Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, Universityof Wisconsin - Green Bay
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I will respond to questions and comments as time permits, but if you want to take issuewith any position expressed here, you first have to answer this question:
What evidence would it take to prove your beliefs wrong?
I simply will not reply to challenges that do not address this question. Refutabilityis one of the classic determinants of whether a theory can be called scientific. Moreover,I have found it to be a great general-purpose cut-through-the-crap question to determinewhether somebody is interested in serious intellectual inquiry or just playing mind games.Note, by the way, that I am assuming the burden of proof here - all youhave to do is commit to a criterion for testing.It's easy to criticize science for being "closed-minded". Are you open-mindedenough to consider whether your ideas might be wrong?
Has there ever been a society that wallowed in feelings as much as ours?
People who attack other drivers because of minor incidents, or start shootingpeople at random because they're unhappy over being slighted, don't have poorself-esteem. They have grotesquely bloated senses of self esteem. They seem tobelieve they rank so high in the cosmic order of things that they are entitledto lash out at anyone who crosses them.
Supposedly, traditional morality is rigid and inflexible, whereas modernmorality is situational. That's exactly the opposite of reality. Traditional morality is highly situational; modern morality is rigidand inflexible.Traditional moralists distinguish between murder, self-defense, capitalpunishment and war;modern moralists insist that all taking of human life is morally equivalent.A traditional moralistwould look at poverty and ask why it exists: is the poor person a victim ofmisfortune or did hewaste his resources? Only the modern moralist insists that poverty in and ofitself is wrong.Traditional moralists distinguish between a slap on the bottom and putting achild's hand on a hotstove; modern moralists insist that all corporal punishment is child abuse.
Part of the problem is that certain combinations of action and situationarise often enough thatthey merit special terms, and the words are used so often that most of ushave forgotten that theyhave a situational component. This is especially true when the situationnever (or extremelyrarely) makes the action permissible. The morally neutral term for having sexis sexual intercourse. Adultery, rape, fornication, homosexuality, child molesting and innumerableother terms alldescribe sexual intercourse in specific situational contexts.
The simple actof killing a humanbeing is homicide. Self-defense, abortion, negligent homicide, war, capitalpunishment and murderall describe killing in specific situations. Saying that murder is wrong isnot the same as sayingthat killing is wrong; it is saying that killing (the action) for privatereasons when there is no clearmoral justification (the situation) is wrong. Capital punishment may or maynot be wrong (notethat this essay does not take a position one way or the other) but calling it"legalized murder" isboth ethically slovenly and a contradiction in terms.Have you noticed that the Bible says "Thou shalt not kill" but thatDavid "slew" Goliath? Thetwo terms are used Biblically in somewhat overlapping ways, but"kill" is more often used fordeliberate murder whereas "slay" is used for other situations, suchas killing in battle. Criminalhomicide that is not as deliberate as murder is termed manslaughter, notman-killing. A fewcenturies ago, "kill" and "slay" had different meanings;it's only in more recent times, as we havebecome intellectual slobs, that we gave "kill" its present genericmeaning. This, by the way, isLinguistic Literacy 101 - it has nothing to do with the morality of war,abortion or capital punishment - it is solely about the ability to read. Anyone who trots out "Thou shalt not kill"in a debate on war or capitalpunishment is simply too ignorant to have an opinion worth listening to.
The unfortunate results of this sort of ethical sloppiness are many. When allcorporal punishmentis child abuse, real child abuse is trivialized. Despite all the claims thatchild abuse cuts across allsocial classes, when Life magazine did an article on all the children killedin America in one week,only two of the 29 cases involved children in intact, two-parent families. Lifeclearly found this embarrassing and cautioned readers about jumping toconclusions. The reality is, though, that when we restrict child abuse to realbodily harm, it does not cut across all social classes but is stronglyassociated with drug use and alcohol,
One very real reason forthe linguistic blurring of issues is precisely to cover up the adverseconsequences of nontraditionalethics. Another is to try to force traditional moralists into a box bycreating false dichotomies;for example, either cease opposing abortion or start opposing war or capitalpunishment. (Ipersonally wonder how anyone can support abortion yet oppose war or capitalpunishment; theissue is not life but innocent life. There are almost foolproof ways ofavoiding capital punishment- stay away from crime. In war, there are choices: you can desert orsurrender if you're a soldier,or run away if you're a civilian. A fetus, on the other hand, is guilty ofnothing more than inconvenience.) Once we recognize that traditional, notmodern, morality is situational andflexible, a lot of logical fallacies become obvious.
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Created 8 December, 2001, Last Update 24 May, 2020
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