Suppose you find yourself in a very bad situation. You are in the enginer of a train speeding down the tracks. You are coming to a switch which will let you either stay on the current track or switch off to an alternate track. In the engine with you is a villain. The villain has tied five people to the main track ahead. He has also tied two people to the alternate track. He now tells you that you must choose. Do you do nothing and left five people die or do you act to save them, but kill two others in the process. What do you do?
This is a real issue that you will study in philosophy and in law school if your teachers are any good. What this gets at is the question of omission versus commission. Said differently, is it morally better to act (commission) and kill people, even if it saves more lives, or is it morally better to refuse to act and thereby kill no one by your own actions, but in the process let people die by your failure to act (omission). As with all philosophical questions, there is no right answer and the scenario can be tweaked to try to understand the boundaries of what we consider to be moral behavior. For example, suppose you believe that it is morally right to kill the two to save the five. Does your answer change if the five are all in ill-health? What if they are criminals? What if you are related to one of the two or the five?
As you work your way through this, you slowly start to understand how your own moral code works -- an understanding you can then compare to our legal code. And what this debate comes to ultimately is, are you practical or principled? See, the sides break down like this. Practical people will point out that you must act to save the five because you are saving more people by acting. But principled people will counter that you cannot weigh lives just in raw numbers and they will point out that the practical people will change their answers as they start to assign values to the people on the tracks based on factors like age, gender, health, relation, etc.
The principled people will also point out that what we are talking about is a moral code. And as such, everyone should follow the code. And if everyone follows the code, then "omission" will result in no deaths because the villain would not set out to do this in the first place. The practical people, however, will counter that humanity doesn't work that way and we all know that not everyone will follow the code. Thus, we cannot essentially wish the problem away and we must be prepared to meet with situations like this from the villains in our midsts.
Ultimately, there is no right answer, but how you answer says a lot about you and should help you understand the way you analyze problems and the weaknesses of the methods you choose. If you believe only in principle, then you are essentially hoping for an ideal world that will never exist. If you are a practical thinker, you will find yourself swayed by data. And this is true whether or not the issue is how and when to discipline a child to your view of elections to how you'll handle that moment where you need to decide between two very bad choices.
Thoughts? What would you do and what would change your mind?
65 comments:
I believe I would kill the two to save the five. Rationale is that there is no practical difference between an act of commission vs. Omission. Doing either requires making a choice. I would imagine it is a matter of minimizing the loss of life without trying to value one life over the other.
Jed, There is no right answer. And the reason there isn't a right answer, is because the human race is split on the issue. Do you believe in principle or practical?
I think the ultimate answer to that is that we all believe in principle, but at some point, each of us switches over to practical.
As an aside, the problem with your position, i.e. the practical position, is that once you start changing the facts, the answer changes. For example, suppose that the five are all in their 90s and are riddled with cancer, whereas the two are brilliant young children. Suddenly most people view the two as worth more than the five. And that will highlight the problem of weighing human lives against each other... something we claim we never do, but which we actually do every single day.
In fact, every time you run a red light, you've made a decision that your time is worth the risk of people dying in the accident you may cause.
The difference between "practical" and "principled" decision making is time. If you have to make this decision in split second one does not have the luxury of time to ask questions like "who are the people tied to the tracks?" One must make a quick practical decision. When one has the luxury of time, like say, the villain tells you that in one hour you will have to make decision, then one has time to fully assess.
Why not pull the brakes and hope for the best?
Is there some way to derail the train and catch all seven?
And another one "gets it". The Daily Caller has finally joined the ranks of the sane...LINK
Bev, That's true at times. I think though, it really comes down to how important people view particular issues to be. The more important they see something, the more likely they are to stand on principle.
Kit, If you pull the breaks, then unicorns die.
tryanmax, That's good thinking! LOL!
Bev, I wouldn't go calling the Daily Caller sane yet. This article was written by Matt Lewis, who was one of the first to recognize the fringe for what they are and to try to shift conservatives back onto productive ground. Sadly, the rest of DC remain firmly fringe.
Also, note that the comments remain a wretched hive of scum and idiocy.
I do like your comments though, even if they were labelled as "horse shiiiite" and despite your "bigotry" (to be named later).
Speaking of Daily Caller...
This article made me roll my eyes. Shapiro and the gang are so far up Ted Cruz' ass.
Scott, I gotta roll my eyes at both sides. On one hand, yeah, it looks stupid to publish the love letter a politician wrote to your publication. On the other hand, The DC writer asserts reciprocity where there's little evident. (I'm not saying there isn't any somewhere, but the writer only cites the published letter.)
Ultimately, I don't care about open media bias. I wish there were more of it. It would certainly make the journalistic landscape simpler to navigate. I long for the days when publications named themselves "The Cityville Democrat" and the "The Townsburg Republican."
Breitbart Texas??! Ok.
Is there some way to derail the train and catch all seven?
Tryanmax - I see you have neither an ethical NOR moral objection to the slaughter of human life. Just leave no witnesses. What is your opinion on giraffes? ;-)
Andrew,
It exists. Behold! LINK
Yes, apparently, this is the answer to Battleground Texas (f/k/a ACORN Texas division) - the Left's war to turn Texas "blue". They (the DNC) really do believe that Wendy Davis can win. Oh, and Battleground Texas has already been "O'Keefed", so I would expect that election fraud charges will be coming down the road for Davis.
Bev, if any giraffes wanna get involved, then they deserve whatever they got comin' their way.
Every giraffe is sacred. You may not touch one or eat it or feed it transfat, and don't even try to drive one to the liquor store... unless you're prepared to deal with the wrath of God.
Tryanmax - You're not Danish by any chance, are you?
I would let the train continue on course, I didn't put the people on the tracks. I know there are no right answers. My philosophy instructor had a favorite question similar to this: If you had a time machine would you go back in time and kill Hilter before he came to power? I answered NO. My mom and dad met in a defense plant in 1942. If I killed Hitler it's likely to have drastically changed events and mom and dad would not have met; and I could not have gone back in time. I got an A on that assignment.
Andrew - "Every giraffe is sacred" except in Denmark where they shoot them in the head in front of small children, dismember them (the dead giraffe, not the children), and feed them to lions at the zoo. All this, In the same week that their legislative body votes to ban "religious slaughtering of animals" because it's mean if you don't bonk animals on the head first.
Very sound reasoning, Critch!
Oh, and btw to all - I have decided I will never take another train ever again. Apparently, they are just philosophical minefield...
Critch, A very wise answer. The problem with trying to shape the world in that manner is that you never know what will happen. Take the Hitler example. Supposed you kill Hitler and he gets replaced by someone more competent and the Nazis win?
Hmm, danish... and donuts.
Bev, I saw that! What the heck is wrong with the Danish? Weirdos.
And yeah, "avoid trains" is the correct answer! :D
I've been found out!
Andrew,
I go with the Doctor Who answer: "Never change history unless its to stop evil aliens from messing with things."
Andrew,
From your other posts, it seems you have no respect for any talk radio, but I think that unfairly smears them all. One exceptional standout is Dennis Prager. Your morality question reminds me of this article:
http://www.dennisprager.com/moral-absolutes-judeo-christian-values-part-xi/
Another interesting question that he commonly mentions (and often poses to younger kids) is, paraphrasing here, "If your dog and a stranger were drowning, which one would you save?". You love your dog, but don't know the stranger. Prager would argue only a God-based morality guides you to save the stranger. He would question, without that, what is your moral guide? Your heart, feelings, etc.?
Regarding your question, I think a biblical based morality would say to save the 5 since all human life is sacred regardless of age, health, relation, & etc.
Jim
Jim - Going back to Denmark, I find it just a bit disturbing that many people around the world were more upset by the death of one giraffe than by all the innocent humans being slaughter in Syria...and North Korea...and Ukraine...and just about anywhere.
Kit - Yeah, aliens do that except ET. ET was sweet.
Jim, To be clear, I have some respect for what some of the talk radio hosts have done in the past, but I have no respect for anything they've done since about 2009.
In terms of Prager's article, it’s rather deeply flawed. For starters, he uses "moral relativism" as a straw man. What he’s doing is setting up a faulty premise – that the world can be broken into two competing moral camps: (1) Christians and (2) those using "moral relativism." He’s doing this so that when he discredits moral relativism, then Christianity will win by default as it appears to be the only alternative.
However, this is completely wrong. For one thing, there are many different camps in the morality debate, not just two. Even among Christians, there are different camps with different views. There are also other religions and people who have developed moral codes outside of theism. So right out of the gates, his argument offers a false choice which will lead to a false conclusion.
Secondly, he wrongly describes moral relativism as a functioning belief to which people ascribe. Moral relativism is not something anyone actually believes. What moral relativism was is a way to attack existing morality to get people to open the door to other possibilities... a philosophical Trojan Horse. But once that door was open, the people who pushed moral relativism immediately abandoned it and began to push moral absolutism using their own preferred rules.
To give an example, moral relativism was used as an argument to get people to say that it is improper to judge the gay lifestyle. But once gays won broad public acceptance, they dropped the idea of merely tolerating different choices and they pushed heavily to impose a new moral code which holds that it is immoral to disapprove of the gay lifestyle.
Basically, moral relativism was a tool used by the politically correct left to weaken the belief in the existing morality to get a foot in the door so they could replace it with their own moral absolutism. But they didn’t for a minute actually believe the idea that morality is relative or that multiple views of morality can co-exist at the same time in the same society. In fact, you never really hear anyone talk about this anymore except on the talk radio right.
Third, I should point out that Prager makes the same mistake a lot of Christian fundamentalists make when they assume that morality only exists because of Christianity. The same rules of morality that Christians use were created long before Christianity came along, and they have likewise been recreated the world over by a variety of religious and non-religious people. Indeed, the idea of saving the stranger rather than your dog seems to be something that is universally accepted around the globe. So there is nothing unique about Christian morality.
So ultimately, Prager’s argument is flawed at every step.
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(continued)
On the Biblical view of the question above, I would suggest that Jesus would actually take the opposite approach and would tell you to do nothing. There are two reasons for this.
1. Jesus is very clear that Christianity is about personal responsibility, i.e. YOUR obligations to God. In that regard, he goes out of his way to make it clear that your obligations are to act in a moral manner no matter the consequences. At the same time, he tells us repeatedly that we are not to worry about the morality of others nor should we worry ourselves about the Earthly world. Said differently, God wants you to act according to his moral code no matter whatever else is happening in the world.
Moreover, Jesus makes it clear that you cannot do good by doing evil. In other words, there is no balancing test. You are good or you are not, you cannot offset your evil by the good you achieve.
By choosing to save the five, you have made a conscious decision to kill two people. I cannot imagine Jesus saying that it’s ok for you to kill anyone under any circumstances, even if more are saved. He would tell you that you must act morally at all times and that includes no killing anyone. Correlated to this, he would say that you are only responsible for your own acts and not those of others. Thus, if you do nothing, then you are not culpable for the acts of the terrorist, but if you choose to kill two people, then you have those deaths on your hand.
2. Jesus is laying down a set of principles that are meant to apply to everyone. Those principles are absolute and do not make exceptions for things like saving your own life. The reason he takes these absolute positions is that if everyone adopted these rules, which is his intent, then no one will ever find themselves on the tracks in the first place. But if we allow these exceptions and we allow people to believe that it is acceptable to balance who will live and who will die, then we leave in place a kind of thinking that will justify killing.
Thus, I would imagine that Jesus would say to look to your own actions, with those being to do what you can short of violating the commandments and killing someone.
Bev, There is a theory about that. The idea is that massive evil/tragedies are things humans are not good at comprehending and thus, they remains purely intellectual issues for us, rather than emotional issues. Hence, we don't get truly outraged because our emotions aren't triggered.
That's why everyone tries to personalize big tragedies by pointing to individuals who then tell their sob stories, because the sob stories can reach us emotionally in a way that the rest of the tragedy can't.
Consequently, the giraffe tugged on people's emotions because it was one giraffe falling on very hard times. But the (insert number here) of dead people in Syria, etc. are just an abstract to us.
I'm not saying that's right, but it seems to be true of how humans perceive the world.
I suppose you could avoid the choice altogether by jumping out of the engine, thereby putting the responsibility back on the villain. But most people wouldn't do that.
If it's just the scenario in the first paragraph, with no information about who the people tied to the track are, I'd probably have to throw the switch and kill the two to save the five. I wouldn't like it, but there you go. Kill as few as possible. So I guess, yeah, if the decision is placed squarely in your hands and you do nothing, I would consider an act of omission just as bad as an act of comission.
Again pull the brakes and hope for the best.
T-Rav, I prefer the Buddhist Monk solution... set the train on fire.
Kit, The other way this is often presented is a dictator who tells you to pick two out of five to die or he will kill all five.
Also known as "Poland, circa 1942."
Actually, now that I've made that observation, I've decided I don't like my original answer at all. Errr....
You are, of course, free to change your answer. :)
It's like the decision to drop the A-Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, kill a quarter of a million to save millions.....we had a Catholic chaplain who actually talked about this in his homily at the missile base I was at. His answer to it was simple, those are decisions made outside of morals as we know them. Terrible things are done in times of war, especially desperate wars, and it's hard to condemn all these decisions...
Bev,
Agreed. Morally-confused thinking is rampant.
Jim
Andrew,
I think Prager's two camps would be God-based ethical monotheism versus secularism. The first gives the bible as a moral guide/compass while the latter has various guides or "camps" (feelings-based, tribal, feelings, victim-hood, etc.). For Jews and Christians, the moral compass should be the bible. Prager is Jewish, so he speaks specifically about the significance of the Torah (first 5 books of the bible). Also, many irreligious people (in the West) today have "cut-flower ethics" - meaning their values have their roots in Judaism or Christianity, but they don't practice, believe, or endorse those religions ("cut-flower"). Without their root, we are already seeing those “flowers” wither and die away (example, the rise of morally-confused Leftist values).
You wrote, "Even among Christians, there are different camps with different views."
True, but Prager would point out that your faith (or beliefs) and values are two separate things. A person can call themselves a Christian, but still have non-biblical values (like being a pacifist and thinking all killing is wrong). The question is, did their values come from the bible or not (did they use the bible as their moral compass?). In this example, I think Prager would point out they did not. The Torah clearly states that murder is immoral, but killing is not necessarily immoral and may even be moral (in self-defense, in defense of innocents, etc.).
You wrote, "Secondly, he wrongly describes moral relativism as a functioning belief to which people ascribe."
I think that is a misreading of the article. He doesn't say it is a belief system people ascribe to, he just uses the term as a descriptor as follows: Prager writes, “But once individuals or societies become the source of right and wrong, right and wrong, good and evil, are merely adjectives describing one’s preferences. This is known as moral relativism, and it is the dominant attitude toward morality in modern secular society.”
You wrote, "Third, I should point out that Prager makes the same mistake a lot of Christian fundamentalists make when they assume that morality only exists because of Christianity."
Again, he doesn't say that in the article I referenced. He says absolute morality only exists with a God (he acknowledges others have their morality, but it is relative, not absolute). I think another Prager article is relevant here – his description of Ethical Monotheism:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/mono.html
You wrote, "You are good or you are not, you cannot offset your evil by the good you achieve."
I'm not a religion expert, but if you are accurate regarding Christian belief on this, I think this is a significant point of departure from Jewish beliefs. However, it is a moot point because, as you will see below, the train driver is not committing an act of evil.
(continued)
Jim
(continued)
You wrote, "By choosing to save the five, you have made a conscious decision to kill two people."
I think the run-away train scenario is analogous to the dog and stranger drowning. No one is purposely killing anyone except the villain in your scenario (or a natural event like accidental drowning in the other scenario). You could re-phrase it as 7 people are drowning. You can save a group of 2 or a group of 5. Either way, you have not chosen to kill anyone (the deaths are absolutely not in your hands).
Finally, you wrote, “But if we allow these exceptions and we allow people to believe that it is acceptable to balance who will live and who will die, then we leave in place a kind of thinking that will justify killing. Thus, I would imagine that Jesus would say to look to your own actions, with those being to do what you can short of violating the commandments and killing someone.”
In the original article I referenced, Prager points out that the actual Commandment is “Thou shall not murder”, not “Thou shall not kill”. He has pointed out that there are two Hebrew words for homicide, similar to English, murder and kill. The Torah uses the Hebrew word for murder. So, if you are to take the Ten Commandments seriously (or even rationally by studying the text and intent of the Commandments), then killing someone does not necessarily violate that Commandment (it depends on the situation). Again, in your posed scenario, the train driver is not killing anyone (the death is clearly on the hands of the villain).
Jim
I value all of their lives equally. I would choose the two to die to save the five. I have no other information to go on; although even if I did have some past knowledge of each individual in advance...I do not have future knowledge of their respective potentials to judge one as more worthy of life over another. So, my decision defaults to numbers. I guess that makes me a Vulcan.
In that case, I'd tamper with the programming to make the simulation conform to my worldview.
Jon, The needs of the many...
tryanmax, The Reading Railroadmaru.
Jim, I think Prager has wrongly diagnose the world. The two camps premise is faulty. Moreover, he attributes moral relativism as the foundation of the non-monotheist camp, which is simply not accurate.
In terms of the train scenario not involving killing anyone, that is not correct philosophically speaking. That is the difference between omission and commission. An act of omission is only morally wrong when there is a duty to act, such as the duty to save a drowning person. By comparison, an act of commission is always judged on the merits of the action itself.
And under the law, by the way, it is considered murder if you kill an innocent person in defense of another, even if you are trying to save them from death. And the reason is that the law simply doesn't let you decide who gets to live or die. So under the law, the drive is killing someone if he flips the switch.
Critch, I think that's right. As a society, we simply consider some situations as being outside morality, and war is one of those. That said, there is still a code of morality that has been created to handle war and which is constantly being refined. Hence, things like the Geneva Convention, the UCMJ, and various treaties.
Andrew,
Not sure I see the difference. An omission is judged "when there is a duty to act" and a commission is "judged on the merits of the action". Either way, there is a moral judgment and you must take in the situation to understand if it is moral or not. No act, stand-alone by itself, is moral or immoral. The situation dictates it. How to you respond to Prager's point about lying (i.e. the act of lying to Nazi's to hide a Jewish family is morally correct).
Jim
Jim, The difference is this. We are always responsible for our actions. If we take some affirmative action like shooting someone, driving a car or flipping a switch, then we are responsible for the consequences of that action.
We are not, however, generally responsible for not acting unless there is a moral/legal duty to act. For example, I have no duty to tell you if you dropped your wallet even if it contains money you need for lifesaving treatment. Similarly, I have no duty to try to stop a bank robber. Nor do I have a duty to try to stop a gunman who is walking down the street killing people. Thus, I can just walk away in each of those situations without being held accountable because there was no duty for me to act.
BUT, sometimes there is a duty. If that gunman was a child and I was standing next to him and I could disarm him without risk, then a duty does exist. If I see someone inject poison into a package of cereal, then I have duty to notify the authorities and to stop someone from eating the cereal. If I don't, then I will be charged with murder because I had a duty to save their lives, but I failed to act.
Both law and morality are riddled with these types of duties where different circumstances either make you culpable or not culpable if you don't act.
As an aside, there are also limits on how you may act when you do act. For example, in several instances, the IRA threatened to kill someone's family if they didn't shoot a cop. The law, however, does not allow you to kill an innocent person to save others. Thus, if you did it, you would be guilty of murder. You could, however, kill the killers depending on the immediacy of the threat. In the cereal example or the example with the child gunman, you could not kill the villain, but you could disable them.
On Prager's point about lying to the Nazis, that's a practical point and I would assume that most people would accept it (the principled side would say to resist without lying.). However, very clear examples make very bad rules. And when you look at the principle behind what he's asserting, you ironically find a form of moral relativism which the left routinely employs -- "the rules of morality only apply to people you believe are worthy of being treated morally." That's a slippery slope because it lets people decide when they need to behave morally or not. Islam actually does that with infidels.
BTW, Jim, In The Wild Bunch, this philosophical point about lying is played out perfectly with some incredibly sharp dialog. One character says, "He gave his word. That's what matters." The other character says, "It ain't your word that matters, it's who you gave it to."
The little exchange highlights the two competing positions perfectly. I've always been really impressed with that exchange.
Andrew,
Legality and morality are not always aligned. People often make the mistake of only thinking about what is legal or illegal as a substitute for moral thinking.
Regarding the Nazi example, it isn't about a group of people being worthy or not. Let's remove the Nazi's and just say it is a group that is looking for and will murder (in the moral sense, not talking legal terms here) a hiding, innocent family. Lying to the group about the family's whereabouts is moral while telling the truth would be immoral. How would you rationalize otherwise?
Jim
Jim, Technically, it would be a justified immoral act. The fact that the ends justify the means do not make the means moral. And again, the principled position would be that you simply refuse to cooperate rather than lie.
But again, the point isn't the clear examples. It's very easy to think these rules are perfect when you are discussing 100% bad actors with absolutely clarity of purpose and methods. What happens when the example is less clear. For example, what about lying to a mother about the whereabouts of her missing child because you think she's a horrible mother? Suddenly, the "moral position" doesn't seem as obvious.
In terms of legal versus moral, that's a good point to keep in mind, but I'm also not advocating that they should be the same. They shouldn't be the same because morality is very cloudy and there are thousands of different opinions about what is or is not moral. So it would be impossible to impose morality through the government without picking sides, and that is not something Americans accept.
I would only interject that there exists much philosophical disagreement about the morality of lying even in a general sense.
Even when just considering Christians, there is much disagreement over what exactly the ninth commandment prohibits (and in the case of Lutherans and Catholics, what the 9th Commandment even is, LOL).
Wait a minute, there are nine commandments now? When they did they add the four new ones? ;-P
Andrew, they got snuck in as part of Obamacare, along with "Thou shalt not be uninsured," and "Thou shalt not requite for thine own birth control."
"Thou shalt not covet a 30+ hour work week"
Jim
Andrew,
Interesting comment, "...Technically, it would be a justified immoral act."
Sounds like you are referencing some authoritative source (according to Section 2, paragraph 3, technically...). What is the source of that determination? A God-based text? America's legal definition? The Price family commandments? ;-)
Prager pointed out another example in the original article regarding sexual intercourse. Applying your logic, I guess, in marriage it is a justified amoral act while rape is an unjustified amoral act? Adding the adjective in front still doesn't take away the necessity of assessing the morality of the situation in its entirety; not the act on its own.
Jim
Jim, "Thou shalt not covet" would be a great start. :)
The difference between moral and justified is something that law and religion and philosophy all recognize. There are acts that are normally considered improper. But at times, the "wrong" of performing those acts can be excused. But that doesn't make the act itself a moral thing. It is an excused thing. You'll find that distinction discussed extensively in any philosophy or law book. And I don't have a quote on me, but I know that several times the Bible has drawn that distinction. Even the concept of "the ends justifies the mean," which is what this ultimately is, talks about good ends justifying evil means, not good ends making evil means good means. The idea is that you know you have done wrong, you're just excused in this circumstance.
On sexual intercourse, no that would not be correct. First, it's not the sex act that is the problem with the rape, it's the violence and the invasion that is the issue. So the two are not comparable in that manner.
Secondly, sex is an issue where a lot of superstition is involved and religions come up with odd and inconsistent rules. So I always hesitate to try to make sense of the sex rules because they tend to have evolved with the whims of tribal leaders, Kings and Popes rather than being intellectually consistent.
In terms of accessing the overall situation, of course... but it's how you get there that matters because how you get there is what creates the rules that get applied in other circumstances. Morality isn't the outcome, it's the rules that lead you too the outcome.
Andrew,
In your first response you wrote, "Indeed, the idea of saving the stranger rather than your dog seems to be something that is universally accepted around the globe."
And again above you wrote, "The difference between moral and justified is something that law and religion and philosophy all recognize. There are acts that are normally considered improper."
I think a bottom-line difference in our thinking is regarding this worldview. I don't believe that people are inherently good and hold similar values (or consider certain acts as universally proper or normal). That may have been true for a good part of just Western history, but it has broken down significantly now (and not to mention how different non-Western values are).
When Prager asks kids the stranger & dog questions, the majority has always voted for the dog. The minority tend to be kids with religious upbringings, so it highlights the difference in their moral education. Most kids are raised today without being taught to think morally, so they rely on feelings instead. I also don't think they'll change as adults unless they confront morally serious thinkers (e.g. such as taking religious texts seriously).
You wrote, "Morality isn't the outcome, it's the rules that lead you too the outcome."
I think I agree with this statement. And again, those rules that lead you to the outcome are either rationally supported by a God-based text or not (e.g. it cannot be rationally argued that the sixth Commandment supports the values of a pacifist). If there is no God-based source (the moral absolute), then it is man-made (relative).
Jim
Jim, I have to say that this...
I think a bottom-line difference in our thinking is regarding this worldview. I don't believe that people are inherently good and hold similar values (or consider certain acts as universally proper or normal). That may have been true for a good part of just Western history, but it has broken down significantly now (and not to mention how different non-Western values are)
...is entirely backwards.
First, as someone who has been the world over, I can tell you that the core values around the world are pretty much the same with only minor tweaks unless you get into Islam or communism. And assuming that values are Western thing is silly at best.
Secondly, if people weren't inherently good, then we would not have an impulse to altruism, which we do. Nor would we have built societies all around the world who work overtime to help the poor, the sick and the needy. All of that exists because the overwhelming majority of people are inherently good and want a better world, not because people live in fear of God.
Third, I know the religious right pushes the idea that people are bad now compared to the past, but that's flat out wrong. Look at the past when it was commonly accepted that we should torture people to make them change their religions, enslave people because of their race, murder people because of their race or religion, make war because our king wanted more land, throw poor people into prison to die, execute people by torture, burn witches at the stake, stone people who have sinned to death, or when only Kings had rights, when women were considered property, when minorities had no rights, when marital rape was not considered a crime, etc. etc. The idea (which I hear all the time from the Religious Right) that the past was better or more moral is utterly false.
Most kids are raised today without being taught to think morally...
This is false too. Morality is taught in any number of ways today... it's just not the version you like. So what you really mean is "Most kids are raised today without being indoctrinated in my beliefs." It's flawed thinking to equate your beliefs with "morality." It is simply one competing version with no superior claim to those of other Christians, other religions or even non-religious thinkers.
In fact, that's why I never bother arguing with members of the religious right, i.e. like Prager. They have invented a series of arguments, supposedly premised on logical but all fundamentally flawed, in which they try to prove that only their own beliefs are moral/good/whatever and everyone else is immoral and evil and whatnot. The problem is that their arguments are always tautologies, i.e. they always begin by assuming the conclusion they want is true and then they prove that by relying on their own initial assumption. That's not logic. And the distinction between a God-based text and a man-made text is a great example of such an assumption which is both self-serving and a tautology.
Andrew,
I appreciate the response and apologize for my stubbornness ;-)
Well, exempting a huge portion of the planet's population does make it easier to say the values you have encountered are closer to yours! :) Even with that exemption, we it isn't hard to find countries, like in SE Asia, where stealing/corruption, prostitution, etc. are accepted values (where parents might be proud of a child who gets a government position because that is best way to get money via bribes & etc.)
Acting out of a "Fear of god" sounds a bit condescending and is not something I've seen in reality (not to say it doesn't happen, but there are always fringes, aren't there?) And "...they try to prove that only their own beliefs are moral/good/whatever and everyone else is immoral and evil and whatnot..." is completely wrong at least with respect to Prager. You won't hear him calling others immoral or evil if they don't share his beliefs. In fact, a motto of his show is "Clarity over agreement".
So, if my "indoctrination" is not really based on logic and is all fundamentally flawed and has no superior claim over anyone else's beliefs, what is your claim to make a statement like "...Technically, it is a justified immoral act"? Isn't it a similar presumption that enables you to label something moral, immoral, right, wrong, justified, unjustified, & etc (and without a reference)?
Jim
Jim,
It's not meant to be condescending, but that is what a lot of firebrands preach. They don't teach salvation so much as avoiding damnation. The Catholic Church seems to be heavily into the stick rather than the carrot as well. In fact, one of the problems I've had with Catholics throughout my life is that the enlightenment level seems low in their churches and the "just do what God wants or else" level is really high.
In terms of corrupt societies, there are indeed places where that is how the society functions (mainly the Middle East), but that's never what they claim to believe. And the same is true here as well. We claim a great many things in principle that we don't actually do in practice. I think what matters is what a country strives for. And by country I don't actually mean government, because government and morality rarely go hand in hand, I mean the bulk of the people and how they interact with each other.
On the last point, it's not without reference. Law books, the law, and philosophy books are packed with this distinction. The very idea of repentance includes this idea too. You repent and your sin is washed away because you are forgiven, it's not that the sin you committed is suddenly made moral.
Andrew,
Let me rephrase the reference portion and see if I have you correctly. The reference for determining if an act is immoral or moral (putting aside "justified") is derived from myriad laws (current and previous) and philosophical texts/ideas (including the bible as only one of those) that culminate to that label (moral / immoral / amoral). Does that sound right?
Jim
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