Now, it is important to remember that TheStudentWord does not condone murder or any radical ideas but it is, of course, important to remember that you should question things.
It is also important to remember that most of the world still believes in a God of some form, whether that be Spiritual or religious and so this discussion is not particularly active in most of the world today, simply because it isn't an option that needs looking at because God 'obviously' exists.
However, presuming that there is no creator, then really there's no source of morality.
So, how can we justify what is right and wrong? If there is no absolute morality, as it would just be subjective to the culture that you happen to be in. In other words, every moral idea we know of would be culturally relative, depending on time, place etcetera and so technically nothing is punishable because what is punishable should really be absolute like a law.
So, how can a parliament, a legislative, create law, when there is no absolute because if God or a de facto creator doesn't exist then who has created these rules we 'must' follow.
It's a bit like driving on the left hand side of the road (in the UK). You have to do it but you don't actually, it's just a law created by humans in order to keep an ordered society but why should we follow the laws of society,? especially when these laws are created by other humans who are our equals? They're not a divine Lord who has superior knowledge of what is morally right and wrong, they've just been elected, giving them power. This would be correct if you followed Singers Utilitarianism but really, what right does someone else have to tell you what to do? It's tyranny of the majority!
So, I would have to conclude that no government, no parliament, no human, animal or thing other than God himself has the right to dictate to others, on what is best and what is right. We have autonomy and humans have no right to decide what it right and wrong, as you get situations like we've had for millennia.
We have been ruled by the nobility and been manipulated to follow them blindly and it's only since 1928, when all women got the vote, meaning everyone got the vote, that we've actually ruled ourselves!
So, although I'm not condoning murder or robbery, I would argue that really there's nothing wrong with it because at the moment, I'm thinking God doesn't exist and so there are no absolutes and I would have to agree with Freud and his ideas of where our conscience comes from- We learn it from our society- as if there's no God then we must learn what it right and wrong from society or from evolution, as Richard Dawkins would argue, which I am not sure of but I would move towards a mixture of both- we're obviously going to avoid murder but then again it was acceptable for women to be burned alive with their dead husbands, in India during the 19th century and so, you can see that what is right and wrong is relative to different situations.
So, question things, because what society says is right and wrong is not necessary what people will thinking in say 50 years- look at hanging people in the UK- as this was widely accepted among the public but is not looked upon by the majority lightly.
So, I would have to argue that there is no right and wrong and the government of the day has no right to legislate on anything, simply because no one knows what is right and wrong. We're basically, rather sadly, walking around in the dark...fishing for morality but failing miserably...
TGD
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