[extropy-chat] Moral Relativism

[Damien Broderick]

At 08:36 AM 5/10/2005 -0500, John-C-Wright wrote:


>No one has answered this way, but, supposing someone said, "If the
>population of her nation is too low, she must spare the child; but if the
>population is too high, she must slay the child." This answer depends on the
>situation; in this case, on population numbers.
>
>Again, no one has answered this way, but supposing someone said, "She should
>obey the laws of her land and heed the opinions of her elders, whatever they
>are. Only if the general society has reach a consensus that it is right to 
>slay
>the child can she slay it."

And so on, with this tendentious, emotive, old Testament verb "slay", here 
applied as usual to a small clump of fetal cells. It seems to me more 
appropriately employed when Christians of certain denominations withhold 
permission for life-saving treatment offered to their sick children, such 
as blood transfusions, and thus unequivocally *slay* their flesh and blood 
in the name of eccentric interpretations of ancient superstition. See, for 
example, the disturbing cases of Jehovah's Witness and Christian Science 
families happier to slay their children than to let them have medical 
treatment:

http://www.rickross.com/reference/jw/jw11.html

Damien Broderick