Well, it would be nice to answer that action on our personal moral principles should cease, when it breaks the law.
The trouble is, there are laws and there are laws.
The Protestant idea that each of us has a direct and personal obligation to the law, no matter what a duly appointed law enforcement officer may tell us, makes thinking about these issues VERY complicated. Back in the sixties we were taught that we might be obligated to “throw our bodies” on the machine to stop the vietnam war. I am not sure to what higher law we appealed in those days but I vaguely remember that it had to do with the Nuremburg trials. I belief that in military law a soldier is obligated to DISOBEY a law that is illegal? Whether the soldier gets a commendation for disobedience or shot for it depends, in this case, on whether a military judge, in the peace and quiet of a courtroom, comes to agree with the decision of the soldier, which may have been made in a split-second during the chaos of a battle. We have to have a way of thinking about this that rules in civil disobedience but rules OUT stalking abortion providers.
Be careful to take note of how I am reasoning here. I am reasoning backwards from my own actions to some principle that would justify them. Pretty shoddy, as a form of reasoning, but, if one believes that beliefs just are those principles implied by one’s actions, then what I am saying here makes more sense. I am trying to discover what my beliefs ARE, not trying to justify them. The pragmatist Justice, Oliver Wendel Holmes, famously said that Justice is what judges do [in the long run, if they think carefully and well about precedent and the facts of each individual case]. On this account, our beliefs get justified by their long term success. By “long term” I mean generations and generations and by “our” I mean the species. This is the pragmatist doctrine of truth.
I think the reason that people live about 60 years beyond youth is that it takes about that long for the high=minded protestations of one’s youth to come home to roost. I cannot escape the feeling that in some strange sense I am personally responsible for the Tea Party. And bombing abortion clinics. But this s no doubt liberal guilt gone mad. I guess we got THAT from the quakers?
Nick
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2012 8:59 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] Faith
Ok, all of you "faith" proponents: at what point does practicing "faith" cross the line and become criminally negligent?
Corollary question: at what point does adherence to religious faith cross a moral boundary by allowing the practitioner to select comforting dogma over moral obligation?
PS: <complexity> (Added to keep this thread from being completely off-topic.)
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