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All ethical systems are isomorph, they come to the same conclusions on basic questions but can also be used to come to any conclusion on any real situation. The whole thing is completely irrelevant in practice. Deontological systems will have to have a bunch of vague rules to handle all circumstances, reducing to either virtue ethics or to a form of consequentialism. Utilitarianism has enough free variables and unknown parameters that will let you reach any conclusion. Virtue ethics usually comes with a big book of excuses you can pick from.
Also nothing stops you from subscribing to an ethical system and then going "well actually I'd rather grab the money and run anyway".
Yes, lets consider christianity, a religion that tells you to turn the other cheek but also that it's ok to beat your slaves as long as they don't die immediately, that says don't murder but proscribes capital punishment, that preaches poverty and used to practice opulescence.
I'm sure if you try you can think of a few big atrocities committed by devout christians, too. For example, let's say that we agree that heretics needed to die, was it really necessary to burn them alive, could we really not find a more humane way to do it?
If we are going by historical record I think there's no contest that utilitarianism comes out looking like a saint, but I think it's only had 200 years to do damage compared to millennias.
This is one of those "citation please" occasions. Are you attributing this to (1) the Bible (2) the Old Testament specifically (3) the Epistles of St. Paul specifically (4) well it wasn't written down as such but you saw the way Christians behaved when they kept slaves (5) I'm pretty sure I read it online somewhere talking about the Inquisition or something
EDIT: Nevermind, I went and looked it up myself and surprise, surprise, it comes from the Old Testament: Exodus 21: 20-21
You know what? I'm not going to get into this entire argument. I've had it with the Shellfish Argument, I'm not going to fight with someone who clearly has a lot of problems with Christianity for reasons I don't know and don't want to speculate about. Pain is pain, however inflicted.
The NRSV says "But if the slave survives for a day or two, there is no punishment; for the slave is the owner’s property." I don't know which one is more correct, but from my point of view it doesn't matter either.
I think you are misunderstanding me. I don't really have any problems with christianity, the point I'm making is that it's silly to think the key to true morality is in a book (or in a tradition) that is so vague and varied that it has been used historically to justify both the most virtuous and the most vile of acts. I even said the same thing of utilitarianism but I guess you were to blinded by my words offending you religion to read that part.
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