Atlas Moral Acceptability Poll

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

Gay Relations: Good

Having a baby outside of marriage: Nothing wrong with it

Sex outside of marriage: Acceptable

Divorce: Ditto

Embryonic Stem Cell Research: Could save lives. Moral obligation.

Polygamy: Human psychology is more suited to this then monogamy. People can love multiple people at once, and most (link) people cannot manage to keep committed. Somewhere between 25 and 72 percent of all married people have had affairs, and only a handful of them had a strained relationship with their partner. Our expectation of monogamy just wedges people apart and destroys loving relationships. Acceptable.

Cloning humans: Fine as long as you could make sure the process didn't go wrong and hurt the person being born from the cloning(who wouldn't be the same as their genetic parent btw. Environmental factors matter a lot)

Doctor-assisted suicide: Fine if the person chooses it

Suicide: A tragic thing, calling it morally unacceptable is a horrific insult to the people who've been hurt badly enough to do it.

Gambling: Why does anyone have a problem with this.

Abortion: No moral issues with it.

Cloning animals: Can't think of any good reasons why it would be unacceptable.

Fur: Acceptable

Affairs: See polygamy

Death Penalty: Didn't vote, oppose for practicality's sake, morality of it is fuzzy and complex, case by case, etc.

Medical Testing on Animals: Humans > animals. Needs to be done to develop life saving treatments.

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

Sobering numbers on out-of-wedlock births.

Also, is it just me, or is there something a bit laughable about the fact that a majority of Americans say that it's OK to have children out of wedlock, yet very few who will claim that having an affair is acceptable? I'm not saying that it's incoherent, I just think that it's telling that more of us are bothered by a betrayal of our romantic ideals about marriage than we are about the failure of marriage as a structure for sustaining stable families.

A stable, committed relationship doesn't require marriage. Indeed, the former without the latter is increasingly common. While this trend might be unfortunate in some respect, calling it "morally unacceptable" strikes me as a bit of a stretch.

I completely disagree. Marriage isn't just a word or an arbitrary contrivance; it is the legal, social, and spiritual structure on which families are built. Our personal feelings about a relationship's stability and commitment level are insufficient.

This is a very bizarre statement. Why should someone surrender their relationship to past foundations of family structure if that relationship is healthy and good? It's obvious/clear that out of wedlock birth is a disturbing trend but we can't generalize here and start arguing that it's immoral; there are plenty of people who deliberately/intentionally avoid marriage and who have fine families.

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Gambling being immoral is stupid. If you don't let people too irresponsible to not screw themselves do it, any ethical problems vanish.

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Why the f**k should anything else matter in a relationship!?!

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The nuclear family being any more inherently stable then other systems is BS. Marriage doesn't magically grant stability, and its not the job of some collective to decide the stability of an individual relationship

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

Sobering numbers on out-of-wedlock births.

Also, is it just me, or is there something a bit laughable about the fact that a majority of Americans say that it's OK to have children out of wedlock, yet very few who will claim that having an affair is acceptable? I'm not saying that it's incoherent, I just think that it's telling that more of us are bothered by a betrayal of our romantic ideals about marriage than we are about the failure of marriage as a structure for sustaining stable families.

A stable, committed relationship doesn't require marriage. Indeed, the former without the latter is increasingly common. While this trend might be unfortunate in some respect, calling it "morally unacceptable" strikes me as a bit of a stretch.

I completely disagree. Marriage isn't just a word or an arbitrary contrivance; it is the legal, social, and spiritual structure on which families are built. Our personal feelings about a relationship's stability and commitment level are insufficient.

This is a very bizarre statement. Why should someone surrender their relationship to past foundations of family structure if that relationship is healthy and good? It's obvious/clear that out of wedlock birth is a disturbing trend but we can't generalize here and start arguing that it's immoral; there are plenty of people who deliberately/intentionally avoid marriage and who have fine families.

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Gambling being immoral is stupid. If you don't let people too irresponsible to not screw themselves do it, any ethical problems vanish.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Why the f**k should anything else matter in a relationship!?!

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The nuclear family being any more inherently stable then other systems is BS. Marriage doesn't magically grant stability, and its not the job of some collective to decide the stability of an individual relationship

The idea of marriage goes beyond love. Marriage is an institution, that means your relationship is strong, and you remain committed to each other for life. This is inherently more superior than other relationships. However do I think that children being born out of wedlock is inherently unacceptable, no, as any sort of sex may result to such an arrangement, and for that, I would have to say pre-marital sex is also unacceptable. However, having babies, should be done within the realm of marriage, and marriage extends more beyond one's relationships, and the "idea", that marriage is all about one's love for each other, which causes the high divorce rates in western countries, which causes pain to the children, who many a time are a victim of divorce.

Divorces happen when the relationship isn't working and staying together would hurt both parties. And a child wouldn't exactly be healthy in an environment where their parents hate each other. The increase in divorce rates mean people are getting out of loveless marriages and toxic relationships more then before. Forcing people to continue a broken relationship is evil.

Cloning humans = Acceptable (as long as the human being cloned consents)
Suicide = Acceptable (I went with this because even though I know it's sh*tty, it's that person's life to take. They understood what was going to happen.)

This sort of logic is annoying, as what is consent? Consent does not mean everything, consent means very little in wide array of things.

What BS do you have that matters at all. Consent means a hell of a lot, and your valuing of dusty traditions and gut-driven "morality" is quite disturbing.

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

And most of all - one cannot say that lack of consent automatically makes something immoral and simultaneously support abortion.

Consent is required for concious, thinking beings. An embryo can't do that.

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

And most of all - one cannot say that lack of consent automatically makes something immoral and simultaneously support abortion.

Consent is required for concious, thinking beings. An embryo can't do that.

So if a person is unconscious you can do whatever you want to them? Pretty sure that's the opposite of what the consent movement is arguing for.

... No. A conciousness existing and a conciousness being currently active are different things.

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

And most of all - one cannot say that lack of consent automatically makes something immoral and simultaneously support abortion.

Consent is required for concious, thinking beings. An embryo can't do that.

So if a person is unconscious you can do whatever you want to them? Pretty sure that's the opposite of what the consent movement is arguing for.

... No. A conciousness existing and a conciousness being currently active are different things.

The person will still be just as affected when they wake up as if it was done while awake.

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

Humans > animals.

I hate past me.