Ethics Final

Question 1: Are there any circumstances under which you would support the death penalty? If you answer "no," explain your categorical opposition to capital punishment. If you answer "yes," identify those circumstances and explain why they make the death penalty morally permissible or morally obligatory

The death penalty has its good aspects and its bad aspects. There is always the chance no matter how small that an innocent person would be put to death. For many this is a valid reason as to why the death penalty should be done away with. English jurist William Blackstone said, "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." This quote demonstrates the seriousness of sending an innocent person to jail. Imagine just how much more serious it would be to accidently sentence an innocent person to death.

The justice system of the United States has embraced the concept of innocent until proven guilty. This leaves it up to the prosecution team to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person is guilty. While this may seem to be an easy task in cases where one person looks to be guilty it is not always that easy. One must keep in mind that with every valid point that is made by the prosecution the defense has the chance to cast the shadow of doubt on their point. With the justice system, the way that it has become it is very difficult to prove a guilty person guilty and much more difficult to prove an innocent person guilty. In theory, with fewer people going to jail for crimes that they did not commit there is less of a reason to oppose the death penalty.

In my opinion, the death penalty should be a sentencing option for a multitude of violent crimes not just murder. Violent crimes, while they do not always bring forth the death of the victim, cause a death of a part of a person. Violent crimes such as rape can result in a rape victim being unable to trust anyone, or in extreme cases develop a fear of leaving their "safe place", usually their home. Someone who is a victim of a violent assault can also have the same reaction as a rape victim, or as a victim of attempted murder. Any violent crime that changes the victim in a radical and negative way should have the death penalty as one of the sentences available. I do believe that there are crimes that are truly crimes of passion and those should have a lesser sentence than crimes that cannot be classified as a crime of passion. A crime of passion could be defined as but not limited to, a person comes how to find their spouse in bed with another person, if the person who discovers them has a psychotic break and harms or in extreme cases kills one or both of the offending parties. Violent crimes that cannot be classified as crimes of passion are crimes such as rape, attempted murder, or assault with a deadly weapon, or any other extremely violent crime that involves no provocation from the victim.

The death penalty is underused in my opinion, and possibly, if it were used more it would become a deterrent to others. As stated in the book if there were days of the week designated as death penalty days and days designated as life sentence days there would be fewer murders committed on death penalty days. Yes, I do believe in the death penalty and think that it should be used more.

 

Question 2: Under what circumstances, if any, is it morally permissible to break the law? Explain how your position relates to the one King puts forward in his "Letter."

Since there are unjust law makers there are unjust laws. Unjust laws are permissible to break as long as they are broken in a just way. There are even some just laws that under certain circumstances they too can be broken. It all comes down to individual circumstances and the laws that are being broken.

As mentioned by Martin Luther King Jr. in his letter that was written while he was in a Birmingham jail, unjust laws are ethical to break. In Hitler's Germany, it was illegal to harbor or protect the Jews. While it was breaking the law to do these things, it was still ethical. While Hitler and his constituents were working towards the eradication of the Jews it did not make it unethical for someone to protect them. Alternatively, look back even further into history at the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was a system that aided in moving slaves from the south to the free north. If someone were caught, doing so they would be punished and the slaves they were trying to save would go back to their owners.

While it may seem to be very clear as to what laws are unjust and should be broken it is not always so. If you were raised to believe a certain way then the laws that kept things that way would not seem unjust. However, if you were a part of the groups that the laws were persecuting the rightness or wrongness of breaking the law were much clearer.

There are still other laws that fit into the gray area of whether or not it is permissible to break them. One that immediately comes to mind is theft. If you steal because you are starving then yes it is more permissible to break that law, although still illegal and if caught you will still be punished. Even if you are caught and punished, there is the possibility that you would be given a lesser sentence because of why you were stealing. This is not true if you say you are stealing to feed your family but the items you steal are not food related. This being said there are organizations that feed the hungry, which, if you have access to these organizations, could nullify your argument about stealing to feed your family.

Self-defense shows even more laws that are just to break. If you are being attacked by someone and in order to save your life or the life of someone else, you assault or kill the offender, you have committed a crime. However, it is less likely that you will convicted of the crime because you were defending another life. If you catch someone breaking into your home and in order to protect yourself and your property that person is harmed in the removal from your property you should also not be convicted for harming him or her.

It is my opinion that life overrides the law. Regardless of the law that is being broken, if it is being broken to preserve life then it is permissible to break it.

Not to choose

Creationism and Evolution should not be taught to school aged children, partially because of the religious connotations associated with creationism, but mostly because of the amount of faith that is required for both.
Creationism v. Evolution, just the mention of the argument makes some people see red. To understand the argument you need to first understand both sides, if not completely then at least on the basic level. Creationism is the belief that God created everything, and evolution is a scientific belief of how life began. There are two main subtypes of evolution that most everyone is aware of. Microevolution is explained by Charles Darwin as natural selection. (Charles, 2003) Macro evolution is large scale evolution.
Evolution is generally associated with Charles Darwin, when the reality is, Darwin's most famous book "The Origin of the Species" was not about macro evolution but about natural selection. Micro evolution does have scientific proof, if it were not for natural selection there would not be variation in animal breeds, plant types or insects. Darwin showed no proof of macro evolution in his book. Macroevolution has not been proven past the theory phase, due to the fact it takes such an extensive amount of time for it to occur and it has not been observed.
Although creationism is a primarily Judeo-Christian belief, creationism is not completely faith based; creation science strives to not only disprove the science behind, but to also build the scientific proof of creation. One of the biggest points made is that since no one was around 4.5 million years ago to observe the development of the strata then the earth is only 10,000 years old. This same argument can be reversed since there were no creationists around 10,000 years ago to witness creation. (Moore, 2003) Since it cannot be proven it is also still a theory.
There is a scientific and philosophical rule called Occam's razor, it states that if all things are equal, the answer requiring the fewest jumps in logic is normally correct. (Occam's Razor- Definition from the Merriam-Webster-Online Dictionary) But, what should be considered a jump in logic? For some the simple statement that God created everything requires no jump, yet for other's it requires a giant leap of faith. In contrast some see that life coming from primordial soup (Primordial soup-Definition from the Meriiam-Webster Online Dictionary) requires no jump in logic. Picking which theory requires the fewest jumps in logic, is not the place of the educational system. Both creationism and evolution are scientific theories; neither can be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. How can two conflicting theories be chosen from to teach school children?
Children are generally taught one belief system or the other depending on their parent's beliefs. By the time a child reaches school age he or she has already been indoctrinated by their parents' beliefs, and teaching a different belief could have detrimental effects on a child's comprehension of the subject matter. Whichever theory was chosen to be taught could cause undue stress in home life depending on which belief system the student's parents follow. If students have been taught one thing at home and then taught the other in the school setting it could be fuel for disruptive and unhelpful arguments in the classroom where there is neither time nor the resources to handle the argument successfully.
It is considered a breach of the "Separation of Church and State" (Separation Of Church And State) to teach anything religious in public schools. If it is taken into account that there are some people who practice science as their religion then scientific unproven theories should not be taught, just like creationism as a creation science and Judeo-Christian theory should not be taught. It is neither a publicly funded nor privately funded learning institution's responsibility to determine the basic beliefs of children left under their supervision.
    Neither evolution nor creationism should be taught to school aged children. The theories have no forbearance on learning of other scientific theory or fact. Whether the child believes that God created the universe or if the child believes that the universe was formed by a big bang, or any of the other countless theories of the beginning has no effect on whether or not the child can learn and understand the law of gravity or the law of inertia. Why cause so much unneeded strife?

Works Cited

Charles, D. (2003). The Origin of the Species. New York: Signet Classics.

Hutson, J. (1998, June). A Wall of Seperation. Retrieved 01 24, 2010, from Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danbury.html

Moore, J. A. (2003). From Genesis to Genetics: The Case of Evolution and Creationism. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Occam's Razor- Definition from the Merriam-Webster-Online Dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved 1 24, 2010, from Dictionary and Thesaurus-Merriam-Webster Online: http://www.meriiam-webster.com/dictionary/Occam%27s%20Razor

Primordial soup-Definition from the Meriiam-Webster Online Dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved 01 24, 2010, from Dictonary adn Thesaurus- Merriam-Webster Online: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Primordial%soup

Separation Of Church And State. (n.d.). Retrieved 1 24, 2010, from History - AllAboutHistory.org: http://www.allabouthistory.org/separation-of-church-and-state.htm

How the Sexual revolution altered Family values

The sexual revolution changed the face of the family unit. It began with changing the definition of modesty which helped begin the feminist movement. The feminist revolution drastically changed the structure and functionality of the family unit. As in most debatable topics there is no clear answer to whether the effects of the sexual revolution were negative or positive.

It is believed that the sexual revolution began in the 1960s, but it actually began in the mid 1950s. The 1950s is usually viewed as the last decade of innocence, but if one was to look deeper into the happenings of the decade you would see the vast changes that were already beginning to take place in the country. By the mid1960s there was the widely known 'hippie' movement, which embraced the concepts of peace and free love. With the widespread "free love" it became common place for actions such as pre-marital sex and drug use to be considered not as bad or sinful as originally thought. In the 1960s and 1970s there was the feminist movement, which is often portrayed as groups of women who didn't shave and burned their bras.

One of the biggest and most noted events that changed society's view on modesty was the establishment of Playboy magazine in 1955. (Kennedy) Playboy is still in the lime light today, with shows like "The Girls Next Door" idealizing Hugh Hefner's lifestyle of being married to one woman, yet still having the "bunnies" live in his home and sleep in his bed. Women being portrayed in the magazines, even though these photos are "tastefully done", still had far more skin uncovered than considered appropriate in other publications of the time. Over time it became more socially acceptable to show more skin than once considered modest. This is true even for Playboy magazine, if you were to compare the photos from an issue in 1955 to issues released currently you would see a vast difference in the amount of material and what parts of the female body is covered.

The 1960s and the "hippie" movement brought with it free love and drug use. The young adults of the 1960s were in the first generation of children born to the baby boomers. (Kennedy) Children, who had been raised in the innocence of the 1950s, spent some of their adult lives rebelling against the constraints and morals that they were raised in. This would be the first generation of people who had widespread unprotected premarital sex, which led to their children being born out of wedlock, and being raised in single parent homes or in communes. With such wide spread premarital sex society began to become jaded to it and it was no longer seen as bad as it was in the 1950s, unwed mothers were less likely to be sent away to convents or homes for unwed mothers. The children born during this time period, to these mothers could be the largest group of children to be born in an unconventional family unit.

The Feminist Movement or Women's movement was supposed to be about breaking through the 'glass ceiling' and equality for women. It can be seen as extremely detrimental to the family unit. Before the movement women could work out of the home but the jobs they could do were very limited, after the movement the choices were greater. Around this time the economy made it impossible for a household to be supported by one person's income which forced women into the workplace. Once women entered the work place their children became more self reliant. Gone were the days of the woman being at home, taking care of the family and being a house keeper. It is unclear if this is truly the fault of the movement or just an economic shift.

The sexual revolution did bring forth some needed change. Women were to be treated equally in the work force, equal pay for equal work. This is probably the most positive change, and one that is taken for granted today.

The sexual revolution also had some very negative effects. The moral fiber of America began to tear. America went from a society that prided itself in being moral and prudish to society of people who didn't care what other people thought. Sex became less of a taboo and more in your face. The family suffered as well, with women not at home there were children left unsupervised for long periods of time. Not to say that children became neglected but they did not have the supervision that they once had. Parents became less involved with their children's lives leading to rebellion to try to regain their parent's attention.

The sexual revolution had its good and bad points, and we must continue to live with the results. The difference between the attitude of society of now and society of pre- sexual revolution is extremely apparent. In short sexual revolution caused society to lose its innocence.

 

Works Cited

Kennedy, D. (2005). The American Pageant Volume Ii: Since 1865. In D. Kennedy, The American Pageant Volume Ii: Since 1865 (pp. 884-937). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.