..... from all I've studied about World History and World Philosophy, I don't recall any clear example where a centerpiece of an ethical ideology among, say, the Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks or Romans, or various Asian peoples, demands that people love "even their enemies." Do you know of any?
I'm asking you about your statement. Now I'm obliged to prove you wrong or something? How this part of your earlier statement? Or are you just trying to give an example of what you believe to be shifting the goalposts?
As for different a historical example of an outcome that is different than one would expect if Christianity were absent from the world stage, it's a known fact that infanticide was promulgated around the world and the suggestion to refrain from doing so primarily came by the introduction and influence of the Christian faith.
We were talking about how different groundings of the notion of love would lead to different conclusions (not the existence of christianity per se, but I see what you are trying to do
). I believe that all that is needed is that a large enough proportion of the people to hold a position for it to be impactful, regardless of the grounding.
There are a number of people today who do expect that we subscribe to the notion of Human Rights as it is currently defined and has been defined for the past several decades since the end of World War 2.
Yes, because we have agreed to them by mutual assent. It is when they are codified into law or in political action they are realised. I've never met anyone that would argue that they are true by default.
No, Hobbes specifically says that without Leviathan, nature is "nasty, brutish and short." And as far as I can tell, he really meant that. In a world where rats can eat their young, I'm not so sure he was wholly wrong.
Ah, I see, my bad I formulated that ambiguously. I know what Hobbes said as in he probably described how he thought life would be in the natural state, I just don't agree with him having an interesting perspective or that his definition is true. Without Leviathan life isn't necessarily solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
What do I mean about Darwin? I mean that where evolution is concerned, there is no prescriptive measure for ethics which Darwin's theory insists everyone must recognize, abide by or else perish. We can argue all day about which sets of behavior are those that have enabled survival over the epochs of time, but the behavioral necessities belong outside of Darwin's realm and not even the presence (the often mitigated presence) of altruism or 'natural empathy' as a supposed inherent property of evolution avoids being highly speculative.
Y'know, this is where we decide to implement either Hume's Is-Ought Problem or decide with Sam Harris that science really can manufacture moral direction and maybe necessary consent [eventually] and overcome Hume's problem.
Biology isn't supposed to be prescriptive.
I don't know that it's possible or necessary to come down clearly on one side of the Hume / Harris divide, but the goalpost in THIS THREAD is on whether or not atheists tend to change goalpoasts when having discussions and whether or not it's ethical for them to do so, if and when they do.
For my part, I'm inclined to say that atheists don't unnecessarily change the goalpost of a conversation simply to try to win it; only trolls do. Would you agree?
I feel like you took an opportunity to try to make a point
You seemed to widen the discussions in some of your answers, but that is not moving the goalposts, if they are close enough and actually pertinent to the discussion they are not red herrings either.
I think that changing the evidentiary threshold for a specific claim is quite uncommon in general. I don't think that atheists unnecessarily change the goalpost of a conversation simply to try to win it.
