Which Rights Take Priority?

[TheFightingPikachu]

Because that didn't happen in this situation.

Stop. Avoiding. The point. I was not talking about the ****ing birth control. I was talking about medicine in general.

In watching this sub-debate, I find it interesting how you seem to want to decide when the argument can and cannot be brought to a hypothetical level. The above two quotes make that tendency clear.

Ten bucks says Malanu's against abortion.

Smells like guilt by association. And you'd lose that bet.

I also support the right to life. If one is denied the right to life, they are denied absolutely everything else. In no way does this make me "one of the people I am 'Rrarring' against".

The irony. You mean you support the right to life unless somebody fallaciously declares something non-human, right? I couldn't resist.

Which personal beliefs are you referring to? The one that says a person who's been hired to do a job should be able to do said job? The one that says the life and health of a living breathing human being is more important than the feelings of an omnipotent yet impotent, omnipresent yet unprovable tyrannical deity who doesn't understand the idea of flexibility? The one that says the phrase "your personal beliefs" should have a lot more emphasis on the words "your" and "personal"?

As with your use of "skydaddy" in an earlier post, some of this unduly weights your post against traditional, monotheistic religions. I mean, the way it stands, your post gives the impression (completely inaccurately, I'm sure) that imposing your religious morals on someone else is only a problem if said religious morals are allegedly commands from a single deity. Shouldn't you make your remarks, I don't know, inclusive, and point out that it would be wrong to force your non-theistic religious morals on someone? I also seem to recall you making a few statements to the effect that you wouldn't obey God even if His existence was proven. And polytheism is still capable of influencing people to do what you've expressed outrage at. And don't forget, Satanism deserves some love! How about pointing out the dangers of people doing something that negatively effects others "at the instigation of some rebellious, underworld...daddy"?

By this logic, a serial killer's belief that he has the right to kill anyone and everyone he pleases cannot be wrong.

Throughout this debate, you've been completely missing the distinction between active and passive. Even without the confusion of degree and scope inherent in your comparisons to the WTC attacks and the Crusades, those both fail because they are direct actions, while any pharmacist's refusal, if not inaction, is certainly not that kind of direct action. That error is at the heart of your sub-debate with Malanu.

 

[mattj]

Spoiler: Profesco's post

I'll explain it.

Point 1: You are making the argument that the two first cases above are analogous around the theme of the agent in either case making a decision to affect someone else's life based on a moral conviction. Your argument is that either both of these cases are ethically defensible or both of these cases are ethically indefensible, and that this is only because the agents considered their reasons for acting to be "moral" in nature.

Point 2: You have been so far arguing that the pharmacist's action is ethically defensible regardless of whether you or I or anyone else agrees with her moral reason, and so the first conclusion from your logic is that you also must argue that the soldiers' actions were ethically defensible because they too were acting on moral conviction.

Point 3: Someone has added another scenario to be evaluated by your logic: that of the Nazis' extermination of the Jewish, which was an action done based on a moral reason (on the part of the Nazis). Your argument so far is that acting in such a way as to affect other people's lives based on a reason you (general you here, not you personally) hold to be moral is ethically defensible. This leads to the second conclusion from your logic, which is that the Nazis' extermination of the Jews, being an action done for a reason they held to be moral, is ethically defensible.

To put it into the specific terms of your above question (so as to avoid the impending and frustrating red herring of demanding verbatim quotation): the complaint is not that you "accept the Nazis' belief," but rather that the logic of your argument concludes that you defend their genocide of the Jews in the same way you defend the pharmacist's medication refusal as ethically acceptable and the soldiers' disobedience as ethically acceptable - namely that the Nazis' extermination of the Jews is ethically acceptable solely because they were doing what they thought was morally correct.


The counterargument, I gather, is that any ethical reasoning which concludes that genocide is acceptable is a flawed ethical reasoning. I suspect the more specific criticism is that your argument is overly - and erroneously - simplistic, and that it in fact lacks any actual moral or ethical reasoning at all.

If I could only muster up the energy, this would be ample motivation to create a debate about moral relativism.

Edit: TFP, I have yet to reply to some of your more chewable points, including the taxi cab example - I will get to them, in time. @_@

I apologize for taking so very long to reply to this, but its exceedingly difficult to type a response while bottlefeeding or holding a squirmycuddly new born baby boy x)

I think that the point we're disagreeing upon is your point #1 (an excellent Chevelle song).

Point 1: You are making the argument that the two first cases above are analogous around the theme of the agent in either case making a decision to affect someone else's life based on a moral conviction. Your argument is that either both of these cases are ethically defensible or both of these cases are ethically indefensible, and that this is only because the agents considered their reasons for acting to be "moral" in nature.

I do not at all support a person's right to affect someone else's life in just any old which way just because that action is based on someone's convictions. For example, I do not support a Muslim terrorist's right to blow up a schoolbus, even though he may in fact honestly believe that action is morally justified for whatever reason. I do, however, support a Muslim doctor's refusal to treat a wounded Jewish soldier, even though I personally disagree with such an action. I do not support a person's right to act, I do support a person's right no refuse to act. To go to the original hypothetical proposed, I do not support an anti-semite's right to murder Jews, regardless of his convictions on the subject. I do however support that anti-semite's right to not serve Jews at his Restaurant. If he wants to be be a bigot, I don't really care. Just let him be a bigot without physically harming anyone.

I don't support a person's right to do whatever they want because their conscience tells them to. I support a person's right to say "No. I can't do that. I believe it would be wrong."

Now, refusing to treat wounded soldiers, and refusing to serve patrons because of their nationality definitely sounds like a shockingly racist and unjustifiable position to you, me, and most people. But you aren't the one who had their entire family blown to bits in front of their very eyes by a stray missle from an Israeli jet. You aren't the one to have your family home bulldozed by an Israeli construction team. Personally, i still don't see those events as basis to refuse to serve every single Jewish person who enters my restaurant, but I'm not that person. The things that I consider to be the moral line in the sand may not make any sense to you. And the things that you consider to be the moral line in the sand may not make any sense to me. But when you, or I, or anyone else starts taking the right of the anti-semite, or the Muslim, or any other minority (here) we're walking down a very slippery slope that very well may in a few years prohibit you yourself from taking a stand against whatever it is that you yourself couldn't imagine being forced to do.

How dare you refuse to euthanize your neighbor when he asks for help. Who are you to force your moral standards on them? How dare you refuse to kill enemy combatants (after being drafted into a future war). Who are you to force your moral standards on the Military?

 

[J.T.]

In watching this sub-debate, I find it interesting how you seem to want to decide when the argument can and cannot be brought to a hypothetical level. The above two quotes make that tendency clear.

In what way? In the first quote, we had been talking about the pharmacy for multiple posts. He suggested that if no other pharmacy in town it would be necessary for the manager to get another employee to fill the prescription, which I pointed out that the pharmacist he was defending had failed to do. In the second quote, I had extended the scope of the debate in order to get an answer to a question, and Malanu twice tried to pretend that I was still talking about the pharmacy even though I had made it abundantly clear that I wanted a question answered.

Smells like guilt by association. And you'd lose that bet.

The fact that I shrank the font size and immediately followed it up with an actual response probably should've indicated that it was a joke. And considering Malanu then said that he personally is against abortion, I'd say no, I wouldn't. Shame no one took me up on it.

The irony. You mean you support the right to life unless somebody fallaciously declares something non-human, right? I couldn't resist.

I assume you're referring to the remark about abortion? I'd ask how exactly "fetus != child" is fallacious, or for that matter how killing a living breathing child outside the womb (oh, sorry, letting him/her die) because "my religion says so" is comparable to abortion, but I don't want to get into an abortion debate because of an offhanded joke I made.

As with your use of "skydaddy" in an earlier post, some of this unduly weights your post against traditional, monotheistic religions. I mean, the way it stands, your post gives the impression (completely inaccurately, I'm sure) that imposing your religious morals on someone else is only a problem if said religious morals are allegedly commands from a single deity. Shouldn't you make your remarks, I don't know, inclusive, and point out that it would be wrong to force your non-theistic religious morals on someone? I also seem to recall you making a few statements to the effect that you wouldn't obey God even if His existence was proven. And polytheism is still capable of influencing people to do what you've expressed outrage at. And don't forget, Satanism deserves some love! How about pointing out the dangers of people doing something that negatively effects others "at the instigation of some rebellious, underworld...daddy"?

I... guess I could edit my posts to say "deity/deities" rather than "skydaddy" to make my disdain a bit more universal, but it seems the point was made regardless of my poor wording.

Even without the confusion of degree and scope inherent in your comparisons to the WTC attacks and the Crusades,

Those comparisons were made back when I thought Malanu believed the right to religious beliefs always trump the right to life, and by extension, the right to a religious belief that states that a group of people deserve to die trumps the right of said group of people to live. He clarified his position later on.

Throughout this debate, you've been completely missing the distinction between active and passive. [...] those both fail because they are direct actions, while any pharmacist's refusal, if not inaction, is certainly not that kind of direct action. That error is at the heart of your sub-debate with Malanu.

Okay. So they're not actively killing their children, they're just letting them die when they are perfectly capable of preventing it through any sort of intervention. Much better.

For the record, I apologize for my last reply to Malanu. I find his position disgusting and abhorrent, but I should have been a bit more... cool-headed about the whole thing. And if I could find specifically which portion of my little ****storm got me this infraction, I'd edit it out, although I'm pretty sure that'd involve cutting out a rather sizable portion of it.

 

[Antiyonder]

Okay. So they're not actively killing their children, they're just letting them die when they are perfectly capable of preventing it through any sort of intervention. Much better.

This! Sometimes the most immoral thing one can do, is to do nothing. They might as well have directly killed the child.


Though I might as well pose my question one more time. Do you (The Fighting Pikachu and Malanu) believe that religiosus/moral beliefs justify any immoral actions/inactions? If not, it would be helpful to know where you draw the line.

And while I can't speak for J.T. or mattj, if you do answer no, then there really isn't more that I can say.

 

[mattj]

Who are you to determine that a person refusing to act because of their convictions is is objectively morally wrong? Its quite obviously not wrong in their eyes.

 

[Bill Nye the Sneasel Guy]

It's really easy to say that those parents are evil, yes. But if they honestly and truly believe what their sect says, then you're asking both them and the child to basically give up the kid's soul in exchange for a little more time on earth, and then, depending on exactly which crazy sect you're talking about, burning in hell when that time runs out.

It's not a pleasant choice to be making, to say the least.

That said, though, if the child doesn't believe in the faith, then the parents in that case need to be ignored.

 

[Raddaya]

Who are you to determine that a person refusing to act because of their convictions is is objectively morally wrong? Its quite obviously not wrong in their eyes.

A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, cause humanity to come to harm.

That statement means exactly what it says.

 

[Malanu]

Denying service to a paying customer is disrespectful. Especially when it's something like dealing in medication.

Furthermore, when you take a job, you are under obligation to behave in a professional manners (not letting your personal feelings inhibit you from doing your job). I mean should a vegetarian working in a restaurant or a grocery store be allowed to deny a paying customer meat products?

Yes, a person shouldn't be disrespected for having a moral/religious belief, but the trade off is that they need to respect that others don't follow said beliefs. I mean, if a person's religious beliefs are strong to the point that they refuse to watch R Rated movies, fine. But said person has no right in say trying to ban R Rated movies.

Have to ask, but do you believe that a religious belief justifies anything, and should absolve someone from penalty?

I disagree (but only alittle)I can quite respectfully decline to help someone. (I'm sorry sir/ma'am, I'm off the clock right now.) You are right Anti, but at what point does respecting others' beliefs compromise your own? And to answer your final question, sometimes.

Well he linked to an article where someone basically abused and killed their child, and got off scott free because "god said so". Ironically, a few pages back, I linked to a constitutional scholar's lengthy article documenting how it's unfortunately common miscarriage of justice where parents who cause harm (up ot death) to their children get far lesser criminal punishments if they cite religious reasons, than those who do the same or similar crimes and don't have religious defenses.

That I linked to it does not mean I agree with it. It does prove that in some situations, the rights to follow religious dogma(?) out weighs man's laws/morals. I feel so weird arguing in favor of religion!

A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, cause humanity to come to harm.

That statement means exactly what it says.

Yes... for robots. First time man picked up a rock and bashed in someones skull that law flew out the window for humanity.

 

[Antiyonder]

You are right Anti, but at what point does respecting others' beliefs compromise your own?

Only when their actions infringe on my freedom. And no matter how disagreeable their opinion/belief in, if I disrespect them, then why should they respect mine?

And furthermore, as you said a page ago, a person's religious status shouldn't factor into whether they get employed.

That much is true, but an employee can legitamitely be fired for lack of professionalism (i.e. the vegetarian refusing to let a paying customer buy a sausage pizza). The world doesn't revolve around the religious employee and their beliefs.

And to answer your final question, sometimes.

Ok, you don't find it to be an absolute. In what circumstances do you not grant a person a proverbial get "out of jail free card" based on their religious beliefs?

 

[Malanu]

I personally draw the line at religious percecution. I am not a member of your religion, That does not give you the right to go and burn me at the stake.

 

[TheFightingPikachu]

The fact that I shrank the font size and immediately followed it up with an actual response probably should've indicated that it was a joke. And considering Malanu then said that he personally is against abortion, I'd say no, I wouldn't. Shame no one took me up on it.

Good point on the applicability issue. I should have just pointed out that "against abortion" is usually used of people who are actively pro-life, and so it might not be the most appropriate term for him. What you said does apply.

I... guess I could edit my posts to say "deity/deities" rather than "skydaddy" to make my disdain a bit more universal, but it seems the point was made regardless of my poor wording.

But then again, since you've said you doubt you'd obey God, a god, or gods even if any do exist, the amount of baggage in your post exceeds anything necessary for the debate. Provability has nothing to do with it. The same gray areas would still exist if some god decided to run for Congress for all to see.

Those comparisons were made back when I thought Malanu believed the right to religious beliefs always trump the right to life, and by extension, the right to a religious belief that states that a group of people deserve to die trumps the right of said group of people to live. He clarified his position later on.

The issues are still not comparable in scope and degree.

Okay. So they're not actively killing their children, they're just letting them die when they are perfectly capable of preventing it through any sort of intervention. Much better.

It is much better. Legally and morally, negligent homicide is much better than murder. That doesn't make my emotions about religious groups allowing such deaths any less mixed.

This! Sometimes the most immoral thing one can do, is to do nothing. They might as well have directly killed the child.


Though I might as well pose my question one more time. Do you (The Fighting Pikachu and Malanu) believe that religiosus/moral beliefs justify any immoral actions/inactions? If not, it would be helpful to know where you draw the line.

Whatever was already going to kill the child is still ultimately responsible. Failure to act is never the most immoral thing one could do. One could always help someone along in their death. Or worse, there's always death by torture.

To answer your question, leaving aside from difficult issues like "Is it okay to lie to save a life?" with which I struggle a bit, I do not believe religious/moral beliefs justify any immoral actions. And I have expressed my mixed emotions on the Jehovah's Witnesses being allowed to deny blood transfusions to their dying children. Where do I draw the line on inactions? I'm not sure such a line can be drawn.


EDIT:

A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, cause humanity to come to harm.

That statement means exactly what it says.

Is that one of Asimov's laws of robotics? If so, I just point out that that led to dreadful consequences in that science fiction world (from what I've heard from some friends), making its relevance for our world even more suspect.

 

[Profesco]

I do not at all support a person's right to affect someone else's life in just any old which way just because that action is based on someone's convictions.

...

I do not support a person's right to act, I do support a person's right to refuse to act.

...

I don't support a person's right to do whatever they want because their conscience tells them to. I support a person's right to say "No. I can't do that. I believe it would be wrong."

I understand what you're saying, mattj, but this doesn't change the logic. You don't support a person's right to do whatever they want because their conscience tells them to, but in so many words you do support a person's right to not do whatever they want because their conscience tells them to. See my talk with TFP about acting and not acting; the difference between action and inaction is a question of language, not of ethics.

Even using this slightly altered wording of your argument, we can reach the same morally bankrupt conclusions as were in my other post. All you need to do is speak of some of the members of the Nazi party who refused to act against Hitler because they thought what he was doing was morally good. Or extremist Muslims who refuse to teach their children not to perform suicide bombings, or high-ranking Catholic clergy who refuse to excommunicate the priests who have molested young parishioners, or any such thing.

An argument that concludes that such "inaction" is ethically appropriate is not a sound ethical argument. =/

 

[TheFightingPikachu]

See my talk with TFP about acting and not acting; the difference between action and inaction is a question of language, not of ethics.

The difference is not mere semantics, and this should be obvious from my previous post's mention of negligent homicide verses murder.

My family owns some cats. My cat is often the victim of needless scratching and intimidation by her brothers. I believe I should help her out by preventing them from attacking her. Yet there will still be times when I'm, say, in bed, barely awake, that sort of thing, so I don't think helping her is always practical. Someone could allege (based on some of the responses in this thread) that I'm being just as bad as her brothers every time I don't help her. I'm not. I didn't do it.

There is a fundamental difference between not preventing harm and actively causing harm.

 

[Profesco]

There is a fundamental difference between not preventing harm and actively causing harm.

I agree with this sentiment, TFP, in general. But let's not forget how the argument has been expressed so far. First of all, it does still remain that the pharmacist incident can be validly framed as active causation, as opposed to mere passive inaction (this is why I mention the semantic point at all). Second of all, the argument was made such that the justification for the inaction that defines whether it is okay or not is the reason for the inaction, not the results of the inaction (this is what legitimized the comparison to Nazi ideology and brought us to the pitfalls of moral relativism). The second "of all," by the way, is why taking me up on the semantic point does not do any damage to my criticism as a whole. The action/inaction (and all the semantics therein) comes after the reasoning for it.


I assume, when you choose not to get up and help your cat, you're probably not using ethical reasoning in that decision. You said yourself it was a decision of practicality. Your ethics, on the other hand, would demand you get up and provide help, right?

For instance, let's see if your hypothetical here is representative of your general ethical reasoning, or merely of practical scale (the "cat" scale, in this case). Instead of your cat getting beaten up, let's say it's your mom. Once in a while, your mom gets physically and verbally attacked by your neighbors. If you hear or see this going on, would you reason that it's ethically okay on your part to not make some move to intervene or get help because you're tired?

And now, factoring in the second "of all," if we assume that in both of the above cases, you do decide you are in the right for refusing to intervene, is that because you believe it morally good that your cat or your mom gets beaten up? Because, remember, according to the argument mattj originally made, if you refuse to act because you believe the thing you're letting happen is morally good, then nobody can dare to say you're wrong.

 

[mattj]

Woah, wait. Unless I'm misunderstanding you, you're talking about two different things. I'm talking about not doing something because my conscience tells me I should not get involved. You seem to be talking about a situation where you know you should get involved but you don't. Both of those situations involve inaction, but I don't think they are comparable because in one, the inaction was a result of that tug of conscience, while in the other the inaction was in spite of that tug of conscience. Those seem like polar opposite situations to me.

Am I misunderstanding you?

 

[TheFightingPikachu]

The second "of all," by the way, is why taking me up on the semantic point does not do any damage to my criticism as a whole. The action/inaction (and all the semantics therein) comes after the reasoning for it.

I'm just going to say that in part, my previous statement misunderstood yours, and in part, your previous statement misunderstood mine.

You do have a valid point in the case of the pharmacist, and I should have stated my point differently. The split between active and passive in that instance is...another gray area.

However, your point invoked examples that are truly bad comparisons. Committed Nazis hold views that are approximately the same as, if not identical to, Hitler's view. While holding such views, why on earth would they speak out against Hitler? Though I should not have, I may have let some other people's posts color my view of your other two examples: Some have been saying people who don't act to stop evil might as well have done the evil themselves. This is obviously fallacious, and your latter two examples just add evidence of that.

If a Muslim doesn't commit a suicide bombing nor teach someone to do so, why, they aren't responsible for anyone's suicide bombing! (Parents who are against it may always wonder "Could I have kept him from this by teaching against this more strongly?") If one fails to report a crime like child molestation, that can never make that person guilty of that crime. Even if the law finds the person guilty of obstructing justice (and I'm not sure at the moment if this applies in all cases or even if I've got the right term), the law doesn't hold that not telling is the same as, say, hiding evidence.

And now, factoring in the second "of all," if we assume that in both of the above cases, you do decide you are in the right for refusing to intervene, is that because you believe it morally good that your cat or your mom gets beaten up? Because, remember, according to the argument mattj originally made, if you refuse to act because you believe the thing you're letting happen is morally good, then nobody can dare to say you're wrong.

I realize I rushed my post too much. I intended that as a refutation of the view that not acting is just as bad as doing the wrong. I believe that my cat needs the help, therefore, under most circumstances, I do help.

To make my example better, let's assume that I believe my cat needs to stand up to some other cat. Even better, let's use a school bully as an example. Is a parent wrong to not sue the other kid's parent if he believes the principle must take notice of things happening in his school?

I caution that what I have presented is still not a perfect example, but I think it should remove a lot of the fuzziness in my previous example.

 

[mattj]

Federal Judge: Washington State Cannot Force Pharmacies To Sell PlanB.

"The question really is whether the patient's rights come first or the pharmacist's rights come first," said Andrew Greene, a lawyer for the intervenors.

Not the same exact situation as the Pharmacist from the OP, but similar.

 

[Sadib]

Federal Judge: Washington State Cannot Force Pharmacies To Sell PlanB.

Not the same exact situation as the Pharmacist from the OP, but similar.

Judges controlling what pharmacies sell =/= pharmacies controlling what their pharmacists sell.

 

[Malanu]

However Mario, it does provide the Moral Pharmacist(TM) a legal position to fall back on.

 

[Sadib]

However Mario, it does provide the Moral Pharmacist(TM) a legal position to fall back on.

You're right. The pharmacist had no obligation whatsoever to do her job if she didn't feel like it.