My reason for being against your opinion is that I am assuming you would also vote against a person's right to murder someone else, or against a person's right to wantonly slaughter animals.
So why then would you not also vote against the taking of the life of the fetus (be it human or not)?
There is a way to logically reach morality. However logic changes depending on the premises one starts with.
Most people use emotion rather than logic to determine what is moral.
You're right. I was not clear. I see morality as being situational. An action is only immoral or moral within a specific context. So abortion in the context of the sole desire of the woman is wrong in my opinion, as is abortion when a woman has no means to provide for a child.
However, I am not against abortion to save the woman's life. I believe in situational morality. Rather than black and white always right always wrong moral principles.
You're right. I did not say that it is always wrong and always immoral, but I implied that. I was not clear in my communication. I apologize for insulting your ability to read.
I did not and have not stated or supported the position that abortion is never moral. I said that abortion is wrong. I didn't say always, but I realize that the implication was that I meant always. I apologize for that.
My point with that is that we can reach morality through logic, but not everyone agrees with that or uses logic to find morality. Therefore we must account for that.
Bravo. So lets cull down to where I think we disagree.
I believe there is a scientific moral position that does not vary from person to person or culture to culture. Universally I think in many cases that it is obvious. To take one example from the video: Lets say there is a failed city trying to recover and get back on its feet. Would poisoning the water supply of said city today be moral? Would its morality vary from culture to culture or from person to person? I would say no... its wrong. If someone did that then they acted immorally.
However lets look at your argument that it could be ok if their social contract says its ok. Let say poisoning water supplies was culturally acceptable to some bizarre country. (Crazysadistica) Lets paint it... they believe in a god that judges people by letting them live when exposed to some poison they believe is spiritually connected to her. By spreading this poison they are inadvertently doing her will and thus their social contract allows such nefarious acts.
Regardless of what they believe or their motivations the act is still immoral. Its wrong.
To quote Sam a bit on this subject:
Sam Harris said:
to speak about the conditions of well being in this life, for human beings, we know that there is a continuum of such facts. We know that it's possible to live in a failed state, where everything that can go wrong does go wrong -- where mothers can not feed their children, where strangers can not find the basis for peaceful collaboration, where people are murdered indiscriminately. And we know that it's possible to move along this continuum, towards something quite a bit more idyllic, to a place where a conference like this is even conceivable.
And we know -- we know -- that there are right and wrong answers to how to move in this space. Would adding cholera to the water be a good idea? Probably not. Would it be a good idea for everyone to believe in the evil eye, so that when bad things happened to them they immediately blame their neighbors? Probably not. There are truths to be known about how human communities flourish, whether or not we understand these truths. And morality relates to these truths.
So, in talking about values we are talking about facts. Now, our situation in the world can be understood at many levels -- ranging from the level of the genome on up to the level of economic systems and political arrangements.
There is an unbiased answer to this question that is either right or wrong no matter what you believe or think. You can be on the side that says it may have been moral to poison this failed state... perhaps you were just putting a suffering people out of their misery... you were doing gods work... or you can be on the side of those that think poisoning the water supply of a failed state is morally wrong.
Abortion is more complicated to be sure. Really arguing this point is bound to make others question other values they already hold. When you do that you touch on personal values that many people don't know how to express.
For example... lets say you argue a fetus is not a person. Its in its fourth week, its not citizen and as a developing human it is still not yet a human yet. It has the potential to be a human but its not a human yet. It will be.
This is argument tends to get out of hand and you will end going down a path where the arguments become irrational.
Is being a human what you want to argue? If we meet an alien race as intelligent and as conscious as any human but that is by definition not human or even from earth - is killing them now morally justified because they're not human?
Clearly not... They are intelligent and wantonly killing them would to me obviously be immoral.
However... Could it be intelligence? Whats the threshold? Is killing a single ant or fly morally justified because it doesn't meet some level of intelligence but killing a dog not so because a dog is smarter? Hmm this sounds promising... should we argue along these lines?
