VG,
The conversation has moved on so briefly only now:
And I responded that god's behaviour could have been morally right for that situation, and our behaviour could be morally right for now. I also asked you the question as to why you thought that the morals of the god character in that story need to be aligned with the morals of humans today. Unless you are claiming that morals should not change depending on the situation and circumstances and/or that human moral behaviour in their interactions with other humans should be the same as the morality of the god character.
No – if, say, current moral thinking is that not preventing unnecessary suffering is wrong, then by that standard it’s wrong whether it happened now or 2,000 years ago. There’s no magic factor that would make, say, giving brain cancer to babies wrong now but just fine at some time previously.
You can assert that it has a plain meaning but others disagree with you. You have provided no evidence to show that your meaning is the only possible meaning. Oh well. Guess we'll have to keep agreeing to disagree.
Wrong again. Dictionaries for example describe the standard usage of words, including the word “will” – if you want to “interpret” that word differently
then it’s you job to justify your different meaning. When you can’t do that (and you can’t) you just go nuclear on any argument because anyone can say they “interpret” a word differently from their interlocuter’s use of the word, so their argument fails. Hence: “I interpret the word “orbit” differently to you, therefore your argument that the Earth orbits the Sun is wrong” etc.
Either justify your “interpretation” of “will” meaning something other than “will”, or give up the assertion.
The angel has not said God cannot change course. So once again we just have your interpretation of the meaning of the words in the story that is different from the meanings other people have interpreted. You have provided no evidence to show that your meaning is the only possible meaning. Oh well. Guess we'll have to keep agreeing to disagree.
The “angel” of the story told Mary what “will” happen, that what “will” happen is “God’s word” and that “God’s word” is “unfailing”. My “interpretation” of these words is just their standard use – if you still want to play your get out of jail free card of absolute linguistic relativism – ie, just claiming without justification to “interpret” any way that suits you any word you find inconvenient – you just collapse any possibility of discourse even in principle. “It gets dark at night time” you say? No, you’re wrong about that because I “interpret” “dark”, “night time” etc differently from you albeit with no justification at all.
Can you see the problem you create here?
All you put in bold was someone else's assertion on the internet, which is no more convincing than if you asserted it. If one organisation's assertion from the internet is your idea of evidence of a currently accepted moral standard, I can see why you are struggling to make your case. There are so many surveys online where people say that they not only had relationships with employees, but think work is the place where many people meet their partners, that I can't even be bothered to link to them. The advice online is that employers should have policies in relation to relationships in order to protect the business in case it gets sued for sexual harassment or discrimination if things go wrong or the relationship creates a conflict of interest. Not sure what policy civil servants are required to follow in terms of relationships with colleagues or their managers. As you are so focused on the word "servant" it might be worth you checking if any civil servants have consented to relationships that, according to you, it is impossible to give valid consent for.
“Someone else’s assertion” is actually from the guidelines published by RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), the largest anti-sexual violence organisation in the US. They operate a nationwide sexual assault hotline and work with more than 1,000 sexual assault service providers, and they provide sexual assault-related support to various Government agencies including the US Department of Defence. In the last 27 years RAINN have supported some 3.7. sexual assault survivors and their families. They’re the largest and best-regarded organisation oof this type that I could find.
Oh, and if you want to use “assertion” pejoratively as part of your ad hom you should understand that that
all ethical positions are to some degree “assertions”, albeit as here well-argued, widely accepted and practically implemented in many real world situations.
No I don't know full well - in fact I completely disagree with you that employees are routinely let go for dating in the workplace. There are some companies that have this as a rule, but not a lot of companies. And the reason for these rules are to protect the business from a lawsuit.
What is not convincing, is you asserting there is a moral consensus but not being able to provide evidence of a moral consensus.
We're not talking about a headmaster as you said the moral standard applied even when people were not under-age.
The ”moral consensus” is documented in guidelines, academic articles, workplace policies and the like that have been widely adopted across Western democratic societies. Of course they’re not applied universally and consistently – workplace ethics especially is a constantly developing field; just think of the different dates that smoking in offices was banned for example – but it’s nonetheless nonsense to suggest that the consensus doesn’t exist at all.
No you haven't - you linked to one organisation online that made an assertion and told me to Google structural coercion. That's rubbish in terms of evidence to support your assertions. You spend lots of time on here telling other people how evidence works, I suggest you school yourself on the basics of evidence.
Wrong again – se above. Its apparent that you will dismiss without grounds as “rubbish” any evidence that falsifies your beliefs, so what’s the point of asking for it in the first place?
What you're doing here is misrepresenting me because you can't come up with evidence that there is an accepted moral standard that you will be fired for dating in the workplace. If there were so many links to so many guidelines and so much evidence of people losing their jobs merely for dating, you presumably could have done better than linking to one US organisation that just asserted the same claim as you. And as I keep saying, if there were a few companies that have terminated employment just for dating, it was to protect the business from potential future lawsuits.
Not “fired for dating” – action will be taken (sometimes including firing, but not always when another solutions are available)
when the power relationship means that valid consent is deemed not to be possible. Not every company, school, hospital etc will do this (at least not yet) but those that have adopted the guidelines they think most appropriate will. That at some tine in the past you may have had experience of a company that didn’t do this is irrelevant, just as my once knowing a company that still allowed smoking in the office is irrelevant.
Why even look at pregnancies at all - it isn't illegal or exploitative to get pregnant. The issue that might make a pregnancy problematic is the issue of consent. Why not come up with any act that isn't intrinsically illegal or exploitative to demonstrate your claims about valid consent in an employer / employee relationship.
Oh dear. It’s not that the “act” is “intrinsically illegal or exploitative”, it’s that t
he context in which it happens makes it intrinsically illegal or exploitative.
Not true. I was asking for evidence for the Western standard you claimed existed about consent. Especially the one that you linked to which said "Unequal power dynamics, such as engaging in sexual activity with an employee... also mean that consent cannot be freely given." All I see when I look at media reports is lots of discussion and disagreement about consent - was there valid consent to puberty blockers or other medical procedures or relationships, discussions about children consenting to non-therapeutic circumcision, whether the age of consent should be lowered etc etc
Why are you doing this to yourself? You seem to have no awareness of how badly out of your depth you are but as you’d simply copy and paste a “no you are” reply I see no point in telling you why. “Western standards” about these matters are developing and, as always, their real world implementation follows behind – and it sometimes does so fitfully and inconsistently too. We’ve come a long way since the days of women being expected to resign when they became pregnant for example, but denying that change was happening just because it took a while is stupid.
