fr0d0 Wrote:@ Sae : yes how does that apply to all life and not just human life. All I accept is the fact that this is the taking of life. I think it's impossible for anyone to knowingly take any life and be morally blameless for it. There are no circumstances where anyone could possibly know enough to make a morally justified decision. For me, that only works with God.
Why does a person have to know anything to make a 'morally justified decision' to kill something? Also, morals are subjective... and what is not morally justifiable to you might be entirely justifiable to someone else. Justification doesn't even have to be 'right'... it is simply the reason(s) a person uses to defend their actions (perhaps from themselves at times).
Nothing that affects a situation is blameless for that situation, fr0d0. I think it is impossible for anyone to do anything (or even in many cases not do something) and be blameless in any relevant way for what occurs as a result.
Quote:Ethically the ability of our victim to feel pain can be a boundary. Self defence is legally just. Morally not always so. We are attacked for a reason, that we may not always be innocent of.
Why should it matter that it feels pain? It'll be dead soon anyway Or were you referring to what compassion may arise from witnessing a creature in pain (perhaps by one's own hands)? I don't see a thing's feeling pain (as a 'boundary') as a question of ethics, but as one of compassion. Simply, if you have no compassion for it, and have no particular reason to keep it comfortable: why would you make it comfortable at all?
Quote:Human procreation is a damaging process. So what. To suggest it shouldn't occur only in perfectly favourable circumstances is verging on the obscene. It's our species method of survival, not the preserve of the wealthy. Natural selection would suggest the opposite... that healthy genes stem from difficult circumstances.
Human procreation is a damaging process :: Fire is a damaging process.
We should procreate when it is unfavorable :: We should have fires when it is unfavorable.
Actually, it is the preserve of the wealthy. Who would be wealthy if there's nobody left? If sex is our species method of survival... I should wonder: at what cost? And I should answer myself: a vast portion of a person's economy, unless they are rich, or lucky, or both.
Natural selection would suggest that healthy genes stem from difficult circumstances... like fire... therefore we should build houses of straw, and never protect against fire... for how else could we possibly keep the gene pool healthy? It works for the Krogan
http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Krogan
And does it strike you as interesting that the only way for natural selection to work is by killing the less lucky ones? Natural selection is not a formulae of having better genes and carrying them on... it is that the lucky will carry on their genes, and that a creature has 'good'/'strong' genes it is more likely to do so, given an equivalent situation with others of the species who do not have as 'good' or 'strong' genes.
Please give me a home where cloud buffalo roam
Where the dear and the strangers can play
Where sometimes is heard a discouraging word
But the skies are not stormy all day