top | item 24984351

(no title)

dternyak | 5 years ago

With this logic, most of the world is exhibiting deeply ingrained magical thinking by honoring 3000+ year old commandments like "You shall not murder".

Just because an ideology is honored and held in high esteem by its adherents (and to steelman your argument - even in higher esteem than it may deserve) does not mean we have better alternatives to the ideology.

discuss

order

ASalazarMX|5 years ago

That commandment is not the thing stopping people for murdering others, it's the legal system. I would go as far to say that the ten commandments are mostly absent in the decision-making process of most people, and hence quite obsolete.

bloodorange|5 years ago

Perhaps we could go even further and say that people are inherently not inclined to kill one another and the legal system only steps in when such exceptional events do occur.

(Here, I'm only talking about murder and not what is a "tribe" attacking another, which happens even now. For instance, a nation invading and bombing another nation, drone-bombing wedding parties or religious extremists trying to take over a nation etc.)

PeterisP|5 years ago

The parent post argued about attributing special importance to the exact verbiage and intent as expressed in that 250 year old document. While we do still have laws prohbiting murder, we don't rely on Old Testament for guidance on what killing is permissible and what killing is murder, which details matter, and what shall the punishments be; we do consider the nuances expressed in that old document as obsolete and if people would try to make arguments about treating murder based on the nuances of how exactly Old Testament prescribes to handle murder (e.g. whether all murderers must get the death penalty as per Leviticus 24:19) then we would consider that as magical thinking and not really a valid argument.