The Bible: A Moral book?!

[genkaus]

I don't want an abortion thread either but I was hard pressed to come up with a better example of how the golden rule depends on recognizing the humanity of others. For example a group of lettered ethicists have already gone so far as to deny our moral obligations to very young children and claim that infanticide is acceptable because they are not fully human.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/health...s-say.html

There seems to be no limits on how much depravity can be rationalized away.

I don't know - their argument is pretty logically sound.

Are they really rationalizing? Do they actually want to kill babies and are simply looking for an excuse to do so? Or are they simply recognizing the fact that the criteria by which we bestow person-hood and rights do not apply to babies - no matter how much we'd want them to?

Firstly, this one has nothing to do with the golden rule. The golden rule has no preconditions for humanity.

Secondly, this is an application of established ethical principle - an application that goes against our instinctive moral sense, but is sound nonetheless. Really, other that slippery-slope, I don't see any argument against it.