> I can, without hesitation, proclaim that eating children is categorically wrong.
You are captain of a cruise liner full of children. The ship is boarded by pirates. These pirates are utterly evil and utterly truthful. They demand that either you eat one child, who happens to be about to die of a congenital heart defect, or they will blow up the ship and kill hundreds of children.
Absolute veracity is generally acknowledged to be a virtue, conflicting with the "utterly evil" trait. Thus, the pirates disappear in a puff of logic. This once again proves that conjectural sophistry based on impossible examples is categorically un-compelling.
This is a different kind of wrong though... You're talking about morally wrong, while the parent is talking about factually wrong.
Also, though, in reference to the silly pirate example below, something being absolutely wrong does not prevent the possible necessity of doing that thing to prevent greater wrongs. Its still wrong, just possibly less wrong.
Ha. Thanks for pointing that out. Perhaps I instinctively avoid blanket generalizations so as to avoid the criticism that I am currently unleashing on this article.
I don't know why the parent gets downmodded, he is right. What is considered morally right and wrong is culture specific, it is not absolute. For example, some cultures used to sacrifice children to their gods. We may consider this wrong, but they certainly didn't.
Name me a human culture that eats babies. Also you've committed the classic error of confusing "Culture X thinks Y isn't wrong" and "Y isn't wrong". Is it true in some societies that the Sun goes around the Earth?
You're confusing ethically wrong (as in 'considered to be not nice') with scientifically wrong (as in 'considered to be not consistent with observations')
Lets break it down. Is killing children always wrong?
In many countries it's legal (today) to kill children. In some cultures surplus children were left to die of exposure (Sparta for example).
And once the child is dead - well some cultures eat the dead as a form of burial.
There goes your absolute.
Just so you know: it's not possible to create a moral system from first principles. It always has to be imposed from outside. In most countries the bible serves as the starting point.
If you want, you can have one guy decide, and use his ideas. But you can never defend them as absolute and correct. Another person, just as logical, can come up with conflicting ideas, and you can never prove one is right and the other wrong.
I cannot see any biological advantage of not eating your children in emergency situations -- i.e. where you need to eat the child (survival, extortion, ...) and she won't survive anyways.
Depending on your standards, you can justify absolutely anything. There is nothing that is inherently right or wrong -- perhaps something that is right or wrong in most views.
Our standards have changed, too -- not even a century ago, holocausts were considered absolutely appropriate (even by scientists!).