Please explain your reasoning on laws and morals.?

Question

If there is NO absolute truth as we are now taught in secular humanism and naturalism what gives you, your government, your religion or lack thereof, any legitimate right to impose your views, ideals, morals, or code of ethic upon me? IF I wish to have sex with whom I please and the ‘other’ is agreeable who are you to say no, regardless of age, or relation? If I work hard but still struggle to make ends meet, and you have an abundance that you don’t use, why should I not be able to help myself to your abundance? I need it you don’t. If you place any restrictions upon my actions as in speed limits, seatbelt laws, age of consent, age to drink, smoke or ‘fool around’ or what drugs I may or may not freely use, are you not ‘pushing’ your beliefs on me? I have seen the term ‘harm no one else’ If I want to snort coke in my home, how does that harm you? If I want to drive 120 on the freeway, how does that harm you? If I want to sleep with you 13-year-old son or daughter, and they readily agree, how does that harm you? If there is no absolute truth, what right do you have to impose your morals on me?

Answer 1

Of course you are quite correct.

Without God, we do what we feel like doing and then justify it in our own minds. We can do that because, without God, we make our own standards and then judge ourselves as to how well we meet the standard. Big surprise that we always judge ourselves to be basically good. Even criminals plotting their next crime think themselves to be basically good.

Without some higher moral authority to whom we have an obligation to respect, we're able to rationalize away any behavior. On the TV news, a robber was interviewed. The thief had shot the victim when the victim didn't turn over his wallet. The thief said, "he asked for it, what did he think would happen when he comes into a neighborhood like this?" The thief made himself the dispenser of justice thus justifying his crime.

Answer 2

First:
there is absolute truth.
Yes, the opposite is taught in schools, however, can we agree that everything that is taught is not necessarily true?
Even if absolute truth was not the case, some form of rules would be sought after.
Why?
Order.
The type of world that would result by everyone doing their own thing would be chaos ....leading to extinction.
As long as 2 people are in the same area, some order is needed.
If your argument is you're only doing harm to yourself, its still not justifiable.
You have family. You have friends. Younger ones may look to you as a role model.
True, we cannot go to an extreme with rules and morals, but throwing everything out the window is the same thing, just the other extreme.

Answer 3

I was hoping you had read my answer to your previous question (I suspect you did not).

WE as society are the law givers. We must decide what kind of world we want to live in and that is were we get our ideas for laws.

Can you really not see how those things you've mentioned will harm others?

Sex with minors wraps children's minds - society must then deal with that person.

Sex with close relations produces deformed babies - society must deal with those babies (and we all feel for them).

Do you really want to live in a society were people steel from one another? Neither do I.

If you do not where a seatbelt, you cause my medical insurance rates to go up (because you are more likely to get injured in a car accident).

Your speeding effects me and my loved ones (you're more likely to kill them).

You using drugs, may not only harm you (and we foot the hospital bill) it spreads to others that I love. Excessive drug use will also make you a less productive member of society.


Always ask yourself, what are the long-term consequences of my continued behavior?
Always ask yourself, what if everyone did it?
Always ask yourself, is this how I want to be treated?


I have a right to impose my morals because our society has agreed upon those morals.

Answer 4

ok... i see where youre going with this. while i agree with the majority of what you are saying... driving 120 on the highway isnt a smart thing, and neither is procreating with your 13 year old daughter. in both situations, you are endangering others lives, which DOES go against your "harm no one else" ideal. speeding increases the likelyhood of a deadly accident. getting a 13 yr old pregnant with a doubled blood line not only endangers the 13 yr old through pregnancy, but brings a most likely retarded person into the world.

on drugs though, im with you. check out L.E.A.P. on youtube (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition). youll like that.

there is a place for societal rules involving murder, rape, age of consent and dangerous activities which might directly effect others lives. however, like you have implied, the line for what these things are is blurred considerable. i tend for the libertarian ideal myself, "give the necessity to the state and everything else to the people"

Answer 5

Oh brother, I respect what you say but I cannot accept your self-motivated actions that are based only in sense pleasure without any restrictions. They are not at all good. You are seeking out happiness in life, but without laws and morals how can there be happiness? Actually you are harming yourself and others, you can not perceive that because you are blinded by immediate sense pleasure without seeing the future consequences, just like dog rushes to the she dog to have sex intercourse without thinking. Do you think that your life is everything? Consider society as well. Rules and morals which can increase the happiness of the human being in society are advisable. That is called morality. Gaining happiness through morality makes man superior to animals. Your actions that you described are animal tendencies only. You must cultivate all the positive sentiments such as love, friendship and compassion in order to increase the over-all happiness of society and overcome your degraded mind. By doing this, violence, hatred and other evil tendencies will not be able to contaminate the your heart, will wake the real happiness within the core of your heart.

Answer 6

mankind started out as the lowly caveman and even then had a set of moral laws that were followed..... it was by brute force much of the time... if a man went out and walked all day in the cold to find meat to feed his family, when he got the kill, it was HIS..... being a good man, he would share it with the rest of the clan... but if another came to steal it from him, he would kill to protect his family's food....
his children were precious to him and if someone did something to harm his child, he'd fight for that child.....same deal with his woman.....
these feelings of "MINE-not YOURS" may have been the basis for all the laws today.... the fact is, they are laws and they are not easily ignored.... I really have no idea what's happened to YOU that you'd think you have some kind of right to NOT obey the society rules.... other than you're a throwback and not quite right in the head...........

Answer 7

if these things DIDN'T harm anyone, they would be legal. things are illegal for a reason, not just because they seem right to some people. there's nothing wrong with someone driving 120 down a highway, except that it would be very easy to hit someone by accident, and that interferes with their liberty. as for the adult wanting to sleep with a 13-year-old girl or boy, there would be nothing wrong with that if it wasn't statutory rape. 13-year-old girls [or boys] are not always responsible for their actions, which is why they are not considered adults, which is why their consent in meaningless. they're children, and children are not mature enough to make those types of decisions.

Answer 8

Laws are passed for the good of society. Half the things you mention were not even spoken about in the bible yet we have them as laws in todays society. How did your absolute truth change from the old testiment to the new? If it is absolute it should be unchanging. Yet you will find a lot of Christians say they don't have to follow the rules of the old testiment because Jesus brought a new law with him in the new testiment.

Answer 9

I agree with you - most of all the rules and guidelines for anything today come from stupid bible teachings..

But one thing I always keep in mind is sometimes it's OK to have some rules - what if killing someone was legal? How would you feel if someone came up and killed your family right in front of you, and it was OK?

Know what I mean?

The only real issue I think is deciding what rules/morals are ridiculous and which do actually help mankind.

Answer 10

Why do you ask questions that you don't want the answers to?
If you've assumed there is some kind of "absolute morality" then what do you care what I, or anyone else, thinks.
We live in societies.
Societies have rules that allow them to function.
Those rules depend of the will of majority.
Hopefully, the majority is enlightened enough to have reasonable tolerance for the minorities.