Harmful and harmless are subjective concepts that are open to interpretation. When one talks of straight out physical harm it is an easy distinction to say if I punch you in the face it harms you, but what if i administer a vaccination? There is harm done to your body but the benefits outweigh the harm in most people's opinion.
That's extremely short sighted and not really a valid argument.
Obviously I talk about net harm.
The net harm of a vaccine is not only harmless, it is the opposite of harmfull.
It prevents you from dying from potentially fatal deseases.
Additionally, almost never are these things you are complaining about that some Christians oppose as simple as straight out physical harm.
I never talked about "physical" harm either.
There's also sociological harm, psychological harm, etc.
If I bully you to the point of you ending up in a depression with suicidal tendencies, then I'm causing you psychological harm.
[quote$So unless you want to insist that only physical harm done to others ought to be opposed, you run into a very subjective area[/quote]
No and no.
Alcohol consumption can be seen as helpful, harmful or harmless.
Already covered that in my analogy of "healthy vs unhealthy", in the "gray area's" part.
However, past a certain point, there really is no discussion about if alcohol consumption is harmfull or not.
There can be discussion about a glass of wine every other day.
There really isn't any discussion about 3 bottles per day.
Atmospheric CO2 can be seen as helpful, harmful or harmless.
Again, the same.
Some level of CO2 isn't only helpfull, it is
required.
Too much CO2... well.... you eventually inevitably end up with a run away green house effect. That ends with a surface temperature hot enough to melt metals. No discussion there either.
I submit that those "gray area's" where there can be made a rational argument for both sides, actually don't really matter in this discussion. Because you end up with "net harm levels" that approach zero. They good cancels out the bad, if you will.
It depends upon how one views those things when one weighs the pros and cons of each and not upon a single objective fact.
I never said it's about "one single objective fact" either.
What I said is that there are correct and wrong answers to such questions. They are not a matter of subjective opinion. At best, they become a matter of opinion in the gray area's. But as I pointed out earlier - those don't actually matter. And should also mostly be judged on a case by case basis.
For example.... alcohol consumptions raises the risk of vascular desease.
On the other hand, it lowers the risk of certain cancers.
(I'm just inventing pro's and con's on the spot - for my argument it doesn't matter if these effects are actually real or not , it's about the logic of the example using a hypothetical)
If you are someone who's genetically predisposed to get those cancers, while you are not at all in the risk groups of vascular desease, then for you it might be a good idea to drink a glass every day.
If someone else is the opposite (high predisposition for vascular desease and none for those cancers), then it's probably a better idea to refrain from alcohol consumption.
You'll note that at no point does "opinion" come into this. It's all about facts, circumstantial or otherwise, knowledge of the consequences / effects of things, etc and taking all that having it lead to a rational conclusion.
At no point is any of this preceeded with "
I believe that...." or "
in my opinion..."
People's priorities differ so different people perceive harm where others do not and different people perceive harmlessness where others do not
I have yet to be presented with a single valid example of something where wheter or not it is harmfull, is just a matter of mere opinion.
It makes no sense to me.
If you say "x is harmfull", you should be able to explain
how it is harmfull. You should be able to explain what the harm is exactly. If you can't do that, then your assertion of it being harmfull, seems rather useless and unfounded. Meaningless.
Is an aspirin harmless, helpful or harmful? Depends, there is not an absolute answer to that question.
That's probably because you formulated the question so vaguely that it has become unanswerable.
An asperin by itself is harmless. It just sits there, in the meds box.
When you take 500 asperins in one go, then those asperins will be rather harmfull.
Yes, "it depends".
And one thing it doesn't depend on by the way, is
opinion.
It relieves pain and may stave off heart attack, but it also damages the lining of the stomach.
Net harm, is what matters.
Yes, it's a tradeoff. Many things in life are.
Like evolution, it's no different.
Just about every genetic change with effects on fitness is a tradeoff. It's about what weighs through more.
For example, a mutation that increases bone density.
It might be beneficial: you'll be less prone to breaking a leg for example.
But, the resources used by the body to increase that bone density, now can't be used for other stuff. So something else in the body will have less resources. Or the organism must increase nutrition take in, or adapt diet or whatever. Something.
So it's a tradeoff. Your example doesn't seem any different.
Deciding whether someone else is being silly about what they find harmful is not as easy as "its harmless because it doesn't harm anything I care about."
Don't think I ever said such a thing either. In fact, I've been saying the opposite... that concluding if a thing is harmfull or not, is NOT a matter of mere opinion. What you said there between quotes, seems to be exactly that: using opinion as a basis for deciding if a thing is harmfull.
As for Christianity being obsessed with harmless things, I just do not see that as being the case. In your moved goalpost scenario
What goalpost moving would that be?
, where there are a very few Christians that are somehow greatly morally offended by long hair or music style, I don't know anyone that fits that description and I know a lot of Christians.
You are not aware of the cases where such fundamentalists actually even sued rock bands with ridiculous complaints, like their music apparantly containing "demonic messages" when played backwards?
You are not aware of their crusade against heavy metal and alike?
Their rants against those music styles are 100% religiously motivated.
