Lately, I think I’ve bought into some of Kant’s ideas.

I can see how you can be offended about it, but I don’t know how you can see the position breathtakingly wrong.
We are talking about the basis of morality. While we both might agree that human trafficking is wrong – the atheist and theist have both different groundings to believe so. I believe that the atheist that argues that human trafficking is objectively wrong is inconsistent with the groundings in which his or her’s worldview grants them. A worldview that doesn’t grant for a higher morality with grounding in anything other than subjectivity. It is intellectually dishonest if you don’t believe in objective morality to ask about the objective evil in the world.

I’m pretty sure Kimi was talking about Taz up above.

While this group of kids from the news story did include a few true orphans, and there are Haitians who are trying to get their kids into the US despite the real possibility of never seeing them, it has emerged that the Baptist group lied to some of these parents about their intentions for their kids. Parents were told that they were taking the kids out of the country on a temporary holiday until the country is settled out a bit, and then they were bringing them back. The reality is that the missionaries put kids whose parents are alive and well in an orphanage with the intention of permanently adopting them to “Christian families”.

This is on top of them not realizing that they need to file paperwork with the government of Haiti to take Haitian citizens out of the country (an oversight which actually strikes me as vaguely racist). Their failure to do so *is* human trafficking, and that’s not just inflammatory language. I’m not too sure on the details of the pending court case, but I very much doubt a Haitian judge (if they’re tried in Haiti) would set a precedent that their human trafficking laws apply only some of the time, considering their previously mentioned history with this issue.

This is the sort of discussion I had hoped would take place here. Human trafficking is wrong, we all agree on that. If you think atheists are hypocrites, or have no basis for thinking so, or whatever, fine. I think that’s a breathtakingly wrong position, but we’re getting nowhere on it. And honestly, it’s nowhere near as interesting as the essay I just linked to.

Indeed, it’s possibly that this Baptist group was employing some kind of crude utilitarian calculus–that is, if they really believed that by kidnapping the kids and raising them in their brand of Christianity, they’d be saving them from eternal torment in Hell.

I would re-assert, Kimi, that you are not helping yourself at all. In fact, you appear to be simply contradicting yourself. If you look at what you say in your 2nd and 3rd sentences above, you essentially say ‘I think morality is subjective but I also don’t think it is subjective’. I don’t know why people are so attached to this view that “morality is relative”. Most people that say things like this don’t really believe it anyway. Kimi provides us with a striking example of that just above.

Kimi may prefer to avoid philosophical debates, but a bit of philosophy would help here. I think Kimi is a utilitarian (actions are wrong because they hurt others) without quite realizing it. This is a fine view – not everyone agrees with it but many do and it is a coherent moral philosophy. Actions are wrong when they cause more harm than good, right when they cause more good than harm (usually understood in terms of pleasure or pain).

An interesting question – but a philosophical debate that Kimi might prefer to avoid – is whether or not human trafficking always causes more harm than good. In other words, could you make a utilitarian argument defending the human trafficking (at least in some cases)? I think you could. (By the way, I am not a utilitarian in large part for precisely this reason — it is too easy to make utilitarian reasoning defend morally monstrous acts, like human trafficking).

But the point I was trying to make wasn’t that they are wrong for thinking this way. Sure, I believe they are, but others may disagree. My point is that they broke the law. They can’t hurt someone else just they feel they are in the right. Feeling angry doesn’t justify punching someone in the face. You have to respect the boundaries and wishes of others if you want to live any sort of decent society.

I hope that clears up what I was going for.

Granted, had this group been a non-religious organization I rather doubt we’d have seen a post about it on this blog. I frankly don’t see that their religious affiliation really has anything to do with the matter. But there is nothing more predictable than contemporary atheists jumping on anything that opens the door for expressing outrage at religious groups. But, again, that was not the point of my above post. If they are guilty of trafficking (and the apparent reluctance of the US govt to push for their release is a bad sign) then Kimi’s outrage was justified and should be shared by all.

I am willing to wait to hear more about this particular case before I pass judgment. I don’t know that we yet know enough to say that the group was guilty of human trafficking.