Headhunter,
What will you do if your daughter ends up being gay? How will you view it then? You don’t see Cheney on that soapbox now do you.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
What is the ultimate purpose of morality?
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Purpose? Morality has no single purpose. Morality is an expression of the ego, its self interest, and its preservation. Being that all organisms differ in their interests there is no single moral authority; however, morality is used as a means of control by those given to moral authority.
[quote]CappedAndPlanIt wrote:
I could give hundreds of examples of things that YOU would say are perfectly moral for any one person to do, but would have an adverse effect if ALL men did it.
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That is part of the problem with using the word “moral.” There are some things that do not tend to the Good, nor do they tend to the Bad. The Kantian Categorical Imperative is more useful for identifying the extremes of behavior rather than ordinary action. If everyone played basketball, for example, is probably meaningless in terms of “moral” qualities.
Secondly, the Categorical Imperative is arbitrarily sensitive to nuance in the formulation of the universal law. So if I said: “I act as a king, and therefore all men shall act as kings,” it would become apparent that this universal law would obviate the definition of king itself. There could be no moral imperative. If I changed it to: “I have a kingly nature and act as a king, and all men of kingly natures shall act as kings,” then we have significantly reduced the scope of the “universal” law while introducing additional subjective qualities into it. The resultant law is much less problematic, but also less useful as “universal.”
We could formulate these laws as though they were mathematical (they may be) by saying something like “A man should act as a king in proportion to his kingly nature.” And so on.
And yet this is all rather impoverished by a sort of Enlightenment-esque, tabla rasa sort of idealism that supposes all men to have identical natures. I think this is plainly false. The end of man is inextricably bound with his nature.
Further, everything we dislike doesn’t need to be “immoral.” Everything we like doesn’t need to be “moral.” We can even separate the things themselves from their supposed concomitants to derive that a thing may be morally neutral while having immoral accidents.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
All of this is very simple — an action is moral if all humans can do it, without negative consequence. Should all men rob and plunder? Should all men be homosexual perverts? Should all men cheat on their wives?
Simple, most people can comprehend it.
Now, to my critics, suggest a better standard.
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Negative consequences of homosexual sex are…? A pain in the ass?
[quote]Schwarzfahrer wrote:
What is more brutal, unfair and inhuman than planned, strategically deployed systematic violence?
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I disagree, Schwarz. A look at the history of human civilization will show that while planned, strategically deployed systematic violence may seem unfair to its victims, it is inherently human.