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Originally Posted by Ikari  Aye, but if we want to talk morality it can not be done without empathy. There are certain things which are right and which are wrong, there are things called rights. It actually exists. Morality in its specific religious context isn't legislated, but there is a morality which is not connected to religion. Or rather, that religion adopted as mankind evolved intellectually and socially. It is universally not ok to kill someone because you just felt like it. People do have the right to life, we as individuals understand that. We are able to understand that due to concrete and abstract thought, the understanding of what life is. |
Morality is subjective and while there may exist a broad commonality of certain values in a society, there are some that are not common yet held to be just as valuable or important by the few who hold them, say polygamy among Muslims or Mormons. You say it is "universally not OK to kill just because we feel like it" but we do kill all the time because we feel like it. The US was founded like that. British subjects decided not to be British any more (felt like it) and said that if anyone will try to stop them they will kill them if necessary. And they did. Native Americans wanted to stay on their land, but some felt like taking that land for themselves and they killed for it. Part of the US decided or felt like becoming a different country and they killed for it. Part said no you don't, and killed ofr it. A gentleman said something inappropriate, real or perceive and another gentleman felt insulted and they killed for it. Need I go on? Do you suppose they never heard of the inalienable right to life? Today people die because treatment is either not affordable to them or it is simply denied by someone sitting in an office looking to make bigger profits. Do they not have this right to life. Where is the punishment for the violation of that right to life?
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Rights are universal, they apply to every human. Societies can act against the rights of the individual, it's not something agreed upon. It's something innate to being human. Life, liberty, and property form the basis of our rights because we understand what that is. Is slavery ok? Is theft ok? Is murder ok? All these things infringe upon the rights of the individual, they are not ok. Humans can recognize this, we can understand these concepts. We're probably the only species on the planet which can. Understanding rights of the individual is part and parcel with intellect. Evolution pushed our species down the path of higher brain function, and because of that we understand a great many things which other species can not. Societies have no rights, and societies can act against the rights of the individual. But there is a true reference point, an absolute scale and on that scale are our rights.
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There is nothing universal only aspiration. Societies have rights by way of the rights of the individual members of those societies. You seem to confuse what most people would say are values we all should aspire to with rights. Rights only exist to the extent they are recognized and enforced. Whether you agree or not with the existence or extent of the rights in a particular society is entirely different from the existence of those rights. In other words when blacks did not have any rights in the past, was it right? Well the founding father thought it was, and they are revered today for their wisdom. Today we say no and attach a long list of why that was wrong, but it is truly irrelevant to those who at the time did not have the rights. Just like it is today to those who are held without charge. They do have rights so what? They are still held and nothing can make up for the time they were held if and when they are released. So much for rights. The entire concept of rights is meaningless it individuals can not exercise them. In some places such as the US people enjoy more rights than in some other places, but again they are only meaningful if they can be and are exercised.
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No, the main role of government is to guarantee and proliferate our rights and liberties. Order and "security" can come at the end of a gun, through treason and tyranny against the people. Rightful government does not act in this manner, rightful government is mindful of the rights of the individual.
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True, but only of the rights society has decided to adopt.
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Not necessarily. There have been "secure" and "ordered" societies which have engaged in genocide. What that genocide right? The base of humanity would say no because humans on the whole understand the rights of others.
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I fail to see the point you are making. Clearly the victims were deemed by those societies not to have rights and for all practical purposes they did not have rights. That is why they became the victims. Do we condone that now? Of course not, but that hardly helps those who died.
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While not killing others definitely has advantages (such as not killing people for the fun of it), it's not social contract which forges that morality. That morality is there and we use social contract to enforce it.
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Correct, it does not forge that morality, just the practicality. Morality happens to coincide with it, but is not necessarily the source of it. Lets look at the issue at hand. From your posts I deduct that you consider abortion immoral, I do not. Are we to conclude that immorality was the source of the legal status of abortions? Or we can look at it another way. I consider it immoral for anyone to impose their view or value upon anyone. Therefore I think that that morality repealed the immoral imposition of abortion restrictions on women.
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Yet you condemn me for calling a fetus an unborn child, claiming that it's an appeal to emotion. Fair enough, but if you're going to claim that you have to accept the likening of a fetus to a parasite as the same thing.
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But I did no such thing. I pointed out that stating that fetuses exhibited some parasitic behavior was not inaccurate. There is a difference.
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It's an emotional claim, you're looking to bring up imagery of parasites to disconnect the fetus from "human". Parasites do not offer any benefits, yet reproduction is hugely important to humanity as a whole. We need it, without it our species is doomed. Reproduction serves an important and necessary role for the continuation of a species. A fetus can not be likened to a parasite because it serves a very important role to our species. If you are going to say "unborn child" is a call to emotion, then you must accept likening fetus to a parasite is the same.
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I do not wish to disconnect anything, not that a fetus can be disconnected from humanity anyway.
On the contrary, some parasites are beneficial, but that is a different topic.
Do you see a problem with the declining of human population? I do not.
Again, I did not liken a fetus to anything.