Your Questions About Morality And Law Uk

Pip answers:

Unlikely that the poll is really accurate.

Honestly I think its about even. The question isnt religion or lack thereof, it is morals.

You have moral atheist who do the right thing because its right just like you have moral Christians who do the right thing because its right.

Then on the atheist side you have the person who follows the law, not morality and does so out of fear of punishment. This is equal to a Christian who only is good out of fear of hell. Ammoral people exist everywhere, in every faith, in every atheist group.

They give no info at all on that poll. There is no margin of error. There is no report of how the data was collected, whether it required work on the part of the responder or not. All of these affect the accuracy–this poll could end up being just as accurate as those online polls where clearing your cache means additional votes.

Pip answers:

Legality is not the same thing as morality. The two are unrelated, except in that people will usually try to get laws passed that support their personal view of morality.

Pip answers:

You’re so right – Jesus was Jewish and a lot of Christians today seem to forget that. I wasn’t sure if you’re asking a serious question or whether you’re just expressing frustration at how arogant and narrow minded some chrisitans can be but I’m going to take it as the former and hopefully alleviate the later in the process.

I’m studying theology at Oxford UK and if you look in depth at the Gospels (esp Matthew) they spend a lot of time trying to show that Jesus was the fulfillment of everything that it meant to be Jewish.
I don’t know how familiar you are with the story of Moses for example? However the gospel writers seem to deliberately parallel it: So Jesus comes out of Egypt, passes through the waters (of baptism) then goes up a mountain to bring the new law (the sermon on the mount where he systematically takes each aspect of first century Jewish morality and makes it not just about externalities but about heart intentions – upping the game), he provides bread for his hungry followers talking about it as the “new manna” (John 6)… I could go on. Or we could take any of the other things that were important to a first century Jew in self identification – David, Abraham, the scriptures, the law, the passover, hanukka, the feast of tabernacles… Jesus claims that his body is the New Temple, he even claims to be the True Vine John 15 (the symbol for the Jewish people in the Old Testament literature) and calls his followers to be in him.

So this is the deal – The argument the gospel writers are putting forward is that Jesus himself was the only person to live the ideal Jewish life and indeed he was the embodiment of Judeism. By trusting in Jesus (the Jew) as opposed to ourselves (as a Jew – or not) we can be the people of God.

The Hebrew word for the assembled people of God throughout the OT was “Quahal” by Jesus’ day this had been translated into the Greek word “Ekklasia” which Matthew quotes Jesus using twice about his followers whether they were Jewish or Gentile (highly shocking for a first century Jew). So in Jesus (the perfect Jew) we can be the assembled people of God. Most languages get their word for church from the Greek Ekklasia.

Although the Jews persecuted the Christians from the start (we know this from seccular, Jewish and Christian sources), Christianity remained a Jewish sect and it’s leaders were for the most part highly committed to remaining so untill they were kicked out of the synagogues in AD 80 when they reformed Judeism at the council of Jamnia and decided to put a curse on anyone who made any variance on traditional Judeism.

Hope this is helpful.
Grace

Pip answers:

They are bogged down too much in erroneous abstractions that they stack into irrational constructions that lead to no illumination because only rational constructions are workable in reality, and the dissonance between an irrational construction and reality confuses and seems threatening to them so they cope with unhealthy ego-defensive mechanisms and bite their fingernails nervously.

But, also, they are still either in their “girls have cooties” stage of development and think whatever “girls” are is icky, or they are ladened with Master / Slave moralities and acculturations that say women are inferior than men, therefore to be like a woman is something bad, undesireable or wrong. Those abstractions are erroneous and incompatible with reality and so people can feel a disharmony or dissonance in those belief systems and abandon rationality and regress back into or wallow/languish in ego-defensive coping startegies.

In reality, the rise of mankind has been toward what fundamentally we associate feminity to be. Feminity is clearly not whatever we transiently, subjectively assign it to be through “gender role” behaviors. When pressed to define femininity and masculinity, time and time again here, I see lists of HUMAN qualities. One cannot say that “nurturing” for example, is only a quality of women. Or, one cannot say that courage is only a quality of men. So, what do ALL humans identify and mean deep down by the notion of femininity?

The original ancient etiology of the phrase, “the fairer sex” comes from the dichotomy of fair=just and foul=unjust. Men historically have viewed women as being the more “fair” sex in that regard. That hails from the early human mother-child relationship in which we were helped to live by our mothers rather than preyed on. Early humans never again had it as good as when they were in their mothers’ care, never as warm or able to sleep without worry or easily find food or shelter. Our entire rise as a species has been through our explorations of the world around us for better ways to live as comfortably and safely and “justly” as we did within our mother-child relationship, better ways such as clothes to stay as warm as we did when snuggled up to our mothers, better ways to find and store food to stay as well-fed as we did with our mothers, better ways to protect ourselves from predators and each other as our mothers did for us, better ways to live with compassion and mercy in our societies.

We especially wanted better ways to live together in peace and compassion and mercy as our mothers treated us without so much viciousness and predatorial threat, so we’ve struggled to rise above vicious predatorial savagery through laws, notions of order and rules of “feminine” or maternal social behavior such as the Ten Commandments and the U.S. Constitution. The entire rise of mankind has been away from savagery and Master / Slave moralities into humanistic values of treating each other with respect and mercy. It is not at all about good=female and bad=male. It’s about all of us rising as an animal species out of savagery into greater comfort, peace, safety and consciousness. In that, I must say men are most definitely becoming “feminized”. And that is good.

Men have long expected their female spouses to create for them mini-maternal utopias of justice and safety and comfort in their marital relationships and private kingdom of their homes. And with the rise of women many men feel horribly shook up over the notion that those mini-utopias are being lost. GOOD! It’s time for men to want and work toward and fight for a more just, compassionate and merciful SOCIETY for all of us rather than just for themselves alone in their seperate peaces with a surrogate mommy.

Pip answers:

2278 Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of “over-zealous” treatment. Here one does not will to cause death; one’s inability to impede it is merely accepted. The decisions should be made by the patient if he is competent and able or, if not, by those legally entitled to act for the patient, whose reasonable will and legitimate interests must always be respected.

2279 Even if death is thought imminent, the ordinary care owed to a sick person cannot be legitimately interrupted. The use of painkillers to alleviate the sufferings of the dying, even at the risk of shortening their days, can be morally in conformity with human dignity if death is not willed as either an end or a means, but only foreseen and tolerated as inevitable Palliative care is a special form of disinterested charity. As such it should be encouraged.

2296 Organ transplants are in conformity with the moral law if the physical and psychological dangers and risks to the donor are proportionate to the good sought for the recipient. Organ donation after death is a noble and meritorious act and is to be encouraged as a expression of generous solidarity. It is not morally acceptable if the donor or his proxy has not given explicit consent. Moreover, it is not morally admissible to bring about the disabling mutilation or death of a human being, even in order to delay the death of other persons.

Legitimate defense

2263 The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. “The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one’s own life; and the killing of the aggressor. . . . The one is intended, the other is not.”65

2264 Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality. Therefore it is legitimate to insist on respect for one’s own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow:

If a man in self-defense uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repels force with moderation, his defense will be lawful. . . . Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one’s own life than of another’s.66
2265 Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility.

2266 The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people’s rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation. Punishment then, in addition to defending public order and protecting people’s safety, has a medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to the correction of the guilty party.67

2267 Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.