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When, if ever, do you feel stealing is morally okay?

roguenuke said:
But why are there no exceptions? Why is it that stealing is never okay, but killing is in some instances, eventhough killing involves something generally much worse and involves natural concepts while stealing is all about ownership, which is a man-made concept?
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Because stealing is in no way going to save your life of the lives of others, sometimes killing does.
 
Paleocon said:
Then why did you forget what we were talking about?

Murder is the unjustifiable killing of a person.

The word is Euthanasia, assisted suicide involves, well, assisted suicide, rather than direct homicide. Although it is treated as homicde.

And neither does it automatically mean it isn't murder, just because civil laws assert that it isn't.

Morality and the shape of the Earth are both objective.

BTW, it's once in a blue moon that me and shrub nose agree with each other. That we nearly complete opposites both see the error of your assertions, goes to how evident it is to a sensible person it is that you're wrong.
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I didn't. You apparently are not getting this. Murder is not unjustifiable killing. Murder is killing of a person that is against the law. There is a difference.

Murder - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

mur·der
noun \ˈmər-dər\

: the crime of deliberately killing a person

Note how that says nothing about being justified or not. It is only against the law.

A good example is our laws do not justify killings for honor (such as after a rape), while other countries' laws very well might. In the past, it was justified to kill a person who stole your horse or really anything of yours even if they were not any danger to you or others and even in some cases after the fact/actual incident.

It is not murder unless the laws are against it. That is how it works. This is why abortion is not murder, yet it could still be considered an unjustified killing (and by many it is). Murder involves the law, not personal justifications.

The shape of the Earth is round. That is objective. Morality, what is right or wrong, is absolutely subjective. It requires personal beliefs.
 
Summerwind said:
Because stealing is in no way going to save your life of the lives of others, sometimes killing does.
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Stealing absolutely could save your life. If you are starving and the only thing that is available is food in someone else's house, on someone else's property, then the only thing that would save your life is stealing. Or the example I gave involving the kidnapped victim and the gun or other weapon or tool. That could easily come down to either escaping by stealing or not stealing and being killed by the kidnapper(s).
 
shrubnose said:
Good, because a lot of people on this forum are going to disagree with you.
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Some will, some won't. There are still plenty of people on this forum who are going to agree that morality is subjective. Evidence of this can easily be found throughout other threads.
 
lizzie said:
I don't think you're really understanding what I am saying.
Suppose someone's car breaks down on the highway in front of your house, and his battery is faulty, so that the driver needs jumper cables to jump his battery off. You are not home, but he just happens to see your cables sitting on your front porch, and he uses them, then puts them back, because he didn't want them for his own. He needed them for a specific and temporary situation. Is that stealing?
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If it's temporary, it's unauthorized borrowing. But that really has nothing to do with your example of the kidnapped woman stealing weapons to break out of her kidnapper's home. You never said anything about putting it back, thus I assumed she took it and thus was stealing.
 
roguenuke said:
I didn't. You apparently are not getting this. Murder is not unjustifiable killing. Murder is killing of a person that is against the law. There is a difference.

Murder - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

mur·der
noun \ˈmər-dər\

: the crime of deliberately killing a person

Note how that says nothing about being justified or not. It is only against the law.

A good example is our laws do not justify killings for honor (such as after a rape), while other countries' laws very well might. In the past, it was justified to kill a person who stole your horse or really anything of yours even if they were not any danger to you or others and even in some cases after the fact/actual incident.

It is not murder unless the laws are against it. That is how it works. This is why abortion is not murder, yet it could still be considered an unjustified killing (and by many it is). Murder involves the law, not personal justifications.

The shape of the Earth is round. That is objective. Morality, what is right or wrong, is absolutely subjective. It requires personal beliefs.
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Your still going on legal positivism, which asserts that there is no natural law (and as such nothing which is permitted by civil authorities is unlawful).

You can keep claiming the morality is subjective, but that doesn't make it so.
 
Paleocon said:
Your still going on legal positivism, which asserts that there is no natural law (and as such nothing which is permitted by civil authorities is unlawful).

You can keep claiming the morality is subjective, but that doesn't make it so.
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Murder involves the law, period. You can personally feel that a killing is unjustified but that makes no difference in the laws. You can also personally feel that killing is justified and again that would make no difference in what the law says. Now, you are free to try to change the laws to reflect your belief on whether certain killings are justified or not, and that would change the definition of murder, but it wouldn't change whether those killings were objectively right or wrong.

And you can keep trying to claim that morality isn't subjective, but until you have proof that it isn't subjective or rather that it is objective, then you have nothing but your personal belief, which is subjective.
 
roguenuke said:
Murder involves the law, period. You can personally feel that a killing is unjustified but that makes no difference in the laws. You can also personally feel that killing is justified and again that would make no difference in what the law says. Now, you are free to try to change the laws to reflect your belief on whether certain killings are justified or not, and that would change the definition of murder, but it wouldn't change whether those killings were objectively right or wrong.

And you can keep trying to claim that morality isn't subjective, but until you have proof that it isn't subjective or rather that it is objective, then you have nothing but your personal belief, which is subjective.
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The natural law is a law.

http://www.debatepolitics.com/polls/191925-legislating-morality-2.html#post1063190006a proof that morality is objective.
 
Paleocon said:
The natural law is a law.

http://www.debatepolitics.com/polls/191925-legislating-morality-2.html#post1063190006a proof that morality is objective.
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You are attempting to prove something is objective using personal opinions/beliefs. That is a huge fail in logic. And people within that thread told you that. I realize that you don't seem to accept this fact, but it doesn't make it any less true.

Natural law, as you are using it here, is a philosophical concept, and therefore completely subjective.

Natural Law [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
 
As rogue nuke correctly states. The biological purpose of morality is to maintain complex societies and complex social relationships. Super organisms (bee hive versus the lone beetle) make up for something around 98% of insects by mass for example. Species that cooperate tend to have a survival advantage. This means that morality is instinct rather than logical, which is why nobody can get their finger on it and we tend to know it when we see it. It's also why people will disagree, not everyone was born with exactly the same instincts

Because of that there are few hard and fast rules that are set in stone. In terms of this question, the only thing that matters is the weighting someone or a collective puts on various survival priorities and strategies that we call morality. If it is a resource poor society rather than a resource rich one. What social institutions are in play. Stuff like that.
 
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There is a grimy, dirty feeling attached to stealing. Stealing is as old as man but I welcome the knowledge that I am not a thief and it feels great. Children often steal until they are scolded or taught different. I hope I am more learned than a child.
 
polgara said:
If he returned them, then it's borrowing, not stealing, IMO.

Greetings, lizzie. :2wave:
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And if I were heing held hostage, and I managed to grab my captor's gun in order to free myself, it most certainly would not be with the intent to keep something that such a scumbag owned. It would not be theft.
 
roguenuke said:
Most people will make exceptions when it comes to killing of some kind or another in whether they feel it is morally okay or not to kill, even when it comes to taking human life. The most common exception is "in self defense", but others include in defense of others, during war, to end a person's suffering, or even the death penalty (to name really just a few).

However, there aren't too many times people would say it wouldn't be morally wrong to steal. I think a good number of people might say in general "when a person is starving", but even then, it is going to be greatly limiting and may not actually be morally right, but rather simply not as big of a wrong as stealing for other reasons.

I personally can think of a few extreme cases where it would be morally okay to steal (trapped in a country with little hope of getting back, and little other choice but to steal because of many possible complications in trying to actually earn food, when escaping wrongful detainment of some kind, when protecting yourself against another person, the general "when starving", etc.). There are even likely many others where I would probably say that it would be okay to steal, but it would take having a very specific set of circumstances presented to me to decide that.

On the flip side of that though, there would be circumstances where some would say a person/entity is "stealing" from them eventhough it isn't truly against the law because they have a difference of opinion on ownership and whether ownership of certain property should have transferred to a particular other party or at all.

I think stealing may be the hardest to make exceptions for when it comes to right or wrong because stealing involves a man-made concept of ownership. Life is clearly, scientifically defined.

So, I ask, what, do you feel is morally okay when it comes to stealing or is it always morally wrong to steal, no matter the specific circumstances?
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Morality against stealing is a human-based construct. Watch animals. They steal all the time. It's called being opportunistic by seeking out a free meal.

Man decided to make stealing wrong, not because God said so, but because the wealthy land owners wanted to keep the peasants from being opportunistic and seeking out free meals. Stealing via plunder after winning a war against another country or tribe is always acceptable. Hence, stealing is not immoral. Prohibition against theft is just a form of control.
 
lizzie said:
And if I were heing held hostage, and I managed to grab my captor's gun in order to free myself, it most certainly would not be with the intent to keep something that such a scumbag owned. It would not be theft.
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:agree: It may have been stolen by the captor in the first place! What does a person do - turn it in to the police and face all kinds of questioning; throw it in a lake; bury it? All because some ass decided to kidnap you? :2mad:

Greetings, lizzie. :2wave:
 
calamity said:
Morality against stealing is a human-based construct. Watch animals. They steal all the time. It's called being opportunistic by seeking out a free meal.

Man decided to make stealing wrong, not because God said so, but because the wealthy land owners wanted to keep the peasants from being opportunistic and seeking out free meals. Stealing via plunder after winning a war against another country or tribe is always acceptable. Hence, stealing is not immoral. Prohibition against theft is just a form of control.
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I would say that morality in general is a human-based construct, since it requires having beliefs in order to have some sense of morality.
 
roguenuke said:
I would say that morality in general is a human-based construct, since it requires having beliefs in order to have some sense of morality.
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Exactly. Creating a complex set of rules against killing, stealing and even raping is a human issue. Animals have no qualms with any of those issues. In fact, it's kind of funny when you watch a buck pursuing a doe in heat.
 
rhinefire said:
There is a grimy, dirty feeling attached to stealing. Stealing is as old as man but I welcome the knowledge that I am not a thief and it feels great. Children often steal until they are scolded or taught different. I hope I am more learned than a child.
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And you still haven't answered the actual question asked here. Are there any exceptions that you would make? I provided several examples of situations where I can see a good number of people making exceptions for the statement "stealing is always wrong".
 
rhinefire said:
There is a grimy, dirty feeling attached to stealing. Stealing is as old as man but I welcome the knowledge that I am not a thief and it feels great. Children often steal until they are scolded or taught different. I hope I am more learned than a child.
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You live in a country that was stolen. Do you have a "dirty feeling attached to it" or does living here "feel great"?
 
B.L.Zeebub said:
I am sure the native Americans felt the same way.
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Yes, they did. The NA's made a regular habit of stealing from other tribes. Their philosophy was pretty much if you could take it, it was yours, including people.
 
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