It's not a matter of rights

I've been thinking about morality, and while I know _my_ thoughts on it, and how they got there, I'm interested in what tack other people take. Specifically, for people that believe in absolute morality I'm curious as to what their basis/reasoning is.

I've therefore simplified the different approaches down to five options:

1) There is no absolute right and wrong - all morality is subjective opinion.
For those people who believe that all moral statements are claims about the way that the speaker would like the world to be. "Homosexuality is wrong." translates as "I wish people didn't engage in homosexual acts."

2) There is absolute right and wrong - I know what it is because God/God's representatives told me.
Which includes all of those people who draw their morality from religion. And know what right and wrong are either because they've learned from religious teachers or spoken directly to a divine entity. "Homosexuality is wrong." translates as "God says that people should not engage in homosexual acts."

The problem with this approach is that you're dependent on your religious teachers not having been fooled by their own religious teachers (or _their_ teachers, etc) and that the morality wasn't just made up by someone who then told them that God said so. If you heard it direct from God then this doesn't apply, but you might want to wonder about your sanity.

3) There is absolute right and wrong - I know what it is because it feels Right/Wrong to me.
Which covers all of those people who _know_ that stoning homosexuals to death is wrong, but this knowledge stems from internal intuition and feeling, not from external sources. "Homosexuality is wrong." translates to "Homosexuality is just plain wrong. I can tell."

The problem with this is that feelings aren't terribly trustworthy, and you if you feel that something is right, while someone else feels the exact opposite then you have to question why your feelings would have a direct link to Absolute Truth and theirs wouldn't.


4) There is absolute right and wrong - I don't know what they are though.
For those people convinced that there is an absolute morality, but don't maintain that they have access to said Universal Truth. You'd never hear these people say "Homosexuality is wrong.", instead they'd say "Homosexuality might be wrong, how would we know?"

The problem with this is that if you don't have access to Universal Truth then you don't have access to anything which could prove that there's such a thing as Universal Truth.

5) I have no idea if there is absolute right and wrong.
For those people that just don't know whether morality is objective or subjective. Those people aren't actually likely to have read this far, and probably don't think or care about this kind of thing, so who knows what they'd use to justify their stance on homosexuality. They might fill in the poll though, because polls are kewl.

[Poll #954176]

I am interested, by the way, and I'd love to know more. So do tell me how exactly you don't fit into any of the above categories - if nothing else I'll delight in pointing out exactly how you do :->

Movie Review - Hannibal Rising (no, really, quite funny, and not written by me)

Written, in fact, by Symon from work, whose website you can find at www.ferretpossum.com

Things in the shadows are scary. Anyone who has ever been a child in a darkened bedroom at 2am knows this. Unspeakable creatures lurk in the corners of the room - growling, creeping, snapping things with many teeth and red eyes... That is, until you shine a torch on them.

7 YEAR OLD ME: Wait a minute! You're not a monster at all! You're just a pile of underpants!
UNDERPANTS: We've been rumbled! Abort! Abort!

What I'm trying to say is that when you bring scary things into the light, they inevitably become less scary. Which is why "Silence of the Lambs" was such scary film, while "Hannibal Rising" is just a pile of underpants. I don't know about you, but hearing Hannibal's reasons for being a demented cannibal robs him of his mystique. Where he was once pure evil, he's now just a mixed-up chap, reliving unpleasant events from his past. Also, he's been rewritten as some sort of psycho avenger who targets only baddies, not the arbitrary monster he was in Manhunter who went after nice chap Will Graham and his family just for larfs. Which is sort of cheating I feel.

Hannibal Rising is stylishly done and does its best to appear well-written. But it's a movie that makes you think, "What was the point of that, then?" Other than to add zeroes to Thomas Harris' bank balance, that is. 3/10

UNDERPANTS: This is red leader to Y-front-one. The socks have stolen his torch! Repeat, the socks have obtained the torch! Attack formation! Tora! Tora! Tora!

Worn out

Went off to traditional Monday pilates only to find that the instructor had torn a tendon in her leg. So Erin suggested we play badminton instead. An hour of leaping about the court later I was a big sweaty mess. Great fun though - and it reinforced that I really need to do more of that kind of thing.

So, (checks calendar), when I get back from Eastercon, in mid-April, I intend to start trying to do something of that ilk once a week, whether it be badminton, tennis or some other sporty, sweaty thing.