morality

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

It is immoral to execute a criminal for being a humanbeing

  • yes
  • no
0 voters

People often say that the moral standards are slipping.
This usually occurs if pornography or blasphemous material has been shown on TV.

If those people choose not to watch the offending programme then that is perfectly morally acceptable. No one should force you to watch it against your wishes.
However when that person tries to ban others from watching it against their wishes, that person is morally wrong.
If you don’t want to watch pornographic material then that is ok but why should you force other people not to watch it.
What moral rights have you to prevent the two participating and consenting bodies from carrying out their wishes?

For an example in 20 states of America it is illegal to be homosexual. The banning of homosexual practises is morally wrong as the two participating bodies i.e. the couple have consented, making the act morally correct.
When someone says this is wrong because the bible bans it, then the bible is immoral.
If the bible is the word of god, then god is wrong.

Rape is immoral since one of the participating bodies is not consenting. Punishment of any sort is immoral because one of the participating bodies is not consenting. Capital punishment e.g. execution is immoral because one of the participating bodies is not consenting.
Murder is immoral as one of the participating bodies is not consenting. Burglary is immoral as one of the participating bodies is not consenting.

Euthanasia is morally acceptable as the two participating bodies have consented.
Intercourse between two underage teenagers is morally acceptable if the two participating bodies are aware of the consequences of their actions and consenting.
Getting drunk is morally acceptable if the drunken person does not fight another person.
If you walk into a video store and buy pornography then that is morally acceptable. If you try and stop the video store from selling pornography then that is morally unacceptable as you are oppressing the two participating bodies.

It was immoral for Christian pressure groups to try and ban the Jerry Springer opera because the two participating bodies were consenting. The opera was only shown to the people watching the show. It was not forced upon anyone not watching the show therefore it was morally acceptable. But if the pressure groups banned the company from showing the opera to its customers then that is immoral as the two participating bodies were oppressed.

It is immoral to allow a person to have religious beliefs if their religion allows the two participating bodies to be oppressed.

It is immoral to allow religious people to vote if they vote for a candidate who will oppress the two participating bodies. E.g. religious Texans should not be allowed to vote if the representative they vote for will allow the execution of criminals and other immoral acts.

In a democracy, if the majority elects a government that oppresses the two participating bodies, then the government is immoral and must be dissolved.

It is immoral for a person to vote for a political party that allows the oppression of the two participating bodies.

Basically it is immoral for anyone to allow the oppression of any two participating and consenting bodies.
If you think something is wrong but the participating bodies have consented you have no right to stop them from carrying out their moral act.

Liberty is the foundation stone of a free society. Society has realised that to prevent participating bodies from carrying out a consented action is wrong. Society’s standards haven’t fallen, if anything they have risen.

If you are not a libertarian then you are an oppressor. If you are an oppressor you are against freedom, the force of good, so you are evil. Oppressors are the children of satan.

Here’s to freedom, the right to vote for a political party that doesn’t oppress people, the right to own your life and the right to be free from torture, both mental and physical.

Here’s to liberty. God bless the free world.

2

It is immoral for you to post this thread, because I (a participant of the forum) do not consent nor subscribe to your theories.

Congratulations.

3

If all those things are immoral and immoral is defined as “contrary to established moral principles,” and we left the immoral acts commited unpunished, wouldn’t that create a world without retribution. A world where people can do what they want due to the fact that there is no penalty.

4

The word moral only exists because there is immorality. That is contrary to the way of nature and nature includes our behaviour. A tree is always a tree, it always grows according to the same principal, it never tries to be a cloud, it never thinks, I’m a tree and I am free to behave in the way I want to. It knows it is a tree. It is aware. So, the same with people. There is a correct way to behave according to truth. But this morality must come out of our awareness. If it is imposed on us by outside then it cannot be true morality. The more aware we become, the more moral, very naturally, we become.

5

I disagree, humans are naturally immoral. We are sinful from birth, so morality is actually going against our human nature, and doing what is right and decent.

6

Welcome to America! You can make a good living selling pictures or movies of two people having sex. As long as you pay your taxes morality has nothign to do with it.

what moral about war?

7

the key to morality is splashing water on your head. or maybe its learning some kind of lesson of some kind in your life-…

…nah its probably just water.

8

Thankyou for the responses.
You will not find morality at the bottom of your heart, nor will you find it in a pool of water.

All human behaviour is governed by genes/chemicals and electric impulses which occur naturaly in response to the natural universe so all human behaviour is natural. Therefore punishment is immoral.

One word you all need to understand is society.
A set of laws which all people are expected to follow. Those who do not follow these laws are punished.
Since each person is, by nature, different it is immoral to force everyone to behave the same way. The laws of society are in their own nature against nature.

No one should be punished, doing so is a waste of life. Each person who harms another has some sort of problem. This needs to be sorted not ignored.

All you need to do to understand whether society is moral or not is to look in the prisons.
Is a prisoner allowed their own room as they would have in their home?
Is a prisoner forced to eat and interact with the other inmates?
Is a prisoner allowed the use of their personal belongings?
Does the prisoner have access to their own tv, computer, books as they would at home?
Is a prisoner forced to exercise?

Is the prison to punish the person for being a human being, or is it a protected environment designed to ensure a person has a good quality of life without harming anyone elses quality of life?

Would you cross the road to help the dangerous lepper, or would you carry on walking?
This question is the key to understanding morality.

How can you honestly expect a baptism to prevent your hamanity from exerting itself? You are an intregrated part of the universe, the sooner you realise this the sooner you’ll understand how it works.

Surely we have a responsibility as human beings to ensure that we move as far away from our caveman roots as possible. Anything we didn’t understand was beaten out of existance with a club. Surely we have evolved beyond that.

But by looking at the way each human being treats another, and by looking at all the opression in the ‘free world’ would you draw the conclusion that we tried to understand things we knew nothing about? Or would you draw the conclusion that we still lock away or destroy anything we don’t understand?

9

If all behavior is natural, and morality has no bearing, and no one ought to be compelled to behave like anyone else, then what does ‘Punishment is immoral’ even mean? You’ve pre-defined that sentence into nonsense before you uttered it.
Presumably the people doing the punishing can’t help themselves either, right? I mean, punishment is a human behavior, and all human behavior is natural.

Ok, what if the way me and the majority of individuals choose to behave involves punishing people we see as wrong-doers? You think it’s immoral to force us to stop, so where does that leave you?

10

ah yes
It then becomes a case of importance of morals.
Obviously if you are harming anyone then you must be stopped even if it is imoral to do so. That is an opression and imorality i can live with.

11 
I'm sorry, but this doesn't make any real sense at all. You amount to saying that sometimes it's right to do immoral things. If you want to stick to a statement like that, then I have to ask you what you mean by 'immoral'.  So far, your argument sounds to me like "It's wrong for anybody to punish anybody else, because behavior shouldn't be compelled or restrained, but it's ok to restrain the behavior of punishment itself because...I say so."

Also, why must people harming others be stopped? This is perfectly natural behavior as well, and as you said, nobody ought to be compelled to behave a certain way.

12

Hi all,

Shoving your cock up another man’s arse has nothing whatsoever to do with morality!

Peter

13

In truth there can be no immoral acts since all behaviour is natural.
Nature being wholy natural.
I think it probably should be wrong to harm another person but it is against the choice of history.

I gues it all amounts to this, total freedom is right but it will result in the total destruction of the human race. Oppression will result in the chain of events responsible for freedom and will also result in the total destruction of the human race.

Can human beings stop ourselves from being wiped out? Since the only 2 choices will ultimately result in our destruction the answer is no.

I suppose the real question here is do we spend those years oppressing everyone or do we let everyone die free?
We can’t stop our course of evolution the human race will end in anarchy and chaos either way.
I guess i am guilty of wanting to try and stop the natural course of history, i don’t want humanity to be destroyed but i’ve realised there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it.

Oh well, happy days.

now to answer peter.

According to most religions. It is immoral to be gay beause it means you won’t procreate and so won’t allow for the survival of the human race. since god is supposed to have created the human race, to destroy it would be wrong. thus being gay would be immoral.
This would be why i don’t believe in a human god or gods.

If the bible god exists then being gay has everything to do with morality.
Hence why it is banned in the majority of religious countries.

As long as the bible is wrong peter is right.

14

matmilne, who died and made you God to decide what is immoral? You are very loose with the sterotypes. If not Libertarian, you are an oppresor. Hum, I have recently changed to Independent, does this make me immoral?

I do agree with many of your claims regarding freedom, and I am a firm secularist, Deist who advocates freedom, but often freedom is abused.

15 
If nothing is immoral, and we're all doomed no matter what we choose. you're just wasting your energy by telling us all what society should and shouldn't do.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I suppose.
I would propose that humanity hasn’t been destroyed yet, and that if there’s a process that let humanity survive from Monday into Tuesday, that process will let it survive from Tuesday into Wednesday as well. I guess it’s that kind of thinking that makes me a conservative.
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16

i gues, but what if that process is slowly making it harder to survive?
I propose that such a process would be the nature of our conflicting nature.
Humanity continues to use irreplaceable recources, such as oil and iron ore. Eventually the strongest nations will destroy the smaller nations for their resources, then when those are gone the remaining nations will fight each other until all the recources are gone and everyone dies. Are we engineered to destroy ourselves?

17

Yes, what if? Then human civilization would be kind of like a radioactive isotope, undergoing constant, irreversible decay.
I think it’s obvious that that isn’t the case, though. Just as things have been better in the past, they have been worse as well. Humanity seems to undergo various up and down movements of quality of life, morality, and etc based on our actions.

Not to mention whale oil and mammoth tusks, eh? There’s no rule saying we have to keep using these resources until they run out. We may well invent some new way to live before these things run out- or worst case scenario, we go back to living the way we did before they were discovered in the first place. The majority of human history was played out without oil and iron ore, you know.

Oh, I definately agree that resource shortages could lead to the fall of many modern civilizations- many many empires have risen and fallen into ruin in the past, I don’t see any reason to say that the current crop will be any different. Mankind as a whole always moves on though.

Again, if we haven’t yet, then there’s nothing to say we have to later.
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18

It’s also important to note the natural cycle of life. Mass extinctions 1) generally affect the dominant species of the planet, giving room for another to replace it–therefore returning nature to a more stable place [until the new dominant species has developed enough… and ultimately dies out as well].

The natural cycle of civilizations follows a similar mandate. The dominant culture eventually begins to weaken, militarily, economically, culturally (to a degree), and another takes its place. It is happening to America at the moment. Although the dollar is the most widespread monetary token used around the world—and America has a grand old army which is also facing a massive strain; it’s value has decreased and is ultimately weak compared to the pound, (soon) Chinese dollar, and the Euro.

In fact, the Chinese market is currently overtaking the American markets both in size and productivity. And as an economist explained (I can’t recall his name), the Chinese Market will be the dominant market within the next twenty years.

In short: all things come and go.

19

sure it’ll cycle until something gives way and everything collapses.
Make no mistake sometime, something in the future will cause our extinction.
I’m just wondering since every other species has something about it that made it die out, if we have something inbuilt that over time will cause us to fight to our own destruction. Our conflicted nature for example, in a dire life or death situation, would cause us to do anything to survive including killing and eating each other, which would wittle the survivers down to a few and then it would be the end.
If there is something inbuilt then every moment we live, we are helping to end our own civilisation.

20

OK matmilne, something that has been overlooked here is children.

Kids are the reason why things are the way they are.

Its one thing to speak of free open societies when you are talking about adults, but kids learn by example and if those examples are anything less then spectacular then you will get less then spectacular results.

If everybody were born an adult then we would have already been in an absolutey open society.

Children are a constant and they are an x-factor and how they are viewed within the moral arguements of society and in this forum reveals a lot more about a person’s views then when speaking of adults.

This is where the issue of responsibility to do what one feels sets the best example overides what one feels in terms of what would be convenient.