Mnementh said:
First of all - I don't know why you bring up science in your OP. You ask moral questions (except maybe 3, but more to it later), and science doesn't help with moral questions. Morals are basically a decision on what is moral (right) or not moral (wrong). We seldom really decide about our morals, they are mostly learned and assembled from our surroundings. Also people tend to have different morals, but usually you have for most questions a common moral in the society. For instance usually it would be considered immoral if I kill someone (except defending myself). That this is immoral is the moral of the majority. These majority morals tend to change over time, we clearly not have the same morals as in the middle age.
1. We have no clear majority morals on the topic of abortion. Majority morals on this topic differ between countries, age groups and religious beliefs. But usually the fetus is not considered. If you say abortion is wrong, then it is wrong in this case. If you say abortion is the decision of the woman (in a certain timeframe since inception), then it doesn't matter if she uses additional information. Sometimes other factors are weighed in, like if the child is from a rape (I don't really understand this, it doesn't seem to be right - if you believe abortion is wrong because of the rights of the fetus, it is wrong even if it came from rape, but that wasn't the question here) or there is some threat to the health of the women through the pregnancy. so I say, it doesn't matter for the question of abortion.
2. Well, should someone who tends to be depressive be considered sick? How about women that tend not to follow the orders of their husband? Or people that are opposing the government? In different times some of these things were considered an illness, sometimes not. So that follows the same category. Following the todays majority morals it would be considered normal, as nobody is harmed by gender identification.
3. What is the question here? Are these things genetic? I don't know. If they are genetic, would it affect children? Yes, as genes get inherited. But it may be more complicated, even if it is genetic, it may not be simple parents are transgender -> children are also transgender. Biological inheritance can be more complicated than that.
4. Whether or not LGBTA or being criminal is a choice or not - it doesn't matter here. Criminals harm other. Even if they have no choice about it, we as a society have to do something about it. LGBTA-people don't harm others. So it doesn't matter. They simply don't need a "defense". |
Your reply is great! I'll attempt to make my reply shorter than the last two posts since I've been writing too much.
About bringing in science: I completely disagree with the notion that science can't inform morals, but mine is a very unpopular opinion. If you've ever read Sam Harris' arguments, let's say I agree with him to a large extent. When I was writing the questions, I realized that I was asking moral questions, and I thought about deleting the first paragraph but I still thought it was nice information to share. So I don't mean to say that my particular opinions are the science truths; but I do mean to say that if there is a scientific truth that opposes our belief, then we should get rid of the belief no matter how nice it is.
1. I forgot to make ground rules for the abortion, but you wrote the problem up quite nicely. In my opinion, as soon as the fetus develops a nervous system, it should be considered murder. Before that, abortion, in a general sense, is fine. However, you and I both know that the reason a woman may choose to abort does matter; perhaps not legally, but morally it does. If a white woman has sex with a black man and gets pregnant, and aborts the child solely in fear that the child will be born black, a lot of people would consider that act racist and immoral, and they're justified in their feelings, since the abortion was done only because of racism. The whole point of my question was to show that though the answer to the abortion issue is it's immoral, the answer to the cure issue is less black and white.
2. The person who tends to be depressive is sick; that actually is a disorder. The other stuff you said are not supported by observation. That is to say, there is nothing physically different with people opposing the government from "normal" people. But that's why I said on my point that it's been observed that the brains of the people with transgender tendencies behave slightly differently on average than the brains of people with no gender identification issues. That is why science does matter in considering the morals or not.
3. It was, in a way, a trick question to show that whatever answer one may give, it is founded on feelings, and feelings are deceptive and not objective. The correct answer, as you said, is "I don't know". I also of course don't believe nor imply that children of transgendered people may become transgendered as well (or that they may even have a higher risk of being transgendered), but they could, conceivably, be affected by this issue, and until there's research into this we can't answer this question. In contrast, we know that sexual orientation does not affect the childrens' uprising, not directly anyways.
4. Well by "defense" I meant it in the sense of how they should reply back to the conservative right on the debates that happen today all over the world, because the reality is they do not have the rights they should have, especially in some middle eastern and African countries, and I believe their argument could be strengthened by letting go of that "it's not a choice" line that is said everywhere. It's weak and it doesn't work, precisely because it doesn't matter, as you put it. The key thing is that they don't harm anybody. That's what the focus should be on. It may seem like a technicality, but I'm easily bothered by arguments that don't work, regardless if the arguments are for or against whatever I'm discussing.
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