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There appears to be this meme going around. I'm avoiding work. The answers below actually got interesting. And long. Really long.
Abortion?: It was not very long ago that I thought abortions were a perfectly reasonable thing. Then I kind of changed my mind. I still think very early abortions are basically indistinguishable from contraception, and that if contraception is bad than Not Spending Every Minute Of Our Days Making Babies So Our Zygotes Don't Go To Waste is bad, and that's just dim. However, I generally dislike the thought of people having mid-late contraceptions, on the grounds that we don't know when the soul enters the child, or where it goes if the child is never born, and I'd rather be safe than sorry. Up to the point where I found myself willing to offer to look after someone's child, if I could, rather than them having an abortion. On the level of society in general, however, it should be legal, safe and hassle-free - making it illegal or stressful just helps mess up and inconvenience the poor mother, rather than doing any good.
Death Penalty?: The death penalty is wrong, and from my point of view (if I was running the government) just plain stupid. If someone does something wrong, the last thing I want to do is kill them before they've had a chance to repent of it. There are generally implementation difficulties and false positive issues as well. I think this one should be abolished on a social level.
Prostitution?: Morally, I think it's generally wrong and unhealthy, although no more wrong and unhealthy than any other kind of extramarital sex (and, if I'm honest, I think it's a good deal less wrong and unhealthy than some). Socially, I think it should be legalised and regulated, because this ought to deal with the really bad bits and shake it down into 'only as wrong as what everyone else does anyway'. There are a number of implementation difficulties with legalised prostitution, which I've discussed in the past, but I don't feel I currently know enough about the related issues to go into them in any detail.
Alcohol?: I don't drink, for several reasons: I vaguely distrust things which are designed to lower my inhibitions, I get passively drunk quite happily anyhow, and I'm quite unwell and tired enough anyhow without encouraging such states. Also, I don't like the taste, which doesn't exactly encourage me. I don't think low-level drinking is particularly harmful, although many of the people I know and respect who do drink have said at some time or other that they wish they didn't. I love to point out to militiant anti-alcohol Christians that Jesus' first miracle was to turn water into wine.
Marijuana?: The fist set of demerits under 'alcohol' applies pretty well; also, it's generally smoked, which is Really Very Bad For Me Indeed, sometimes even just to be in the room with. I seem to have picked up the impression that marijuana smoke is less disagreeable than tobacco smoke, but maybe that's just because it doesn't tend to come in such quantities, as it appears to be mostly rolled with tobacco. I'm pretty sure I've quantified the possible effects of alcohol by observation and anecdotes from people of similar physiological makeup to myself, and being told that those dreams I have in which I am drunk are pretty accurate, but I'm not sure I have quantified the effects of being stoned, so I might one day be tempted by some food items containing the stuff. I don't think it's in any way intrinsically bad or wrong, but I shy away from seeing it legalised because the fools will legalise it in cigarette form and that will not help my dream of getting tobacco smoking banned.
Other drugs?: I don't have enough data to maintain a sensible position. The problem with the 'people can wreck themselves if they like' argument is that everyone else has to pay for their medical care, but then we get down the 'what about dangerous sports' path and I really don't have the energy for that whole argument right now.
Gay marriage?: It's a real shame that people are so fixated on this word 'marriage'. I feel that the best and most obvious solution is to have the state hand out 'Civil Partnerships' or some such which basically give all the nice next-of-kin, inheritance-tax-free stuff to any group of friends or lovers who sign for it, and then let churches and covens and what-have-you hand out whatever rites of partnership they like, these having no legal standing whatsoever.
If you want to draw me into a debate on 'the whole homosexual issue' - I did a lot of research on this way back when, and I decided that yes, on the balance of probabilities the Bible does say that homosexual relations are wrong, no, I can't argue this in any manner that makes sense without relying on 'God says it's wrong and He knows best', and no, I don't think I know certainly enough to impose my views on other people. Mostly I feel it's between the people involved and God, and maybe people should think a bit more on the 'do not judge lest ye be judged' bit of That Book.
Illegal immigrants?: Mm, this is a can of worms. There are several different issues here: people-smugglers, how much paperwork legal migration takes, and then the whole issue of economic migration and whether it's a good or a bad thing in general.
People-smugglers are bad. They promise lots of things (which encourages economic migrancy which needn't happen) and take people's money and give them rubbish service and kill lots of people and stuff. I have yet to see anyone give them a positive spin, and suspect the people who would do so are ill-informed.
It is possible there is too much red tape around legal migration. There certainly appears to be too much red tape and lots of bad stuff happening around asylum seekers. However, whether this is actually too much depends an awful lot on the answer to the third issue, because if we decide that this country really cannot support immigrants then it is indeed our duty to make it difficult, even for people who really need to move, although we might like to think about deporting asylum seekers somewhere other than back to where they started if there are places immigration isn't quite so bad for and that aren't quite so bad for them as where they were about to be tortured to death or whatever.
The whole issue of whether immigration is a good or bad thing is really difficult. I think I posted about it recently after my parents were jokingly discussing needing more immigrants because our local Tesco couldn't find the staff to sit at the till at midnight for peanuts and hence wasn't 24-hr any more when we really needed it to be. It is fairly obvious that this country is 'better' than many, many other countries in this world, even for the poorest people in it. The poor of this country face huge difficulties and malnutrition and everything, but not in quite the same style as the poor of small African desert nations perpetually at war with themselves. It is natural that a sizable chunk of the inhabitants of those nations would quite like to be here instead. The fear is that if we let them in then some of the people we already have will become poorer as a result, and hence we would be doing a disservice to the people we (as the govenrment) are here to look after.
We have better public services than quite a lot of places. If we let in economic migrants, we would have to provide them with those services, just because it's fair and that's what makes them so good. If the economic migrants did less work than the work it took to support them, that would be bad for our economy. I claim, on no particular evidence, that the vast majority of economic migrants are perfectly willing to work as hard as they can and learn English so they can work better and generally be far more productive members of society than our own crop of stupid people who we are afraid might lose their jobs which they do shoddily over it. On the other hand, I accept that the economic migrants have a necessarily limited skillset, their education is probably not that great, and hence they do have lousiness issues (like 'I can't understand any of those shop assistants') that our local labour force doesn't so much. I suspect that it would take quite a lot more migrants than we currently accept to flood the 'jobs just anyone can do as long as they're willing to be paid little and work stupidly hard' market.
There's also a line of argument that goes 'Everyone's kind of worried about this 'population time bomb' we're setting up by having less kids. However, the people over that way are setting up their own 'population time bomb' by having too many kids. So if their kids come over here to look after our old people, everybody's happy.'
I think I have rambled on quite enough about this, although if anyone's interested and would like to ask specific questions I might be motivated to do some research and actually post about it seperately. If people would like to do their research for me and tell me about it, that would be great :).
Smoking?: I have a shamelessly personal bias against people who smoke - it makes me cough really badly and generally messes up my breathing. Therefore it's bad. Therefore people should not do it around me, and ideally should not do it. Also, from mostly anecdotal evidence I conclude that nicotine, especially in cigarette form, is a lot worse for you than many, many other illegal drugs, and worst of all is viciously addictive. If any drugs should be illegal, nicotine should be illegal, because the main critera I would choose for making drugs illegal are the addictiveness (because being addicted to stuff, especially if it is actual physical Stuff, is Bad, mmkay?) and the health penalties. Smoking is also highly antisocial whatever's in the cigarette, specifically because it makes me ill (and I suspect by extension many other people with breathing trouble) and generally, and so ought to be regulated the heck out of, if not entirely banned.
Drunk driving?: I'm not sure why on earth this one is in here. Drunk driving, bad, mmkay? Driving when impaired in any way, bad, mmkay? Next question.
Cloning?: I must admit - I like the idea of cloning. This is because I not-so-secretly would like a clone-daughter, because I liked me as a kid, and I wanted to know her better, and I feel woefully incompetent to bring up any child who is not me. And it would help answer that pesky nature vs nurture question scientifically. However, I would like to do an awful lot of unethical things to children in order to see how they tick and how to make better adults, and I suspect this is one of them. Generally, I do not see what people's problem is with this, except that we're inept at it and killing people-in-potentia, as discussed under Abortion, is something I think should not please me.
Racism?: Racism is bad, mmkay? Um. Except I laugh at racist jokes. And religionist jokes. Even the ones aimed at me. Sometimes especially the ones aimed at me. I like them because they poke fun at stereotypes, not because I believe in the stereotypes. I don't tend to think about race issues, but this is probably because I am white and most anyone I run into is basically white (even if they're not) and I must admit I might stare at people of unusual colour from my perspective in the street because I don't see many of them, like I'd stare at a different kind of flower. So. According to people who are really into race issues, I'm a racist. I think positive discrmination really, really sucks; it would be really nice if everyone could judge just on competence, I accept they can't, but I don't think that making things explicitly not based on competence in hopefully the other way to people's natural biases is going to actually help any. I really don't know what to do about racism; I don't understand it so I don't know how I can fix it.
Premarital sex?: It's wrong. There are many long and complicated reasons why it's probably suboptimal, too. People spend far too much time on the subject.
Religion?: I am a Christian. You should be a Christian, too. Repeatedly stating the second fact is not likely to get me anywhere, so I won't. (If I think it will, then I might.) Also, Christians should get on better. It would be nice if God would provide us all with a little implanted neon sign saying 'Christian' so people would stop all these long and dreary debates as to who is a 'real Christian' and who isn't. Also, I think that CICCU's main problem is that it refuses to look at the world from other people's worldviews, even if it believes their worldviews are wrong, for long enough to see whether its favourite tactics are actually going to work or about to do more harm than good. If anyone wants to ask me anything else specifically religious, do go ahead; I like a good religious debate. Heck, I like a bad religious debate, so long as people aren't taking it too seriously.
The war in Iraq?: I get this feeling it's more complicated than I give it credit for. Mark me down as a wishy-washy liberal type, of the 'would have been nice if Saddam faded slowly into the night, dropping bombs on people is nasty, somehow they seem to have managed to screw everything up with no obvious means of un-screwing it, oh dear, *wrings hands*' type.
Bush?: He is absolutely and precisely the leader that America In General asked for and deserved. To all appearences, he is an excellent representative of the majority of his people. He is the most wonderful example I have had the misfortune to witness of the Problem Of Democracy, which can be subtitled People Are Stupid. On good or bad days, depending on your perspective, this is further subtitled '(including me)'.
Downloading music?: I have, on occasion, downloaded music. I was on dialup, and it was a bit of a pain, and I managed to catch some adware from it because I was stupid. It was music that my dad had in his LP collection that was too much of a hassle to rip, but I used this justification merely to give me a warm glow of self-righteousness. I posess large quantities of MP3s which are from two main sources - my dad's CD collection, and MP3 collections from friends, most of which is downloaded.
Downloading music is wrong, and it is theft. I like having a vast collection music, and I feel awkward about going and buying all the music I have, because it strikes me as something of a waste of money. Mostly the whole affair causes me to reflect on the sad state of society and how much I loathe capitalism absolutely. Unfortunately I can't find a better system which doesn't rely on engineering a different species to inhabit it first. But I want stuff free, and I am happy to do things free to get it, possibly even if they're not very shiny things; however, I think there would be a chronic shortage of people to do the 'scutwork' and unfortunately our robot-desiging skills just aren't up there yet. Every now and again I feel vaguly bad about my stolen music and stop listening to it for a while, often because I want to get self-righteous with other people about downloaded music and warez, but it never lasts and I never actually bring myself to delete it.
The legal drinking age?: Age limits are awkward. However, people are awkward, and so there isn't much better we can do. It's possible we should have to take drinking licenses like we take driving licenses, but on the other hand that is really quite silly. I don't know and have no strong opinions, except I would like not to be in danger or percieved danger from drunk people (normally youths) and I would like everyone to be sensible enough for there to be no regulation but I know this doesn't work either.
Porn?: Commercial porn is dull, and quite utterly gross in ways that aren't even interesting. The production of it comes under at least the same catagory of 'wrong' as pre-marital sex and prostitution. I would vaguely rather it didn't exist. Artistic porn (e.g. slash fiction, drawn artwork - even live-action done tastefully) is less immediately repulsive, and although I have a sneaking suspicion some of it is probably wrong in the same manner too, I think it's a useful part of artistic expression. I do not see why children should be kept away from porn; they should not have it inflicted upon them, sure, but I see no more problem than with violence, and that only because I know some kids who it gives nightmares (which is just plain awkward, as well as unpleasent) and then it's obvious what you should keep the particular child away from.
Suicide?: I think suicide is one of the most selfish things you can do. In my worldview it's also quite pointless. I think it is possible to contrive a situtation in which it is the best solution, but you have to try very hard indeed. On the other hand, the idea of people hanging onto life tooth and claw when it's basically over also repels me somewhat. Generally, I would vote for fighting tooth and claw if the person wasn't known to be a Christian, and letting them go gracefully if they are, but I understand that's due to a worldview which is not socially shared, and hence I think I should support the 'fight tooth and claw' approach in case it does some good somewhere. People who try and commit suicide need help and need it fast, not to have their lives made worse in whichever way you feel like.
Abortion?: It was not very long ago that I thought abortions were a perfectly reasonable thing. Then I kind of changed my mind. I still think very early abortions are basically indistinguishable from contraception, and that if contraception is bad than Not Spending Every Minute Of Our Days Making Babies So Our Zygotes Don't Go To Waste is bad, and that's just dim. However, I generally dislike the thought of people having mid-late contraceptions, on the grounds that we don't know when the soul enters the child, or where it goes if the child is never born, and I'd rather be safe than sorry. Up to the point where I found myself willing to offer to look after someone's child, if I could, rather than them having an abortion. On the level of society in general, however, it should be legal, safe and hassle-free - making it illegal or stressful just helps mess up and inconvenience the poor mother, rather than doing any good.
Death Penalty?: The death penalty is wrong, and from my point of view (if I was running the government) just plain stupid. If someone does something wrong, the last thing I want to do is kill them before they've had a chance to repent of it. There are generally implementation difficulties and false positive issues as well. I think this one should be abolished on a social level.
Prostitution?: Morally, I think it's generally wrong and unhealthy, although no more wrong and unhealthy than any other kind of extramarital sex (and, if I'm honest, I think it's a good deal less wrong and unhealthy than some). Socially, I think it should be legalised and regulated, because this ought to deal with the really bad bits and shake it down into 'only as wrong as what everyone else does anyway'. There are a number of implementation difficulties with legalised prostitution, which I've discussed in the past, but I don't feel I currently know enough about the related issues to go into them in any detail.
Alcohol?: I don't drink, for several reasons: I vaguely distrust things which are designed to lower my inhibitions, I get passively drunk quite happily anyhow, and I'm quite unwell and tired enough anyhow without encouraging such states. Also, I don't like the taste, which doesn't exactly encourage me. I don't think low-level drinking is particularly harmful, although many of the people I know and respect who do drink have said at some time or other that they wish they didn't. I love to point out to militiant anti-alcohol Christians that Jesus' first miracle was to turn water into wine.
Marijuana?: The fist set of demerits under 'alcohol' applies pretty well; also, it's generally smoked, which is Really Very Bad For Me Indeed, sometimes even just to be in the room with. I seem to have picked up the impression that marijuana smoke is less disagreeable than tobacco smoke, but maybe that's just because it doesn't tend to come in such quantities, as it appears to be mostly rolled with tobacco. I'm pretty sure I've quantified the possible effects of alcohol by observation and anecdotes from people of similar physiological makeup to myself, and being told that those dreams I have in which I am drunk are pretty accurate, but I'm not sure I have quantified the effects of being stoned, so I might one day be tempted by some food items containing the stuff. I don't think it's in any way intrinsically bad or wrong, but I shy away from seeing it legalised because the fools will legalise it in cigarette form and that will not help my dream of getting tobacco smoking banned.
Other drugs?: I don't have enough data to maintain a sensible position. The problem with the 'people can wreck themselves if they like' argument is that everyone else has to pay for their medical care, but then we get down the 'what about dangerous sports' path and I really don't have the energy for that whole argument right now.
Gay marriage?: It's a real shame that people are so fixated on this word 'marriage'. I feel that the best and most obvious solution is to have the state hand out 'Civil Partnerships' or some such which basically give all the nice next-of-kin, inheritance-tax-free stuff to any group of friends or lovers who sign for it, and then let churches and covens and what-have-you hand out whatever rites of partnership they like, these having no legal standing whatsoever.
If you want to draw me into a debate on 'the whole homosexual issue' - I did a lot of research on this way back when, and I decided that yes, on the balance of probabilities the Bible does say that homosexual relations are wrong, no, I can't argue this in any manner that makes sense without relying on 'God says it's wrong and He knows best', and no, I don't think I know certainly enough to impose my views on other people. Mostly I feel it's between the people involved and God, and maybe people should think a bit more on the 'do not judge lest ye be judged' bit of That Book.
Illegal immigrants?: Mm, this is a can of worms. There are several different issues here: people-smugglers, how much paperwork legal migration takes, and then the whole issue of economic migration and whether it's a good or a bad thing in general.
People-smugglers are bad. They promise lots of things (which encourages economic migrancy which needn't happen) and take people's money and give them rubbish service and kill lots of people and stuff. I have yet to see anyone give them a positive spin, and suspect the people who would do so are ill-informed.
It is possible there is too much red tape around legal migration. There certainly appears to be too much red tape and lots of bad stuff happening around asylum seekers. However, whether this is actually too much depends an awful lot on the answer to the third issue, because if we decide that this country really cannot support immigrants then it is indeed our duty to make it difficult, even for people who really need to move, although we might like to think about deporting asylum seekers somewhere other than back to where they started if there are places immigration isn't quite so bad for and that aren't quite so bad for them as where they were about to be tortured to death or whatever.
The whole issue of whether immigration is a good or bad thing is really difficult. I think I posted about it recently after my parents were jokingly discussing needing more immigrants because our local Tesco couldn't find the staff to sit at the till at midnight for peanuts and hence wasn't 24-hr any more when we really needed it to be. It is fairly obvious that this country is 'better' than many, many other countries in this world, even for the poorest people in it. The poor of this country face huge difficulties and malnutrition and everything, but not in quite the same style as the poor of small African desert nations perpetually at war with themselves. It is natural that a sizable chunk of the inhabitants of those nations would quite like to be here instead. The fear is that if we let them in then some of the people we already have will become poorer as a result, and hence we would be doing a disservice to the people we (as the govenrment) are here to look after.
We have better public services than quite a lot of places. If we let in economic migrants, we would have to provide them with those services, just because it's fair and that's what makes them so good. If the economic migrants did less work than the work it took to support them, that would be bad for our economy. I claim, on no particular evidence, that the vast majority of economic migrants are perfectly willing to work as hard as they can and learn English so they can work better and generally be far more productive members of society than our own crop of stupid people who we are afraid might lose their jobs which they do shoddily over it. On the other hand, I accept that the economic migrants have a necessarily limited skillset, their education is probably not that great, and hence they do have lousiness issues (like 'I can't understand any of those shop assistants') that our local labour force doesn't so much. I suspect that it would take quite a lot more migrants than we currently accept to flood the 'jobs just anyone can do as long as they're willing to be paid little and work stupidly hard' market.
There's also a line of argument that goes 'Everyone's kind of worried about this 'population time bomb' we're setting up by having less kids. However, the people over that way are setting up their own 'population time bomb' by having too many kids. So if their kids come over here to look after our old people, everybody's happy.'
I think I have rambled on quite enough about this, although if anyone's interested and would like to ask specific questions I might be motivated to do some research and actually post about it seperately. If people would like to do their research for me and tell me about it, that would be great :).
Smoking?: I have a shamelessly personal bias against people who smoke - it makes me cough really badly and generally messes up my breathing. Therefore it's bad. Therefore people should not do it around me, and ideally should not do it. Also, from mostly anecdotal evidence I conclude that nicotine, especially in cigarette form, is a lot worse for you than many, many other illegal drugs, and worst of all is viciously addictive. If any drugs should be illegal, nicotine should be illegal, because the main critera I would choose for making drugs illegal are the addictiveness (because being addicted to stuff, especially if it is actual physical Stuff, is Bad, mmkay?) and the health penalties. Smoking is also highly antisocial whatever's in the cigarette, specifically because it makes me ill (and I suspect by extension many other people with breathing trouble) and generally, and so ought to be regulated the heck out of, if not entirely banned.
Drunk driving?: I'm not sure why on earth this one is in here. Drunk driving, bad, mmkay? Driving when impaired in any way, bad, mmkay? Next question.
Cloning?: I must admit - I like the idea of cloning. This is because I not-so-secretly would like a clone-daughter, because I liked me as a kid, and I wanted to know her better, and I feel woefully incompetent to bring up any child who is not me. And it would help answer that pesky nature vs nurture question scientifically. However, I would like to do an awful lot of unethical things to children in order to see how they tick and how to make better adults, and I suspect this is one of them. Generally, I do not see what people's problem is with this, except that we're inept at it and killing people-in-potentia, as discussed under Abortion, is something I think should not please me.
Racism?: Racism is bad, mmkay? Um. Except I laugh at racist jokes. And religionist jokes. Even the ones aimed at me. Sometimes especially the ones aimed at me. I like them because they poke fun at stereotypes, not because I believe in the stereotypes. I don't tend to think about race issues, but this is probably because I am white and most anyone I run into is basically white (even if they're not) and I must admit I might stare at people of unusual colour from my perspective in the street because I don't see many of them, like I'd stare at a different kind of flower. So. According to people who are really into race issues, I'm a racist. I think positive discrmination really, really sucks; it would be really nice if everyone could judge just on competence, I accept they can't, but I don't think that making things explicitly not based on competence in hopefully the other way to people's natural biases is going to actually help any. I really don't know what to do about racism; I don't understand it so I don't know how I can fix it.
Premarital sex?: It's wrong. There are many long and complicated reasons why it's probably suboptimal, too. People spend far too much time on the subject.
Religion?: I am a Christian. You should be a Christian, too. Repeatedly stating the second fact is not likely to get me anywhere, so I won't. (If I think it will, then I might.) Also, Christians should get on better. It would be nice if God would provide us all with a little implanted neon sign saying 'Christian' so people would stop all these long and dreary debates as to who is a 'real Christian' and who isn't. Also, I think that CICCU's main problem is that it refuses to look at the world from other people's worldviews, even if it believes their worldviews are wrong, for long enough to see whether its favourite tactics are actually going to work or about to do more harm than good. If anyone wants to ask me anything else specifically religious, do go ahead; I like a good religious debate. Heck, I like a bad religious debate, so long as people aren't taking it too seriously.
The war in Iraq?: I get this feeling it's more complicated than I give it credit for. Mark me down as a wishy-washy liberal type, of the 'would have been nice if Saddam faded slowly into the night, dropping bombs on people is nasty, somehow they seem to have managed to screw everything up with no obvious means of un-screwing it, oh dear, *wrings hands*' type.
Bush?: He is absolutely and precisely the leader that America In General asked for and deserved. To all appearences, he is an excellent representative of the majority of his people. He is the most wonderful example I have had the misfortune to witness of the Problem Of Democracy, which can be subtitled People Are Stupid. On good or bad days, depending on your perspective, this is further subtitled '(including me)'.
Downloading music?: I have, on occasion, downloaded music. I was on dialup, and it was a bit of a pain, and I managed to catch some adware from it because I was stupid. It was music that my dad had in his LP collection that was too much of a hassle to rip, but I used this justification merely to give me a warm glow of self-righteousness. I posess large quantities of MP3s which are from two main sources - my dad's CD collection, and MP3 collections from friends, most of which is downloaded.
Downloading music is wrong, and it is theft. I like having a vast collection music, and I feel awkward about going and buying all the music I have, because it strikes me as something of a waste of money. Mostly the whole affair causes me to reflect on the sad state of society and how much I loathe capitalism absolutely. Unfortunately I can't find a better system which doesn't rely on engineering a different species to inhabit it first. But I want stuff free, and I am happy to do things free to get it, possibly even if they're not very shiny things; however, I think there would be a chronic shortage of people to do the 'scutwork' and unfortunately our robot-desiging skills just aren't up there yet. Every now and again I feel vaguly bad about my stolen music and stop listening to it for a while, often because I want to get self-righteous with other people about downloaded music and warez, but it never lasts and I never actually bring myself to delete it.
The legal drinking age?: Age limits are awkward. However, people are awkward, and so there isn't much better we can do. It's possible we should have to take drinking licenses like we take driving licenses, but on the other hand that is really quite silly. I don't know and have no strong opinions, except I would like not to be in danger or percieved danger from drunk people (normally youths) and I would like everyone to be sensible enough for there to be no regulation but I know this doesn't work either.
Porn?: Commercial porn is dull, and quite utterly gross in ways that aren't even interesting. The production of it comes under at least the same catagory of 'wrong' as pre-marital sex and prostitution. I would vaguely rather it didn't exist. Artistic porn (e.g. slash fiction, drawn artwork - even live-action done tastefully) is less immediately repulsive, and although I have a sneaking suspicion some of it is probably wrong in the same manner too, I think it's a useful part of artistic expression. I do not see why children should be kept away from porn; they should not have it inflicted upon them, sure, but I see no more problem than with violence, and that only because I know some kids who it gives nightmares (which is just plain awkward, as well as unpleasent) and then it's obvious what you should keep the particular child away from.
Suicide?: I think suicide is one of the most selfish things you can do. In my worldview it's also quite pointless. I think it is possible to contrive a situtation in which it is the best solution, but you have to try very hard indeed. On the other hand, the idea of people hanging onto life tooth and claw when it's basically over also repels me somewhat. Generally, I would vote for fighting tooth and claw if the person wasn't known to be a Christian, and letting them go gracefully if they are, but I understand that's due to a worldview which is not socially shared, and hence I think I should support the 'fight tooth and claw' approach in case it does some good somewhere. People who try and commit suicide need help and need it fast, not to have their lives made worse in whichever way you feel like.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-27 01:39 am (UTC)From:It's always struck me as quite a central concept; it goes along with the whole 'the pass mark to get to Heaven is 100% and nobody can make it, which is why we need Jesus' thing, because in that system all sin has the same consequence and is hence as bad as any other sin.
Maybe I should do some more research on it sometime.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-27 02:53 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-04-28 09:47 am (UTC)From:This was read at Evensong sometime last term and it stuck because I've heard evangelicals claim that all sins are equally bad.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-28 10:16 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-04-27 06:28 am (UTC)From:Maybe I'm just reading "equally wrong" in the wrong way. Do you agree with me that in one of the cases they are living *much closer* to God's ideal for humanity, even though they are not achieving the unachievable perfection? Surely to live in a moral way that is close to God's ideal for mankind but just misses is to be "less wrong" than to live in a way that deliberately turns away from this ideal? Can you accept a sliding scale "Sex with love and marriage"; "sex with love"; "sex with no love" as being increasingly further from Gods plan? Would you think that sex in a marriage without Love was as wrong as prostitution too, as to not love is a great sin?
no subject
Date: 2004-04-27 06:35 am (UTC)From:If I can take a stab at this; the answer is that one usually expects people to use morals to evaluate this sort of situation, not the black-and-white sledgehammer of "is this sin".
no subject
Date: 2004-04-27 06:47 am (UTC)From:And if people's morality code comes from their religion, which the answers to the meme would seem to suggest to at least some extent, then saying that something is more or less morally wrong surely implies some sort of "more or less wrongness" in the eyes of the religion / God?
So being able to say that one of the two situations is more or less immoral surely is the same as saying they're more or less wrong? Or was the original comment ment to say that they were equally immoral too?
(Now I think about it, morals are kind of the "sliding scale of wrongness" I was thinking of.)
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Date: 2004-04-27 06:52 am (UTC)From:I do agree that one case is much closer to God's ideal, and to live as close to that ideal as possible is better than to turn away from it. I agree that there is a scale of 'further away from God's plan'. In the last case, I'd say the sin is the absence of love, not anything further, and I'd have to have better definitions before I could be sure of my ground here.
I think we might be working under different definitions of 'wrong' - I'm using 'wrong' to mark anything which ought to be avoided because it is sinful and all sins are equally wrong because they are sins, but not all sins are equally harmful, which is a different concept altogether. I'm still not entirely sure in which proportion we should try and minimise wrong and harmful.
(One of the issues I have with your example is it presupposes consequences for actions; just because the consequences eventually work out for the best doesn't mean that the couple know this at the time of their earlier actions, and hence the actions are wrong (because there is the potential for great harm, even if eventually it doesn't come about). I'm not sure what the balance in the two situations is for potential levels of harm, but my instincts are that the prospects are about equal... it's just that the prostitution case will always be harmful, but perhaps at a lower level, whereas the other case may sort itself out to be okay in the end, but on the other hand could easily do a lot more damage.)
I'm pretty sure I'm not explaining myself very well on the whole 'what is wrong' thing. Sorry.
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Date: 2004-04-27 07:03 am (UTC)From:Also you would say that prostitution, premarital sex, theft, and marital sex in the absence of love, were all "equally wrong" due to the sin in all of them?
If you answer yes to the above, I think I've kind of got my head round it. Although I'd be interested in a reply to my other comment after Senji about morally wrong - would you say the better situation is less "morally wrong"?
*at least in this idealised situation where we know the consequences
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Date: 2004-04-27 07:27 am (UTC)From:Yes, with the caveat that something still pings as 'not necessarily sin because it strikes me as a state-of-affairs problem rather than a specific action problem' about the last one.
I'm not too clear on the distinction between morals and ethics; I would tend to define 'morally wrong' as the kind of 'absolute wrongness' and 'ethically wrong' as the 'sliding scale of wrongness'. But I'm fairly sure those are not the 'correct' definitions. I feel more comfortable saying that the second situation is 'less harmful' rather than anything else.
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Date: 2004-04-27 07:31 am (UTC)From:Thanks for wasting your time answering me, I think it's a lot clearer in my head now :-)
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Date: 2004-04-27 07:44 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-04-27 08:03 am (UTC)From:I'm interested in where you get your concept of what a sin is though. I tend to muddle by with some wishy washy idea that a sin is acting without Love, away from Gods plan, without trying to pin down too much which situations do that, as I'm not sure I can know. So I wouldn't be confident in saying that the pre-marital sex in the "nice" case was a sin. How would you define a sin? Would you say your main idea of sin was biblical teachings, or what?
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Date: 2004-04-28 01:16 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-04-28 02:39 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-04-28 03:18 am (UTC)From:1) All food laws are repealed (cf Peter's vision of a table of 'unclean' food descending from Heaven and being told to eat).
2) By extension, anything that is meant to be done because foo is 'unclean' is almost certainly not still a sin.
3) All laws to do with sacrifices are now unnecessary because we have had our one perfect sacrifice in Jesus and no longer need to atone for sins in that manner.
There are still a few grey areas (my favourites are the wearing of clothes with mixed thread, as you said, and cross-breeding of animals) but that clears up most of the stuff people normally point at. Also, I tend to take my main list from things mentioned in the New Testament rather than things only mentioned in the Old.
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Date: 2004-04-28 03:39 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-04-27 06:40 am (UTC)From:Disclaimer: I'm not a Christian, and have never come across this idea before, so I may have missed something, but... the only moral scale on which I could see this concept applying is the one where the only judgement you can ever make about people is 'are they perfect? yes/no', with no room for 'but's, which seems to me a fantastically impractical approach to a world full of moral grey areas. Do you really believe it's as bad to take someone's biscuits as it is to take their life?
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Date: 2004-04-27 06:58 am (UTC)From:Yes, I do believe that it is as wrong (but not necessarily as harmful - I'm not sure where 'bad' comes) to take someone's biscuits as to take their life. Both require you to admit you've done wrong and be remorseful for it. Both carry the same penalty. Both are wrong. Both should be avoided equally. Note that this is an entirely theological viewpoint and that I am much more likely to take your biscuits than your life, on the grounds that the former is less likely to get me into so much trouble and more likely to be viewed as a joke or that you had offered me the biscuits by letting me near them, and that it is less harmful to you.
'wrong' as a blanket term helps people to get things in perspective, to not rant on and on about 'big sins' or whichever sins they are not committing without seeing all the 'little sins' in their own lives which are *just as bad* and working on putting those right more than trying to remove those sins they see as a big thing in others.
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Date: 2004-04-27 07:42 am (UTC)From:Right, so my conclusions from this are thusly:
You're saying the system is designed such that "are they perfect" should always be answered "no". This implies that all human beings are always imperfect. However, the exercise of free will requires that it be possible that we be perfect (otherwise Christ, being wholy human, would have been unable to be sinless).
Also, you are saying that God has deliberately pushed Humanity further away from Himself, making it harder for Humanity to Love Him, in order that it be easier that that portion of Humanity that do Love Him can Love each other more easily.
What I would say is more like thusly:
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Date: 2004-04-27 08:28 am (UTC)From: (Anonymous)How do you get to this?
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Date: 2004-04-27 08:40 am (UTC)From: