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Here, perhaps, Christianity is at odds in the real world. In the real world, immoral conditions cause people to perform immoral actions in order to defend themselves and their families. Theoretically this might be immoral, but raising that consideration to people in desperate situations doesn't convince them to act otherwise.

It is self-preservation that makes the world go round, not concern for what's right.

(The earth is stationary.)

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"...but whoever does not have, even what he does have shall be taken." [Matthew 13:12]

The issue is ascertaining why a person finds themselves in desperation. So often, we are the cause of our own despair.

This is why the gate to heaven is narrow because evil begets evil begets evil.

There is no question that a suffering person can behave morally. This idea that a desperate person must be immoral to survive is simply wrong.

I suppose the particular sort of desperation is what is at stake. Does the enslaved person have a moral pass to kill the person who took him as a slave?

Does a starving person have a right to harm others to acquire food?

In the first example, my answer is yes. In the second, it is no. The simple way to show this might be to demonstrate how the person's confounding was the result of improper actions at the start of the causal chain which lead to their situation of starving. We might also ask what other options exist to acquire food: charity, for example, which were available (but perhaps less convenient at the time) than killing someone to raid their fridge.

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Wait about instead of physically harming someone for food, you steal their jewelry to pawn, for food?

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How about you ask them for help and tell them you'll work it off by doing something useful for them?

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I remember hearing from a black woman that it is okay for slaves to rape their white slaveowner woman, and that it's not rape, because rape requires having the power advantage.

I said that rape is immoral.

Here you're encouraging the slave to kill the slavemaster.

There's something that allows us to say, okay, murder is okay, because it is a cessation of life. But rape is not okay, because it will induce suffering, or long-lasting suffering.

But would say, no no, rape is much better than murder. Because non-existence is an evil. But rape is just a pain, and living longer gives you more chance to convert to Catholicism.

So, were someone to fall into an industrial grinder and be dead in 5 seconds unless you turn it off by the switch, but an oracle tells you they will die in 15 minutes in excruciating pain if you turn off the switch, would advocate pressing the switch, because that's more time for them to convert to Catholicism.

Praise God!

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But would say, no no, rape is much better than murder. Because non-existence is an evil. But rape is just a pain, and living longer gives you more chance to convert to Catholicism.

So, were someone to fall into an industrial grinder and be dead in 5 seconds unless you turn it off by the switch, but an oracle tells you they will die in 15 minutes in excruciating pain if you turn off the switch, would advocate pressing the switch, because that's more time for them to convert to Catholicism.

Don't put words in my mouth. I have elsewhere, and recently, defended the death penalty to you. So what makes you think I would always prioritize someone living longer?

I would never defend rape because it is always moral evil.

Death (contrary to murder) is a natural evil, but not necessarily a moral evil. Murder is a moral evil. Death is only necessarily a natural evil. So the death penalty is overall a good, because it is a restoration of the right order of justice; the natural evil of the punishment / death is attached to this good accidentally. Such a death is not a moral evil, and thus it is justified by the good of the justice being directed towards God.

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Here, perhaps, Christianity is at odds in the real world

Christianity is and always has been at odds with "the spirit of the world" (, , , ).

As for convincing, there is scarce a rational argument that will persuade anyone in dire straits, unless such a one already possesses great virtues. And if the sacrifice required is great, it may require supernatural virtues in addition to cardinal virtues and the like. So I appeal more to grace than argument to "convince".

(The earth is stationary.)

Based.

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Grace aside.

You have people like me who are very "morally interested." Nevertheless, I fail to be convinced that masturbation is wrong. Now, this could be demons, or an absence of grace, or weak will, or whatever.

I mean, I'm more inclined to say that it is weak will that keeps me eating meat, than to say that it is weak will that keeps me fapping. The thing is, I actually see some kind of argument about why eating meat is wrong. Whereas, I'm unconvinced about the immorality of fapping.

There isn't a rational argument here. It's an appeal to intuition. If you make a volley in an argument, and I don't know how to reply to it, but it fails to convince, I suspect there is some kind of reason that my brain knows about that I don't.

(Wait I am my brain; identity theory.)

As for concern for the afterlife rather than this one... Well, that only works if you believe in the afterlife. Also, there is no afterlife.

But even if there were.

People are fine with sacrificing their eternal afterlives to protect the temporal lives of their children. This is not an instinct that's going to go away. It seems wrong to condemn them to hell for something where they "could not have done otherwise", but such is God.

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This is not an instinct that's going to go away. It seems wrong to condemn them to hell for something where they "could not have done otherwise"

Where there is faith, there is a way.

There's nothing wrong with eating meat.

Since we're making appeals, I'll make an appeal to consequences w.r.t. masturbation. Even if it can be difficult to understand how something, as said earlier, is seemingly trivial or simplistic, can actually be something very grave, we need only look at the effect it has on those who habitually engage in such activity to get an idea about just how harmful this seemingly innocuous activity may be.

Men who masturbate lose motivation. This is a serious issue. Related to this is the emasculation of men who masturbate. Men who masturbate are also less confident, and far less likely to go out on a limb and take the risk of approaching a woman. Men who masturbate have weaker relationships (sexually or otherwise) with their wives. This weakens the family itself. The family is the cornerstone of civilization. What correlation might there be between endemic masturbation habits, and infidelity and divorce rates?

Women who masturbate, contrariwise, become more masculine. Instead of embracing a feminine behaviour, being submissive or obedient to men, they feel empowered - they "don't need a man" to give them such intimate pleasure. They are far less likely to marry, and even less likely to stay married if they do marry, if they have masturbated habitually or were otherwise sexually promiscuous. Again, this is damning to the family and civilization by extension.

Aristotle, and Aquinas with him, affirmed that nothing in nature is vain. Following from this insight (also present in Scripture), we can understand how those trees that bear evil fruit are themselves evil. The evil fruits of masturbation are, as also said earlier, too numerous and perverse to fully enumerate. It will destroy any person who engages in it habitually, and they will go to their grave ruining their best attributes and believing themselves to be doing something good or wholesome. Such an attachment to self-provided pleasure also lends itself to the making of pleasure into an idol - it lends itself to hedonism, where pleasure is pursued as an end in itself. Anything but God (and man, made in God's image) cannot be an end in itself, and even man is only so in relation to God. To view pleasure in this way is thus damning.

Repent and believe the Gospel - for your own sake.

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Maybe not every moral truth can be exhausted by pure reasoning alone. The Christian always has the appeal to revelation as an epistemic modality for believing a particular moral truth.

There are a lot of fine details though too. For example, I don't consider masturbating to mental images to be equivalent to masturbation to pornography.

Many times, I take moral teaching in Christianity to have an esoteric and an exoteric component. On the exoteric side, we can construe the wrongness of masturbation as something having purely to do with just ends, or whatever.

On the esoteric side, I often find (personally, anyway) that there are likely natural explanations, which if we were to dig deeply into the full psychological/physiological effects of masturbation, would prove to have detrimental consequences.

In other words, morals like this one may say that the action is wrong because it is sexually nonproductive, but I also think that this level of reasoning betrays something more straightforward yet concealed - that Christian morals tend to optimize a person's psyche and experience of life (whether that be from physiological, psychological and/or social effects).

For example, masturbation may cause you harms that you (a) are not aware of, or (b) which you are aware of but which you don't connect to masturbation conceptually. We might say these are downstream effects which the sciences have not yet (or refuse to) connected to masturbation.

Perhaps these arise from the availability of masturbation and the convenience. That retaining semen and the effects this has on libido do something by way of conscious experience that has ripple effects that spread across your life. Or chronic masturbation effects neurotransmitter levels in the brain that alter your day-to-day consciousness.

I genuinely believe that Christian virtues identify a way of being that tends to strike a balance across multiple dimensions of life (and desires) that achieves something like a dynamic stability or optimization.

Perhaps masturbation once per week is more moral than 35 times per week.

Or that entering into a relationship with a woman and having sex with her is more moral than either of these.

Morals have ends, both for this life and the afterlife. I believe that.