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Subject: Great Questions :)

Author:
An Atheist

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Date Posted: 13:44:28 06/21/01 Thu
In reply to: Finding the answers 's message, "Questions" on 09:01:17 06/20/01 Wed

Those were some great questions! I'll do my best to answer them. If you have more, don't hesitate to keep posting :)

The thing you have to remember is in what situations this argument applies. Basically, it comes into play whenever you are faced with a moral dilemma. The moral dilemma is between doing what you *ought* to do and doing what your desires tell you to do. I'm not sure how "amorality" would apply here. Either you exert the moral effort to do what's right or you give in to your desires. If you give in to your desires, then you could possibly call this acting "amorally" or "immorally".

As for degrees of moral effort, absolutely! Let me give you an example that I particularly like:

Let's say there is this big keg party that will have lots of drinking. Two different groups of people decide to go to this party and each group decides to select one person as the "designated driver" because, of course, they *want* to get home safely :) One group selects a recovering alcoholic that's hasn't had a drink in 6 weeks. The recovering alcoholic figures that he could use this responsibility to motivate himself not to drink even though deserately wants to. The other group selects a person who is dangerously allergic to alcohol. This guy can't even take a sniff of beer without breaking out all over his body.

Now, who do you think has the best chance of keeping his promise not to drink that night? In this case, the recovering alcoholic will have to exert a much greater amount of moral effort to keep from drinking than the guy who's alergic to alcohol. Likewise, we could have a normal Joe Schmoe who will have to exert less moral effort than the alcoholic but certainly more so than the allergic one to keep from drinking.

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Replies:

Subject	Author	Date
Why thank you	Finding the answers	21:39:30 06/22/01 Fri
You've Got the Idea -- An Atheist, 17:49:30 06/25/01 Mon