[ExI] Morality (was: atheists declare religions as scams)

[Sondre Bjellås]

2011/1/7 John Clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net>

> On Jan 7, 2011, at 1:29 PM, Sondre Bjellås wrote:
>
> I don't see the problem with this moral example, and of course is #2 the
> worse one. In the first one, you are not inflicting death upon the single
> individual.
>
>
> Yes you are, you're killing one man to save 5.
>

No, I am not killing anyone. I did not initiate the physical treat towards
neither of those people. I'm not obligated to give all my money to poor
people to save their lives, am I?


> In the second example, you are initiating physical force towards another
> human being,
>
>
> And in the first example I am also initiating physical force by moving that
> switch, resulting in the death of a human being.
>

You are not the initiating physical force, either the trolley started by
accident or someone pushed it on purpose. If I only give a poor man $5 when
he asks for help and the next day he is dead, frozen to death because he
couldn't afford both drugs and food. Am I responsible in any way to his
death, was I a contributing factor? Of course not.


>
> The moral thing to do would allow the 5 people to die, while myself and the
> fatty survives.
>
>
> If the end result of morality is that more people suffer and die then
> morality would have no point and there would be little reason to be moral.
>
>
People dies, that's a fact of life. Morality will improve our probability
for survival and help us work well together in a society.


> Moral values have to hold true to all contexts and not contradict each
> other
>
>
> People like to say things like that, and it might be nice if it were so,
> but it has never been found to be even close to the truth. In reality moral
> values NEVER hold true in all contexts and ALWAYS contradict each other.
>
>
Had a discussion around this with my wife earlier tonight and life ain't all
black and white, that's right. I don't have all the answers right now, I can
see events where a certain moral value could be bent/broken, but I have yet
to come up with one which will inflict negative result upon the receiver of
any act violating true moral values.

We discussed the following scenario: Let's say my brother is standing on a
bridge about to take his own life. If I physically take him down from that
bridge, I'm initiating physical force which is against his own will. I don't
believe that most people who want to die have a mental disorder (almost
baseless argument from some experience).

My first reaction would be to stop him, but only to verify and understand
his will to take his own life. If he truly wants to die, who am I to stop
him? I'm reaching out a helping hand, not physically abusing my brother.

In the end I think I realized that the scenario was not a contradiction
after all, only if I kept my brother with force away from the bridge in the
future.

> Example: Is it morally right to use physical force towards other human
> beings if that will save some other human beings?
>
>
> Well I can only speak for myself but I'd be willing to step on a innocent
> person's big toe if that saved another person's life.
>
>
Of course anyone would, I would even steal from another person if it could
save someones life. BUT, I would have to pay for my violations. The good
deed of saving another persons life, doesn't invalidate other moral truths.
Yet that is exactly what happens with governments, they violate all the
moral truths that exists and never pays back for their evil doing.


> The moral truth of "you shall not initiate physical force" tells us that
> NO, we should not morally accept the killing of another human being. Not for
> two people, not for 5 people, not for thousand people and not even for a
> million people.
>
>
> Arithmetic is one of the very few things that we know to be true and
> consistent, the idea that it's OK to use this true and consistent thing on
> trivial matters, like making change, but we must never use it on important
> matters, like morality, makes absolutely no sense to me. I think one person
> dying is bad, two people dying is worse and three is even worse.
>
>
I did not say the opposite of what your saying. Arithmetic applies to the
decision of reducing consequences of the scenario described, so it's logical
and correct to do whatever you can to avoid deaths in the position (first
scenario) where you are not directly responsible for their deaths.

On the other hand (second scenario), you can't morally justify the killing
of a fat guy to save five other people, which breaks the moral principle of
not killing anyone.



>   John K Clark
>
>
>
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