[Raynor]

Originally Posted by the guy who be short

moral relativism is not a moral system, it is amoral. It does not say "this is good, this is bad, live your life by these rules." It says "good and bad do not exist, they are unnatural fabrications of the human mind enforced by society."

Moral relativism is all fine and dandy, until we get to the hard stuff. There are certain horrors and degradations of human behaviour that simply cross cultural boundaries. And this is even more true in Tolkien's world, where evil acts with a mythological-level power.

If the only people who disagree that <<delighting in evil is immoral>> are the same people who consider that <<there is nothing wrong, evil, or immoral about rape, or unnecessary harm, or Melkorian-style nihilism>>, then, frankly, I will happily rest my case.

If it is only all the other people [the ones who consider that <<rape, or unnecessary harm, or Melkorian-style nihilism are wrong, evil, immoral, in and of themselvs>>] agree that delighting in evil is immoral, then I am satisfied. I need not go any further than that.

Originally Posted by Lal

Standing back and asking What Is Morality is vital where we are throwing around insults at decent people and casting aspersions on their moral fibre and character.

Why are you trying so hard to twist arguments about ideas into arguments about persons? No single person has been targeted, only ideas. If a general moral judgement is true, then uttering it is not an insult, so please don't make it look so.

This whole discussion has started when you claimed that there is nothing wrong with liking bad guys because they are fictional. If you make this statement in an open debate, then you must be ready to have it challenged.

The curiosity of this is that, as pointed previously, you implied the existence of an absolute moral value: "it's definitely wrong to say they are wrong for that as it's a free choice." and "We don't fail to see that at all [that "good" is good for all"], but when confronted, you resort to an argument that "there isn't in fact an absolute moral scale", which denies the previous "ok". Unless you qualify your statement as a purely personal position, then it can only be naturally read as presuming an absolute morality. I hope you see the contradiction.

Originally Posted by Lal

you agree that just because Johnny or Susan think Orcs are fun and likes to write evil characters in RPGs or maybe habitually goes to conventions dressed as the Witch King or has a Balrog theme on their profile or likes to wind up Elf-heads by acting the minion, it does not mean they are immoral or evil?

Please qualify your statements. Do they think that orcs can sometimes make jokes or do they think destruction done by the orcs is fun? Do they dress as the witch-king because such clothes are trendy (or whatever adjective, or whatever reason) or because they believe that (almost) irredeemable allegiance to evil is acceptable? I don't understand your last refference to make a comment on it.