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From: alan@cae780.UUCP
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Best for Others?
Message-ID: <2807@cae780.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 10-Oct-86 15:54:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: cae780.2807
Posted: Fri Oct 10 15:54:10 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Oct-86 06:32:56 EDT
References: <2710@burdvax.UUCP> <5833@ut-sally.UUCP>
Reply-To: alan@cae780.UUCP (Alan M. Steinberg)
Organization: Tektronix, Inc. (CAE Systems Division), Santa Clara, CA
Lines: 46


In article <2625@watdcsu.UUCP> mberkley@watdcsu.UUCP (J.M.Berkley - Computing Services) writes:

>In article (Alan M. Steinberg) writes:

(That's me, but the poster left out the first line.  It said:

THIS IS NOT TO DISCUSS ABORTION!!
I guess I did not check the subject, since I read talk.religion.misc, but
not talk.abortion.  I  have corrected the subject line, but still feel this 
reply is necessary.

I had said:
>>What is moral is what a person or group accepts as being moral.
>>If it is the custom of a society to eat their first-born (to use
>>an extreme case), then this is morally okay to them, and we cannot
>>say they are wrong.  We abhor the practice, and to everyone in our
>>society (I hope), it is morally wrong.  But if we were
>>in their society, we would be morally violating the custom if we did not do the
>>same.
>
He then says:
>I don't recall any societies where murder is condoned for the
>sake of convenience.  ...but I do not know of any society
>where it was acceptable for a child to be killed for reasons of
>convenience.
>That's what abortion is.  A matter of convenience.
>
The poster was not listening.  I was discussing morals, not abortion.  He are
discussing abortion.  The reason why an issue becomes one of morals is 
irrelevant.  The point is that there is disagreement among society, so that 
there is no one singular moral stand.

To use Jonathan Swift's examples from Gulliver's Travels, if half of society
breaks its eggs on the big end, and the other half on the small end, then
that  society has no single moral stand on the right way to break its eggs.
One half may think the other half is morally wrong, but each has its own
reasons for believing what it does.  Each side is right in its moral opinion.

Now don't start saying that eggs are fetuses, and they shouldn't be broken.
That's an issue for net.abortion.
-- 
                                             Alan Steinberg
                                             textronix!cae780!alan

Helllp, Mr. Wizarrrrd!  I don't want to be a programmer anymore!