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Try and keep it on the political/societal/cultural end of the discussion. This deals not only with gay rights but also the larger issue of looking at the interaction of religious groups within secular society, their rights and their influence, in contrast with the privileges of other groups. Which religion, if any, is right is irrelevant and arguments of that nature will be moderated. |
On December 15 2012 04:22 heliusx wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 04:12 ahappystar wrote:Animal urges: Final vote on bestiality ban to be held in GermanyGermany is to decide whether to ban bestiality, which has been considered lawful in the country since being legalized in 1969. The final vote on the matter is set to take place in the Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament, on Friday. + Show Spoiler +The government of Angela Merkel introduced the new law against the practice, saying animals should not be used "for personal sexual activities or made available to third parties for sexual activities … thereby forcing them to behave in ways that are inappropriate to their species."
Late Thursday the Bundestag, the parliament's lower house, passed the tough new law against bestiality, which includes a hefty fine of 25,000 euros.
The lawmakers’ intention is not teaching zoophiles a morality lesson, as one of them told RT.
“We are not policing morality but we are improving animal protection law, where we would like to specify that it is forbidden to cause suffering through a sexual relationship. But the line is when you cause suffering to an animal for your personal sexual gratification,” Hans-Michael Goldmann, MP Chairman of the parliamentary agricultural committee, said.
Animal rights groups have also been campaigning against zoophilia for some time, battling for bestiality to be recognized as rape and defilement inflicted on an animal.
“Dogs are loyal even when they are abused – they are still going to look as if they are happy, especially when it gets enough to eat. Dogs will be happy whatever you dictate. But that is not a sign that the dog is enjoying it,” Stephanie Eschen, animal rights campaigner for Berlin Shelter for Animals told RT.
Campaigners even reportedly posted 800 addresses of zoophiles on their Facebook page, saying they would fight to take the animals away from those who practice bestiality.
German media outlets followed suit to protest against the practice, first with the Berlin tabloid BZ featuring the issue on its front page in October. The picture showed a man holding his dog with the headline reading "we call it sodomy, he calls it love." Bild magazine then joined the cause.
In July, over 93,000 Germans voted to ban the bestiality in an online poll, revoking the 1969 law which legalized zoophilia, except in cases where the animal was deemed to suffer "significant harm."
Zoophiles, however, say that they never treat animals cruelly or force them to do anything against their will.
“I need an animal to be happy. If I did not have it, there would be something missing. There are several levels of relationship with an animal. You can fall in love with your animal… then, the sexual relationship is not out of the question,” David Zimmerman from the German Zoophile Engagement for Tolerance and Information told RT.
And there’s a growing concern that those who are against the practice could walk the talk.
“They fantasize about castrating me or taking my animals away. Our friend has found a razor blade in his post with a note “Do it yourself so we don’t have to”. Letters don’t arrive too often but it they arrive every now and again. In the subway someone was yelling at me, calling me names – I am concerned that attacks could become physical.”
While bestiality is deemed illegal in most European countries, it is allowed in Belgium, Denmark and Sweden, apart from Germany. Stockholm, however, is considering a change in the legislation. What is up with these evil lawmakers in Germany that want to ban love between two species! I say equality for all, they should be able to marry these animals too, equal rights my ass! EDIT: and the evil church is against bestiality too! evil evil You have a serious problem if you think comparing bestiality and homosexuality is a valid argument.
Not comparing bestiality to homosexuality, I was kinda being sarcastic... homosexuality was illegal and considered a mental illness until the early 90's, just like bestiality/necrophilia/pedophilia is considered now, maybe in 20 years you will be considered a conservative bible fanatic because you think incest is wrong and that mother-son marriages don't deserve the same rights as the rest of us...
Maybe I'm going off topic, but its kinda on topic... sorry guys 
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On December 15 2012 04:42 ahappystar wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 04:22 heliusx wrote:On December 15 2012 04:12 ahappystar wrote:Animal urges: Final vote on bestiality ban to be held in GermanyGermany is to decide whether to ban bestiality, which has been considered lawful in the country since being legalized in 1969. The final vote on the matter is set to take place in the Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament, on Friday. + Show Spoiler +The government of Angela Merkel introduced the new law against the practice, saying animals should not be used "for personal sexual activities or made available to third parties for sexual activities … thereby forcing them to behave in ways that are inappropriate to their species."
Late Thursday the Bundestag, the parliament's lower house, passed the tough new law against bestiality, which includes a hefty fine of 25,000 euros.
The lawmakers’ intention is not teaching zoophiles a morality lesson, as one of them told RT.
“We are not policing morality but we are improving animal protection law, where we would like to specify that it is forbidden to cause suffering through a sexual relationship. But the line is when you cause suffering to an animal for your personal sexual gratification,” Hans-Michael Goldmann, MP Chairman of the parliamentary agricultural committee, said.
Animal rights groups have also been campaigning against zoophilia for some time, battling for bestiality to be recognized as rape and defilement inflicted on an animal.
“Dogs are loyal even when they are abused – they are still going to look as if they are happy, especially when it gets enough to eat. Dogs will be happy whatever you dictate. But that is not a sign that the dog is enjoying it,” Stephanie Eschen, animal rights campaigner for Berlin Shelter for Animals told RT.
Campaigners even reportedly posted 800 addresses of zoophiles on their Facebook page, saying they would fight to take the animals away from those who practice bestiality.
German media outlets followed suit to protest against the practice, first with the Berlin tabloid BZ featuring the issue on its front page in October. The picture showed a man holding his dog with the headline reading "we call it sodomy, he calls it love." Bild magazine then joined the cause.
In July, over 93,000 Germans voted to ban the bestiality in an online poll, revoking the 1969 law which legalized zoophilia, except in cases where the animal was deemed to suffer "significant harm."
Zoophiles, however, say that they never treat animals cruelly or force them to do anything against their will.
“I need an animal to be happy. If I did not have it, there would be something missing. There are several levels of relationship with an animal. You can fall in love with your animal… then, the sexual relationship is not out of the question,” David Zimmerman from the German Zoophile Engagement for Tolerance and Information told RT.
And there’s a growing concern that those who are against the practice could walk the talk.
“They fantasize about castrating me or taking my animals away. Our friend has found a razor blade in his post with a note “Do it yourself so we don’t have to”. Letters don’t arrive too often but it they arrive every now and again. In the subway someone was yelling at me, calling me names – I am concerned that attacks could become physical.”
While bestiality is deemed illegal in most European countries, it is allowed in Belgium, Denmark and Sweden, apart from Germany. Stockholm, however, is considering a change in the legislation. What is up with these evil lawmakers in Germany that want to ban love between two species! I say equality for all, they should be able to marry these animals too, equal rights my ass! EDIT: and the evil church is against bestiality too! evil evil You have a serious problem if you think comparing bestiality and homosexuality is a valid argument. Not comparing bestiality to homosexuality, I was kinda being sarcastic... homosexuality was illegal and considered a mental illness until the early 90's, just like bestiality/necrophilia/pedophilia is considered now, maybe in 20 years you will be considered a conservative bible fanatic because you think incest is wrong and that mother-son marriages don't deserve the same rights as the rest of us... Maybe I'm going off topic, but its kinda on topic... sorry guys
For those who have no access to a King James Holy Bible, from the book of Leviticus, chapter 18 verse 4 until 30, defines, incest, same-gender sexual intercourse and inter-species sexual intercourse ALL as an abomination.
Hence it is the same category in that context.
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I do like the interesting philosophical discussion about science and morality, personally I don't think the majority gets to decide what is moral and what isn't, but better people than I have tried and failed to axiomatise morality. I just try to go by what causes the least amount of suffering (but then defining suffering is tricky).
I do not agree with religious groups being able to discriminate. I think freedom of religion should not get priority over other human rights. I don't like the precedent set by this law; what about adoption charities organised by religious groups? Should they also be allowed to discriminate against gay couples? I know there was an issue with a catholic adoption agency in the UK who wouldn't consider gay couples (Link). But it could now be possible to refuse gay couples by only accepting "married" couples.
I think this gay parents topic is what started the discussion about defining what is "good" :p
I'm already feeling tired and have been trying to catch up on a long thread, so I'm sorry that my thoughts are not so well-formulated as they could be. I'm sure I'll be able to do a better job when I feel more awake 
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On December 15 2012 03:05 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 01:02 HULKAMANIA wrote:On December 14 2012 23:35 [F_]aths wrote:On December 14 2012 22:48 WhiteDog wrote:On December 14 2012 22:21 [F_]aths wrote:On December 14 2012 21:36 WhiteDog wrote:On December 14 2012 18:08 [F_]aths wrote:On December 14 2012 13:23 sam!zdat wrote:On December 14 2012 08:21 KwarK wrote:On December 14 2012 08:16 sam!zdat wrote:
We were writing at the same time. see my post above. There's nothing "independently verifiable" about the secular worldview, either. The secular world view is the one that says "actually we've done research on it and it turns out that children raised in a stable loving family with two mums or two dads do just fine, whatever it is you think you know based upon praying on the matter". The secular state is the child of the enlightenment in which traditional assumptions met the challenge of reasoned inquiry and the scientific method. Where's the scientific experiment that tells you whether or not you should care about whether or not a child "does fine", and which tells you what "does just fine" means? Is that a rigorously defined and operationalized concept? Can it be? The Enlightenment has its limits. Defending the Enlightenment is not exactly a comfortable position right now in the academy (I know because I do defend the Enlightenment to a rather unfashionable degree). My point is not that you're wrong. I agree with you about all of this gay people stuff. My point is just that if you start dismissing things because they "aren't scientific," you're going to find that line of reasoning coming back to bite you in the ass, I promise. Kant avec Sade, and so on. If they aren't scientitific, what are they? In a broader sense, anything which is testable and falsifiable is scientific. Social sciences aren't falsifiable, but always historically linked to a certain context - hence why the term "law" hasn't the same sense in economy (it's more tendancies than laws) than in physics. sm!zdat is right when he says that there is no "out of context" or "anhistorical" definition for childs that "do fine". The history of familly or filial love is interesting in this regard. We can measure the child's well-being at least roughly. We can have a rough look if the child is exposed to unnecessary suffering. We do have some rough options to decide if a particular environment to raise a child leads to good or bad results. Is corporal punishment good or bad for the child? Science can say something about it. Can a child be raised by same-sex parents as good as a traditional couple can? This seems to be way more difficult, but I see no reason which prevents a scientificly conducted experimet to find out. We can look at the child's level of happyness (at least roughly), we can see the average level of education and income, of healthiness and so on. I admit that those are just some and only quite rough indicators. But it is better than nothing. Is being gay an illness or a mental disorder? Science seems the best tool we have to determine. You are missing the point. Science can't say what is a "good or bad result" regarding child, because science can't define it scientifically. As for corporal punishment, well "science" can show correlation between corporal punishment and specific objectiv facts - such as number of friends, social behavior, or academic result. That's it. There is no way for sociology or any social science to clearly state that corporal punishment are bad for famillies because it's a moral judgement, that is based on the idea that kids should not get hurt by adults. Stop thinking science can teach us what is or what is not a "good" familly, because it can't. Happyness is defined socially, it's not the same at every layers of the social ladder and it's not a scientific concept that you can "measure". As for gay being a mental disorder or an illness (you don't let a lot of choice, how about gay is a sexual preferance and nothing else ?), "science" showed how it could not judge for that. What is normal and pathological is not objectively defined but linked to a rule, a social norm. For exemple, you can read G. Canguilhem, The normal and the pathological : The Normal and the Pathological is one of the crucial contributions to the history of science in the last half century. It takes as its starting point the sudden appearance of biology as a science in the 19th-century and examines the conditions determining its particular makeup.Canguilhem analyzes the radically new way in which health and disease were defined in the early 19th-century, showing that the emerging categories of the normal and the pathological were far from being objective scientific concepts. He demonstrates how the epistemological foundations of modern biology and medicine were intertwined with political, economic, and technological imperatives. While it is true that our concept of health depends on the cultural tradition and political will, we still can learn some objective facts through science. To not beat a child is now widely viewed as a moral in the western culture. Other cultures or our own culture just some umpteen years earlier, found it a moral imperative to beat the child to educate and raise it. Rather depending on a moral zeitgeist, I would like to investigate this issue with the scientific method. "Good" and "bad" or "evil" are traditionally referred to a higher morality or absolute morality. I don't believe in such things. In my world view, good, bad (or evil) must relate to the real world and therefore is subject to science. That does not mean science will get definitive answers. But if science cannot, can anything else? Science is mute on the question "Is it moral to beat a child?" Science has nothing to say about such values, and you are, by necessity, dependent upon a "moral zeitgeist" to answer that question for yourself. This is true if you consider morals a matter of opinion and/or construct of society. But "morals" is a word and we, who use it, must define a meaning for it. As I understand the rough concept of morals, morals who are moral must relate at some point to suffering. Now science comes in because suffering is the cause of events which can be in the end reduced to events in the world.
No. Suffering is a phenomenological event and cannot be reduced to a description of physical states in the world. How would you do this? Why would one configuration of the atoms that make up consciousness be more or less "objectively" moral than another?
It is far from an obvious axiom that morality is concerned with the alleviation of suffering.
On December 15 2012 03:05 [F_]aths wrote:
I consider any 'morality' which does not intend to reduce unnecessary suffering to be not moral at all. This is an assumption I make. Having values for the sake of having values doesn't really make sense to me.
These two statements are directly contradictory.
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On December 15 2012 05:43 Melliflue wrote:
personally I don't think the majority gets to decide what is moral and what isn't.
From google's definition:
mores plural of mo·res
Noun
The essential or characteristic customs and conventions of a community: "an offense against social mores".
Synonyms
manners - morals - manner
So originally morals were defined as what the majority believes. It did not mean right or wrong, just how the community did things.
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-20 points for using a google definition to make a philosophical point
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On December 15 2012 04:16 dAPhREAk wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 04:12 ahappystar wrote:Animal urges: Final vote on bestiality ban to be held in GermanyGermany is to decide whether to ban bestiality, which has been considered lawful in the country since being legalized in 1969. The final vote on the matter is set to take place in the Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament, on Friday. + Show Spoiler +The government of Angela Merkel introduced the new law against the practice, saying animals should not be used "for personal sexual activities or made available to third parties for sexual activities … thereby forcing them to behave in ways that are inappropriate to their species."
Late Thursday the Bundestag, the parliament's lower house, passed the tough new law against bestiality, which includes a hefty fine of 25,000 euros.
The lawmakers’ intention is not teaching zoophiles a morality lesson, as one of them told RT.
“We are not policing morality but we are improving animal protection law, where we would like to specify that it is forbidden to cause suffering through a sexual relationship. But the line is when you cause suffering to an animal for your personal sexual gratification,” Hans-Michael Goldmann, MP Chairman of the parliamentary agricultural committee, said.
Animal rights groups have also been campaigning against zoophilia for some time, battling for bestiality to be recognized as rape and defilement inflicted on an animal.
“Dogs are loyal even when they are abused – they are still going to look as if they are happy, especially when it gets enough to eat. Dogs will be happy whatever you dictate. But that is not a sign that the dog is enjoying it,” Stephanie Eschen, animal rights campaigner for Berlin Shelter for Animals told RT.
Campaigners even reportedly posted 800 addresses of zoophiles on their Facebook page, saying they would fight to take the animals away from those who practice bestiality.
German media outlets followed suit to protest against the practice, first with the Berlin tabloid BZ featuring the issue on its front page in October. The picture showed a man holding his dog with the headline reading "we call it sodomy, he calls it love." Bild magazine then joined the cause.
In July, over 93,000 Germans voted to ban the bestiality in an online poll, revoking the 1969 law which legalized zoophilia, except in cases where the animal was deemed to suffer "significant harm."
Zoophiles, however, say that they never treat animals cruelly or force them to do anything against their will.
“I need an animal to be happy. If I did not have it, there would be something missing. There are several levels of relationship with an animal. You can fall in love with your animal… then, the sexual relationship is not out of the question,” David Zimmerman from the German Zoophile Engagement for Tolerance and Information told RT.
And there’s a growing concern that those who are against the practice could walk the talk.
“They fantasize about castrating me or taking my animals away. Our friend has found a razor blade in his post with a note “Do it yourself so we don’t have to”. Letters don’t arrive too often but it they arrive every now and again. In the subway someone was yelling at me, calling me names – I am concerned that attacks could become physical.”
While bestiality is deemed illegal in most European countries, it is allowed in Belgium, Denmark and Sweden, apart from Germany. Stockholm, however, is considering a change in the legislation. What is up with these evil lawmakers in Germany that want to ban love between two species! I say equality for all, they should be able to marry these animals too, equal rights my ass! EDIT: and the evil church is against bestiality too! evil evil and there it is, the reference to bestiality in a homosexuality thread....was waiting for it....
We did well though. We had a civilized debate about religion and homosexuality on the internet for a good few pages, I got a lot to think about there.
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On December 15 2012 03:05 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 01:02 HULKAMANIA wrote:On December 14 2012 23:35 [F_]aths wrote:On December 14 2012 22:48 WhiteDog wrote:On December 14 2012 22:21 [F_]aths wrote:On December 14 2012 21:36 WhiteDog wrote:On December 14 2012 18:08 [F_]aths wrote:On December 14 2012 13:23 sam!zdat wrote:On December 14 2012 08:21 KwarK wrote:On December 14 2012 08:16 sam!zdat wrote:
We were writing at the same time. see my post above. There's nothing "independently verifiable" about the secular worldview, either. The secular world view is the one that says "actually we've done research on it and it turns out that children raised in a stable loving family with two mums or two dads do just fine, whatever it is you think you know based upon praying on the matter". The secular state is the child of the enlightenment in which traditional assumptions met the challenge of reasoned inquiry and the scientific method. Where's the scientific experiment that tells you whether or not you should care about whether or not a child "does fine", and which tells you what "does just fine" means? Is that a rigorously defined and operationalized concept? Can it be? The Enlightenment has its limits. Defending the Enlightenment is not exactly a comfortable position right now in the academy (I know because I do defend the Enlightenment to a rather unfashionable degree). My point is not that you're wrong. I agree with you about all of this gay people stuff. My point is just that if you start dismissing things because they "aren't scientific," you're going to find that line of reasoning coming back to bite you in the ass, I promise. Kant avec Sade, and so on. If they aren't scientitific, what are they? In a broader sense, anything which is testable and falsifiable is scientific. Social sciences aren't falsifiable, but always historically linked to a certain context - hence why the term "law" hasn't the same sense in economy (it's more tendancies than laws) than in physics. sm!zdat is right when he says that there is no "out of context" or "anhistorical" definition for childs that "do fine". The history of familly or filial love is interesting in this regard. We can measure the child's well-being at least roughly. We can have a rough look if the child is exposed to unnecessary suffering. We do have some rough options to decide if a particular environment to raise a child leads to good or bad results. Is corporal punishment good or bad for the child? Science can say something about it. Can a child be raised by same-sex parents as good as a traditional couple can? This seems to be way more difficult, but I see no reason which prevents a scientificly conducted experimet to find out. We can look at the child's level of happyness (at least roughly), we can see the average level of education and income, of healthiness and so on. I admit that those are just some and only quite rough indicators. But it is better than nothing. Is being gay an illness or a mental disorder? Science seems the best tool we have to determine. You are missing the point. Science can't say what is a "good or bad result" regarding child, because science can't define it scientifically. As for corporal punishment, well "science" can show correlation between corporal punishment and specific objectiv facts - such as number of friends, social behavior, or academic result. That's it. There is no way for sociology or any social science to clearly state that corporal punishment are bad for famillies because it's a moral judgement, that is based on the idea that kids should not get hurt by adults. Stop thinking science can teach us what is or what is not a "good" familly, because it can't. Happyness is defined socially, it's not the same at every layers of the social ladder and it's not a scientific concept that you can "measure". As for gay being a mental disorder or an illness (you don't let a lot of choice, how about gay is a sexual preferance and nothing else ?), "science" showed how it could not judge for that. What is normal and pathological is not objectively defined but linked to a rule, a social norm. For exemple, you can read G. Canguilhem, The normal and the pathological : The Normal and the Pathological is one of the crucial contributions to the history of science in the last half century. It takes as its starting point the sudden appearance of biology as a science in the 19th-century and examines the conditions determining its particular makeup.Canguilhem analyzes the radically new way in which health and disease were defined in the early 19th-century, showing that the emerging categories of the normal and the pathological were far from being objective scientific concepts. He demonstrates how the epistemological foundations of modern biology and medicine were intertwined with political, economic, and technological imperatives. While it is true that our concept of health depends on the cultural tradition and political will, we still can learn some objective facts through science. To not beat a child is now widely viewed as a moral in the western culture. Other cultures or our own culture just some umpteen years earlier, found it a moral imperative to beat the child to educate and raise it. Rather depending on a moral zeitgeist, I would like to investigate this issue with the scientific method. "Good" and "bad" or "evil" are traditionally referred to a higher morality or absolute morality. I don't believe in such things. In my world view, good, bad (or evil) must relate to the real world and therefore is subject to science. That does not mean science will get definitive answers. But if science cannot, can anything else? Science is mute on the question "Is it moral to beat a child?" Science has nothing to say about such values, and you are, by necessity, dependent upon a "moral zeitgeist" to answer that question for yourself. This is true if you consider morals a matter of opinion and/or construct of society. But "morals" is a word and we, who use it, must define a meaning for it. As I understand the rough concept of morals, morals who are moral must relate at some point to suffering. Now science comes in because suffering is the cause of events which can be in the end reduced to events in the world. Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 01:02 HULKAMANIA wrote:Now if you already assume that the outcomes you're testing for in a scientific study (indices of child's self-esteem, for instance, or the absence of violence in his or her interpersonal relationships) are good or bad, then science may provide some insight on how one style of raising a child is tentatively better or worse—i.e. which style tends to result in the most net "good" outcomes. But you did not derive those original assumptions about good or bad from science. Nor are they "subject to science" in any sense at all. They are actually ideological presuppositions that are already in play.
And it's always the assumptions that you don't realize you're making that are the most problematic. You are right, I assume some things. But without it, we have no definition. If everyone means a different thing when talking about morality, it doesn't make much sense to talk about it at all. I consider any 'morality' which does not intend to reduce unnecessary suffering to be not moral at all. This is an assumption I make. Having values for the sake of having values doesn't really make sense to me. Does gay marriage leads to unnecessary suffering? If we want to know this, we could just discuss, or we could try to plan out a scientific endeavor to determine the answer.
The thing is you're essentially conceding our main point.
You have a belief about what constitutes moral vs. immoral behavior. And I hope that I'm not being unfair when I summarize that belief (roughly) as follows: "Moral behavior avoids causing unnecessary suffering. Immoral behavior causes unnecessary suffering." On a personal level, I find that belief to be rather admirable, and I think that, by and large, the world would be a far happier place if people attempted to keep space for such sentiments in their day to day lives.
But the fact of the matter is, as you have admitted, your belief about morality did not originate in scientific research and experimentation, nor is it corroborated by scientific research and experimentation. No amount of scientific activity can generate the principle "Moral behavior avoids causing unnecessary suffering," nor can any amount of scientific activity help one evaluate whether such a statement is true, accurate, or good.
As I understand the rough concept of morals, morals who are moral must relate at some point to suffering. Now science comes in because suffering is the cause of events which can be in the end reduced to events in the world.
It is only by previously accepting that statement as true that science can weigh in on the matter at all, which is something that you've just admitted yourself. In other words, if one agrees to the first part of the above argument, then the second part follows. But there is no scientific, purely rational, or strictly logical reason at all to agree to the first part of your argument. It is simply an assertion of belief.
Now in a free and pluralistic nation, I believe that it behooves us to be respectful one another's sincerely held moral convictions and to allow one another to act on those convictions to the greatest extent compatible with a peaceful and stable society. Conceiving of our own moral convictions as bearing the authority of science and rationality, however, and conceiving of other people's moral convictions as deriving from irrationality or backwardness is a real obstacle to such freedoms. Because, besides being demonstrably incorrect, such assurance that other people can only disagree with one's obviously superior morals because those other people are uneducated, stupid, disingenuous, scheming, or [insert disparaging adjective here] is a sure path to groupthink and persecution. Civil disagreements like the one were having right now show the fruits of protecting freedom of belief, freedom of religion, and freedom of conscience. They keep such disagreements civil.
I mean if the state were to try to forcibly assimilate me into their system of Approved Beliefs, my only recourse would be another Crusade! 
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On December 15 2012 06:26 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 03:05 [F_]aths wrote:On December 15 2012 01:02 HULKAMANIA wrote:On December 14 2012 23:35 [F_]aths wrote:On December 14 2012 22:48 WhiteDog wrote:On December 14 2012 22:21 [F_]aths wrote:On December 14 2012 21:36 WhiteDog wrote:On December 14 2012 18:08 [F_]aths wrote:On December 14 2012 13:23 sam!zdat wrote:On December 14 2012 08:21 KwarK wrote:
[quote]
The secular world view is the one that says "actually we've done research on it and it turns out that children raised in a stable loving family with two mums or two dads do just fine, whatever it is you think you know based upon praying on the matter". The secular state is the child of the enlightenment in which traditional assumptions met the challenge of reasoned inquiry and the scientific method. Where's the scientific experiment that tells you whether or not you should care about whether or not a child "does fine", and which tells you what "does just fine" means? Is that a rigorously defined and operationalized concept? Can it be? The Enlightenment has its limits. Defending the Enlightenment is not exactly a comfortable position right now in the academy (I know because I do defend the Enlightenment to a rather unfashionable degree). My point is not that you're wrong. I agree with you about all of this gay people stuff. My point is just that if you start dismissing things because they "aren't scientific," you're going to find that line of reasoning coming back to bite you in the ass, I promise. Kant avec Sade, and so on. If they aren't scientitific, what are they? In a broader sense, anything which is testable and falsifiable is scientific. Social sciences aren't falsifiable, but always historically linked to a certain context - hence why the term "law" hasn't the same sense in economy (it's more tendancies than laws) than in physics. sm!zdat is right when he says that there is no "out of context" or "anhistorical" definition for childs that "do fine". The history of familly or filial love is interesting in this regard. We can measure the child's well-being at least roughly. We can have a rough look if the child is exposed to unnecessary suffering. We do have some rough options to decide if a particular environment to raise a child leads to good or bad results. Is corporal punishment good or bad for the child? Science can say something about it. Can a child be raised by same-sex parents as good as a traditional couple can? This seems to be way more difficult, but I see no reason which prevents a scientificly conducted experimet to find out. We can look at the child's level of happyness (at least roughly), we can see the average level of education and income, of healthiness and so on. I admit that those are just some and only quite rough indicators. But it is better than nothing. Is being gay an illness or a mental disorder? Science seems the best tool we have to determine. You are missing the point. Science can't say what is a "good or bad result" regarding child, because science can't define it scientifically. As for corporal punishment, well "science" can show correlation between corporal punishment and specific objectiv facts - such as number of friends, social behavior, or academic result. That's it. There is no way for sociology or any social science to clearly state that corporal punishment are bad for famillies because it's a moral judgement, that is based on the idea that kids should not get hurt by adults. Stop thinking science can teach us what is or what is not a "good" familly, because it can't. Happyness is defined socially, it's not the same at every layers of the social ladder and it's not a scientific concept that you can "measure". As for gay being a mental disorder or an illness (you don't let a lot of choice, how about gay is a sexual preferance and nothing else ?), "science" showed how it could not judge for that. What is normal and pathological is not objectively defined but linked to a rule, a social norm. For exemple, you can read G. Canguilhem, The normal and the pathological : The Normal and the Pathological is one of the crucial contributions to the history of science in the last half century. It takes as its starting point the sudden appearance of biology as a science in the 19th-century and examines the conditions determining its particular makeup.Canguilhem analyzes the radically new way in which health and disease were defined in the early 19th-century, showing that the emerging categories of the normal and the pathological were far from being objective scientific concepts. He demonstrates how the epistemological foundations of modern biology and medicine were intertwined with political, economic, and technological imperatives. While it is true that our concept of health depends on the cultural tradition and political will, we still can learn some objective facts through science. To not beat a child is now widely viewed as a moral in the western culture. Other cultures or our own culture just some umpteen years earlier, found it a moral imperative to beat the child to educate and raise it. Rather depending on a moral zeitgeist, I would like to investigate this issue with the scientific method. "Good" and "bad" or "evil" are traditionally referred to a higher morality or absolute morality. I don't believe in such things. In my world view, good, bad (or evil) must relate to the real world and therefore is subject to science. That does not mean science will get definitive answers. But if science cannot, can anything else? Science is mute on the question "Is it moral to beat a child?" Science has nothing to say about such values, and you are, by necessity, dependent upon a "moral zeitgeist" to answer that question for yourself. This is true if you consider morals a matter of opinion and/or construct of society. But "morals" is a word and we, who use it, must define a meaning for it. As I understand the rough concept of morals, morals who are moral must relate at some point to suffering. Now science comes in because suffering is the cause of events which can be in the end reduced to events in the world. No. Suffering is a phenomenological event and cannot be reduced to a description of physical states in the world. How would you do this? Why would one configuration of the atoms that make up consciousness be more or less "objectively" moral than another? It is far from an obvious axiom that morality is concerned with the alleviation of suffering. We have to reason it out. A single consciousness can be expected (with our experience) to be selfish. We cannot take just an opinion seriously if there is no good reason given. In my opinion, even a good reason is not enough unless it is backed up by testable data.
I am still not sure if we should use the variation of the golden rule (don't treat others in a way you don't like to be treated) as axiomatic because it seems intuitively right or if we shall reduce even this one to physical events.
I think, if one tries hard enough and goes a way long enough, suffering can be reduced to physical states. Pain itself doesn't exist as an object, it seems to be created by neurons for our conscious perception. As far as we know, neurons follow the chemical / physical laws all the time. We still don't know yet how exactly this can create the perception of pain, but there seems to be no reason to deny a physical cause.
On December 15 2012 06:26 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 03:05 [F_]aths wrote:
I consider any 'morality' which does not intend to reduce unnecessary suffering to be not moral at all. This is an assumption I make. Having values for the sake of having values doesn't really make sense to me.
These two statements are directly contradictory.
If you see the meaning of the moral concept (reduce harm, avoid unnecessary suffering) as value, it is contradictory. We still can try to reduce that to facts: Suffering is experienced as real even though it is only a state of mind. But we experience everything through our brain anyway. In this sense, suffering is as real as the real world. Then we have the fact that most of us don't like suffering. This makes sense in an evolutionary sense: Pain is a mechanism to get the priorities right when our nerve center (the brain) makes a decision between different options. Unnecessary suffering is pain (in a broader sense, also other forms of pain like the feeling of getting betrayed and other emotions) with no sufficient reason.
I am aware that my approach is kind of a reductionist one. Still I think this approach is better than to use the inner sense of disgust (like "gay men sex is disgusting, this cant't be right.")
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On December 15 2012 08:17 HULKAMANIA wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 03:05 [F_]aths wrote:On December 15 2012 01:02 HULKAMANIA wrote:On December 14 2012 23:35 [F_]aths wrote:On December 14 2012 22:48 WhiteDog wrote:On December 14 2012 22:21 [F_]aths wrote:On December 14 2012 21:36 WhiteDog wrote:On December 14 2012 18:08 [F_]aths wrote:On December 14 2012 13:23 sam!zdat wrote:On December 14 2012 08:21 KwarK wrote:
[quote]
The secular world view is the one that says "actually we've done research on it and it turns out that children raised in a stable loving family with two mums or two dads do just fine, whatever it is you think you know based upon praying on the matter". The secular state is the child of the enlightenment in which traditional assumptions met the challenge of reasoned inquiry and the scientific method. Where's the scientific experiment that tells you whether or not you should care about whether or not a child "does fine", and which tells you what "does just fine" means? Is that a rigorously defined and operationalized concept? Can it be? The Enlightenment has its limits. Defending the Enlightenment is not exactly a comfortable position right now in the academy (I know because I do defend the Enlightenment to a rather unfashionable degree). My point is not that you're wrong. I agree with you about all of this gay people stuff. My point is just that if you start dismissing things because they "aren't scientific," you're going to find that line of reasoning coming back to bite you in the ass, I promise. Kant avec Sade, and so on. If they aren't scientitific, what are they? In a broader sense, anything which is testable and falsifiable is scientific. Social sciences aren't falsifiable, but always historically linked to a certain context - hence why the term "law" hasn't the same sense in economy (it's more tendancies than laws) than in physics. sm!zdat is right when he says that there is no "out of context" or "anhistorical" definition for childs that "do fine". The history of familly or filial love is interesting in this regard. We can measure the child's well-being at least roughly. We can have a rough look if the child is exposed to unnecessary suffering. We do have some rough options to decide if a particular environment to raise a child leads to good or bad results. Is corporal punishment good or bad for the child? Science can say something about it. Can a child be raised by same-sex parents as good as a traditional couple can? This seems to be way more difficult, but I see no reason which prevents a scientificly conducted experimet to find out. We can look at the child's level of happyness (at least roughly), we can see the average level of education and income, of healthiness and so on. I admit that those are just some and only quite rough indicators. But it is better than nothing. Is being gay an illness or a mental disorder? Science seems the best tool we have to determine. You are missing the point. Science can't say what is a "good or bad result" regarding child, because science can't define it scientifically. As for corporal punishment, well "science" can show correlation between corporal punishment and specific objectiv facts - such as number of friends, social behavior, or academic result. That's it. There is no way for sociology or any social science to clearly state that corporal punishment are bad for famillies because it's a moral judgement, that is based on the idea that kids should not get hurt by adults. Stop thinking science can teach us what is or what is not a "good" familly, because it can't. Happyness is defined socially, it's not the same at every layers of the social ladder and it's not a scientific concept that you can "measure". As for gay being a mental disorder or an illness (you don't let a lot of choice, how about gay is a sexual preferance and nothing else ?), "science" showed how it could not judge for that. What is normal and pathological is not objectively defined but linked to a rule, a social norm. For exemple, you can read G. Canguilhem, The normal and the pathological : The Normal and the Pathological is one of the crucial contributions to the history of science in the last half century. It takes as its starting point the sudden appearance of biology as a science in the 19th-century and examines the conditions determining its particular makeup.Canguilhem analyzes the radically new way in which health and disease were defined in the early 19th-century, showing that the emerging categories of the normal and the pathological were far from being objective scientific concepts. He demonstrates how the epistemological foundations of modern biology and medicine were intertwined with political, economic, and technological imperatives. While it is true that our concept of health depends on the cultural tradition and political will, we still can learn some objective facts through science. To not beat a child is now widely viewed as a moral in the western culture. Other cultures or our own culture just some umpteen years earlier, found it a moral imperative to beat the child to educate and raise it. Rather depending on a moral zeitgeist, I would like to investigate this issue with the scientific method. "Good" and "bad" or "evil" are traditionally referred to a higher morality or absolute morality. I don't believe in such things. In my world view, good, bad (or evil) must relate to the real world and therefore is subject to science. That does not mean science will get definitive answers. But if science cannot, can anything else? Science is mute on the question "Is it moral to beat a child?" Science has nothing to say about such values, and you are, by necessity, dependent upon a "moral zeitgeist" to answer that question for yourself. This is true if you consider morals a matter of opinion and/or construct of society. But "morals" is a word and we, who use it, must define a meaning for it. As I understand the rough concept of morals, morals who are moral must relate at some point to suffering. Now science comes in because suffering is the cause of events which can be in the end reduced to events in the world. On December 15 2012 01:02 HULKAMANIA wrote:Now if you already assume that the outcomes you're testing for in a scientific study (indices of child's self-esteem, for instance, or the absence of violence in his or her interpersonal relationships) are good or bad, then science may provide some insight on how one style of raising a child is tentatively better or worse—i.e. which style tends to result in the most net "good" outcomes. But you did not derive those original assumptions about good or bad from science. Nor are they "subject to science" in any sense at all. They are actually ideological presuppositions that are already in play.
And it's always the assumptions that you don't realize you're making that are the most problematic. You are right, I assume some things. But without it, we have no definition. If everyone means a different thing when talking about morality, it doesn't make much sense to talk about it at all. I consider any 'morality' which does not intend to reduce unnecessary suffering to be not moral at all. This is an assumption I make. Having values for the sake of having values doesn't really make sense to me. Does gay marriage leads to unnecessary suffering? If we want to know this, we could just discuss, or we could try to plan out a scientific endeavor to determine the answer. The thing is you're essentially conceding our main point. You have a belief about what constitutes moral vs. immoral behavior. And I hope that I'm not being unfair when I summarize that belief (roughly) as follows: "Moral behavior avoids causing unnecessary suffering. Immoral behavior causes unnecessary suffering." On a personal level, I find that belief to be rather admirable, and I think that, by and large, the world would be a far happier place if people attempted to keep space for such sentiments in their day to day lives. But the fact of the matter is, as you have admitted, your belief about morality did not originate in scientific research and experimentation, nor is it corroborated by scientific research and experimentation. No amount of scientific activity can generate the principle "Moral behavior avoids causing unnecessary suffering," nor can any amount of scientific activity help one evaluate whether such a statement is true, accurate, or good.
Science is somewhat in the moral business as one shall not lie about the experiment and make up data.
But in a moral discussion I would invoke science this way: "If we agree about the meaning of the word 'morality', we should use science to get results." Science itself favors reasoning over emotional reactions. In this sense, one could try to use the concept of science even as a reason to establish a morality: With reason we can argue why we should try to avoid unnecessary suffering. (Of course, in many cases it is good to show emotions because we feel better and give valuable information about our feeling to other persons. In this sense, it is not the scientific optimum to keep calm all the time.) If we do something because we should while we don't have to, we can create the concept of values.
Another argument would be that many of us search the true, the good, the beautiful. Why do we do this? Maybe as side product of our evolutionary line, but even if we don't know why, we do know that we seek it. I would count this as a fact, which could be reduced to physical states of the world even though we cannot do it now because the brain and the culture is so complex. We maybe never can. And it sounds useless to create a science for the beautiful. How scientific could aesthetics ever be? I still think that science can at least say some things. If we determine why we never fully agree on what it beautiful, we can do this in a scientific way.
I don't want a body of authority to determine what is true, what is beautiful or what is good. I want discussion, reason and experiments to the day we cease to exist.
On December 15 2012 08:17 HULKAMANIA wrote:Show nested quote +As I understand the rough concept of morals, morals who are moral must relate at some point to suffering. Now science comes in because suffering is the cause of events which can be in the end reduced to events in the world. It is only by previously accepting that statement as true that science can weigh in on the matter at all, which is something that you've just admitted yourself. In other words, if one agrees to the first part of the above argument, then the second part follows. But there is no scientific, purely rational, or strictly logical reason at all to agree to the first part of your argument. It is simply an assertion of belief. Now in a free and pluralistic nation, I believe that it behooves us to be respectful one another's sincerely held moral convictions and to allow one another to act on those convictions to the greatest extent compatible with a peaceful and stable society. Conceiving of our own moral convictions as bearing the authority of science and rationality, however, and conceiving of other people's moral convictions as deriving from irrationality or backwardness is a real obstacle to such freedoms. Because, besides being demonstrably incorrect, such assurance that other people can only disagree with one's obviously superior morals because those other people are uneducated, stupid, disingenuous, scheming, or [insert disparaging adjective here] is a sure path to groupthink and persecution. Civil disagreements like the one were having right now show the fruits of protecting freedom of belief, freedom of religion, and freedom of conscience. They keep such disagreements civil. I mean if the state were to try to forcibly assimilate me into their system of Approved Beliefs, my only recourse would be another Crusade!
This is in a sense my point. We are aware that we developed morals during our evolution as a social being while we still are selfish and egoistic. We also see that some have more power than others and we are afraid that their opinion trumps ours, even in moral questions. So we want to have the safety of a moral code everyone must agree on, to avoid exploitation. We also are afraid of being the victim of unmoral persons who don't even have a bad conscience when they are done harming us. We like to have eternal rules.
The greatest fear I have in a moral debate however is dogma. Immoral things like gay sex or even incest could be viewed as not immoral at all at some point in the future. "Moral" in practice is a construct of society. Now I have an issue with different morals in different societies. If one agrees on to ban gay marriage because of moral issues while another society doesn't really have any beef with gay marriage, I question the concept of morality as universal even thought I often find it described as such.
I want to find out what really is moral, what actually is immoral. The best tool I can imagine is science.
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On December 12 2012 04:29 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On December 12 2012 04:24 dAPhREAk wrote:On December 12 2012 04:20 KwarK wrote:On December 12 2012 04:17 dAPhREAk wrote:
you are infringing their right to practice their religion as long as its an actual belief of the church Would you support a church refusing to marry interracial couples on the basis of religious beliefs? no, i would not "support" them. however, if its an actual belief of the church (not pretext) then i would not object to them doing it. the interracial couple can be married elsewhere. if a gay couple wants to get married, why would they want or even need to be married (for example) at a catholic church, or by a catholic priest? they have absolutely no reason to do so. so, it seems, that you (metaphorically) are concerned about a non-issue. Do you feel there is a potential issue in whether or not discrimination can actually be dealt with if private groups are allowed to discriminate? Do you feel religious convictions are any more important than any other strongly held conviction? A man could genuinely believe that gay marriage would destroy society by eroding the morals enshrined by traditional marriage without involving God and feel the same passion regarding the issue.
You are overstepping the line by attempting to enforce sinful behavior encouragement. You are categorizing 'Religious Convictions' as nothing important, and this is where your opinion is wrong. When considering 'God' there is no doubt that the church's convictions are far more important than vast majority of strongly held convictions. 'Convictions' and 'Truth' are two completely different areas. The church is considered to be a meeting place with God, conducting a ritual which is not supported via the beliefs is wrong on multiple levels.
I can have a 'very strong conviction' that the government enforced tax shouldn't discriminate against people in different pay brackets, and thats fantastic. However to live your life in service to God who just may be the sole truth in life and be forced to encourage as i mentioned 'sinful behavior' is to enforce your belief onto others. Kwark, your argument is that everyone's beliefs are equal, and the truth is that there is only a single truth. People's beliefs are not equal and people do not deserve the same amount of regard in terms of the belief. If when we all die we come back as an animal, this would indicate that all but 'those who believe' are really living a falsehood, you can respect someone's belief, but it doesn't make it equal or correct.
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Homosexuality is completely natural.
Other Species like ours have a lot of by or gay animals. Besides, this has always been about people' s private lives, and people should be able to do in there private life (as long as its consentual) whatever the fuck they please. Yes getting married is a private affair, its not like there obligating you to go to there wedding. I not only agree with to give gay people the right to marry, but i also believe they should have the right to adopt, and ever other civil right (and obligation). Furthermore i think people should be allowed to display there emotions in public like every other couple (Obviously kissing and holding hands are accepted by society)
If any of you have lived in Berlin, these things (public display of emotion) are happening and you would realise that its completely natural and normal.
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On December 15 2012 04:22 heliusx wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 04:12 ahappystar wrote:Animal urges: Final vote on bestiality ban to be held in GermanyGermany is to decide whether to ban bestiality, which has been considered lawful in the country since being legalized in 1969. The final vote on the matter is set to take place in the Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament, on Friday. + Show Spoiler +The government of Angela Merkel introduced the new law against the practice, saying animals should not be used "for personal sexual activities or made available to third parties for sexual activities … thereby forcing them to behave in ways that are inappropriate to their species."
Late Thursday the Bundestag, the parliament's lower house, passed the tough new law against bestiality, which includes a hefty fine of 25,000 euros.
The lawmakers’ intention is not teaching zoophiles a morality lesson, as one of them told RT.
“We are not policing morality but we are improving animal protection law, where we would like to specify that it is forbidden to cause suffering through a sexual relationship. But the line is when you cause suffering to an animal for your personal sexual gratification,” Hans-Michael Goldmann, MP Chairman of the parliamentary agricultural committee, said.
Animal rights groups have also been campaigning against zoophilia for some time, battling for bestiality to be recognized as rape and defilement inflicted on an animal.
“Dogs are loyal even when they are abused – they are still going to look as if they are happy, especially when it gets enough to eat. Dogs will be happy whatever you dictate. But that is not a sign that the dog is enjoying it,” Stephanie Eschen, animal rights campaigner for Berlin Shelter for Animals told RT.
Campaigners even reportedly posted 800 addresses of zoophiles on their Facebook page, saying they would fight to take the animals away from those who practice bestiality.
German media outlets followed suit to protest against the practice, first with the Berlin tabloid BZ featuring the issue on its front page in October. The picture showed a man holding his dog with the headline reading "we call it sodomy, he calls it love." Bild magazine then joined the cause.
In July, over 93,000 Germans voted to ban the bestiality in an online poll, revoking the 1969 law which legalized zoophilia, except in cases where the animal was deemed to suffer "significant harm."
Zoophiles, however, say that they never treat animals cruelly or force them to do anything against their will.
“I need an animal to be happy. If I did not have it, there would be something missing. There are several levels of relationship with an animal. You can fall in love with your animal… then, the sexual relationship is not out of the question,” David Zimmerman from the German Zoophile Engagement for Tolerance and Information told RT.
And there’s a growing concern that those who are against the practice could walk the talk.
“They fantasize about castrating me or taking my animals away. Our friend has found a razor blade in his post with a note “Do it yourself so we don’t have to”. Letters don’t arrive too often but it they arrive every now and again. In the subway someone was yelling at me, calling me names – I am concerned that attacks could become physical.”
While bestiality is deemed illegal in most European countries, it is allowed in Belgium, Denmark and Sweden, apart from Germany. Stockholm, however, is considering a change in the legislation. What is up with these evil lawmakers in Germany that want to ban love between two species! I say equality for all, they should be able to marry these animals too, equal rights my ass! EDIT: and the evil church is against bestiality too! evil evil You have a serious problem if you think comparing bestiality and homosexuality is a valid argument.
While I don't think comparing them is a valid argument, nor do I agree with it, some smart people have argued it might be. In Lawrence v. Texas, the dissent implied that bestiality could be a next step with future cases. While it's most commonly known as the anti-sodomy case which legalizes homosexuality, it's more about privacy and that's where the idea of bestiality came into play. Granted the way Scalia posed it was a pretty large slippery slope but still. Anyways on topic: good for the UK I hope this passes. Religion is the opiate of the masses!
ITT: People defining "moral" in a emotionalist way as something that makes them feel "yucky" or "yummy"
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United States41961 Posts
On December 15 2012 19:59 Azz wrote:Show nested quote +On December 12 2012 04:29 KwarK wrote:On December 12 2012 04:24 dAPhREAk wrote:On December 12 2012 04:20 KwarK wrote:On December 12 2012 04:17 dAPhREAk wrote:
you are infringing their right to practice their religion as long as its an actual belief of the church Would you support a church refusing to marry interracial couples on the basis of religious beliefs? no, i would not "support" them. however, if its an actual belief of the church (not pretext) then i would not object to them doing it. the interracial couple can be married elsewhere. if a gay couple wants to get married, why would they want or even need to be married (for example) at a catholic church, or by a catholic priest? they have absolutely no reason to do so. so, it seems, that you (metaphorically) are concerned about a non-issue. Do you feel there is a potential issue in whether or not discrimination can actually be dealt with if private groups are allowed to discriminate? Do you feel religious convictions are any more important than any other strongly held conviction? A man could genuinely believe that gay marriage would destroy society by eroding the morals enshrined by traditional marriage without involving God and feel the same passion regarding the issue. You are overstepping the line by attempting to enforce sinful behavior encouragement. You are categorizing 'Religious Convictions' as nothing important, and this is where your opinion is wrong. When considering 'God' there is no doubt that the church's convictions are far more important than vast majority of strongly held convictions. 'Convictions' and 'Truth' are two completely different areas. The church is considered to be a meeting place with God, conducting a ritual which is not supported via the beliefs is wrong on multiple levels. I can have a 'very strong conviction' that the government enforced tax shouldn't discriminate against people in different pay brackets, and thats fantastic. However to live your life in service to God who just may be the sole truth in life and be forced to encourage as i mentioned 'sinful behavior' is to enforce your belief onto others. Kwark, your argument is that everyone's beliefs are equal, and the truth is that there is only a single truth. People's beliefs are not equal and people do not deserve the same amount of regard in terms of the belief. If when we all die we come back as an animal, this would indicate that all but 'those who believe' are really living a falsehood, you can respect someone's belief, but it doesn't make it equal or correct.
This can be summed up as "there are many strong convictions but only only religion is true because it's true because I believe it to be true because religion because God". Not one of those "because"s amounts to a strong argument for how it's any different. You have stated "don't ignore unsubstantiated beliefs, they should be given respect, I cannot substantiate this", if the opposing position is already ignoring unsubstantiated beliefs then you have yet to bring anything useful to the field. It's like you're fighting a ghost type pokemon with a normal type pokemon, it doesn't matter which move you use or how much you evolve it, you have to switch it out for another.
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On December 15 2012 20:39 bjwithbraces wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 04:22 heliusx wrote:On December 15 2012 04:12 ahappystar wrote:Animal urges: Final vote on bestiality ban to be held in GermanyGermany is to decide whether to ban bestiality, which has been considered lawful in the country since being legalized in 1969. The final vote on the matter is set to take place in the Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament, on Friday. + Show Spoiler +The government of Angela Merkel introduced the new law against the practice, saying animals should not be used "for personal sexual activities or made available to third parties for sexual activities … thereby forcing them to behave in ways that are inappropriate to their species."
Late Thursday the Bundestag, the parliament's lower house, passed the tough new law against bestiality, which includes a hefty fine of 25,000 euros.
The lawmakers’ intention is not teaching zoophiles a morality lesson, as one of them told RT.
“We are not policing morality but we are improving animal protection law, where we would like to specify that it is forbidden to cause suffering through a sexual relationship. But the line is when you cause suffering to an animal for your personal sexual gratification,” Hans-Michael Goldmann, MP Chairman of the parliamentary agricultural committee, said.
Animal rights groups have also been campaigning against zoophilia for some time, battling for bestiality to be recognized as rape and defilement inflicted on an animal.
“Dogs are loyal even when they are abused – they are still going to look as if they are happy, especially when it gets enough to eat. Dogs will be happy whatever you dictate. But that is not a sign that the dog is enjoying it,” Stephanie Eschen, animal rights campaigner for Berlin Shelter for Animals told RT.
Campaigners even reportedly posted 800 addresses of zoophiles on their Facebook page, saying they would fight to take the animals away from those who practice bestiality.
German media outlets followed suit to protest against the practice, first with the Berlin tabloid BZ featuring the issue on its front page in October. The picture showed a man holding his dog with the headline reading "we call it sodomy, he calls it love." Bild magazine then joined the cause.
In July, over 93,000 Germans voted to ban the bestiality in an online poll, revoking the 1969 law which legalized zoophilia, except in cases where the animal was deemed to suffer "significant harm."
Zoophiles, however, say that they never treat animals cruelly or force them to do anything against their will.
“I need an animal to be happy. If I did not have it, there would be something missing. There are several levels of relationship with an animal. You can fall in love with your animal… then, the sexual relationship is not out of the question,” David Zimmerman from the German Zoophile Engagement for Tolerance and Information told RT.
And there’s a growing concern that those who are against the practice could walk the talk.
“They fantasize about castrating me or taking my animals away. Our friend has found a razor blade in his post with a note “Do it yourself so we don’t have to”. Letters don’t arrive too often but it they arrive every now and again. In the subway someone was yelling at me, calling me names – I am concerned that attacks could become physical.”
While bestiality is deemed illegal in most European countries, it is allowed in Belgium, Denmark and Sweden, apart from Germany. Stockholm, however, is considering a change in the legislation. What is up with these evil lawmakers in Germany that want to ban love between two species! I say equality for all, they should be able to marry these animals too, equal rights my ass! EDIT: and the evil church is against bestiality too! evil evil You have a serious problem if you think comparing bestiality and homosexuality is a valid argument. While I don't think comparing them is a valid argument, nor do I agree with it, some smart people have argued it might be. In Lawrence v. Texas, the dissent implied that bestiality could be a next step with future cases. While it's most commonly known as the anti-sodomy case which legalizes homosexuality, it's more about privacy and that's where the idea of bestiality came into play. Granted the way Scalia posed it was a pretty large slippery slope but still. Anyways on topic: good for the UK I hope this passes. Religion is the opiate of the masses! ITT: People defining "moral" in a emotionalist way as something that makes them feel "yucky" or "yummy"
Sorry, why is this good??
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On December 15 2012 21:57 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 19:59 Azz wrote:On December 12 2012 04:29 KwarK wrote:On December 12 2012 04:24 dAPhREAk wrote:On December 12 2012 04:20 KwarK wrote:On December 12 2012 04:17 dAPhREAk wrote:
you are infringing their right to practice their religion as long as its an actual belief of the church Would you support a church refusing to marry interracial couples on the basis of religious beliefs? no, i would not "support" them. however, if its an actual belief of the church (not pretext) then i would not object to them doing it. the interracial couple can be married elsewhere. if a gay couple wants to get married, why would they want or even need to be married (for example) at a catholic church, or by a catholic priest? they have absolutely no reason to do so. so, it seems, that you (metaphorically) are concerned about a non-issue. Do you feel there is a potential issue in whether or not discrimination can actually be dealt with if private groups are allowed to discriminate? Do you feel religious convictions are any more important than any other strongly held conviction? A man could genuinely believe that gay marriage would destroy society by eroding the morals enshrined by traditional marriage without involving God and feel the same passion regarding the issue. You are overstepping the line by attempting to enforce sinful behavior encouragement. You are categorizing 'Religious Convictions' as nothing important, and this is where your opinion is wrong. When considering 'God' there is no doubt that the church's convictions are far more important than vast majority of strongly held convictions. 'Convictions' and 'Truth' are two completely different areas. The church is considered to be a meeting place with God, conducting a ritual which is not supported via the beliefs is wrong on multiple levels. I can have a 'very strong conviction' that the government enforced tax shouldn't discriminate against people in different pay brackets, and thats fantastic. However to live your life in service to God who just may be the sole truth in life and be forced to encourage as i mentioned 'sinful behavior' is to enforce your belief onto others. Kwark, your argument is that everyone's beliefs are equal, and the truth is that there is only a single truth. People's beliefs are not equal and people do not deserve the same amount of regard in terms of the belief. If when we all die we come back as an animal, this would indicate that all but 'those who believe' are really living a falsehood, you can respect someone's belief, but it doesn't make it equal or correct. This can be summed up as "there are many strong convictions but only only religion is true because it's true because I believe it to be true because religion because God". Not one of those "because"s amounts to a strong argument for how it's any different. You have stated "don't ignore unsubstantiated beliefs, they should be given respect, I cannot substantiate this", if the opposing position is already ignoring unsubstantiated beliefs then you have yet to bring anything useful to the field. It's like you're fighting a ghost type pokemon with a normal type pokemon, it doesn't matter which move you use or how much you evolve it, you have to switch it out for another.
I wish you'd of addressed points such as:
- Forcing your beliefs onto others
- Correctness in people's belief and equality
- Majority rule ----> relativism (seems to be your thing)
Oh and your post can be summed up as "everyone is equal because they are but only only because I decided my conviction is important because people in groups discriminate against my conviction but i know im right cus I am and 1900+ years worth of people and history are wrong cus I am enlightened". Maybe I should talk about pokemon or how your previous post brought nothing new to the table because I had to edit my post a few times. At the end of the day 'private' is meant to be 'private' for a reason. Based on your reasoning 'Affirmative Action' is far worse than what is happening right now.
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On December 15 2012 21:57 KwarK wrote:
This can be summed up as "there are many strong convictions but only only religion is true because it's true because I believe it to be true because religion because God". Not one of those "because"s amounts to a strong argument for how it's any different. You have stated "don't ignore unsubstantiated beliefs, they should be given respect, I cannot substantiate this", if the opposing position is already ignoring unsubstantiated beliefs then you have yet to bring anything useful to the field. It's like you're fighting a ghost type pokemon with a normal type pokemon, it doesn't matter which move you use or how much you evolve it, you have to switch it out for another.
If we knew for a fact that God, or the word of God, existed, we wouldn't call it belief, we would call it science.
The whole argument of religion rests on the assumption that something nobody can know is true. You cannot bring science into such a debate because science can only prove what "is" not all the things that "aren't".
On the other hand, a religious person will have to accept that there are many different ways of filling that void we can never gaze into. There are many religions that does this, as well as less structured folklore and superstition. You cannot accept them all because they are mutually exclusive. In a sense, that means you either make an instinctive guess on which explanation is the correct one and stand sceptic to the rest or you are sceptic towards all of them.
People oftentimes speak of humility beore the things we don't know, but that really is not the point here. Humility in this case would mean the acceptance that nobody knows and arguing that this makes things true is not logical. It is the religious people that needs humility in claiming things, not atheists for chosing not to believe them.
On those grounds I feel like the churches of the world should be happy that their irrational believes are even accepted in society despite their terrible track record. They should also be content with that and only that. Thinking for a moment that you can infringe on the rights of others is arrogant and selfish. Just in the same way as atheists must allow for the individuals right to believe in what they want, whether it is God, string theory or telekinesis.
That said, how can gay marriage in church even be an issue? How can you have one organisation with two groups of people who interpret the "rules" for the organisation differently. Even to a point where one half belives homosexuality is essentially a crime punishable by death and the other does not? To me that is a bizarre situation.
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On December 15 2012 18:50 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 06:26 sam!zdat wrote:On December 15 2012 03:05 [F_]aths wrote:On December 15 2012 01:02 HULKAMANIA wrote:On December 14 2012 23:35 [F_]aths wrote:On December 14 2012 22:48 WhiteDog wrote:On December 14 2012 22:21 [F_]aths wrote:On December 14 2012 21:36 WhiteDog wrote:On December 14 2012 18:08 [F_]aths wrote:On December 14 2012 13:23 sam!zdat wrote:
[quote]
Where's the scientific experiment that tells you whether or not you should care about whether or not a child "does fine", and which tells you what "does just fine" means? Is that a rigorously defined and operationalized concept? Can it be?
The Enlightenment has its limits. Defending the Enlightenment is not exactly a comfortable position right now in the academy (I know because I do defend the Enlightenment to a rather unfashionable degree).
My point is not that you're wrong. I agree with you about all of this gay people stuff. My point is just that if you start dismissing things because they "aren't scientific," you're going to find that line of reasoning coming back to bite you in the ass, I promise. Kant avec Sade, and so on. If they aren't scientitific, what are they? In a broader sense, anything which is testable and falsifiable is scientific. Social sciences aren't falsifiable, but always historically linked to a certain context - hence why the term "law" hasn't the same sense in economy (it's more tendancies than laws) than in physics. sm!zdat is right when he says that there is no "out of context" or "anhistorical" definition for childs that "do fine". The history of familly or filial love is interesting in this regard. We can measure the child's well-being at least roughly. We can have a rough look if the child is exposed to unnecessary suffering. We do have some rough options to decide if a particular environment to raise a child leads to good or bad results. Is corporal punishment good or bad for the child? Science can say something about it. Can a child be raised by same-sex parents as good as a traditional couple can? This seems to be way more difficult, but I see no reason which prevents a scientificly conducted experimet to find out. We can look at the child's level of happyness (at least roughly), we can see the average level of education and income, of healthiness and so on. I admit that those are just some and only quite rough indicators. But it is better than nothing. Is being gay an illness or a mental disorder? Science seems the best tool we have to determine. You are missing the point. Science can't say what is a "good or bad result" regarding child, because science can't define it scientifically. As for corporal punishment, well "science" can show correlation between corporal punishment and specific objectiv facts - such as number of friends, social behavior, or academic result. That's it. There is no way for sociology or any social science to clearly state that corporal punishment are bad for famillies because it's a moral judgement, that is based on the idea that kids should not get hurt by adults. Stop thinking science can teach us what is or what is not a "good" familly, because it can't. Happyness is defined socially, it's not the same at every layers of the social ladder and it's not a scientific concept that you can "measure". As for gay being a mental disorder or an illness (you don't let a lot of choice, how about gay is a sexual preferance and nothing else ?), "science" showed how it could not judge for that. What is normal and pathological is not objectively defined but linked to a rule, a social norm. For exemple, you can read G. Canguilhem, The normal and the pathological : The Normal and the Pathological is one of the crucial contributions to the history of science in the last half century. It takes as its starting point the sudden appearance of biology as a science in the 19th-century and examines the conditions determining its particular makeup.Canguilhem analyzes the radically new way in which health and disease were defined in the early 19th-century, showing that the emerging categories of the normal and the pathological were far from being objective scientific concepts. He demonstrates how the epistemological foundations of modern biology and medicine were intertwined with political, economic, and technological imperatives. While it is true that our concept of health depends on the cultural tradition and political will, we still can learn some objective facts through science. To not beat a child is now widely viewed as a moral in the western culture. Other cultures or our own culture just some umpteen years earlier, found it a moral imperative to beat the child to educate and raise it. Rather depending on a moral zeitgeist, I would like to investigate this issue with the scientific method. "Good" and "bad" or "evil" are traditionally referred to a higher morality or absolute morality. I don't believe in such things. In my world view, good, bad (or evil) must relate to the real world and therefore is subject to science. That does not mean science will get definitive answers. But if science cannot, can anything else? Science is mute on the question "Is it moral to beat a child?" Science has nothing to say about such values, and you are, by necessity, dependent upon a "moral zeitgeist" to answer that question for yourself. This is true if you consider morals a matter of opinion and/or construct of society. But "morals" is a word and we, who use it, must define a meaning for it. As I understand the rough concept of morals, morals who are moral must relate at some point to suffering. Now science comes in because suffering is the cause of events which can be in the end reduced to events in the world. No. Suffering is a phenomenological event and cannot be reduced to a description of physical states in the world. How would you do this? Why would one configuration of the atoms that make up consciousness be more or less "objectively" moral than another? It is far from an obvious axiom that morality is concerned with the alleviation of suffering. We have to reason it out. A single consciousness can be expected (with our experience) to be selfish.
No, I don't accept this premise. At any rate, even if true, this is an observation. You would need an extra step to establish that this was a morally justified way to behave. that question remains open.
We cannot take just an opinion seriously if there is no good reason given. In my opinion, even a good reason is not enough unless it is backed up by testable data.
So when you want to make friends with someone, and you have a reason to do so, do you wait until there's data? What kind of data would it be? Do you believe in the existence of any useful concepts which are non quantitative?
I am still not sure if we should use the variation of the golden rule (don't treat others in a way you don't like to be treated) as axiomatic because it seems intuitively right or if we shall reduce even this one to physical events.
Ah, now you're on the right track. Go ponder that question for a while.
I think, if one tries hard enough and goes a way long enough, suffering can be reduced to physical states. Pain itself doesn't exist as an object, it seems to be created by neurons for our conscious perception. As far as we know, neurons follow the chemical / physical laws all the time. We still don't know yet how exactly this can create the perception of pain, but there seems to be no reason to deny a physical cause.
Before we continue on, how familiar are you in general with the mind-body problem, philosophy of consciousness, and so on? What you're saying is an acceptable enough position but I'm just curious if you're familiar with the shape of the debate.
My position is that a phenomenological state is ontologically but not epistemologically or conceptually reducible to physical states. It is an emergent property of a physical system. One is right in some sense in saying "it's nothing but cells", but this is not completely true and it's certainly not useful for ethical theorizing.
(edit: which is to say, the fact of its ontological reducibility is by far the least interesting thing one could ever say about it)
Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 06:26 sam!zdat wrote:On December 15 2012 03:05 [F_]aths wrote:
I consider any 'morality' which does not intend to reduce unnecessary suffering to be not moral at all. This is an assumption I make. Having values for the sake of having values doesn't really make sense to me.
These two statements are directly contradictory. If you see the meaning of the moral concept (reduce harm, avoid unnecessary suffering) as value, it is contradictory.
Yes, that is a value, and don't you dare tell me it isn't.
We still can try to reduce that to facts: Suffering is experienced as real even though it is only a state of mind. But we experience everything through our brain anyway. In this sense, suffering is as real as the real world. Then we have the fact that most of us don't like suffering. This makes sense in an evolutionary sense: Pain is a mechanism to get the priorities right when our nerve center (the brain) makes a decision between different options. Unnecessary suffering is pain (in a broader sense, also other forms of pain like the feeling of getting betrayed and other emotions) with no sufficient reason.
So? I don't see why any of this tells me I shouldn't punch you in the face. Why shouldn't I do stuff you don't like?
You are on exactly the right track when you say a thing like "suffering is as real as the real world." But you have not followed that through to its conclusion.
I am aware that my approach is kind of a reductionist one. Still I think this approach is better than to use the inner sense of disgust (like "gay men sex is disgusting, this cant't be right.")
If those were the only two possibilities, I would be very sad.
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On December 15 2012 19:17 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 08:17 HULKAMANIA wrote:On December 15 2012 03:05 [F_]aths wrote:On December 15 2012 01:02 HULKAMANIA wrote:On December 14 2012 23:35 [F_]aths wrote:On December 14 2012 22:48 WhiteDog wrote:On December 14 2012 22:21 [F_]aths wrote:On December 14 2012 21:36 WhiteDog wrote:On December 14 2012 18:08 [F_]aths wrote:On December 14 2012 13:23 sam!zdat wrote:
[quote]
Where's the scientific experiment that tells you whether or not you should care about whether or not a child "does fine", and which tells you what "does just fine" means? Is that a rigorously defined and operationalized concept? Can it be?
The Enlightenment has its limits. Defending the Enlightenment is not exactly a comfortable position right now in the academy (I know because I do defend the Enlightenment to a rather unfashionable degree).
My point is not that you're wrong. I agree with you about all of this gay people stuff. My point is just that if you start dismissing things because they "aren't scientific," you're going to find that line of reasoning coming back to bite you in the ass, I promise. Kant avec Sade, and so on. If they aren't scientitific, what are they? In a broader sense, anything which is testable and falsifiable is scientific. Social sciences aren't falsifiable, but always historically linked to a certain context - hence why the term "law" hasn't the same sense in economy (it's more tendancies than laws) than in physics. sm!zdat is right when he says that there is no "out of context" or "anhistorical" definition for childs that "do fine". The history of familly or filial love is interesting in this regard. We can measure the child's well-being at least roughly. We can have a rough look if the child is exposed to unnecessary suffering. We do have some rough options to decide if a particular environment to raise a child leads to good or bad results. Is corporal punishment good or bad for the child? Science can say something about it. Can a child be raised by same-sex parents as good as a traditional couple can? This seems to be way more difficult, but I see no reason which prevents a scientificly conducted experimet to find out. We can look at the child's level of happyness (at least roughly), we can see the average level of education and income, of healthiness and so on. I admit that those are just some and only quite rough indicators. But it is better than nothing. Is being gay an illness or a mental disorder? Science seems the best tool we have to determine. You are missing the point. Science can't say what is a "good or bad result" regarding child, because science can't define it scientifically. As for corporal punishment, well "science" can show correlation between corporal punishment and specific objectiv facts - such as number of friends, social behavior, or academic result. That's it. There is no way for sociology or any social science to clearly state that corporal punishment are bad for famillies because it's a moral judgement, that is based on the idea that kids should not get hurt by adults. Stop thinking science can teach us what is or what is not a "good" familly, because it can't. Happyness is defined socially, it's not the same at every layers of the social ladder and it's not a scientific concept that you can "measure". As for gay being a mental disorder or an illness (you don't let a lot of choice, how about gay is a sexual preferance and nothing else ?), "science" showed how it could not judge for that. What is normal and pathological is not objectively defined but linked to a rule, a social norm. For exemple, you can read G. Canguilhem, The normal and the pathological : The Normal and the Pathological is one of the crucial contributions to the history of science in the last half century. It takes as its starting point the sudden appearance of biology as a science in the 19th-century and examines the conditions determining its particular makeup.Canguilhem analyzes the radically new way in which health and disease were defined in the early 19th-century, showing that the emerging categories of the normal and the pathological were far from being objective scientific concepts. He demonstrates how the epistemological foundations of modern biology and medicine were intertwined with political, economic, and technological imperatives. While it is true that our concept of health depends on the cultural tradition and political will, we still can learn some objective facts through science. To not beat a child is now widely viewed as a moral in the western culture. Other cultures or our own culture just some umpteen years earlier, found it a moral imperative to beat the child to educate and raise it. Rather depending on a moral zeitgeist, I would like to investigate this issue with the scientific method. "Good" and "bad" or "evil" are traditionally referred to a higher morality or absolute morality. I don't believe in such things. In my world view, good, bad (or evil) must relate to the real world and therefore is subject to science. That does not mean science will get definitive answers. But if science cannot, can anything else? Science is mute on the question "Is it moral to beat a child?" Science has nothing to say about such values, and you are, by necessity, dependent upon a "moral zeitgeist" to answer that question for yourself. This is true if you consider morals a matter of opinion and/or construct of society. But "morals" is a word and we, who use it, must define a meaning for it. As I understand the rough concept of morals, morals who are moral must relate at some point to suffering. Now science comes in because suffering is the cause of events which can be in the end reduced to events in the world. On December 15 2012 01:02 HULKAMANIA wrote:Now if you already assume that the outcomes you're testing for in a scientific study (indices of child's self-esteem, for instance, or the absence of violence in his or her interpersonal relationships) are good or bad, then science may provide some insight on how one style of raising a child is tentatively better or worse—i.e. which style tends to result in the most net "good" outcomes. But you did not derive those original assumptions about good or bad from science. Nor are they "subject to science" in any sense at all. They are actually ideological presuppositions that are already in play.
And it's always the assumptions that you don't realize you're making that are the most problematic. You are right, I assume some things. But without it, we have no definition. If everyone means a different thing when talking about morality, it doesn't make much sense to talk about it at all. I consider any 'morality' which does not intend to reduce unnecessary suffering to be not moral at all. This is an assumption I make. Having values for the sake of having values doesn't really make sense to me. Does gay marriage leads to unnecessary suffering? If we want to know this, we could just discuss, or we could try to plan out a scientific endeavor to determine the answer. The thing is you're essentially conceding our main point. You have a belief about what constitutes moral vs. immoral behavior. And I hope that I'm not being unfair when I summarize that belief (roughly) as follows: "Moral behavior avoids causing unnecessary suffering. Immoral behavior causes unnecessary suffering." On a personal level, I find that belief to be rather admirable, and I think that, by and large, the world would be a far happier place if people attempted to keep space for such sentiments in their day to day lives. But the fact of the matter is, as you have admitted, your belief about morality did not originate in scientific research and experimentation, nor is it corroborated by scientific research and experimentation. No amount of scientific activity can generate the principle "Moral behavior avoids causing unnecessary suffering," nor can any amount of scientific activity help one evaluate whether such a statement is true, accurate, or good. Science is somewhat in the moral business as one shall not lie about the experiment and make up data.
No. this just means there are ethical questions involved in the concrete practice of scientific methodology in the life-world. This has nothing to do with science in a way that would be relevant to your thesis.
But in a moral discussion I would invoke science this way: "If we agree about the meaning of the word 'morality', we should use science to get results."
You're begging the entire question... that's a big "if" and that's what we're arguing about. So you agree that science comes after...?
Science itself favors reasoning over emotional reactions.
Let's try not to personify "SCIENCE" as some sort of deity or total weltanschauung. Science is a rather good strategy for producing a certain type of truth-claim. Let's not blow things out of proportion.
In this sense, one could try to use the concept of science even as a reason to establish a morality: With reason we can argue why we should try to avoid unnecessary suffering. (Of course, in many cases it is good to show emotions because we feel better and give valuable information about our feeling to other persons. In this sense, it is not the scientific optimum to keep calm all the time.) If we do something because we should while we don't have to, we can create the concept of values.
I don't understand where the science came in.
Another argument would be that many of us search the true, the good, the beautiful. Why do we do this? Maybe as side product of our evolutionary line, but even if we don't know why, we do know that we seek it. I would count this as a fact, which could be reduced to physical states of the world even though we cannot do it now because the brain and the culture is so complex. We maybe never can. And it sounds useless to create a science for the beautiful. How scientific could aesthetics ever be? I still think that science can at least say some things. If we determine why we never fully agree on what it beautiful, we can do this in a scientific way.
Well, let's not get into aesthetics. That is another question.
Also, whenever you explain something you can't understand "because of evolution," warning bells should be going off in your head. c.f. Gould and Lewontin "The Spandrels of San Marcos"
I don't want a body of authority to determine what is true, what is beautiful or what is good. I want discussion, reason and experiments to the day we cease to exist.
Sure, fine, but I think you may be fetishizing the role of "experiment" and you may have a slightly out of date idea of what "reason" is.
Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 08:17 HULKAMANIA wrote:As I understand the rough concept of morals, morals who are moral must relate at some point to suffering. Now science comes in because suffering is the cause of events which can be in the end reduced to events in the world. It is only by previously accepting that statement as true that science can weigh in on the matter at all, which is something that you've just admitted yourself. In other words, if one agrees to the first part of the above argument, then the second part follows. But there is no scientific, purely rational, or strictly logical reason at all to agree to the first part of your argument. It is simply an assertion of belief. Now in a free and pluralistic nation, I believe that it behooves us to be respectful one another's sincerely held moral convictions and to allow one another to act on those convictions to the greatest extent compatible with a peaceful and stable society. Conceiving of our own moral convictions as bearing the authority of science and rationality, however, and conceiving of other people's moral convictions as deriving from irrationality or backwardness is a real obstacle to such freedoms. Because, besides being demonstrably incorrect, such assurance that other people can only disagree with one's obviously superior morals because those other people are uneducated, stupid, disingenuous, scheming, or [insert disparaging adjective here] is a sure path to groupthink and persecution. Civil disagreements like the one were having right now show the fruits of protecting freedom of belief, freedom of religion, and freedom of conscience. They keep such disagreements civil. I mean if the state were to try to forcibly assimilate me into their system of Approved Beliefs, my only recourse would be another Crusade! This is in a sense my point. We are aware that we developed morals during our evolution as a social being while we still are selfish and egoistic. We also see that some have more power than others and we are afraid that their opinion trumps ours, even in moral questions. So we want to have the safety of a moral code everyone must agree on, to avoid exploitation. We also are afraid of being the victim of unmoral persons who don't even have a bad conscience when they are done harming us. We like to have eternal rules. The greatest fear I have in a moral debate however is dogma. Immoral things like gay sex or even incest could be viewed as not immoral at all at some point in the future. "Moral" in practice is a construct of society. Now I have an issue with different morals in different societies. If one agrees on to ban gay marriage because of moral issues while another society doesn't really have any beef with gay marriage, I question the concept of morality as universal even thought I often find it described as such. I want to find out what really is moral, what actually is immoral. The best tool I can imagine is science.
LOL what? You are concerned because people are imposing universal morality on what is in fact a social construct, and then you want to "find out what really is moral" with science?? And this right after you say you are worried about dogma and eternal rules?
Tell me, sir, what is the first experiment you will perform?
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I thought this might be interesting to everyone:
http://yougov.co.uk/news/2012/12/12/tory-voters-split-gay-marriage/
55% of public support gay marriage
Meanwhile, 53% say they support giving churches the choice of whether or not to offer same-sex marriages, while 37% oppose this and 10% don’t know.
This is from a YouGov poll. YouGov are a market research company, and are usually the source of a lot of the stats you read in you paper.
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