Sunday, June 11, 2006

Continuing on with the morality thread

There's been lots of discussion about what constitutes religion or morality, but maybe we should define what a morally ideal society would include. What's the line between an individual's personal freedom and their responsibility to society as a whole? Where is the line that science shouldn't cross- if there is one?

My personal ideal is choice- that we have the resources to make our own decisions and are free to choose how to live our own lives so long as it doesn't inhibit someone else from their own choice. And I'll add to it that the choice of an already existing person takes precedence over a potentially existing person.

6 comments:

DeeK said...

This is a difficult question. an obvious choice for some may not constitute a so obvious for others. A personal example is that I feel we should all do as much as possible to reduce ecological impact. Others see this as a dumb idea when it comes at the expense of the economy.

Also, even if we could, choosing morality say by popular vote may not be the best idea. Popular vote could determine that people over 6' 5" use too much air (phew, I am 6'3").

I think a good start is to realize that science should not be given carte blanche. Even the scientific community realizes that it has been lax about its investigative standards.

Yeah, I'm jumping around the issue, but its a big one. I need some time.

Peter said...

fundamentalist christians would sooner kill a herd of elephants than a human zygote.

The Red Queen said...

I think fundamentalist anythings would sooner kill an adult with different opinions than theirs before they would kill a zygote because a zygote can still be converted.

Anonymous said...

As long as we're poking around at zygotes and the such -- at what point do you feel that a fertilized egg actually becomes a human? At what stage do you feel the creature receive the kind of rights that you and I do? Because if it seems that if you and I have different definitions of "human," that's where we're going to disagree about a woman's reproductive rights vs. a human's right to life.

We come to conclusions about these kinds of issues based on some core definitions... so what are your definitions in this? (or this might be a good topic for another post)

The Red Queen said...

Jovial-
I think the when is a zygote a human arguement is moot as far as reproductive rights go and is only thrown in to make a claim that it is about "life" and not control of a woman's sexual autonomy.

See this post.
I wrote a while ago and pay attention to the kidney analogy.

Then see this chart .showing how it's about sex and not life

Anonymous said...

I think you might be making sweeping generalizations about anybody that brings up the zygote-to-human argument. And that chart is in reference to leaders of the abortion-criminalization movement, of which I'm not a part, and I don't have those views.

In any event, I'd still like your opinion on the definition of human life, because it would give me a clearer idea of your philosophies on the subject. Maybe we agree; maybe we disagree. I think it's an important question to answer, because putting some kind of definition on things allows us to legitimately ask questions about the rights of a human being, whether the mother or the thing inside the mother.

Let's arbitrarily pick a stage of development in the womb to define the critter as a "human being." We'll just call it "stage X." If we call it a human being at stage X, is abortion at that stage reasonable? Or do we agree that by calling it a human being, we have moved out of the realm of infringing upon reproductive rights and into the stage of protecting a human life? If we agree to that, it only makes sense to define what "stage X" is.