Posted on 06/14/2011 12:44:32 PM PDT by libertycause13
Who owns your body?
Judging from our nation’s body of law, the ruling class wrongly believes the government does.
However, you own your body and, with that ownership, you have a God-given natural right to do what you will with it, even if that means ending your life.
That is the lesson we should take from the life of Dr. Jacob “Jack” Kevorkian, who died June 3 at the age of 83. As he once said, “Dying is not a crime.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thinkfree.freedomblogging.com ...
The discussion has no point unless there is an absolute commitment to the Law of God. Without God’s sacred Law every act of evil is defensible. God’s Law is clear. He gives life and He takes it away. It’s an Amish thing.
I’m not talking about guilt or innocence, but moral justification. If there is the need to make a crucial distinction, then there is relativity. When you have to use words like, ‘generally’ and terms like ‘certain specified circumstances’, it’s not objective, it’s relative to a circumstance.
Does belonging to an army, but in a non-combatant position, count as an aggressive, violent act? Pressing a button and eliminating a group of sleeping enemy soldiers from 20000ft?
A regular guy with no interest in going to war against anyone, lives in a country that declares war on another country. He goes to war and kills or gets killed by the same kind of guy, just from the enemy country though.
These all result in the taking of a human life. You’re saying these losses of life are not relative?
The very terms, justice and judgement themselves are relative to the law and who decides what the law is.
>>> Which raises the question of how many other physicians, and other medical caregivers are out there, who have committed, and continue to commit murder, with little or no chance of being caught?
Bing Crosby’s final screen role spoke to this question.
“One of the amazing films of the ABC Tuesday Night at the Movies, Bing Crosby starts out as a Kervorkian style doctor but crosses the line as he begins to make judgments on who in his small town must live or die based on their conduct. Chilling and foretelling.”
Dr. Cook’s Garden (1971)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065657/combined
If a customer puts $20 on the counter of a deli to pay for his food and the counterman takes it, it's a sale. If a random person off the street takes it and makes off with it, it's theft. The morality of the action is dependent on the objective circumstances and the objective status of the actors. Yet under your argument, designating the one act as a theft and not the other is relativistic, because the distinction is based on who is taking the $20 (the counterman) and the circumstances (buying food from a deli).
Your notion of "relativism" is, frankly, erroneous. All human activity is undertaken by specific persons in specific circumstances.
I have specifically pointed out the difference between defensive killing and murder.
“Logan’s Run”
"Crucial distinction" is not the same as "relativity" in he moral sense, because the "crucial distinction" I am speaking of refers to rules which are absolute within the limits of their proper definition.
For instance, Person A says "Thou shalt not steal". Person B says "Ah, but do you consume milk or honey? Aren't they stolen from the cattle and the bees? Your morality is relativisitic!" Person A can justly reply, "Let me specify. First, in the moral sense "steal" means "steal from any member of the human family," and "steal" also in this context means "unjust taking," i.e. theft. Now let's define "unjust". Etc. The moral norm makes sense only if its terms are defined and its limits specified.
The moral prohibitions which are absolute, are actually very few, but very firm. In the question of killing, the absolute is that the ordinary, blameless human subject has an absolute right not to have his life intentionally, deliberately ended --- whether his death ins intended as a means or as an end.
I think this is admirably well stated by the British philospher (my personal hero) G.E.M. Anscombe, who summarized it in this way:
“There is one consideration here which has something like the position of absolute zero or the velocity of light in current physics.It cannot possibly be an exercise of civic authority deliberately to kill or mutilate innocent subjects".
And again:
"For men to choose to kill the innocent as a means to their ends is always murder."
This norm is absolute and applies across absolutely every set of circumstances: the killing of an innocent person is murder whether done by the military, or by the medical profession, whether done by a person on their own, or under orders from a superior; whether done by abortion, a bomb, or a baseball bat. The act of killing an innocent person is termed by Anscombe the violation of an “exceptionless norm” --- and if you're interested, also termed by the Catholic Church an "abominable crime," no matter what the circumstances. Including abortion, infanticide, and indiscriminate killing in war:
| “Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.” (Second Vatican Council, Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, 51) “With these truths in mind, this most Holy Synod makes its own the condemnations of total war already pronounced by recent popes, and issues the following declaration: Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It is firmly and unequivocally condemned.” |
Typical idiot's misinterpretation of things. We don't 'own' our body. Our life was given to us by God. God also gives us inalienable rights, but that doesn't include destroying what He has given us through His love.
I haven't scrolled down yet to see exactly what prompted your zot, but stupidity would be a sufficient reason.
I couldn’t disagree with you morally, but let’s just look at the current state of the “ownership of our own bodies” discussion.
My bet is that you supported the Obamacare legislation, so no matter what you say here you advocated the federal government taking ownership of my physical being. With that legislation, there is no longer an established privacy between a doctor and patient. With that legislation the federal government can dictate to me anything that reduces their cost of ownership of my physical being.
Not only do they now have the ability to direct the death of individuals, but the could go to the other extreme and defund any “medical procedure” at any time. That includes Abortion.
How does it feel to legislate away Roe?
Well, what should we do with the ashes? Hmmm......Didn’t people used to use ashes to make certain soaps a long time ago? ;-)
This is where I am coming from. I believe that our moral codes are fluid to a point, and are strictly individual, given to us each when God creates us. We are all different, even in our moral strictures. There is no real moral absolute for everyone.
Bottom line, I believe that there are things each of us will do and things we won’t do, which differ between individuals. These things are dependent on circumstances, I call this relativism. If your definition differs, I guess that’s just the way it is.
We all have things which we swear we would never do no matter what, but until the need for that particular moral decision occurs, we really do not know what we will or won’t do. Our morals are fluid until we reach the point where a decision is made.
Moral judgements or prohibitions, are between the individual and his maker.
What we can do, is make man-made restrictions, or laws, which dictate proper or improper actions. These are decided upon by societies, which also change. Should someone’s actions go against these laws, they suffer the consequences...here on earth.
Right, all human activity is relative to a circumstance.
I myself am convinced that to deliberately kill an innocent human being is always objectively gravely wrong, i.e. murder. The guilt of the person who commits such an act may be subjectively mitigated by factors like mental retardation, insanity, coercion; or aggravated by factors like sadism, premeditation for personal gain, or torture.
That doesn't mrean that I infallibly "know what I would do if..." It does mean that I know for a fact that killing an innocent person is always gravely wrong.
I also cannot believe that anyone who is not forensically insane-— that is, psychotic/hallucinating/delusional -— could kill an innocent person, and then say “I did him no wrong.”
Thanks. In the case of suicides, how is the question of guilt or innocence decided? Are enemy soldiers innocent? If not, what are they guilty of?
I think this is one of those subjects that no one really knows for a fact.
That’s why we have judges and courts and laws...to tell those people that according to society and it’s laws, you did do him wrong.
As for the enemy soldier: if he is engaged in agression, he is committing an objectively wrong act, and needs to be stopped. In this case, the intent is to stop him, not to kill him per se, and that can be proved by the fact that if you injure him and then capture him, you cannot kill him at that point. He has been stopped: to kill him would be murder.
He’s dead, Jim.
Wood ash contains a certain amount of lye, and it has to be processed and tested to make sure of the proper concentration.
Since I buy my lye in tiny-pelleted form (think Red Devil Drain Opener, which is pure NaOH), I don’t need to use troll ashes. And I’m not sure what kind of spirits might inhabit my soap if I did, if you know what I mean. ;-)
How could someone really determine what state of mind a dead person was in when they committed suicide?
What about bombing soldiers from 20000ft behind the front lines? How would you know whether they were acting aggressively or not? Do snipers commit murder when they shoot someone from 800yds, that’s walking out of a building?
There’s an if at the beginning of each example. Who determines the if?
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