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If murder was legal... (1 Viewer)

Rhapsody1447

Rhapsody1447

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Would it be right?
 
Is morality relative to the individual? Is their a higher moral that all human beings are under? If there was no law, what makes right? What makes wrong? Where did the sense of morality come from? Was it created in mankind from a God? Was it evolved from prehistoric bacteria?

Just trying to get a little more in-depth.
 
talloulou said:
Well since by definition murder is an "illegal" killing it wouldn't make sense. :rofl
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My mistake. If the taking of another human life was legal.
 
Rhapsody1447 said:
My mistake. If the taking of another human life was legal.
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.....Ever heard of...Warfare
 
Rhapsody1447 said:
Is morality relative to the individual? Is their a higher moral that all human beings are under? If there was no law, what makes right? What makes wrong? Where did the sense of morality come from? Was it created in mankind from a God? Was it evolved from prehistoric bacteria?

Just trying to get a little more in-depth.
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Morality is a Human Concept, created to set order as populations increased and social patterns evolved. It was strengthened dramatically by the use of religion to force the masses to adhere to social norms intended to foster unity and cohesion in differing personalities. The evolution of Morality has in ways, brainwashed humanity to follow precepts of ethical behavior for the betterment of the population as a whole.


If Killing another human were Legal...(and it is)...most would still avoid it, due to ingrained mentality that plays on guilt and Spirituality. Thus many oppose warfare as a means to conflict resolution.
 
Clearly something doesn't have to be legal or illegal to make it right or wrong. Generally people have individual morals and typically societies will make laws that reflect a "moral concensus." Anotherwards most of us agree that stealing our neighbors stuff is wrong. Some might believe you shouldn't steal 'cause their God said stealing is wrong and others might not believe in God but still don't want their stuff stolen. So many laws are based on our societies "shared" moral concensus.

It gets trickier when we are divided on a subject and don't all agree whether something is right or wrong like same sex marriage or abortion.

But yeah of course something can be legal and still be wrong. Polluting the atmosphere is in many ways legal and yet probably wrong.

And I think most people really know right from wrong and feel bad after they've done something "wrong" even if they were never caught or judged for the deed. In regards to abortion I generally think that women who have them and people who are prochoice don't feel strongly that abortion is "wrong. " Just like some people don't feel embryonic stem cell research is "wrong" though it sorta bothers me. It's not that some people can't see "Right from Wrong so much as sometimes there are genuine disagreements.
 
Define "right". A society where murder is legal is anarchy, and there would be complete chaos. It subverts the definition of society, and violates the non-aggression principle.

What does this have to do with abortion? :confused:
 
tecoyah said:
Morality is a Human Concept, created to set order as populations increased and social patterns evolved.
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Morality is common to most of the Great Apes. While I agree with your assessment of its purpose... I think it far predates the Agricultural Revolution or any other drastic increase in the human population.

In any case, I don't necessarily believe that "murder"-- as defined by the State-- is wrong in the first place. Plenty of people just need killing, and what the State has to say about it is only relevant after the fact; it's not their job to sort out moral from immoral, only lawful from unlawful.
 
Rhapsody1447 said:
Would it be right?
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Haven't you ever heard of 'justifiable homacide'?
 
Lachean said:
Legality is not morality. No
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I agree!

Of course it wouldn't be right to kill some one, just because it's legal.. you're still dealing with another persons life here mate. And yes there would be plenty more death cases if it went legal to kill, but it would still not be right, the terrible burden would still lay on your shoulders and the anxiety would distroy your life.. so no don't go ahead killing people because the state say it's OK!
 
Morality is a Human Concept, created to set order as populations increased and social patterns evolved.
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Morality is as much a human concept as eating or reproduction. All humans possess an intrinsic ability to know right from wrong that is as natural as their ability to know when they are thirsty and when they are not. The only human characteristic that effects morality is the propensity for humans to alter this natural moral code for their own benifit.

Every human is born with an intangible quality that allows them to know right from wrong, but societies and individuals attempt to alter or distort the nature of this intangibility in order to validate their own violation of these intrinsic principles.

It was strengthened dramatically by the use of religion to force the masses to adhere to social norms intended to foster unity and cohesion in differing personalities.
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One can say that organized religion abused or distorted our natural moral code but how could one suggest they were able to create it?

The evolution of Morality has in ways, brainwashed humanity to follow precepts of ethical behavior for the betterment of the population as a whole.
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How can it be said that morality has evolved? Humans have accepted and predominately abided by largely the same moral code for thousands and thousands of years. If there is one thing that can hardly be classified as transient or mutable it's the human moral code. The only thing that has evolved is the manner and length to which societies and individuals will go to to destroy or alter this code.
 
Rhapsody1447 said:
Would it be right?
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You're going to have to define your terms more carefully. If by "murder" you mean taking a human life, then in certain situations it is legal. War, capital punishment, self defense.
 
By definition murder is never legal, and since we look at law under the moral premise that following the law is right, murder is never right...because it is illegal.
 
Ethereal said:
All humans possess an intrinsic ability to know right from wrong ... The only human characteristic that effects morality is the propensity for humans to alter this natural moral code for their own benifit.
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If every society and every individual twists this "natural moral code" to suit their own purposes, how are we supposed to know what these natural moral values actually are? How can we claim that they even exist?

And if you were to present them to us, how would we know that you were not twisting them yourself?
 
I could care less about abortion.
 
Morality is as much a human concept as eating or reproduction. All humans possess an intrinsic ability to know right from wrong that is as natural as their ability to know when they are thirsty and when they are not. The only human characteristic that effects morality is the propensity for humans to alter this natural moral code for their own benifit.

Every human is born with an intangible quality that allows them to know right from wrong, but societies and individuals attempt to alter or distort the nature of this intangibility in order to validate their own violation of these intrinsic principles.
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I completely disagree. We learn right from wrong, it is not intrinsic, and our first teachers are our parents. They give us the morals, the concepts of right and wrong, the base belief system that we develop further on our own within co-existence in society.
There are entire families devoted to racial prejudice; there are entire families devoted to lives of crime.
I've worked with kids who think it's just fine to react to anything with the threat of violence and cry 'unfair' when disciplined for it. They were not taught right from wrong at home. There are prisons full of people who felt they had every right to do what they did and see nothing wrong in their actions. That's not a distortion of nature, that IS their nature.
Some of the worst dictators the world has seen did what they did out of their own sense of 'right', denying that what they do is wrong.
We 'know' that canabalism is wrong, immoral but there are tribes who don't. Right and wrong are taught and built upon, not inherent or instinctive.
 
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