there was no way to measure the earth back then though. but if the majority thought it was flat and that's all people had to go by then, does that mean they're right? are you flip-flopping?
No I am not flip flopping. You are missing the point. I am not appealing to a majority to make a point. I am just not doing that. I am stating that the majority decides what is right or wrong, as you just agreed to later in your post.
And there is never any way to conclusively prove anything right or wrong even if you can precisely measure it. and that is because there could always be a more precise tool invented later, or new information may change current thinking. The best we can do it say that "X is right until better information comes along"
simply because it is the only thing we can take doesn't mean it's right. i'm asking for what is right, not what is done or their opinion.
But as you yourself have said, right and wrong are subjective. They are only opinions. It can not be more that what it is.
that is the point. the first post clearly asks can right and wrong ever be definitive, in other words, absolute. the only way to prove this is logically.
this is not even the point i am trying to make right now. All of this started when somebody asked "Who even decides what is right or wrong?" I answered "The society you live in." And you disagreed with me starting this wonderfully long debate we have been having.
That is the point I have been trying to make this entire time. Once you understand who decides what is right and wrong I was then going to move on to how it relates to the OP original question.
it comes from environmental factors really. what you were surrounded by and how you were brought up. again, simply relative to the society.
Nothing I haven't been saying this whole time.
if we say it's relative, then it will NEVER be definitive (which is what the OP asked).
I was not arguing this topic until this point. I think that may be where the confusion came from. Though I thought I pointed that out before.
But the OP original question was "Is there ever a definitive situation of right and wrong?" But even though it says 'definitive' he doesn't really define it. Is he talking about definitive across the universe? Definitive on earth, definitively right or wrong in our own society? etc.
The more you break it down, the easier it is to answer the question positively. But even if we do not break it down we can say that there is a definitive right or wrong across all societies because there are a few things that every society considers right or wrong. Every single society on earth has laws against murder. Some societies find it more wrong than others, some societies may think that killing a woman, or a rival, is not murder, but every society on earth believes that the killing of another innocent person for no reason is wrong. Of course some societies have a different definition of 'person' than we do. Some may think only men can be 'murdered' some may think that only men of a certain religious faith can be 'murdered'. But the point is still that they view murder as wrong.
Since there is no arbitrary outside force telling us what is right or wrong, since right or wrong can only be determined by society, and that universally every society finds murder of an innocent to be wrong, I can say that definitively, murder of an innocent person for no other reason than your own pleasure, is wrong. And this has been so since the concepts of right and wrong have been with us and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.
this also plays back into my original post on the subject, that it also depends on how much detail you are going to put into the situation you are asking about. It is much harder to say that murder is always wrong than it is to say murder of an innocent is wrong. And it is easier still to say murder of an innocent for no other reason than your own pleasure is wrong.
