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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kaleon Moonshae" data-source="post: 1605863" data-attributes="member: 12147">Actually I disagree, dnd has a very hard line definition of law and chaos and stay pretty true to it. They define it in the phb and keep pretty close to it. Devils are truly lawful in that they always keep their word, not the spirit of the deal but their exact words. Demons are chaotic because they tend to betray, backstab, and lie as if by second nature. One never knows what to expect with them, whereas, with training, one can deal with devils pretty successfully.Actually what I said was that most religious societies agree on what is fundamentally right and wrong, not nec that they agree on morals. Morals are lot more varried than simply what is right and wrong. Not sure how to explain this position. Two societies might agree that cold blooded murder is wrong, but that is not where morals end. Morals go on to define what cold blooded murder is. Maybe to this society (and yes i should have used an eastern culture in my exampl since i am lacking in the nuances of saudi arabia and i apologize for that, mark it up to no sleep and being at work.) cold blooded murder is taking a life without first asking that your god take it to heaven whereas in this other society cold blooded murder is the act of stalking and premeditatingly (is that a word?) carrying out the death of someone without giving them a chance to defend themselves. Of course, this opens up the question what is the difference in that and ethics and that is what philosophers argue about. Some (like me) say that morals and ethics overlap a lot, but the reasons behind each are different. Ethics are there to further civilization while morals are there to further spiritual wellbeing. Others argue different points, many say that ethics are nothing but an extension of morals.As I said, I apologize for that example, although I do think it has some validity, I do not know all of the nuances in which it plays out. It some cultures, however, remember that one's dog can testify as well, namely in some ancient japanese cultures based in buddhism. I did grant that they are allowed to kill their husbands if they cheat on them. I do think that in some ways, religiously speaking, the women are treated like cattle and not humans (I make no judgement calls on that for it is just different) but that the ethics of the law give them rights nec to further civilization. I could be wrong, and that is why I retrack them as an example, from now on I will just use the old culutre A. and culture B. you learn to use in logic classes.Actually this is pretyt much my point, *modern* translations do take this look because we as a society have matured. If you go back and look historically you will still see that they backed up the previous definition with full force. Just because modern translations have toned this down to reflect civilized law does not mitigate the past. The ten commandments, for a very long time, were *very* cut and dried in the christian faith. The jeweish faith has always been a bit softer on some points and harder on others, that is what makes the two faiths different and interesting.One problem here is using christianity as a broad category which I make the mistake of a lot too (evne in this post). I am sure I did not communicate well in my other post, and when I really get into a debate online that is one of my failures. In real life the back and forth nature of conversation helps one refine a point but on here you just plow ahead for a few paragraphs and most of don't go back over things to read them and take time in editing. Fundamental christianity tend to look at sin and being sin as being sin, much the same way some japanese traditions do. There is no excuse for sin, but some sin is easier to forgive than others. I agree with that take on it, my main point was the actual written "rules" say sin is sin. Whether we think god will forgive this sin easier than that one is up to god to decide and is out of our hands. It really doesn't matter what our fellow man thinks, he is not the arbiter of sin. Law, however, makes what our fellow man thinks *matter* whether it is a jury, a king, a potentate or whomever. If that person thinks there are mitigating circumstance then it is within his right to either hand it up the ladder or, in certain stages, outright lessen penalties. This is what I was trying to get at. Morality is above and beyond humanity, it rests in a power/concept/deity and not in the hands of the people living by it. (for the record, yes i understand that humans do change that morality to suit them overtime, as the example you gave of modern translations points out, but that is one of the reasons why I am not sure i believe, personally, in the validity of morals. Remember that I stated at the beginning that I personally do not believe in morals and so am arguing this point from a sholarly/universal position than a personal one.) Law, however, rests completely within *our* hands and we can bend and warp it to a certain point. Once we break it past that point it becomes chaos. Ethics is that line we walk that decides how much we can bend or warp absolute law (usually anyway, there are systems like draconian law and legalism (chinese) which pretty much state that ethics are only valid if they hold as close to the absolute law as they can).I never said all of the legal code fit with ethics, law, chaos, good, or evil, some of it is just human stupidity. I do not think that, if you research it, the actual law stated that alcohol was illegal because it was evil (yes, some people voted for prohibition for that reason and thought that was why it should be illegal) but because it was causing a decline of civilized behavior (ie law and order). Did prohibition work? Of course not, just like the war on drugs or war on gay/lesbian marriage isn't working. Ethics are a communal thing, and we all have the right to resist if we wish, in order to keep things like draconianism and legalism from taking over (hence humanity's tendency for rebellion). We can completely negate parts of ethical law if we all decide that it isn't, in fact, ethical. You can not do that with morals. If a power on high says something si wrong, then it is wrong until he says otherwise (ie the problem with kosher law, where the original law was created to protect from disease due to tainted meat but is still law because it was handed down by god, even though it isn't a health issue today).I hope this has cleared my position up some and given you even more questions at the same time, for that is the beauty of philosophy, the questions never end and as we ask them we cement our ideas better as we go.ziejian</blockquote>

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