Samira wrote:
No, I didn't; but as always your condescension is just the best condescension ever.
It wasn't intended to be condescending, and I do not recall being regularly condescending to you. Not that I'm looking to try to provoke you further here, but did I strike a nerve?
The way that it appeared to me, you understood that you and he were arguing different angles--you that because every society prohibitions against murder that murder is consistent moral, and he that because what constituted murdered varied from society to society that it was inconsistent.
However, it seemed to me that you misunderstood what is a moral, and this may just be a disagreement between us then. Opposition to Murder--without consideration to the specifics that constitute murder--cannot be a moral, because that is redundant.
I suggested the definition of murder to be
illegal killing, to replace the previous suggested (and which you did not challenge) definition of
unwarranted killing. I don't believe I'm wrong in doing this, but if you think so, then please let me know. If you accept this definition, then societal opposition to murder is a tautology, because that's what illegality is.
It's a society being opposed to an act society is opposed to. Using the same argument, I can say that every society has a consistent moral on women's rights, because every society has rules about women's rights even those those rules differ among them.
What Idiggory suggested as a counter makes sense. What needs to be consistent are the acts societies define as illegal--as murder. If the very same action, say killing an outsider, is viewed differently 2
Samira, to be plain and honest, I know you're intelligent person who is almost always in a good humor. So I have difficulty seeing why you took such offense to me criticizing you.