If the populace decides what falls under the defiition of “moral”, then they define “moral”, they most assuredly do decide “what the word itself means.”
And remember, the first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology Club!
Wrong. Scroll up and reread, putz.
Even if we were discussing hypocrisy instead of morality, too damn bad, society defines that too.
Your distaste for being so easily shown wrong is clouding yours. Remember the First Rule of Holes, putz.
But it is wrong, the way that you sometimes do it. Like, for example, in the post i linked earlier.
If someone makes a general argument based on their morals or their principles or their beliefs, and you say to them, “No, you’re wrong because the courts ruled differently in the case of X than they did in the case of Y,” then it’s you who are wrong because your legal observation does not constitute a refutation of their argument.
You might be right that we’ll never convince one another.
But if you start a GD thread titled “Is abortion a grave moral wrong?”, then i can absolutely guarantee that, while i might enter the thread and offer my own reasons for supporting the right to abortion, i would NOT enter the thread and say, “The Supreme Court decided this back in the 1970s, so you are incorrect.”
You might be right that legal arguments can have a certain kind of finality. The problem is that you seem to assume that they have a finality beyond the world of law and the justice system. People have always debated the morality of laws, and they always will. The fact that something is legal will never convince all people that it is a good thing; the fact that something is illegal will never convince everyone that it’s a bad thing. For you, abortion falls into the former category; for me, marijuana falls into the latter.
The only reason that your inappropriate legal rejoinders are, in your own words, a “debate ender” is that you pretend that the legal dimension is the ONLY dimension up for debate. It might be true that two people who hold opposing views on a moral question might never convince one another, but that doesn’t mean that debates over what SHOULD BE are pointless or not worth having. Might i suggest that, if you can’t cope with the uncertainty and the lack of closure that goes with these moral and philosophical debates, you restrict yourself to topics where the only question is a legal one.
Never suggested otherwise. But my opinion about the matter won’t change if or when the Supreme Court overrules Roe v. Wade. By your logic, there’s no need to debate any of these issues at all, because the courts will have the final say anyway. Apparently all we need to do, in the Bricker universe, is look at what the law is, and that will tell us what is right and what is wrong.
We get, like, Skittles and a lot of vacation days. Not so much with the paychecks.
You first, Chuckles. Start with post #46. Let me know if you need help with the big words.