Bingowings said:
darth_ender said:
Where did I ever say anything about a universally-held moral precept? I believe I have stated several times in this thread and in the politics thread that morals are what a society determines, either based on a belief that a Divine Being has deemed them as such, or because of the idea that it is "functional to society" or "not functional to society." The concept of "Thou shalt not kill" has become a universal law in all nations, with exceptions that differ based on the various societies' understandings. Nevertheless, it is based on a moral. But if we truly believe that life should be preserved as often as possible, then we should not limit that belief simply because of another person's "right to choose." Every other exception is based on a much more extreme and rare set of circumstances.
What is functional to society is clearly too loose a rule to devise a legal system. A society could conceivably function with almost no laws at all, though drastically changing to such a society would be destabilizing. But because of morals that much (not necessarily all) of that society holds, we devise laws to protect them. Societies we see today as terribly immoral were once quite stable. But as we see certain other things as right, we choose to reject their systems and devise our own based on our own principles. A majority of my society feels that abortion is wrong in some or all cases. But in the name of "not imposing morality on others," a minority gets to kill literally millions of children every year.
And ultimately what is the reasoning? in literally over 90% of the cases, it is a reason easily bundled under the heading "INCONVENIENCE."
If you are claiming that laws are morals they have to be based on universal precepts or they wouldn't get through the selection process, someone would throw them out or throw the people throwing them in out (probably from a high window).
Once you drop the word "universal" from both this and your last quote, you may actually begin to understand what I'm talking about. I'm not saying anything, not a single solitary thing about any sort of universal moral determining our laws. I am saying that our laws are based on a general consensus of a particular society, meaning that in that society there are those who disagree, and other societies define their morals differently. Our laws are based upon our society's general consensus.
As for a society functioning without almost no laws...er... how?
Anarchists believe that self-rule is the only law we need. Many societies have had few laws in place. I wish I could find you a specific example, but at the moment I can't, but in any case there is a sort of tribal government in Africa where the only law is judgment on an individual basis, with no firm laws in place. The more complex the society, the more complex the needed law system. But many societies have functioned without law in the past.
A society is defined by rules, no rules no club to join.
What societies do we see as immoral and formally stable, show your workings?
Immoral according to our standards, first off. Let's see. Well, the British Empire and the United States of America, for starters, with their involvement in the slave trade (I bring those up because of our citizenship in each, not to excuse the many other guilty nations). Ancient empires such as China, Rome, Ottoman, Inca, Aztec, where they would conquer peoples, kill all the men, rape the women. In some cases they would sacrifice them and eat their flesh. Each felt they had the right to rule over as much land and as many people as possible. European feudalism has thrived at the great expense of lower classes of people. The caste system of India, deeply intertwined with their religion prevailed for years and years, and though now officially abolished, it remains present in the minds of many. Many modern Islamic societies involve the oppression of women, the execution of heretics and homosexuals, the suppression of free information. All these societies have demonstrating stability in spite of their disagreement with us on morality.
Functionally it would be insane to make abortion illegal.
You would have a black market for them which would be as safe as the black market for hard drugs and dangerous sex.
So because people are prone to do something wrong, we should simply legalize it in all cases? I still am opposed to illegal drug use, no matter how difficult the fight. Regardless of the extent of illegal immigration, I oppose it. Even if there is a massive black market for illegal weapons, I still support legislation against it. Even if abortions still go forward, they would be reduced, the guilty more responsible for their choices, and the nation as a whole would be fighting to preserve life. The fight for right is always hard, but that doesn't make it not worth fighting in my mind.
You would have a boom in the parent-less child share of the population which would have to be paid for and you would have to relax the standards for adoption to reduce the burden on the state.
Adoption is a ridiculously expensive and difficult process, as my older sister can attest (I'm really full of familial references in this topic). The standards might not need to be relaxed, but I'm confident the process can be greatly streamlined and the cost lowered. There are literally hundreds of thousands of families in this country alone, eager to adopt, but struggling to obtain a child.
The state make lousy parents and the extra abandoned children will be proportionally less functional than the people that made them and children cost money, meaning that even with extra children born to stable family units there will be less free capital in society to pay for improvements to the general standard of living.
People don't stop having sex when you legislate around the act.
Somehow people forget the benefit of education at reducing pregnancies. If we more effectively educated people about how to avoid pregnancy, this might not be such a problem. Furthermore, if people were held to a greater level of responsibility (the future mothers and fathers), they might make wiser decisions when it came to sex. As you kindly demonstrated yesterday, stricter abortion laws than I'm advocating exist in Ireland. Yet Ireland has been voted the best or among the best countries throughout the past several years. How strange! Their economy has clearly not been shattered by their strict abortion laws.
Thousands of years of laws about homosexuality proves this.
Your moral concern boils down to the same sort of focus of empathy that I have walking past McDonalds.
I can't prove my feelings of empathy with animals, I can't stop Warb gleefully killing mice. I can't prevent a massive multi-billion dollar meat industry from chewing up the world's resources for the sake of consumerism.
If you feel something is morally right, I encourage you to advocate for it. Many, many people stand up for ethical treatment of animals. They have successfully lobbied for the passage of several laws regarding their treatment, and ultimately would like to see more, I'm sure. However, society as a whole has not adopted their level of morality, and thus McDonald's still slaughters cows and chickens for the enjoyment of millions. But if you managed to convince the majority of the country (yours or mine) that such should not be the case, I say in all seriousness, "More power to you." You have the right to impose that moral on those who disagree, as long as most of society does agree.
You can't prove a fetus is a human being with a soul.
But you can see that forcing society to face the full consequences of unprotected sex of some of it's members when we are an industrialised technological society is not going to be an easy sell, right?
A tough sell? Obviously. Is my fight pointless? I am convinced it is not.
Bottom line: morals are not universal. They are generally held and thus imposed in law in various societies. I have every right to advocate for the rights of over 1,000,000 American children per year (not to mention the other 40,000,000 children elsewhere in the world).
Great. Juuuust great. Now I'm resorting to block quoting with you. Arg! ;)