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I've wondered about this before, and I think that sharing beliefs with someone who commits evil results in moral ressponsibility only to the extent that a. your
by paulgb 14y ago
I've wondered about this before, and I think that sharing beliefs with someone who commits evil results in moral ressponsibility only to the extent that a. your beliefs are wrong, and b. that your beliefs influence or enable their behaviour.
A. is pretty obvious; if I believe that the sky is blue and someone who also believes the sky is blue commits murder, I have no responsibility for merely sharing a true belief.
B. I think is sometimes underestimated. Even if you're not hurting anyone yourself, you could be legitimizing a belief that harms others. I think there is moral responsibility in this case, although I'm not sure I could argue it convincingly. A good example is how Catholics legitimize witholding contraception in Africa, even if they're not the ones witholding the contraception themselves.
The issue in practice is A. If you believe that something is true, you don't feel the need to take responsablity for the actions of others who believe it. So nobody believes that they are morally responsable for their beliefs, tautologically.
- guard-of-terra 14y agoBut if you believe something is true, you have to stand up when other people with similar beliefs do horrible things. If you don't, I feel free to assume you do quietly support doing horrible things.
- ajuc 14y agoI think you should stand up, whenever someone do sth horrible, no matter what this person believes. If I see man beating up another, I should help the victim, no matter if the attacker is christian, muslim or atheist. And I don't think just because you share some beliefs with him, you bear more responsibility for his deeds. I don't understand, why should all atheists be responsible, if one of them does sth wrong. I also don't think that moral responsibility of all (people beliving in X) is to search news every day to know where other (people believing in X) did sth horrible, to be able to stand up againist that. If you don't do this with respect to your own beliefs, I think you shouldn't judge others for not doing it.
- guard-of-terra 14y agoAtheism is very different. You don't see atheists having fancy churches. You don't see athists demanding hurting over people over their "religious feelings".
- ajuc 14y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_th...
- guard-of-terra 14y agoThis is true if you consider Marxism-Leninism a religion. Which many do; in former Yugoslavia you can find obituaries posted on the walls, and they're marked either by black cross, or by green crescent, or by red star: meaning that communist beliefs are on the same page with islam and christianity. But then again, most atheists would stand up and announce they don't like communism (at least in its violent early-soviet form) at all, and they're against persecution of christians under such regimes. I do. Early soviet regime sucked a big time. Not a good example for anyone to follow. Still, I don't think there's terribly many communists who claim their religious (or whatever other) feelings were hurt by other people.