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From: dsc@lzpfc.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: re: Morality and Democracy
Message-ID: <256@ahuta.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 20-Dec-84 13:21:24 EST
Article-I.D.: ahuta.256
Posted: Thu Dec 20 13:21:24 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Dec-84 02:14:39 EST
Sender: mig@ahuta.UUCP
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 33

> 
> Abortion is very clearly a matter of much more subjective morality than
> slavery.  And that's the difference, plain and simple.
> 
> How do we define objective morality?  It's tough, but I think we must
> start from a passive state - which is to say we allow things that don't
> infringe on the desires of others, and only disallow things when there
> is a very clear large (like >90%) majority that want it.
> -- 
> Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473

Well Brad, what you seem to want is morality by democracy, so that
if we all got together and decided *whatever* and we all agreed (90 %),
it would be moral.

In ancient societies (egyptian and polynesian)
incest (marrying of sisters to brothers) and
consequently killing deformed infants was the way of life.
Other societies burnt their first-born-sons alive.
Since all the members of those societies agreed to *whatever*,
you're moral codes would say that those where moral acts.

A differing view is that religion and/or  experience
shows us what is moral.  Slavery was always immoral,
it did not become immoral when society decided to admit it
as immoral.


					Dave Chechik
					(houxq or pegasus)!lzpfc!dsc
					AT&T Information Systems Labs
					Lincroft, NJ