Patrick Elliott wrote:
> In article <475### [at] hotmailcom>, a_l### [at] hotmailcom 
> says...
>> Mine wasn't a definition. It was a procedure to arrive at a set of 
>> morals. If you follow ethics through the ages you will see that in most 
>> cases ethics are passed down from one generation to another with or 
>> without minor changes. There are however discontinuities as a result of 
>> people (prophets) that follow my recipe.
>>
> Then, you just described precisely one of the biggest problems with 
> religions. You need to have *personal* definitions and *logical* 
> constructs to derive real ethics. Ethics that are passed down merely as 
> traditions can perpetuate injustice, immorality, etc., by any definition 
> that those who question would, in general, come up with. And that is 
> precisely what often happened. The people willing to question found 
> themselves invariably asking *if* the ethics they where taught made 
> sense in the context they where told to apply them, or even if they ever 
> did. The truly cynical ones invariably didn't live long, because they 
> had a bad habit of pointing out that just arbitrary, non-rational, 
> definitions invariably helped those that *taught them* than the people 
> that where supposed to follow them.
> 
Why do I suddenly think at this point that we agree?

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