martin
You missed out a few superior attitudes. The catholic church was wrong when it proclaimed that the slaughter of muslims was the only killing of which God approved.

The Catholic church was wrong when it brought about the inquisition to persecute all those who disagreed with the churches teachings.

Luther was wrong when he taught hatred of the Jews. A hatred by the way which several catholic church theologians & popes approved of.

You condemn [& in my opinion rightly] the human sacrifice of the Aztecs. Yet when mention is made of the genocide of the Canaanites ordered by God in the book of judges all of a sudden you argue that certain things other than the wrongness of genocide MUST be taken into account. Strange that isn't it martin?

For the current Jewish people the issue is: "Do we allow Hizballah to continue to threaten the security of our nation?" Do the Jews initiate action to eradicate an armed people and their sympathizers with an agenda to drive them into the sea? How fare do they go?

Martin,
I do agree that the morals of non-violent cultures, communities or persons are superior to violent ones.
But, throughout this thread of comments we have already discussed the importance of ‘not hurting others’. I assumed that we established this already.

It is therefore irrelevant to list violent events to attack my point ‘that communities with different moralities can be equal’, because I assumed that violent issues were excluded in comparing communities'/cultures' morals. Perhaps I should have emphasised this. OF COURSE all this violence is wrong, no matter by who's morals it happened.
Bosk has picked up on that and understood what I meant though, so I don’t need to say much more.

Let’s compare non-violent, harmless cultures with non-violent, harmless cultures. All violence in whatever culture or community is wrong, I agree with that. Otherwise we could talk forever about burning ‘witches’ at the stake, killing people who claimed that the earth was round etc. Actually, I cannot really think of any established religion that never has harmed anyone. Let me know if you know of any. Even in Buddhism there are some exceptions to the non-violence norm.

Can we perhaps agree that a non-violent anarchist's morals can be different, yet equal to a non-violent non-anarchist's morals, seeing that neither harms others?

Martin,

I’m sure that just about every culture that’s ever existed would agree with your statement that some cultures are superior to others. And just about every culture will put their own at the top of the pile. In reality, the best we can say is, “we hold these truths to be self evident…” But one thing that we in the west in 2006 have is a breadth of access to so many different ways of thinking and living: what is “self evident” is no longer as simple as it used to be. This gives us the responsibility to be open to far more than our ancestors ever had to deal with – not uncritically, mind you, but with an openness of heart and mind.

I don’t have any background in philosophy or theology (my education was in an applied science) but I reckon you and Philo are both reducing the debate to two poles:

Either true moral values come from outside humans (i.e. from God) and are immutable, or we have the anarchy of an extreme form of moral relativism where no moral system is any better than any other and, as Philo says, “anything goes”. (I’m sure he must have said it somewhere)

Perhaps there is a third possibility: perhaps there are “universal” values, but they don’t come down from on high: they are a product of human searching and effort, are derived from human experience and wisdom, and whose worth can only be measured in their effect on human lives. And furthermore, our understanding of those values is always, more or less, through a glass darkly. Which means that they are always going to be a work in progress, but no less valuable for that.

Continued below:

Martin, my problem with revealed religion is that it seems to deny what is “self evident” to me: that all morality is ultimately a human enterprise. Ascribing the source of that morality to God and making a fetish of “revealed” texts is a way of avoiding our ultimate responsibility to ourselves, others and to the world. The other problem is that revealed religion tends to ossify: particularly when it comes to written texts we can end up stuck with a worldview that might have made sense when it was written, but no longer works. Human societies have always been in a state of flux, but ours is arguably one that has undergone more fundamental change (economic, social, technological) in the last 300 years than any other in a comparable time. That people would seek to anchor themselves in the old verities is understandable, but decoupled from their original human context they can end up making less and less sense.

I feel for the Christian churches as they try to reconcile their heritage with modernity. I’m pissed off that so many of them have chosen homosexuality as their fault lines, but it’s interesting for me to watch. (Actually, I think that Christian conservatives have made a serious tactical error in their choice of this battle line: not as bad as choosing Darwinian evolution as the protestant fundamentalists have, but an unwinnable fight, nonetheless).

What’s going to be really scary, though, is when Islam comes head on with modernity, as is inevitable given the large minorities growing up in western humanist societies. (It would probably be inevitable, anyway, given globalization, and a younger westernized generation might just be its saving grace). My guess is that sooner or later someone’s going to fly a jet airliner into a skyscraper.

I’d still love to hear your thoughts on homosexuality as a “gift”.

Bosk

Of course Luther was wrong in his hatred of the Jews.

You'd need to show me where the Church issued such a statement about killing the Mohammedans.

But of course the moral law applies to the Church too, it knows this better than anyone.

Regarding the Inquisition I know you have a desire to learn. Hope this helps.
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2006/02/inquisition-its-purpose-and-rationale.html

and this one on the Canaanites
http://www.tektonics.org/lp/outrage.html

Celivia

The only temporal non-violent communities that exist are those in the delusions of Marxists utopians. Your wish to exclude violent ones would mean excluding all past present and future communities.

100,000 and 1000000 abortions in Aus, and US respectively is wholesale violence against unborn life. Scroll down from this link http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0504/public.html to
"Everybody who has been involved in one way or another in arguments over abortion policy . . . "

I get the feeling you wish to use Witch burning and flat earthers to discredit moral realism because I'm Catholic. This link about a flat earth http://tektonics.org/af/earthshape.html and the link above about the Inquisition ought to help with that mistaken line of reasoning. The secular authorities who did this are wrong also. The Church was always a moderating influence over secular mania.

So my argument still stands - moral principles are true independent of what a person wishes, wills or dreams to be true and independent of when or where a person is born. Every culture has a role in the proclamation of these and the denouncing of those who do not abide by them.

Snout,
Re: moral principles
"they are a product of human searching and effort, are derived from human experience and wisdom, and whose worth can only be measured in their effect on human lives."
I agree completely, though you beg the question regarding these principle's ultimate