is at the development phase where it has no human characteristics...". stop D-O-D-G-I-N-G

No I cannot stop 'D-O-D-G-I-N-G' because I wasn't in the first place. I was only trying to get you to see that you cannot group all abortion cases as one, and then complain that morality is subjective when it seems so hard to make a fair statement about abortion (which is of course, only a result of your grouping all of abortion cases together as one so it IS hard to make a morall judgment on "it".)

OK, I'll refrain from using humor in my responses, as obviously it goes over your head. The point I was making was that in this case you are unwilling to give an answer or even a hint of one unless you know all the the determining factors, while this does not seem to bother you in other questions. You know we are not living in a perfect world and more often than not, we don't have all the answers before making the decision. This is why some people are better than others in decision making. its really not a big deal to make the decision when you know everything. Decision making is tested when you're facing an uncertain environment. Judges are frequently forced to make decisions when they don't know all the determining factors. Like when the boy says "we had concensual intercourse" and the girl says "I didn't want to". their testimonies may contradict each other and no one knows the truth. So the judge makes the decision if there was rape based on the knowledge he has at the moment. He may get it right or wrong and we may never know the truth.

There is a difference between trying to come up with the literal best moral answer to a situation, which means having pretty much all important factors known, and trying to come up with the most moral answer to a situation that you can given the limited knowledge to a situation. That's fine, but please don't mix them up as if they are the same. I figured here in a debate forum where no one is relying on our decisions, the former is the way to go because if one was caught making his desisicions with an awareness of his lack of knowledge on the subject, he would obviously be presenting a very poor argument, because he simply was not required to make a decision, thus it isn't an argument to say "Well I didn't consider all the factors because I don't know them, but I presented my argument because I had to!". he could scream this all I want, but he still would have present a poor argument.

Let me correct the assumption I gave above, lets say that we are at the 8th week, and the doctor tells the mother he cannot determine how well developped is the fetus. He does not know if it feels pain/conciousness, etc. He can only estimate with 75% certainty that it is not developped. it means that for 1 out of 4 prenancy cases, the fetus development is abnormally fast or slow, and the doctor cannot say what is the real condition (not without endangering the fetus' life anyway)

Well making the assumption that there are no other factors (IE mothers life in danger, rape, the mother cant handle a baby) it then obviously isn't in the hands of the mother to decide if another human organism is worthy of living. It's just not the mothers duty to say 'this unborn child does not deserve to live because my poor knowledge of the situation says it isn't important to know'. Sure some may disagree with me there, but they would also be advocating the brutal slaughter of a human being just to save the mother some trouble, so its not like their argument is very valid.

and what if historians got it wrong? as I showed you time and time and time again, scientific knowledge changes over time. known facts are refuted and discarded all the time. there are alternative history views on the issue (I'm not talking about holocaust deniers). For instance, there is an alternative history view that the dark and middle ages did not stretch over 1000 years, but rather 100 years, and the Roman empire existed until 13th cent. (I read an article about this in Haaretz newspaper.) Of course popular history view discards this alternative view as nonsense. So? that's what they said about Copernicus, about Harvey, about Galilay... It is imerative that you understand that popular opinion does not mean it is the truth. It means it is regarded the truth for practical purposes, but we all need to accept the fact that we might be wrong. For instance, for day-to-day practical purposes, people and mathematicians accept the equation 1+1=2 as true. It does not mean that it is true. This question remains uncertain at the moment. This philosophycal paradox was already described and discussed by Hume and Berkeley and Kent and Decart some 400 years ago. Go read a book for christ sake.

What exactly are you arguing? Of course I except the extremely unlikly possibility that the historians are incorrect about this particular period of history, but it doesn't change my argument at all if I assume that they are correct, which is all I have to concern myself with. If humans sat around complaining like you that we cant have arguments or make decisions because we can't know anything for absolute certain, we would still be in the stone ages with an average life span of 30 years.

First of all, I don't regard the American society as moral. Your president just went to war, killing dozens of innocent civillians for no apearant reason, other than to restore the dignity of the family (or preserve American dominance in the oil market, or Americam dollar dominance, or to test the latest generation of smart bombs - take your pick.) Same as America went to war in Vietnam for no apearant reason, other than the fabrication about the Domino effect, Same as America remains the only nation in human history to apply the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, the Atomic bomb. In all above cases, no leader was trialed for crimes against humanity, no official commity investigation, not a single person was forced to take responsibility for the unmeasurable human sufferuing America has so casually inflicted upon nations that did not even pose a direct threat.

Err, nice little paragraph ranting and raving about your illogical liberal thought patterns, but I was speaking of American society which on the whole is moral. We don't go around killing or stealing as we see fit, etc etc, and if a President does make a mistake that the people do not have power to correct, that does not make the entire country an immoral society.

Continued...

I am David

05-17-2003, 11:28 AM

Second, I gave the above answer to the question why do I accept the judge's decision on murder. In the society you describe (whch is anarchy, btw) there would be no trial and no judge's decision. Since there is no judge, no law enforcement and no prison, it is likely the murderer would either go unpunished, or be murdered himself as a revenge (not justice making) by the family of the victim - causing an even greater injustice.

not to be accused of dodging, I will state that my belief is that murder is an immoral and inexcusable act. If the wife is abused by her husband for 20 years until she can stand it no longer and she stabs her husband - she deserves to go to jail. If the father shoot the two youths who raped and brutalized his daughter (Time to a kill - fourth time mentioned without an answer) - he deserves to go to jail. whether or not he was temporarily insane is not for me to say and makes no relevance to the morality of his action.
btw, I accept the judicial decision in this matter (they let the murderer go) because I accpet the notion of temporarily insanity as a legal argument. It remains is my belief that the father's action is immoral.

This is dodging, again, for I did not ask for your personal 'conviction', as I already heard it, I ask if you would still hold to your argument in the situation I described, with the innocent girl slaughtered in front of her friends, her parents with no child, for no good reason at all. I asked if you were there, would you still say its reasonable for someone to say "yes that murder was the best thing to ever happen on this earth." Would you still say he could say that and be just as right as you are? You mean the murder of that girl was just as right as it is wrong? And no I'm not talking about what the person believes, but what actually happened to the girl and family, is that 'good'? Do you think they would enjoy that happening? Hmm? Answer.

The point I am making time and time again is this: The question of whether or not an absolute truth exists for any given question, cannt be answered by any person. Not in the past, present or future. Thus, it is futile to bang our heads trying to find the absolute truth.

This is just a pathetic argument. Morality, and those who say 1+1=2 are not concerned with the possibilities that are so remote that they would not even pop up once in the life of 1 trillion universe lives, because the odds are so small. Face it, the CD simply does not work facing upside down. You can't get around that. That is a FACT, and no I don't care about the possibility that we are actually in 'The Matrix' And that in real life (outside The Matrix) the CD does work upsidown. If you have one, put a CD in the drive with the label facing downards. See what it does. Can you hear music? Can you install the program? Can you play the game? Does it work? NO. Face it and stop complaining, that is an absolute truth and the fact that someone thinks differently does not change the fact that the CD works rightside up only. No matter what anyones opinions of the CD situation is, they can't change how it works, just as some crazy nuts opinion that killing that girl was rightous, does not change the misery the family had to go through, the trama and lonelyness her friends had to endure, and the entire life of a good person left unlived.

There is no agreeable authority for moral questions (not for secular people, at least). Thus these questions may remain unanswered. All that can be done in these cases is give an answer that fits your concious and faith.

Those questions are already answered, just not accepted perhaps. The question of weather or not murder of an innocent child was moral or imoral was answered ever since humans existed. It doesn't matter what anyone thinks of it, because they aren't the innocent kid getting murdered. Their opinion does not change the situation in anyway. That's the point.

As I mentioned before (and you conviniently disregarded) religious people maintain the opinion that homosexuality is an immoral lifestyle. vast majority of coutries don't accpet gay marriage or legal rights for gay couples. The question of whether or not homosexuality is legal was answered in most countries. The question of legality of homosexual marriage remains highly controversial to this very day. . The question of whether or not homosexuality is moral remains highly controversial to this very day. Just because something was made legal or illegal does not answer the moral dillema. what popular opinion will say about homosexuality and gay marriage in the future? I honestly don't know. No one knows. When you stated that homosexuality is moral - you stated your personal opinion, nothing more.

No when I stated that homosexuality is moral, I stated that fact that, in general cases, homosexuals harm no one, live otherwise as normal people, do their share in society, etc etc and thus there is nothing immoral about it, and cannot logically claim that being homosexual is immoral. Some religous persons opinion does not change these facts. Thus they are simply wrong.

oh, I see, you thought you had an "ace" with the 1+1=2 equation. Now you see this was refuted already so you attempt damage control by diminishing the importance of the whole field. nice strategy. I will adopt this when it suits me. to the mater, I beileve I already answered the question of the existence and detection of absolute truth.

I did have an " 'ace' ", as for all practical purposes, 1+1=2 and you will never be able to prove otherwise.

this is tiring. I believe I answered all of this. Lets try to refrain from hypothetical absurd examples. I can employ the same strategy and throw ridiculous hypothetical examples to present my argument. I don't believe answering such hypothetical absurd examples will benefit the discussion, since the intended analogy that underlines these examples can never be agreed upon. I ask you to stick to real life examples and analogies, and I wll try to answer these as I can.

Wow you don't think this is dodging? This analogy is perfectly valid. It is a moral situation just like any other. The reason why you don't like it however, is because it is very simple, there aren't a lot of complications that you can hide behind, and anyone can see that it is wrong. That man does not deserve all of belgium, and anyone who says so is just a raving lunatic, and just plain wrong. Now please, answer the question.

I already answered this. To date, no case of land ownership was brought before a court of law where one party argued land ownership by virtue of moral/historical link. I suspect the reason is probably because the lawyer tells his client that the judge will tell the lawyer that there is no law concerning historical land ownership and without substantiated documentation there is no justification to grant ownership.

Your missing the point totally. I said simply that the reason for legal land ownership is to preserve simple morality. I didn't say you could argue those points directly in court, but never the less that is their purpose, and to argue otherwise is just maddness.

sharonbn

05-17-2003, 03:58 PM

Originally posted by I am David
[B]You know you're losing (or lost!) an argument when...

A) In order to squirm out of a moral argument you must say that morallity is subjective and thus no one can be right or wrong (thus you are 'prevented' from being wrong)

B) You say logic is subjective and the fact that you need an argument to prove something that isn't already proved is subjective.
You know you're losing (or lost!) an argument when...

It starts as a normal duscussion: you state your argument, your opponent states his. you argue for a while, each one attemting to substantiate his claim - you know, a normal discussion. when it comes to a dead end, your opponent say, "well, each one has his own conviction, I guess there's no way to tell".
You retain that your argument is correct and any alternative is false.
"Why is it so?" asks your opponent
"becuase it is. Because I know what's moral and immoral because my common sense and concious tell me"
This is your basis - "I know".

Your opponent tells you that your certainty and conviction are admirable but not enough to form the sole basis of your argument. "But everybody will tell you..." you say, attemptnig at one point to encapsulate all of humanity into one homogenous entity, only to realise not everybody think the way you do.

You try time after time to bring what you believe to be undisputable proofs of the reliaibility and authenticity of your knowledge. things that "everybody" know to be true, each time believing that now you have found an ace that cannot be answered... and time after time your "proofs" are refuted. By mathematicians, by philosophers, by religion, by historians, by the movies...

Now all of the sudden you realise, your argument about absolute truth is not so solid. Your basis for arguing that you know what's moral and immoral cannot invalidate an alternative opinion. So instead of accepting what is already known to everyone who read any book about philosophy, you simply ignore the issue altogether, decide that his argument is invalid and you have just won (of course you did - you know it) and that's it.

Originally posted by I am David
Give me a break. You need an argument to prove your point. You don't have a valid one. Thus, you are left with an unsuported claim and you have gotten nowhere.
I will recap, so you'll get it all without the tiring job of going back to find it in the original posts:

My argument is that the Jewish historical claim is not sufficient enough to invalidate the Palestinian one over the occupied territories, (and vice versa, btw) I say both claims have a moral legitimacy, and it depends on personal interpratation of the history of the region, basically saying "its in the eyes of the beholder"

I pointed out two justifications for the Palestinian claim:

1) ancient Jewish takeover of Israel is as moral (or immoral) as any other conquest that came before or after it. the fact that the Hebrews came before the Arabs is irrelevant. The Jewish claim cannot be moral if its based on an immoral conquest, regardless of what hapenned to the indiginous population. I also claim that the Aras were not the ones who caused the expulsion of the Jews, and there is no historical "reservation" of land.

Your argument: Since the indiginous population is no longer with us (we don't know what happened to them, so that's ignored) than the Jews are the oldest "previous" owner in existence. That automatically gives them moral right as owners.
We then went into an argument if being the oldest "previous" owner is the rightous one. You gave your analogy (the stolen car) and I gave mine (the adopted baby) and each one remain entrenched in his conviction.

This brings to another point that I missed until now (sorry, I'm not perfect, I know) Your car analogy is missing the fact that the Jews themselves are immoral conqueres of the land. IMO, Your analogy needs to be ammended like this:
The car was stolen by a thief. the original car owner died. (mind you, I'm not saying he was murdered). now the car is stolen from the "original" thief - now who "deserves" the car?

2) Arab presence in the land of Israel remained for the last 1,500 years. regardless of race and nationality - the Arab villagers who lived in Israel in 1948 and 1967 have family trees that stretch for generations and centuries back. This brought up the argument that moral right may be acquied through emotional link to one's home, by virtue of length of time of residence.

Your refuting argument was that emotional ties does not make a valid argument. Jews were here first and that fact invalidates 1,500 years of Arab history.
so we went about arguing about validity of emotional ties as claim of ownership, again each one bringing his own analogies and examples.

Then I brought up the argument of stature of limitation.
Your refuting argument was that the concept does not apply. However, your use of judicial cases as an analogy to base your argments (the stolen car again), validates the stature of limitation analogy. After I pointed out this discrepency in your reference, you were left with no refute, other than the fact that this argument was brought recently and is therefore is "not enough".

at that point I came to the conclusion that the discussion came to a dead end. Each one holds his own conviction and no one can persuade the other - this is also frequent in discussions.
I came to that realisation here (http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php3?postid=52313#post52313). I summerised my pov, and was conceeded to accept a tie.

You, however, did not share my diagnosis of the discussion. You maintained that my opinion is not valid because it accepts the basis of personal conviction and interparatation. You argued that your opinion is based on "absolute" moral standards shared by everyone who is not a wacko.

the rest, a they say...

Originally posted by I am David
I have spent countless paragraphs explaining why my argument was morrally valid, only at the very end did I mention the analagous cases. You think just pointing out an analogous case is going to prove your point? Nope, it is also up to you to explain why the real situation is valid itself, aside from analagous court case. But you have not done this, and the only thing you have done is whine and complain that morallity is subjective so you don't have to even answer my arguments like in a real debate.
oh yes, I almost forgot, your strongest argument to date is that I "whine and complain that morallity is subjective so you don't have to even answer my arguments like in a real debate."
I don't know what I was doing through all this debate and all this time here. I thought I was making arguments but now I understand I was whining. I have no answer to such a strong argument so I admit defeat. You won.

Originally posted by I am David
No I cannot stop 'D-O-D-G-I-N-G' because I wasn't in the first place. I was only trying to get you to see that you cannot group all abortion cases as one, and then complain that morality is subjective when it seems so hard to make a fair statement about abortion (which is of course, only a result of your grouping all of abortion cases together as one so it IS hard to make a morall judgment on "it".)
I already said it before: when people state their opinion on moral issues like abortions, death penalty, etc. they state their claim regarding the issue as a concept. They may have reservations about specific circumstances, but that does not diminish their opinion on the concept.
People say "I believe killing an unborn child is morally wrong". They may add that there are life threatening situations where the moral standard is put aside, but it does not deter the concpetual opinion.

Originally posted by I am David
Well making the assumption that there are no other factors (IE mothers life in danger, rape, the mother cant handle a baby) it then obviously isn't in the hands of the mother to decide if another human organism is worthy of living. It's just not the mothers duty to say 'this unborn child does not deserve to live because my poor knowledge of the situation says it isn't important to know'. Sure some may disagree with me there, but they would also be advocating the brutal slaughter of a human being just to save the mother some trouble, so its not like their argument is very valid.
I don't understand - you didn't mention development phase. So its still "brutal" murder, no matter what the phase of development of the fetus? why did you argue this issue so long?

anyway, I am, as I already said, 100% pro-choice. It is, qouting you - "obvious" - that the mother, being the bearer of the child, has the choice to decide if to end the pregnancy or not. She does not have to come up with a "good enough" excuse for it - her wish is enough. I also firmly believe that men have absolutely no moral right to decide for a woman, as we are not the ones who have to go through the ordeal of pregnacy and birth. We may try to persuade, but if the mother insists - its her life and her choice.

I am willing to question my opinion in the case of the fetus being developped. I have mixed emotions about such a case, and am not sure I have a definite answer. in all other cases, I stand by my pro-choice opinion.

btw, pro-lifers do not believe rape is a good enough cause for abortion (at least the ones in Israel, being orthodox religious in majority). I assume that if you brought up the issue that the father does matter to you, so you're in dispute with both pro choice and pro life believers.
but everybody got it wrong except you...

Continued...

sharonbn

05-17-2003, 04:49 PM

Originally posted by I am David
This is dodging, again, for I did not ask for your personal 'conviction', as I already heard it, I ask if you would still hold to your argument in the situation I described, with the innocent girl slaughtered in front of her friends, her parents with no child, for no good reason at all. I asked if you were there, would you still say its reasonable for someone to say "yes that murder was the best thing to ever happen on this earth." Would you still say he could say that and be just as right as you are? You mean the murder of that girl was just as right as it is wrong? And no I'm not talking about what the person believes, but what actually happened to the girl and family, is that 'good'? Do you think they would enjoy that happening? Hmm? Answer.

This is just a pathetic argument. Morality, and those who say 1+1=2 are not concerned with the possibilities that are so remote that they would not even pop up once in the life of 1 trillion universe lives, because the odds are so small. Face it, the CD simply does not work facing upside down. You can't get around that. That is a FACT, and no I don't care about the possibility that we are actually in 'The Matrix' And that in real life (outside The Matrix) the CD does work upsidown. If you have one, put a CD in the drive with the label facing downards. See what it does. Can you hear music? Can you install the program? Can you play the game? Does it work? NO. Face it and stop complaining, that is an absolute truth and the fact that someone thinks differently does not change the fact that the CD works rightside up only. No matter what anyones opinions of the CD situation is, they can't change how it works, just as some crazy nuts opinion that killing that girl was rightous, does not change the misery the family had to go through, the trama and lonelyness her friends had to endure, and the entire life of a good person left unlived.

Those questions are already answered, just not accepted perhaps. The question of weather or not murder of an innocent child was moral or imoral was answered ever since humans existed. It doesn't matter what anyone thinks of it, because they aren't the innocent kid getting murdered. Their opinion does not change the situation in anyway. That's the point.

No when I stated that homosexuality is moral, I stated that fact that, in general cases, homosexuals harm no one, live otherwise as normal people, do their share in society, etc etc and thus there is nothing immoral about it, and cannot logically claim that being homosexual is immoral. Some religous persons opinion does not change these facts. Thus they are simply wrong.

I did have an " 'ace' ", as for all practical purposes, 1+1=2 and you will never be able to prove otherwise.

Wow you don't think this is dodging? This analogy is perfectly valid. It is a moral situation just like any other. The reason why you don't like it however, is because it is very simple, there aren't a lot of complications that you can hide behind, and anyone can see that it is wrong. That man does not deserve all of belgium, and anyone who says so is just a raving lunatic, and just plain wrong. Now please, answer the question.

Your missing the point totally. I said simply that the reason for legal land ownership is to preserve simple morality. I didn't say you could argue those points directly in court, but never the less that is their purpose, and to argue otherwise is just maddness.

OK, for me its enough.

its obvious you're bringing up concensual issues, going as far as making up hypothetical cases and bringing horror movie scenes like "slaughter of an innocent child in front of her friends" to show there are cases with one possible answers and I'm bringing up controversial issues to show that there are cases with multiple possible answers. we are doing this on and on with no apearant progress.

I throw the towel. the discussion turned nasty with nasty descriptions from both sides and there is no foreseeable conclusion. I summerized all the arguments in the previous post, I believe we each stated his opinion clearly. I leave it at that.

I am David

05-17-2003, 05:59 PM

You know you're losing (or lost!) an argument when...

....

I will kindly skip over your little 'sumirezation' of the argument as it is very poorly done. At least if you are going to summurize do it right, but I can't really blame you as you can't see how wrong you are even now.

Your basis for arguing that you know what's moral and immoral cannot invalidate an alternative opinion.

No, this is exactly the point I have been arguing. My opinion on morality doesn't matter, neither does anyone elses. That's because what makes up a moral situation isn't the opinions of people unnaffected by the situation, but the situation itself. Someones opinion of the moral situation (including one of the involved parties) does not change what the situation actually is. Personal moral convictions are just opinions, and just like opinions on music and literal etc, they are correct only in mind of the beholder and don't apply to any other people. You like rock, you think its the best. No one can deny that, because to you rock is the best. And here lies why morality is not subjective. Because a moral situation is not defined by opinions in peoples minds, it is formed and defined by the the situtation itself. This is why some some extremist liberal's opinion on the Israel-Palestine conflict who formed his opinion of it almost immediatly based on his pre-formed ideals and his selected biased media is not as valid as an 'opinion' of it formed by someone who took the time and energy to actually research and anylize the situation fairly. The liberals opinion doesn't even have to be valid at all, as he could have formed his opinion/personal conviction on absolutly no thinking or fact searching at all. So why is his moral conviction of the situation just as valid as the one who took time to be as fair and thorough as humanly possible in his anylization? Yes to the Liberals mind it is just as valid, but the moral situation does not change based on the liberal's opinion.

On the Israel-Palestine conflict:

Once again, the Ancient Hebrew conquest of Canaan has no effect on the immorality of the Palestinian takeover of of Israel after the Jews were expelled. This is for two reasons. First, the Jews who were expelled were not the same Jews who expelled the Canaanites. Thus it cannot be said that the Jews deserved to be expelled. Second, the Canaanites no longer existed as they once were, thus it is commiting no immoral injustice for the Jews to keep living there. THUS, the Jewish claim to the land can be moral and is since no immoral injustice is being commited by those Jews, since they neither took over anyone or are keeping anyone from living on their land.

And thus, it is therefore just as immoral for the Palestinian's takeover the Jews land when the Jews weren't the very original occupants of the land as it would be if they were the original occupants of the land. Also the fact that the Palestinians were not the ones who actually expelled the Jews is irrellivent, as they were still living on land that was not theirs and thus do not deserve it.

To correct my analogy, take this:

There was a car rightfully owned by the person who bought it from the dealer. It was stolen. The original owner moved away and was no longer rellevant to the ownership of the car. The car theif then used the car for 5 years, and sold it to a new friend he had met, who had no idea the car had been stolen and payed good honest money for it. Now this person who payed his hard earned money for the car and bought it honestly has the car stolen from him. Now does this person not deserve the car? Does the new theif deserve the car? No indeed.

On your second argument, you have provided no valid reason why mere time (and in the mere thousands of years I might add) is enough to somehow magically take away someones right to property in this situation. Considering the Jews did not 'neglect' the land intentionally, and always were in need of a homeland, time has no effect on this moral issue, as long as the Jews are still around and being mistreated and prevented from living normally.

Your refuting argument was that the concept does not apply. However, your use of judicial cases as an analogy to base your argments (the stolen car again), validates the stature of limitation analogy. After I pointed out this discrepency in your reference, you were left with no refute, other than the fact that this argument was brought recently and is therefore is "not enough".

I assume the law in Israel was made to prevent unneeded and unwanted property go unused when others could use it. I can see this as certainly reasonable, and if the Jews willingly left the land of Israel and no longer needed or wanted it, it should now be the Palestinians by right as they occupied it when no one used/needed/wanted it. I can't imagine that law in Israel applying to well when someone is kidnapped from their house and then someone takes it apon themselves to occupy the empty house. But if it does, I am very sad indeed that the law exists and applies that way, because it is definitly unfair.

anyway, I am, as I already said, 100% pro-choice. It is, qouting you - "obvious" - that the mother, being the bearer of the child, has the choice to decide if to end the pregnancy or not. She does not have to come up with a "good enough" excuse for it - her wish is enough. I also firmly believe that men have absolutely no moral right to decide for a woman, as we are not the ones who have to go through the ordeal of pregnacy and birth. We may try to persuade, but if the mother insists - its her life and her choice.

But you see, your argument is completely illogical. The right to 'choice' should never override the right to life, if we desire a standard of morality that is based on rightousness. Sure, you can say the mother has a right to choice over the baby's right to life, but that doesn't deny the fact that the mother has an abortion just so she doesn't have to have a baby then, but a little bit later because she is inconvinienced a little bit, while the fetus is brutally ripped apart inside the mom, and having his/her entire life cut out from him/her.

Now I say this for this situation, it would be different for others, for example if the fetus was only a zygote and only a few cells, because that is a different situation than the one described above and thus deserves a different answer. Which is what I've been trying to explain all along :rolleyes:

its obvious you're bringing up concensual issues, going as far as making up hypothetical cases and bringing horror movie scenes like "slaughter of an innocent child in front of her friends" to show there are cases with one possible answers and I'm bringing up controversial issues to show that there are cases with multiple possible answers. we are doing this on and on with no apearant progress.

I brought up situations where there is only one reasonable answer because if there can be only one reasonable answer for one situation, then that means that there can be for all situations, just answers less definite, and that's a start. You bring up contraversial issues, but only because they are so complex and remote are they 'contraversial', simply because it is hard to understand the true situation. You have pointed these out countless times, but you should understand, like I have said before, it doesn't prove that people's opinions of this very complex situation are equally valid, but only that there are so many opinions and it is so contraversial because the situation is so complex. As well this should be realized in conjunction with the fact that the simpler the situation is, the more people agree on it. Mabye this should be a small hint, that mabye peoples opinions are not what's important.