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Comment by GuiA | Hacker News Reader

> Imagine how many social problems would disappear if people had more integrity and stronger morals. Literally every aspect of life would improve.

Granted, everyone in the world is suddenly moral and of utmost integrity and everyone gets used to this new reality. The economic upside in lying/cheating is now so high that a few minutes later the world is back to exactly what it was, except for the first few persons to decide that lying wasn't such a bad idea, who are now a few billion dollars richer.

> Religions, for all their faults, and for all of their misguided morality, at least had morality frameworks that were more or less unified and teachable

This is your daily reminder that the Catholic Church is the organization with the most identified pedophiles in the world. (I'd have written "convicted", but they work really hard - and are really good - at preventing that outcome).

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>Granted, everyone in the world is suddenly moral and of utmost integrity and everyone gets used to this new reality. The economic upside in lying/cheating is now so high that a few minutes later the world is back to exactly what it was, except for the first few persons to decide that lying wasn't such a bad idea, who are now a few billion dollars richer.

By definition, it is not integrity if you give it up immediately to gain an advantage by lying and cheating.

>This is your daily reminder that the Catholic Church is the organization with the most identified pedophiles in the world. (I'd have written "convicted", but they work really hard - and are really good - at preventing that outcome).

This a non-sequitur when you consider that there are over 4000 religions in the world, all with their own morality frameworks.

> a few minutes later the world is back to exactly what it was, except for the first few persons to decide that lying wasn't such a bad idea, who are now a few billion dollars richer

Within my personal morality framework, it is completely ethical to lean into rage if you can hold your logic, and those few persons have just sacrificed themselves to becoming a lesson.

There's a great saying which is "if you're incapable of violence, you're never peaceful, merely harmless." It's time we start talking about was is and is not okay within the context of intentional harm and suffering. What are the pros and cons of punishment? When should it be applied? How?

I'd say a week of waterboarding could be enough to get someone very adamantly expressing "it wasn't worth it." Those words would never go unsaid by these culprits. "It wasn't worth it" should be the slogan of every evil deed.

I think Islam may like a word with you on that one. There it's not just the priests. It's very common for minors to be married off, young boys to be sold as sex slaves (common in the turkic -stans areas although not sure about today), and the "it's only gay if you take it" reasoning I believe in one of the hadith's which condones pedophilia.

Religion was created in order that priests, mullahs, etc. could perpetrate otherwise forbidden sexual acts on defenseless people. Some later offshoots have forgotten this, but Catholicism and Islam remember. What was the ISIS caliphate, if not organized sex crime? It seems the Protestants favor abuse of girls instead of boys, which in their minds is more moral...

However life back then was incredibly different. We can look at it in hindsight and judge it with the morality of today but that's somewhat unfair of how life was. I mean slavery was commonplace, death sentences for most crimes, and not really any "true" justice system.

Although as of today? Yes I totally agree.

I think the public school system has the Catholic Church beat in that regard, if you categorize it as a single organization.

"The public school system" is not an organization. It is thousands of organizations.

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