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Originally posted by taxwonk
I didn't say that rights, law or mores come from a desire for people to get along. I am saying that laws, rights, mores, etc. must be balanced in order for people to survive.
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You don't really believe this. Many of our rights don't help us survive. In fact many of our rights allow us to diminish the lenght of our lives.
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Originally posted by taxwonk I believe that female circumcision, if it is done involuntarily, is wrong. It violates the principal (the more, if you will) that people should be free from unwanted invasions upon their person.
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This has nothing to do with survival. And why should people be free from unwanted invasions upon their person? If you are forcing someone to take an antibiotic shot that will save their lives then such an invasion upon their person will help them survive.
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Originally posted by taxwonk The same can be said of cultural customs of casting wives, servants, etc. in the funeral pyre of a dead male. (Interestingly, these customs tend only to be applied to the upper stratum of a culture.) This custom violates the more that it is wrong to take a human life.
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What can be said about it? In a world of moral relativism who are you to critisize such practices? And if you do what is your rationalization for critisizing them?
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Originally posted by taxwonk One could say that these are examples of actions that violate an absolute principal. However, how can we take action to prevent these violations of the principal if it is absolutely wrong to violate another's freedom of action or to take another's life?
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This only poses a problem for people that have not fully thought through their moral framework. Many liberals and pacifists say it is absolutely wrong to kill anyone. If you believe that it is absolutely wrong to kill someone under any circumstances you are also a moral absolutist. I think this is an immoral position to take and actually violates the universal moral code.
Ghandi was a moral absolutist that believed in a universal moral code. I think his code is and was well intentioned, but improperly conceived and applied and leads to great evil.
I also believe that moral relativism leads to great evil. If morals change with the circumstance and the culture then there really aren't morals are there. In a moral relativist world you can not critisize the Germans for killing the Jews.
Only if you believe in moral absolutes and a higher law can you critisize the genocide of the jews. In Hitler's mind the Genocide was the moral thing to do, and he changed the laws to make it legal. He also argued that the Genocide was a necessary good for the German culture and German people. Many people that were involved in it thought it was the right thing to do. Only something so monstrous could be pulled of by people thinking they were doing the "right thing".
It is only in a culture that does not believe in universal human rights (and thereby a universal moral code) that such atrocities can occure. Both Hitler and Stalin believed that the "needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few". With social engineering it is OK to sacrifice the rights of peopel to benefit the society as a whole. However, if you believe in a universal moral code, and believe like Jefferson that these rights come from our creator then you can't go around killing large number of people (infringing on their rights) because it benefits the majority of the people.
Most peole that I know that believe in a universal moral code believe that Genocide (or the intentional mass killing of innocnets) is one of the worst violations of the code and it is never OK under any circumstances.
