You still haven't answered my question. If everything is relative, then by extension if Hitler had taken over the world, his view of right and wrong would have been ok?
You seem to feel strongly about relativism. Why are you afraid to discuss this?
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These kind of relationships mainly functioned as a sort of bonding and teaching environment.
Yes, but no one argues whether or not teaching and bonding are ok. The question is whether or not grown men having sex with teenage boys is ok.
Whether or not they're teaching or 'bonding' with them, they're still having sex with them!
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The point is not wether we believe that this behavior was right, but whether they belived it, and whether it had harmful effects on society--You topic was on moral relativism.
So then you're against promiscuousness? You believe its absolutely wrong to be promiscuous? You then have to tell teenagers that they're absolutely wrong to have unprotected sex (both of these things have harmful effects on society), but to do that you would have to convince them that there are moral absolutes.
You're starting to sound like an absolutist here, its very contradictory.
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That morality is relative is self-evident to anyone who any exposure to other cultures.. What is taboo in some societies is perfectly acceptable in others.
That proves that people can't agree on right or wrong. That doesn't mean that God doesn't exist, and didn't come up with some rules about what's right and wrong.
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Thus the example of ancient Greek pederastic relationships. In Greece this was considered an important part of a young man's education and emotional and sexual development. In the modern Western world this is considered harmful. Who is right?
Anyone who believes that a grown man having sex with boys isn't wrong, is wrong.
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There do some to be some universal standards of morality, but even then these rules are not hard-and-fast, and change with time.
Ok, so then murder and rape are only wrong because we've decided they were wrong? This is what I hear you saying. Can you just confirm this for me?
If you don't believe your worldview encourages the most dangerous of relativist people, then I'll reference you back to the original rape quote.
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In A Natural History of Rape, Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer argue that rape is an adaptation--that it has evolved to increase the reproductive success of men who would otherwise have little sexual access to women. Their analysis of rape then forms the basis of a protracted sales pitch for evolutionary psychology, the latest incarnation of sociobiology; not only do the authors believe that this should be the explanatory model of choice in the human behavioral sciences, but they also want to see its insights incorporated into social policy.
Coyne and Berry, Nature, Vol. 404, 9 March 2000, “Rape as an Adaptation” page 121
It would be one thing if this were contradictory to evolution. But evolution doesn't teach anything about right or wrong, and says that the only right or wrong is whatever provides a reproductive advantage. So while this may offend our morals (which aren't really a sure thing anyway), technically its ok.
Let's keep your worldview out of society.
