The Is-Ought Challenge

We have been challenged to come up with a bunch of "Is" statements in order to get the "ought" statement: "Hurting is wrong."

First off, I am changing it to "Hurting without just cause is wrong."

1. When you hurt someone they recieve pain
2. Pain, according to humans, is an unpleasant feeling in the extreme
3. Humans do not like to have unpleasant feelings in most cases
4. Humans base things on morals
5. Human morals say that causing pain and other unpleasant feelings are not right


We need to attribute the ought claims, which Johnson says makes it an "is" instead of an "ought".

I still think I win...

The Old-Fashioned Emo

Emotivism is a school of thought where morals are looked at as merely emotion, and not something that can be either true or false.

I do not think that they are merely human emotion, but they are a human creation. I think that the lines are fuzzy sometimes as to whether they are true or false. I mean, in some countries is is considered immoral to kill a cow. Yet, many people in this country kill them and eat them. Granted the eating of meat is teetering on the line of moral and immoral in the eyes of the American majority.

Laws are a reflection of our morality. Laws differ from country to country, state to state, county to county, town to town.

I guess that what I am saying is that Emotivists have a point: since morals are a human creation and differ from place to place, it is hard to say that they are true or false.

There are of course morals that are the same for everywhere, and those are accepted as facts, but what of the differing ones?

Lobsters and Serial Killers...

OK it is well known that I work at a grocery store and that I am extremely allergic to seafood. This means lobsters. I hate them. I am afraid of them, I see them and I think about how I will break out in hives if I touch them. I was carefully avoiding touching one one day as the customer buying it was babbling about her son's birthday.

"Wow, that's an expensive birthday dinner for a kid," I said.

"Oh, and he plays with it before he eats it. It's a birthday tradition," she said with a laugh.

Whoa, rewind!

First off, thee way that lobsters are cooked is cruel. Second of all, he plays with it before he eats it. That's just sick!

I went out for hot cocoa with a friend yesterday and I was telling him this story. His reaction was: "That kid is going to grow up to be a serial killer."

This is kind of hypocritical. The kid does something that none of the rest of us would do: he looks his dinner in the eye and then kills it. I don't think that any of the rest of us would have the guts to do this.

I still think that it is sick to play with your food...it is cruel to make it think you are going to love it and then plunge it into boiling water....

But, I don't know of many people can look their dinner in they eye before killing it.

This does not seem right to me...

I was researching reasons to go vegetarian/vegan, and I came across a site with what you can eat i you are vegan. The site boasted of how the changes aren't that bad. After all, they do have bacon-flavored meat substitutes. If you stop eating meat for the sake of the animals, why would you want to eat something that tastes like them? You still are enjoying the taste of their flesh even if you are not actually eating it.

Um, excuse me?

Disclaimer: I apologize if this offends anyone. And whenever I say "You" it is not directed at any one person, it is to all of the people who opress. So please, whoever said the innocent little comment, please don't take it personally, it just got me thinking and I had to vent somewhere...

Today in class, we were talking about laws and morality. A comment was made about gay marraige. What was said was something like: In the state of Massachusetts we have gay marraige, this is someone pushing their morals on us (Yeah, I know that this isn't exact, but it is the gist of it.).

Um...HELLO?

How is that pushing morals on someone? Please tell me. It is pushing your morals on someone saying that they cannot marry whom they want. Saying that gay marraige is not allowed is as bad as sayign that you have to marry within your class. Legalizing gay marraige is allowing people to do something thta hurts no one. If people don't like it fine, they can just ignore it. Making it legal is not saying that it is morally right, but sayign that it is illegal is saying that it is morally wrong.

And furthermore, allowing it but not calling it marraige is crap. I mean, seriously, are you all that petty that you cannot allow people in love to have the same rights as anyone else in love?

Sorry that this is somewhat off topic....

That was harsh

I guess that my title for my last post should not have been "Vegetarianism and Fear" that was harsh, but it is not letting me edit the post.

But, I have more to add. I realize that most people don't see how our prolonged lives relate to the slaughter of animals. It does completely. We are so afraid of our own deaths that we get scared when we see the death of any other sentient being. And, this relates to our discussion on religion. The way I see it, there are two very obvious reasons why there is a sudden push for vegetarianism in our society.
1. The war: there is death everywhere, so we are really getting scared now and are finally seeing every life as a wonderful thing (which we should have anyways)
2. People are becoming disillusioned with religion, so now what comes next is no longer clear to us. We no longer know if there is a heaven or not, so our fear of death has increased.

Vegitarianism and Fear

The article I read for the most recent Q&A brought up quite an interesting point. Today's society has an absolutely ridiculous phobia of death. Hello, everything that lives has to die. It's the way that things work. People no longer look at how a life was lived, instead they look at how long said person lived. Often "living" isn't really living. Being in mass amounts of pain for years or so drugged up that you feel nothing and know nothing of the world outside of your bright white hospital room is not living. i know that no one wants to see a loved one go, and we want to hold on to them as long as possible, but that's just not possible. And with our own lives we want to grasp life as long as possible.

This does relate, I swear, just bear with me...

We see these animals being killed for meat, they live very short lives. But honestly, most domestic animals live shorter lives than humans anyways. We don't look at this all as fulfilled lives. We look at them as short lives. Anyways, what I am trying to say is that death is a part of life, so these animals are going to die no matter what. if not at our hand then there is a good chance that there will be a predator that eats them. Not kills and eats, just eats, because animals don't stop to make sure that their dinner is no longer breathing.

But, I do not under any circumstances agree with veal. How would you like it if we never gave your baby a chance to live?

http://www.westonaprice.org/healthissues/ethicsmeat.html

This is interesting...

I know that our assignment was to find an article in favor of meat eating, but I came across this when I first did the search and found it to be interesting: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/~yount/text/meatarg.html

I personally was most interested in the first argument. It said that the Bible says we should eat meat. I have a few points I would like to make about this (and it connects so well to the last topic).
1. It was a very weak argument (as were most of the arguments listed...it was very biased in favor of not eating meat and decided to skimp on good arguments for meat eating). It was weak to the point of being humorous.
2. The Bible was written by humans,, and therefor can be faulty (probably would probably be a much better word than can in this case).
3. The Bible is filled with stories that are not supposed to be taken as direct truth, you are supposed to learn from them, not take them word for word.
4. The argument in response to that is so obvious, that I would thin that no one would use the Bible as an excuse to eat meat: in the Bible, women are subservient, homosexuality is immoral, premarital sex is immoral, etc. I am pretty sure that the people who follow the Bible oh so closely that they say that we must eat meat do not agree with all of the three examples I gave.
5. This assumes that everyone is Christian or at the very least everyone should be. This argument means nothing to someone who is Jewish, Muslim, or Athiest.

Anyways, I just thought that this was an interesting little tidbit of information...

Our Omnivorous Natures

Humans are Omnivores. We were built to be omnivores as can be seen by the way our teeth are set up. Since the beginning of time, humans have hunted and eaten other animals. Other animals kill other animals and eat them. We are doing what our natures tell us to do. I personally do not eat most meat, but I see nothing wrong with other people eating meat.

I do think that we need to find a more humane way to kill the animals, but I see nothing wrong with eating meat.

Sorry that this is sort of scattered....

What are these fear-filled agnostics then?

I was just thinking, if an agnostic is just an agnostic out o fear, what are they?

I mean, if someone says that they think that there might be a God, but there might not be, and they say it because they are afraid that there may really be a God that is goingto punish them for being a nonbeliever, what are they?

If they are truly afraid that there may be someone to punish them, doesn't that make them a theist? Yet, deep down they believe that there is no God. But it is the slight doubt that makes them say that there may be a God.

What does all of this mean?

I feel that they are theists by default, but I am wondering what others think about this....

Agnosticism is Fear

I personally feel that agnosticism is the easy way out. I feel that it is cowardly. I feel that it is a way for people to not have to be looked down upon by both sides. You say that you are not sure if there is a God, but you are open for it.

This looks good to athiests because you are not saying that you definitely believe in God, therefor you can perhaps be persuaded into believing that there is not a God.

On the other side, the theists are happy beause you may be swayed into believing that there is a God.

I feel that you should have an opinion and not say that you are on middleground to keep from being looked down upon.

There is either a God or there is not.