Someone is looking at your kid with covetous eyes, and you won't judge them, despite them not acting on it?
I think nature can be judged. That the paedophile does not act on his nature is good, and is the result of a more beneficial part of his nature which gives him credit. That he desires it in the first place loses him credit.
I mean, who wouldn't judge me for wanting to kill my mother, even if I restrain myself and only think about it constantly, but never act on it?
Very well, let's say nature can be judged[More discussion on that below]. What standards do we judge it by? I would define someone's nature as
bad when its fulfillment would cause harm to another or themselves. Pedophilia is inherently bad because its fulfillment generally involves inflicting lasting trauma and/or bodily harm on others. Any trait, disorder or nature whose fulfillment does not cause harm to themselves or others is inoffensive and morally irrelevant.
On judging someone by their nature:
I am defining nature is defined as follows: An intrinsic set of predispositions towards a certain type of behaviour.
First of all, there are different LEVELS of consideration:
1:There is thinking about violence in passing. I do that every time someone bumps into me in the hallway. The knee-jerk reaction to that, for me, is burning rage.
2:There is considering hypothetical violence. I have occasionally done this towards certain individuals I particularly abhor.
3:There is serious consideration of violence. This is where I begin to judge people. Having violent urges is one thing. Acting on them is another. But between those places there is yet another thing. If the only reason you didn't hurt someone is because it would inconvenience you if you did, here we have a problem. It is not as wrong as actually doing it, because it is possible that you would nonetheless have checked yourself, but it is more wrong then merely WANTING to do violence with the knowledge that you would never let yourself carry through with it.
4:There is actual violence. This is fairly obviously wrong. I will include attempted violence in this category, as there is no difference in intent between successfully violencing someone and failing to violence someone because of outside interference.
The main point of laws and such is to separate the third group from the fourth group. Those people might not be GOOD people for not killing because it would get them in trouble, but they are nonetheless functioning members of society and should be treated as such.
FAKEEDIT: I think everyone's actually on the same page here, mostly.
Th4DwArfY1 is arguing on the hypothetical moral level and FD is arguing on the practical/realistic/whatever level. I don't think I'm disagreeing with either of them, really.
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14905710 times)