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To: metmom
Show me where morals equate to intellect.

Using your own mind, can you tell right from wrong?

88 posted on 12/03/2009 9:29:54 AM PST by OldNavyVet (The source of evil lies in the suspension of rational thought.)
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To: OldNavyVet; count-your-change

Using one’s own mind, one can justify anything.

Right and wrong stand apart from intellectual justifications.

That only leads to situational ethics, like we’re having today with embryonic stem cell research and euthanasia and justifying abortion.

Of course the mind is used in decision making, but that is not the source of right and wrong. Otherwise, right and wrong would be different for everybody on the planet.

Morals are not based in intellect, whether or not intellect is used to make decisions. Morals are based on an outside standard of right and wrong.

One is not immoral (or evil) if one is irrational, one is simply irrational. And even the definition of *irrational* is up for grabs. One person’s behavior may seem irrational to another. Burning witches at the stake is irrational to someone who doesn’t believe in witches. But if someone really believed that they existed and had the power of life and death and were killing others, executing a murderer is not an unreasonable thing to do.

Do you believe in situational ethics or that there’s an objective, outside standard of right and wrong to which one can gauge one’s actions?


95 posted on 12/03/2009 10:40:58 AM PST by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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