# What "kind" of morality do you believe in and why? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 18, 2013, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-morality-do-you-believe-in-and-why/674165 "2013-11-18T06:01:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-morality-do-you-believe-in-and-why/674165/141 "2013-12-05T05:13:25Z")
**UDS** : Excellent point, in all you say here. As an example, I agree with the official Libertarian viewpoint on some certain ideas…but I disagree with them on others. I would be very uncomfortable, thus, embracing the Libertarian process of reasoning in its entirety, and if one of their results – even on where I agree with them – is based on that process of reasoning, I will be uncomfortable in that agreement. I wonder, in fact, if a “method” is necessary…or even useful. Do moral ideals benefit from a systematic linkage? Is a menu-driven process really any worse? Just a big long checklist of issues, and you can vote yes on some, and no on some, and argue that they are wholly independent. Or are underlying principles more useful, and commonalities among issues should be searched for, in order to find a systematic basis? It seems to me that the danger of this is that some completely new and unforeseen issue might pop up – something brought about by a technological innovation, perhaps – and a person who operates on a “system” or “method” could fall into the trap of having an opinion about the matter without having given it much thought. Someone who says, “I always prefer to err on the side of individual liberty,” for instance, while following a system that is attractive to many and certain defensible, might find himself making a prejudiced decision instead of an informed one. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-morality-do-you-believe-in-and-why/674165/142 "2013-12-05T05:46:23Z")
As far as societyal ethical decisions go, I really don’t think that we need individuals to have the same underlying framework to support their views. If there’s a general consensus that, e.g, people should have the right to exclude others from land that they own, that’s a sufficient basis to support workable laws about trespass. It doesn’t greatly matter if people have different reasons for arriving at that conclusion. But, from the perspective of the individual, the framework is more important. Are my ethical positions arbitrary and capricious, with no more content that a preference for vanilla over strawberry icecream? Most of us would prefer not to think that, so we like to think we have good reasons for the stances we take. Plus, when we meet a new dilemma that requires a new ethical stance to be formed, we like to think that we have a set of principles and values that we can work from to arrive at that stance. To that extent, we like to have a robust framework, and a robust framework usually works from some general principle or values that are taken to have general validity, and it usually aims to be reasonably coherent and consistent. But we don’t demand complete coherence and consistency. For example, a lot of people will assert (and indeed some have asserted in this thread) a moral framwork resting on the golden rule, empathy, reciprocity. One area where this framework doesn’t have a lot to say in the question of our ethical responsibilties to animals. Most people manage to solve that problem, and develop ethical stances towards animals, without abandoning the notion of reciprocal empathy because it turns out not to be a universal ethical nostrum. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-morality-do-you-believe-in-and-why/674165/143 "2013-12-05T08:04:50Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > Not absurd at all; it makes the point that ethical systems,as you neatly put it, are built with “should” and “ought” statements. The mere observation that somebody likes X, or dislikes Y, does not make even the beginnings of an ethical system; it make no difference whether X or Y are strawberries or pain. > > I’ m not sure what you mean by saying that starting with a “should” or “ought” statement “seems to be assuming too much”. As far as building an ethical system goes, until you make a “should” or “ought” statement, you haven’t started at all. If what you mean is that your first “should” or “ought” statement has to involve an assumption (in the sense of an acceptance as true of something not demonstrated to be true) - yes, it does. That’s my point. Why select one set of should and ought statements instead of others? Because your postulates drive them. As for strawberries and pain - we evolved an aversion to pain, not to strawberries. Equating them is quite odd. > [@](#): > > It doesn’t have to be through revelation (in the sense of “graven on tablets of stone and handed to us by an omniscient deity”). As Trinopus has already pointed out in post 117, a religious understanding in which God’s plan is both for us to be virtuous, and for us to be responsible for our own moral judgments and actions, is entirely coherent, and is in fact pretty mainstream. Most revelation seems to be from God whispering in someone’s ear. Tablets were right out, until Joseph Smith, that is. If you claim you know God’s plan either you claim direct revelation or believe that someone else experienced revelation. Now the real story is that someone comes up with a “moral” system and supports it through claims of revelation. That’s dishonest whether or not you agree with what the person came up with. > [@](#): > > You’re assuming that Paul’s misogyny only had traction because it was backed by the claim of religious authority. > > There’s no evidence for that assumption, and plenty of examples of people whose moral stances we reject today, but who were extremely influential without ever making any claim to religious authority - Aristotle on slavery would be an obvious example. Maybe Aristotle on slavery (and on love between men) would be more accepted if it supposedly came from a God many believe in. But do you deny that Catholicism’s rather odd view of women came from Paul? Like I said, I’m not a Christian, but I’m fairly sure Paul’s position in the Bible does give him moral authority to many. How many writers of that day are listened to and followed as fervently as many follow him? As you said, not Aristotle (slightly older to be sure.) > [@](#): > > You can derive the Golden Rule from first principles (depending, of course, on what your first principles are. Ayn Rand, to take a m modern example, spectacularly failed to derive it.) But, given that, the fact that the Golden Rule does in fact play a central role in most (all?) of the religious ethical systems that we encounter is surely evidence that religious ethical systems are developed from observations, experience and refection in much the way that secular ethical systems (which also, Ayn Rand notwithstanding, tend to find their way fairly quickly to the Golden Rule) do? Religious systems often follow existing ethical rules. It’s not like someone reading “Thou shalt not commit murder” for the first time said “wow, I never thought of that before.” Ethically derivable rules are not interesting - non-ethically derivable ones are. Jewish law is full of them. > [@](#): > > Nonsense. You persistently assume that anyone who - or any culture that - is religious must derive their ethical standards from their religious beliefs. This simply is not the case. The Greeks, for example, had their pantheon and their creation stories, etc, but they signally failed to draw moral lessons from them. As you must know, they were hugely active and influential in the development of moral thinking, and much of the western ethical tradition - secular and religious alike - still rests on foundations they built. But their ethics is very much based on observation of human nature and the human condition. As you rightly point out, many of the Greek gods behave in a distinctly unethical fashion - and not just sexually. How can you recognise this, and still have failed to tumble to the corollary; that the Greeks did not rest their moral beliefs on the actions, commandments or authority of their Gods? Aristotle was in a culture which had matured past the old gods. He speaks of a singular force in Ethics far more than than WWZD. I’d have to research the influence of the ancient gods on Greek morals, but Greek gods were not fonts of morality like the Western God is supposed to be. Cultures in which the gods do not dictate morality are not covered by my examples. > [@](#): > > The simple truth is this; it’s not the case that anyone who has religious beliefs must draw their moral positions from their religious beliefs. Not if the religious beliefs do not involve morality. But what actually seems to happen is different - at least in a religiously pluralistic society. People derive their ethical beliefs from a variety of sources, and then claim that they are religious beliefs as derived from the subset of religious morality that supports them. I’m assuming they were not brainwashed. > [@](#): > > And the other simple truth is this; it’s not the case that anyone who who _does_ draw their moral positions from their religious beliefs does so on the basis that unquestionable ethical precepts have been authoritatively revealed. Oh, you believe in the Ten Suggestions then. Really, you deny that anyone says that they base their belief on the Holy Word? What universe do you live in, anyway? Are you one of the “we Unitarians don’t do that so no one does that” kind of people? For we have many moderate Christians here who claim that only a handful of their brethren are Creationists. And people dig out the same old surveys showing how big that handful is. > [@](#): > > No, you’re writing clearly enough; you’re not _reading_ clearly enough. I’m not disputing that, e.g, the support of certain churches for SSM is the result of experience and observation of the human condition, and reflection thereon. I’m disputing your suggestion that the moral stances that you _don’t_ like are not the result of ethical reasoning, but are the result of literalist application of biblical precepts which are taken to be beyond question. This is simply not how religious ethical thinking works, for the most part. This has nothing to do with what I like in general. I believe in abortion rights, but given assumptions about what human life is and when it starts I can see the ethical argument of the anti-abortion crowd. I brought up SSM as a specific example because the anti-SSM side had to make an ethical and not moral argument in the trial, and failed miserably. I doubt a great many people changed sides because of this. The ethical argument was that SSM hurt children (falsified by studies) and perhaps something about the traditional meaning of marriage, which is a pretty poor excuse for denying rights. You said they had ethical arguments, perhaps you’d care to share them. We’ve had many threads on this, which have been short on arguments besides the definition one. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-morality-do-you-believe-in-and-why/674165/144 "2013-12-05T13:07:51Z")
Many people use the Bible as the word of God, but in reality it is just the word of another human being. That is their right, but even Jesus called the OT “your law”, he didn’t say God’s Law. It seems to me anything that brings harm to oneself or another is immoral. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-morality-do-you-believe-in-and-why/674165/145 "2013-12-05T17:22:04Z")
All morals are relative. What does the universe, a star, or a rock care about how a human feels about a certain issue? Its irrelevant. Humans invented morals as a easy heuristic to promote behavior that is desirable, nothing more ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-morality-do-you-believe-in-and-why/674165/146 "2013-12-05T22:42:48Z")
> [@YogSosoth](#): > > All morals are relative. . . . Humans invented morals as a easy heuristic to promote behavior that is desirable, nothing more The “nothing more” may have applied in the earliest tribal days of our existence, but not any more. We now have the ability to analyze our morals and make judgements among competing moral systems. Yes, even that will be relative. But it will be open to real and meaningful analysis. Heck, we can analyze art. We can come up with rules and compare things to those rules. We have tools today that the hunter-gatherers could not conceive of. ---
**Author:** ![truthseeker3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e68b1a/32.png) [@truthseeker3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/truthseeker3)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2013, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-morality-do-you-believe-in-and-why/674165/147 "2013-12-07T07:40:37Z")
> [@monavis](#): > > Many people use the Bible as the word of God, but in reality it is just the word of another human being. That is their right, but even Jesus called the OT “your law”, he didn’t say God’s Law. It seems to me anything that brings harm to oneself or another is immoral. I would agree with you: moral = beneficial, immoral = harmful. But then, I’m not sure how that can be subject to change. I would argue that morality doesn’t change - our _understanding_ of it changes. I mean, slavery didn’t suddenly become immoral when the 13th amendment was passed; it was always immoral, but society and the law unjustly permitted it. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2013, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-morality-do-you-believe-in-and-why/674165/148 "2013-12-07T12:28:46Z")
> [@truthseeker3](#): > > I would agree with you: moral = beneficial, immoral = harmful. But then, I’m not sure how that can be subject to change. I would argue that morality doesn’t change - our _understanding_ of it changes. I mean, slavery didn’t suddenly become immoral when the 13th amendment was passed; it was always immoral, but society and the law unjustly permitted it. I agree, if people would accept a person who does good or bad wouldn’t Judge them until, like the the old Indian adage: walk a fortnight in one"s shoes before you judge them". Or as the NT says not to judge others. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2013, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-morality-do-you-believe-in-and-why/674165/149 "2013-12-07T22:09:20Z")
> [@truthseeker3](#): > > I would agree with you: moral = beneficial, immoral = harmful. But then, I’m not sure how that can be subject to change. I would argue that morality doesn’t change - our _understanding_ of it changes. I mean, slavery didn’t suddenly become immoral when the 13th amendment was passed; it was always immoral, but society and the law unjustly permitted it. I sort of agree…but sort of disagree. Changes in the environment – most notably from technological change – can alter the moral dimension of an action. In a small nomadic tribal environment, homosexuality could be seen as harmful to the group. Yes, part of this is simple ignorance – they simply didn’t know that a man has plenty of sperm, and can fulfill his breeding obligations and still have lots of vigor to have sex with the ones he truly prefers. But part of it is that the survival of the tribe depends on reproductive maximization. In that environment, a woman who chooses not to have babies is being harmful to the whole group, and that can reasonably be called immoral. This changes dramatically in a world with sensible medical technology, where most babies actually have a darned good chance of living to maturity and where we have seven billion people, and not a mere few hundred or few thousand. Today, with people living to greater and greater ages, we’re facing some real moral re-assessment of euthanasia. Do we really have to keep people alive on life-support as more and more of their major functions collapse? Is it possible that there is a point of no return, where a lethal injection is an act of mercy, not murder? (At very least, isn’t there room, today, for people to be allowed to make such decisions for themselves?) The idea of basing morality on circumstances, rather than on abstract or dogmatic dicta, allows adaption to situational change. This, however, is alarming to people who favor systematic or constitutionalist approaches. Moral systems, like the U.S. Constitution, should be changeable…but not too easily changeable. ---
**Author:** ![truthseeker3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e68b1a/32.png) [@truthseeker3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/truthseeker3)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2013, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-morality-do-you-believe-in-and-why/674165/150 "2013-12-09T07:48:24Z")
We _don’t_ have to keep people alive indefinitely. Paragraph 2278 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states the following: > [@](#): > > Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of “over-zealous” treatment. [Cite.](http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P7Z.HTM) Also, it’s interesting that you use the phrase “lethal injection” here - almost as though getting sick were a capital crime. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2013, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-morality-do-you-believe-in-and-why/674165/151 "2013-12-10T02:43:36Z")
> [@truthseeker3](#): > > We _don’t_ have to keep people alive indefinitely. Paragraph 2278 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states the following: > [Cite.](http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P7Z.HTM) “2277 Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick, or dying persons. It is morally unacceptable.” You aren’t successfully addressing my point. > [@](#): > > Also, it’s interesting that you use the phrase “lethal injection” here - almost as though getting sick were a capital crime. That doesn’t make any sense, thank you. I think I know the difference between getting sick and murdering schoolkids with an automatic rifle, and so does everyone reading this thread. Your disingenuity is not working as a rhetorical tool. I spoke of “lethal injection” as a distinct life-ending act of mercy for those who are so very, very sick that they have a negligible “quality of life.” Many of us believe that this is morally acceptable. The church teachings you cited say it isn’t. This moves beyond merely a disagreement on morality, but also as an example of changing morality, as a view that very few held three hundred years ago is held by far more (proportionally) today. Progress in medical technology is a big part of the change. It is now possible to keep a patient breathing who has, otherwise, no mental capacity at all. The Terri Schiavo farrago is instructive here. ---
**Author:** ![truthseeker3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e68b1a/32.png) [@truthseeker3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/truthseeker3)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-morality-do-you-believe-in-and-why/674165/152 "2013-12-11T00:57:04Z")
Sorry - I’ve obviously muffed the point completely here. When you say … > [@Trinopus](#): > > Do we really have to keep people alive on life-support as more and more of their major functions collapse? Is it possible that there is a point of no return, where a lethal injection is an act of mercy, not murder? … you seem to suggest that if the Church does not permit direct euthanasia, then it must require patients to be kept alive as long as possible - and that isn’t so. The Church’s position, in a nutshell, is: it’s ok to _let_ people die; it’s not ok to _make_ people die. more specifics on PVS… [http://www.ncbcenter.org/page.aspx?pid=1286](http://www.ncbcenter.org/page.aspx?pid=1286) ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-morality-do-you-believe-in-and-why/674165/153 "2013-12-11T03:16:55Z")
I failed to note that myself in searching the linked document. Equal blame? I’m not wholly convinced the distinction is as sharp as one might claim. Isn’t disconnecting the life-support machine an overt act? When they decided to stop feeding Terri Schiavo, is that “making her die” or “letting her die?” Anyway, let’s back to the general case: these are moral issues that weren’t moral issues 300 years ago, and it is changes in technology that made us address them in a new way. I think moral relativism – to some degree – is necessary when the world is significantly different from one century to the next. As another example, in a very simple economy – agriculture and bronze – we can more readily demand that all able-bodied citizens work. But in the modern economy, with high rates of unemployment, the old charity-based systems aren’t sufficient. We’ve had to implement government-scale intrinsic welfare segments of the economy. This came out of the grinding hellish human degradation that Dickens bore witness to. The old model didn’t function. The fable of the ant and the grasshopper isn’t convincing when there simply aren’t enough grass-seeds for them to accumulate! We still hold, close to universally, that the guy with the broken leg shouldn’t be left to starve to death; we feed him until he heals. But when the economy itself is broken, how do we implement our moral intuition? ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-morality-do-you-believe-in-and-why/674165/154 "2013-12-11T04:06:26Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I’m not wholly convinced the distinction is as sharp as one might claim. Isn’t disconnecting the life-support machine an overt act? When they decided to stop feeding Terri Schiavo, is that “making her die” or “letting her die?” Two things can be different without their having to be a “sharp distinction” between them. Real life is full of things that we do see as materially different even though there is no sharp distinction (or an arbitrary and artificial sharp distinction) between them - e.g. childhood and adolescence, adolescence and adulthood. I think you can defend the proposition that there is a meaningful distinction between (a) killing someone, and (b) failing to save someone’s life, even if in some circumstances the two seem very close together. > [@Trinopus](#): > > Anyway, let’s back to the general case: these are moral issues that weren’t moral issues 300 years ago, and it is changes in technology that made us address them in a new way. > > I think moral relativism – to some degree – is necessary when the world is significantly different from one century to the next. I think changing circumstances present us with new moral questions. (The moral issues presented by cyberstalking, cyberbullying, conventions about how we should deal with the fact that embarrassing information which in the past would disappear but today is preserved and universally accessible on the internet are all topical examples.) It doesn’t necessarily follow that our existing principles and values will be inadequate to address those questions, though having to address those questions may make us re-evaluate things we thought we were certain of. But we may of course reevalate them and conclude that we are still certain of them; the fact that we have reliably humane methods of execution doesn’t, for example, make me abandon the convictions that lead me to oppose the death penalty. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-morality-do-you-believe-in-and-why/674165/155 "2013-12-11T04:28:52Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > Two things can be different without their having to be a “sharp distinction” between them. Real life is full of things that we do see as materially different even though there is no sharp distinction (or an arbitrary and artificial sharp distinction) between them - e.g. childhood and adolescence, adolescence and adulthood. I think you can defend the proposition that there is a meaningful distinction between (a) killing someone, and (b) failing to save someone’s life, even if in some circumstances the two seem very close together. I think I agree with you (I’ll need time to go over your post in more detail.) I was rejecting the specific idea that the Catholic Church can accept one while rejecting the other. For them to do that, at least in a very clear way, they would have to be able to distinguish the two more clearly. There is a cartoon of a superhero dodging bullets, so that the bullets all hit other bad guys. The caption: “Thou shalt not kill, but need not strive relentlessly to keep alive.” But at what point is the hero causing death? By posing for a second in front of a villain, isn’t he increasing the odds, at very least, of another villain shooting in that direction? As you say: no clear distinction. > [@](#): > > I think changing circumstances present us with new moral questions. (The moral issues presented by cyberstalking, cyberbullying, conventions about how we should deal with the fact that embarrassing information which in the past would disappear but today is preserved and universally accessible on the internet are all topical examples.) It doesn’t necessarily follow that our existing principles and values will be inadequate to address those questions, though having to address those questions may make us re-evaluate things we thought we were certain of. > > But we may of course reevalate them and conclude that we are still certain of them; the fact that we have reliably humane methods of execution doesn’t, for example, make me abandon the convictions that lead me to oppose the death penalty. Agreed wholly. I’ll accept that this process of re-evaluation may not constitute the creation of a wholly new morality, but at the very least, it results in a new set of day to day moral guidelines. The things we did yesterday may not be okay today – but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they were not okay yesterday. I hold it to be a little too facile to say “Slavery was always wrong; it just wasn’t known or widely believed to be wrong at the time.” There are murky shades of gray here. Otherwise…there are things we do, today, which are immoral…and we just don’t know it. (Maybe cows and pigs and sheep have souls! Maybe meat really is murder!) The process of “finding out” is, I think, also, in part, a process of “making it up.” ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-morality-do-you-believe-in-and-why/674165/156 "2013-12-11T05:28:55Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I think I agree with you (I’ll need time to go over your post in more detail.) I was rejecting the specific idea that the Catholic Church can accept one while rejecting the other. For them to do that, at least in a very clear way, they would have to be able to distinguish the two more clearly. > > There is a cartoon of a superhero dodging bullets, so that the bullets all hit other bad guys. The caption: “Thou shalt not kill, but need not strive relentlessly to keep alive.” But at what point is the hero causing death? By posing for a second in front of a villain, isn’t he increasing the odds, at very least, of another villain shooting in that direction? > > As you say: no clear distinction. I’m not sure the superhero cartoon is all that helpful in elucidating the issue, to be honest! The implication seems to be that if I fail to take a bullet for you, I’m responsible for your death just as if I had shot you. The analogy ignores the moral agency of the person doing the shooting, and in general is a longish way from the reality of what we are discussing here. (For what it’s worth, in the Catholic tradition, deliberately trying to trick one of your enemies to shoot another would be morally problematic. You could possibly defend it, but not on the basis that you weren’t responsible for the shooting. You’d have to defend on the basis that you were justified in trying to direct fire at your enemy, which if true would mean that you would have been equally justified in shooting at him yourself.) I don’t think it’s a serious critique of the Catholic church’s position to say that it treats cases which are not very different, differently. Once you accept the reality of hazy borders which are nevertheless meaningful borders - and you have already accepted that - then I think the corollary is that somewhere in this hazy border area you’ll have cases which are not that different being treated differently. How can it be otherwise? This isn’t just a problem for Catholic, or religious, ethics in the area of end-of-life decisions; you face exactly the same problem if you are operating within a purely secular framework - e.g. look at the cases which attempt to nut out the border between murder and manslaughter. You can attempt to evade the question by saying that this area should not be regulated by the criminal law/the pronouncements of bishops/other societal agencies; it should be left up to the doctor and the patient. But that really is just an evasion; all you are doing is exempting yourself/society from having to make a moral decision. Instead, the doctor has to make the moral decision, and he still faces the “fuzzy border” problem. And he’s still going to find himself treating quite similar cases differently (unless he throws up his hands, pretends the border does not exist and treats all cases, however different, the same). The Catholic approach to this problem looks at the intention of the actor in order to determine which side of the fuzzy border a particular act falls on; does he intend to end life, or is the end of life an indirect consequence of something done for another purpose? But a focus on intention is an approach which many secular ethical systems take as well; it pretty well underpins the concept of “guilty” in our criminal justice system, for example. (And not just for murder.) And, in fact, many moral relativists place even _more_ stress on the intention of the actor as determining the goodness/badness of an act than the Catholic tradition does so, again, it’s hard to mount a coherent attack on this aspect of the Catholic tradition from a secular starting point. I think what leads the Catholic tradition to oppose “euthenasia” is the paramount value that it assigns to human life. In the Catholic tradition, a direct attack on innocent (meaning, not morally guiltless, but, not threatening harm) human life is intrinsically wrong (meaning, not very very wrong, but wrong regardless of the circumstances). But, again, a humanist ethicist can hardly object to an ethical system which attributes a high value to respect for human life. He might not necessarily agree fully with it, but he will usually agree largely with it, and he certainly can’t object to it as irrational or perverse. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-morality-do-you-believe-in-and-why/674165/157 "2013-12-11T06:25:56Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > I’m not sure the superhero cartoon is all that helpful in elucidating the issue, to be honest! The implication seems to be that if I fail to take a bullet for you, I’m responsible for your death just as if I had shot you. Oops, no, that wasn’t it. It was that he was dancing around, tricking the bad guys into shooting each other. He’s “causing” their deaths by tricking them into shooting foolishly. But they’re the ones doing the shooting…right? > [@](#): > > The analogy ignores the moral agency of the person doing the shooting . . . Tricky. If I beguile someone into doing something evil, how much of the evil is on me, and how much on them? This doesn’t ignore their moral agency; they bear some responsibility. But how much? None is too small; all is too great. How do you divvy up wrongness? > [@](#): > > (For what it’s worth, in the Catholic tradition, deliberately trying to trick one of your enemies to shoot another would be morally problematic. . . . That was what I meant the metaphor to refer to. > [@](#): > > I don’t think it’s a serious critique of the Catholic church’s position to say that it treats cases which are not very different, differently. Once you accept the reality of hazy borders which are nevertheless meaningful borders - and you have already accepted that - then I think the corollary is that somewhere in this hazy border area you’ll have cases which are not that different being treated differently. How can it be otherwise? Well, perhaps. At very least, it should prompt doubt and serious efforts at re-consideration. The messier the distinctions get, the less I can be happy with a doctrinal answer that is unquestioned. When a priest says, “Obviously!” I’m dubious. When he says, “Okay, well, here it becomes difficult” I’m far more comfortable. FWIW, I think I agree with all the rest of your post. (I readily confess to being a tad out of my depth here, but will continue to try to blunder along.) ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2013, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-morality-do-you-believe-in-and-why/674165/158 "2013-12-11T06:50:13Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Well, perhaps. At very least, it should prompt doubt and serious efforts at re-consideration. The messier the distinctions get, the less I can be happy with a doctrinal answer that is unquestioned.) But I’m not seeing you arguing that, by comparison with other possible positions, the Catholic position here is “a doctrinal answer that is unquestioned”. Still less am I seeing you producing any evidence that this is so. Look at it this way. A distinctively Catholic take on this would assert the paramount value of human life, and the moral imperative to respect it by not directly attacking it. Now, I grant you that that’s an ethical assertion whose truth cannot be empirically demonstrated, but since it’s true of _all_ ethical assertions that their truth cannot be empirically demonstrated, that’s not enough to show that the Catholic stance is uniquely “doctrinal” or “unquestioned”. Consider the position of someone who takes a different view, and thinks that if you are suffering, and the only way to relieve your suffering is to kill you, then killing you is morally justified. He’s essentially asserting that the moral imperative to relieve suffering trumps the moral imperative not to destroy life. His position is just as undemonstrated and undemonstrable as the Catholic position, so how is it any less doctrinal or unquestioned? And consider a third person, who considers that the highest good is consciousness , self-awareness, and that it’s morally permissible to kill someone who lacks the mental capacity for self-awareness, even if that person is not suffering. He’s making a different moral assertion about a value that trumps any imperative to respect life. In terms of being “doctrinal and unquestioned”, is that position any different from the first two? And a fourth position; the highest good is to contribute to the health and flourishing of the race, and if your mental or physical disabilities mean that it’s impossible for you to do that, that in fact you will degrade the race, then it’s morally permissible to kill you. (That could be the Aryan race, or it could be the human race.) You can see where I’m going with this. Some of these moral positions might attract us; some might strike us as reasonable or defensible even though we’re not inclined to adopt them ourselves; some are utterly repugnant. But why? What distinguishes them? They are all equally unevidenced. Condemning some as “doctrinal” and “unquestioned” looks like an evasion to me. Does “doctrinal and unquestioned” mean anything more than “this is a moral view that I don’t find appealing”? ---
**Author:** ![truthseeker3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e68b1a/32.png) [@truthseeker3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/truthseeker3)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2013, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-morality-do-you-believe-in-and-why/674165/159 "2013-12-14T05:35:10Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Agreed wholly. I’ll accept that this process of re-evaluation may not constitute the creation of a wholly new morality, but at the very least, it results in a new set of day to day moral guidelines. > > The things we did yesterday may not be okay today – but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they were not okay yesterday. I hold it to be a little too facile to say “Slavery was always wrong; it just wasn’t known or widely believed to be wrong at the time.” There are murky shades of gray here. I’ll agree with that. I think people did know that the system was broken, but didn’t know how to fix it (the economy of the South ran on cotton, and cotton doesn’t pick itself) - just like today. And I’ve already acknowledged that customs can change, giving the example of driving on the left side of the road. (It doesn’t really matter which side of the road people drive on; but if everyone else decides to drive on the right side, then it does indeed _become_ wrong to drive on the left.) I submit that there is a set of moral axioms that do not change, plus some other rules that can be derived from those axioms and the circumstances of the day. And I further submit that “no taking a human life when it can be avoided” is one of those axioms. Perhaps you’re right: god is off somewhere running the cosmos, if “he” even exists at all. Perhaps there’s no heavenly father - only a lot of earthly brothers and sisters - so we better take care of each other. Perhaps, too, there is nothing to look forward to after death, and those who are lost to us are irrevocably lost. Well, then, isn’t it even more important to safeguard life if no one gets a second chance? ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2013, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-morality-do-you-believe-in-and-why/674165/160 "2013-12-14T06:52:12Z")
> [@truthseeker3](#): > > . . . Well, then, isn’t it even more important to safeguard life if no one gets a second chance? I think so. To me, this is a hint as to why humanist morals are “better” than theological morals. Christian morality, at least, always has a “back door” to justice. If the wicked person escapes trial and punishment in life, well, he’ll be punished in the afterlife. But the non-theological view doesn’t have this comfort. When something bad happens, there is no reparation, no magical happy ending. We have only one chance to do it right, and if we fail, that chance is lost forever. But even this view doesn’t exclude euthanasia in extreme cases. The fact that this is the only life in which I can ever see and know my loved ones is a terrible limitation, but if that life is intolerable, so bad that nothingness itself is preferable, then we have the ability to choose, or to give, nothingness. Obviously, there is much circularity in my view. I believe there is no God, and therefore my morals are not going to be swayed by arguments that depend on God’s existence. As a person who values liberty, I have to make certain that there is room in our society for people who do believe in God. The two viewpoints of reality can co-exist, so long as each can muster a basic level of respect for the other. Mandatory state atheism is not preferable to mandatory state religion. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-morality-do-you-believe-in-and-why/674165.md?page=7)