Pledge Of Allegiance: "One Nation, Under God"

[Baelor]

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You never addressed my point. If we were questioning right to life as a fundamental premise, why would we question it via euthanasia? Why wouldn’t we just question whether meaningless murder itself is wrong?

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<p>Because people agree with the idea that meaningless murder is wrong. For you to infer from that a general “right to life” ideal is held is to assert that people have a particular justification in mind. Someone may not believe in a “right to life,” but rather in the moral problems raised by meaningless murder; for example, it would produce utilitarian harm. At no point is the actual ideal asserted or brought up because it’s not necessarily part of the thinking.</p>

<p>Even if it were, you are simply stating that one instance defines it. Obviously, not so. “Right to life” is something that requires qualifications to even be defined at all, and is in fact defined by those very qualifications. Once circumstantial qualifications are provided, the right changes from an ideal to something split into specific situations and aspects.</p>

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Euthanasia remains a qualification. Even used in the eugenic context, it rests on the qualification that life begins at birth, not conception. Proponents of euthanasia, even in a eugenic context, wouldn’t advocate simply exterminating anyone without the ideal characteristics because there IS an implicit right to life.

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<p>That’s not true. Let me repeat what you are saying as it sounds:</p>

<p>“I believe in viewing these issues this way, and therefore everyone does.”</p>

<p>1) Euthanasia and eugenics is literally whether people have the right to live. No one here established that eugenics does in fact rest on the assumption you mention. I don’t know how you could possibly claim that. Euthanasia is literally the question of whether someone has the right to live. That IS the issue itself. Do I have the right to be here? It’s not a qualifications. It’s one facet of an issue that has profound implications on an objective level.</p>

<p>2) You do not speak for everyone who supports euthanasia and eugenics. So your statement that they believe X with justification that X is consistent with your beliefs is obviously idiotic.</p>

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I’M not projecting MY beliefs. In fact, I’m a moral skeptic. I’m arguing from the viewpoint of our social contract, which explicitly assumes a vague ideal of right to life. Of course not everyone agrees with this ideal (I don’t either), but it’s in the social contract to which the constituents of society agreed – hence my viewpoint for this discussion.

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<p>You just don’t get it. You are projecting your beliefs in this very section. You are arguing based on a social contract that YOU are establishing in a particular way.
The social contract is thus far intangible, and therefore cannot explicitly state anything, unless you would be so kind as to provide the concrete social contract. Furthermore, the social contract requires the society to be at least vaguely aware of its existence or to somehow indicate that they are willing to live by it, the prerequisite of which is clearly not simply that they live in said society. You presume too much assent where it simply does not exist.</p>

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Exactly, it’s a matter of where non-discrimination starts and stops. If you were to ask those opposed to same-sex marriage about non-discrimination as a vague ideal, few would argue against it. It’s a qualification of non-discrimination in that proponents argue that bans on same-sex unions amount to discrimination and opponents argue that it does not; it’s a matter of drawing the boundaries.

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<p>No, no, no. You are missing the entire point. </p>

<p>Let me try to illustrate this with something more strange.</p>

<p>You believe that animals and plants are people.</p>

<p>I come up to you and say, “Oh, I eat meat.”</p>

<p>Then you say, “Okay. Well since animals are people, we are discussing the issue of murder. We are now simply putting limits on acceptable murder if we were to discuss the legality of eating meat.”</p>

<p>WRONG. Because this line of reasoning relies solely on your definition of murder and your framework, NOT on the framework on which others are relying. I don’t consider animals people, so the issue of eating them is not even close to one of murder. It doesn’t even make sense for me to talk about it that way.</p>

<p>Similarly, I could claim that gay marriage is discrimination or murder or lying or genocide and come up with whatever justification that I want, but if the people who oppose it do not view it as that particular issue at all, to them it’s not a matter of putting limits on anything at all. So your statement that they oppose discrimination and therefore are putting limits on non-discrimination is obviously worthless, because you haven’t established a link between gay marriage and discrimination within their framework. In other words, your statement makes as much sense as this one:</p>

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Exactly, it’s a matter of where genocide starts and stops. If you were to ask those opposed to same-sex marriage about non-genocide as a vague ideal, few would argue against it. It’s a qualification of genocide in that proponents argue that bans on same-sex unions amount to genocide and opponents argue that it does not; it’s a matter of drawing the boundaries.

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<p>Does that make sense? No. Why? Because you don’t even view genocide as related to gay marriage.</p>

<p>By arguing that something does NOT amount to X, you are NOT necessarily putting boundaries on X. To claim otherwise is to implicitly state that they are arguing that Y form of X is acceptable when they are in fact claiming that it is not relevant in any way.</p>

<p>In other words, it’s not a matter of putting limits on acceptable versus unacceptable discrimination any more than my saying my computer not red is putting limits on the concept of red. True, perhaps, but irrelevant and vacuous, not to mention unproductive.</p>

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You never addressed this point.

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<p>I did. I said that gay marriage in the minds of those against it is not always a discrimination issue. You seem to have a problem with this statement. What I am saying is that the common ground that you require literally is not present in the gay marriage debate.</p>

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Funny coming from a person arguing from an ethically relativistic standpoint, yet claiming to be a moral absolutist. Then upon what are YOUR beliefs founded? Arbitrary faith?

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<p>Yes. That is correct, at least it is the most simply way of saying that. I have reasons for my beliefs, but ultimately they require faith – as do all beliefs.</p>

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Of course individuals can disagree with them, and of course they’re all ultimately arbitrary, but the fact of the matter remains: the constituents AGREE to them. As mentioned, without generally accepted moral premises, our debate wouldn’t center around euthanasia or same-sex unions, but it would rather be an attempt to rise above existential nihilism and determine the moral tenets upon which to found society in the first place.

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<p>You assume that people are even capable of talking about these issues. This extends from philosophy into popular psychology. I agree that there are social norms; what I do not agree with is the idea that people in society always agree to them by virtue of being on that society, because that presupposes contentment with the society. </p>

<p>So, to summarize:</p>

<p>1) People do not always think in terms of social norms, even inadvertently. Some know they do. Some do but do not know it. Others do not at all, either knowingly or unknowingly. Therefore to discuss the social contract is to assume that it exists, which is a conclusion that I have not yet seen proven. The fact that people agree on issue X, e.g. meaningless murder, means exactly that to me unless proven otherwise. So please demonstrate empirically to me that it is part of a larger issue, without poll numbers, which apply only to that particular issue or ideal. Show me.</p>

<p>2) Discussing whether something is consistent with an ideal is not to put limitations on that ideal in all cases because that mentality presupposes that it is related in any way to that ideal.</p>