Historically, all we have to go on for Ancient Egypt is the Pharaoh Akhenaten, eighteenth Dynasty 14th century bce.
Akhenaten introduced a form of monotheism, worshipping the Aten (the sun) as the one true god. He took away the power and wealth of the rich and powerful Priests of Amun.
His son was called Tut Ankh Aten at his birth. After he became pharaoh, that was changed to Tut Ankh Amun and all of the old gods returned. For the rest of Egyptian history, Akhenaten was known as ‘the great heretic’.
Foreigners arriving with their own gods would be usually accepted. The notion of exclusive , dogmatic truth and/or monotheism for all of humanity was rare in the ancient world. The worship of different gods was generally accepted . Rome for example, simply identified foreign gods with their own.
The Jews caused Rome a lot of trouble not because they insisted there was only one god, but because they refused to pay lip service to Roman State gods.
Bollocks.
Atheism is simply alack of belief in god(s)
Hypocrisy is part of the human condition. Society could not function if everyone told the truth all of the time.
Religion is about belief, it has nothing to do with behaviour.A person can be say a devout christian or a Muslim, and still perform the most disgusting [to us] acts.
To that I need to add that morality is both subjective and relative imo.
I do believe that morality and ethics are relative, and not absolutes . . . even if this view causes it’s own problems.
Let us examine torture as an example.
If a religious terrorist knows where the VX nerve gas is in an impending attack that will kill tens of thousands of people and refuses to talk when he’s captured, then I might be receptive to torture as a last-resort solution when everything else fails.
But, what about a captured kidnapper who knows the location of one person–maybe a kid–and won’t talk?
Do I say that torture is wrong, because only one human life is involved?
I have never found a satisfactory answer to this dilemma within myself, as I would feel weighed down by the double-standard.
Moral dilemmas can tell you a great deal about someone’s ability to be moral. I’d be far less worried about someone who was unable to reach a conclusion when faced with such a dilemma, than I would about someone who was certain.
And of course it is axiomatic that one can commit an act one believes to be immoral. It’s one of the reasons i dislike and am wary of religious diktat offered as absolutes, it removes that cautionary “voice” that is innate in our evolved ability to reason why something is right or wrong. Obeying rules isn’t moral, even if one believes the rule’s origins to be divine, all such blind adherence produces is an amoral automaton. With Godwin’s law in mind, even “good” Nazis managed to blindly follow rules.
Remember Drich, and his inability to sat why HE thought rape was wrong, without citing divine diktat. One wonders what he might do if he ever lost his belief in archaic superstition.
Anyone who needs the threat of Hell, or the saccharine promise of heaven, in order to desist from behaviours like rape and murder, is just a shitty human being.
Confessions or information obtained using torture or so-called enhanced interrogation is in general inherently unreliable, for the simple fact that the subject being tortured might falsely confess or give false information just to make the suffering stop.
I have no moral qualms either. However I don’t support the use of torture in principle because it’s probably a unreliable method of obtaining information. I suspect it night be relative, as are most moral values involved… In the scenario you pose, in a heart beat.
" During the George W. Bush administration, the CIA employed what it called “enhanced interrogation techniques” on detainees around the world. This included waterboarding (simulated drowning), sleep deprivation to the point of hallucination, beatings, sexual humiliation, and threats to hurt a detainee’s children or rape a detainee’s mother. Barack Obama banned torture when he assumed office, though his tenure was dogged by allegations that abuse continued, if not in American prisons then in allied countries’ facilities. A 2014 Senate report declared these methods “not an effective means of obtaining accurate information or gaining detainee cooperation.”
My solution to the torture dilemma: if you are certain that torturing someone is required in some extreme circumstance, do it; than throw yourself on the mercy of the court. But you better be sure.
[*Palms covering face in anguish! A primal scream of anguish.] "Aaaaaaarrrrrggggghhhh!
[*Dropping to my knees… in a whisper of forlorn defeat on an exasperated exhale.] “I …can’t!”
