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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 1603571" data-attributes="member: 3146">Kaleon, I'm enjoying this discussion and I think you hit upon a part of the heart of the matter when you say that I don't distinguish between law/chaos and good/evil. Actually, I don't think there is any coherent definition consistent with the use of the D&D law/chaos axis. I'm sure you have something coherent in mind when you talk about it but I seriously doubt that even half of the D&D uses of lawful and chaotic alignments would match up with it.I'm going to be going to my weekly game in a bit but I'm curious on a couple of points:1. At the beginning of your post, you concede that most religious societies share the same moral principles yet at the end of the post, you offer Saudi Arabia--a religious society--as an example of a society with differing morality from the Celts, etc.2. I think you're wrong about Saudi Arabia (and radical Islamic societies in general). Women are not mere objects even if they are of less value than men. They have a distinct role and place in society that I'm sure involves an assumed value greater than dogs, cats, objects, or infidels. While women are certainly second-class citizens, they are allowed to testify in court (by Sharia law at least) and their word counts for more than that of a non-Muslim.3. You exaggerate the degree to which morality is cut and dried--more recent translations of the Ten Commandments specify "thou shalt not murder" for instance and that command is much more consistent with the rest of the Jewish law--and don't give adequate attention to the degree that positive law depends upon morality for its force, structure, and credibility. The book of Proverbs, for instance says that men won't despise a man for stealing a loaf of bread but he will still have to pay the legal penalty--implying quite the opposite of the relationship you implied. A poor man stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family is not regarded as clearly wrong by people who generally consider mitigating circumstances but generally such circumstances are not considered by the law. Interestingly enough, several thousand years later Les Miserables took the exact same theme. The idea that in the eyes of God, sin is sin is indeed occasionally stated the way you state it but it would be more consistent with at least Christian tradition and scripture to say that, while sin is all bad simply by virtue of being sin, some sin is worse than others in much the same way that, while all felonies are bad in the eyes of the law and will generally deny one the right to vote or own a gun, some are worse than others.On the other end, I think you pay insufficient attention to the idea of just or unjust laws. The conviction that alcohol should be illegal because it is evil certainly drove some of the prohibitionists and the same is true of the abolitionists and slavery. It seems to me that not that you don't see the difference between moral beliefs and cultural/legal practice but that after it creates cultural/legal practice, moral belief loses all interest for you. Otherwise, the distinction between a moral code and its interpretation would be supremely important as legal codes and cultural practices shift as changing non-moral belief influences that interpretation (as it did in the case of slavery) in legal/cultural practice.</blockquote>

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