"By extending your logic, we can ask..."
No, by *unreasonably* extending his logic to an extreme neither intended nor necessary, you can ask...
This is another misapplication of the reductio ad absurdum.
"So you spending money on a TV entertainment system is money taken from helping save a human."
This form of argumentation is all too common. I wish we'd become more sensitive to and less tolerant of it.
In a world where there is an area of things that are clearly okay, a gray area of hard calls, and an area of things that are clearly not okay, people cite instances that fall into one of the first two groups in an effort to deny the existence of the third group.
Morality does not require that we all take a vow of povery and give everything above mere subsistence to the poor. However, it does require that we be as generous as we are able, given the constraints of living in the world. We will answer to God if we are less generous than we should be.
The guideline has traditionally been the tithe, the tenth part. Some give less. Bill Gates could wipe out AIDS with a tithe properly applied. If I had that much money, I could relegate leftism once again to the lunatic fringe where it belongs, which would be an act of charity.
At some point, each person deals with his own conscience. However, that third category, that category of things that are clearly not okay, stubbornly remains.
Pontiac: "You can not judge another on how much he spends on his pet compared to how much he gives to charity."
You: "Au contraire, mon frere. Such judgements are an absolute, inescapable moral duty imposed on us by God."
RobRoy: "Or video games, or cars, or bicycles."
You: "Video games and bicycles don't require huge sums. Some cars do, but I'm not sure what the moral calculus is."
RobRoy: "Fact is, as stupid as I think spending money on pets is, how other poeple choose to spend their disposable income is not my business."
You: "It may not be your business, but that doesn't mean that it's moral, or even morally neutral.
Your later comment: "A $5,000 operation: hard call, lots of things to think about." and "A $50,000 prosthesis for a dog that lost a leg: clearly immoral."
Socal Pubbie: "I don't see why it is immoral on its face."
You: "Because $50,000 is a sum that could pay for operations or chemotherapy for human beings that would otherwise die, and the delivery of the funds and the medical services is practical. People are more important than animals."
Alrighty then.
It seems that when it comes to pets, the boundary between moral and immoral is in the neighborhood of $5,000. Good to know that.
Some luxury cars of course cost way more than that beyond basic transportation, but there we're not sure what the moral calculus is.
Judging people by what they spend on their pets vs on charity is an absolute, inescapable moral duty imposed on us by God.
It is apparently not an absolute, inescapable moral duty imposed by God to judge people by what they spend on their cars vs on charity.
Since all of us here on FR aspire to lead moral lives, could you give us your a list of all types of discretionary expenditures beyond basic survival needs and their applicable moral/immoral dollar boundaries? OK if some of the boundaries are a range - we can work wih that. Please annotate each item as to whether the inescapable moral duty to judge people by what they spend on it is applicable to that item.
Thanks so much!