More AFAss.

The original story can be found here Sorry people but unfortunately I don't make this shit up otherwise I'd be a full time writer. Okay let's begin
AFA shit in italics mine not.
- As the debate for a state-operated lottery in North Carolina intensifies, one rationale by certain lawmakers in favor of the measure contends: "If you think the lottery is sinful, it's more sinful not to educate our children." This approach to morality can be extremely dangerous. It's essentially utilitarian, which erroneously argues the morally correct position in any given situation is the one that produces the greatest balance of benefits over the harms affected. In other words, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Okay, you state a morally informed point, that utilitarianism does have a big flaw in which the that you may need to protect the minority, despite that it could make the general population happy... as example would be protecting the rights of, say, gay people vs religious idiots. I'm following you so far. Though I also see how you follow the AFAss.' theme of "ignorance is better than being fully informed", because of your stance against anything except abstinence only education and that evolution, the doesn't follow the mythical bible.


In Calculating Consequences: The Utilitarian Approach to Ethics, Claire Andre and Manuel Velasquez say that "[t]he principle of utilitarianism can be traced to the writings of Jeremy Bentham, who lived in England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Bentham, a legal reformer, sought an objective basis that would provide a publicly acceptable norm for determining what kinds of laws England should enact. He believed the most promising way of reaching such an agreement was to choose that policy that would bring about the greatest net benefits to society once the harms had been taken into account. His motto, a familiar one now, was 'the greatest good for the greatest number.'"

The problem, however, with the utilitarian approach to morality is that it creates situations of gross injustice. It marginalizes certain people, sacrificing them for what is presumed to be a better end for the majority.


This is true, a big flaw in Utilitarianism , is that based fully on it principles, something like, and this is an extreme example but it will in short time explain a flaw in how the general good is not always the best.
Say for example that 100 men would get pleasure from all gang raping one girl, the pleasure of the many would outweigh the discomfort of the girl and thus maybe acceptable with in the utilitarian world, though clearly, not a good world to live in. So good job you've pointed out that Utilitarianism is not a perfect system, you've reached the level of anyone who has ever taken an ethics class!


It was the utilitarian approach to morality that Neville Chamberlain employed when he signed the Munich Pact with Hitler in 1938. In the allusion of attaining "peace in our time," Chamberlain sacrificed the people of Czechoslovakia to German conquest.


And don't forget to mention that this is same approach used by former drug addict, President Bush to sacrificing the Iraqi people to securing oil in Iraq.


It was the utilitarian approach to morality that directed Nazi doctors to perform horrific experiments on Jews at Birkenau, Dachau, and Auschwitz during World War II. For the sake of the Third Reich, Jews were frozen to death, tested with drugs, put into pressure chambers, and sterilized.


Actually you are wrong. It was the fact the Jews were considered less than human in Nazi Germany that allowed for this rationalization. The Nazi rational wasn't utilitarian, they wanted to kill off Jews and if they could get some info while doing it the better, but they didn't try to kill off the Jewish population because this was a good way to get scientific info, at best it was a good way to explain it to Prescott Bush.


It was the utilitarian approach to morality that medical scientists employed in the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. For approximately four decades, impoverished, uneducated black men in Macon County, Alabama, were used as subjects in a project designed to study the effects of syphilis. Despite the fact penicillin was available at the time and was known to be successful in the treatment of syphilis, the subjects were left untreated.


Yeah, the US has as dark a history, we are just usually double plus good at covering it up.


Gilbert Meilaender in The Weekly Standard contends the testing on the Tuskegee men was rationalized by arguing "the poverty, illiteracy, and race of these men meant that, even if the research were not undertaken, they almost surely would not have gotten treatment. The circumstances of their lives destined them to suffer from and perhaps die of complications resulting from syphilis." So, why not profit from the suffering?


Wow, so that is like saying that Iraq is now better off and that Haliburton should profit from the suffering.


nterestingly, it is this same approach to morality that some lawmakers in North Carolina now utilize to whitewash the evils of enacting a state-operated lottery. Yes, legislators know lotteries exploit the poor and uneducated. They are cognizant of the fact that its various forms of advertising sell a false sense of hope that manipulates these people. Yes, lawmakers understand a state-operated lottery would create more than 300,000 compulsive gamblers in the Tar Heel State. Yes, they understand that lotteries cannot succeed without compulsive gamblers and that 10 percent of those who play the lottery are compulsive gamblers and account for 50 percent of the money wagered. Yes, they understand that of compulsive gamblers surveyed 22 percent divorced because of their gambling habit, 40 percent had lost or quit a job due to gambling, 49 percent stole from work to pay their gambling debts, 63 percent had contemplated suicide, and 79 percent said they wanted to die. But, you see, none of that really matters because the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few -- the education of North Carolina's children, they say, is at stake!!!


Besides, they add, people are going to gamble anyway. Gaming is a juggernaut that can't be stopped. North Carolina is surrounded by states with lotteries, causing the state to lose some revenue. Why not make the best of the situation? If the state gets into the gambling business, it will be capitalizing on the weaknesses of a few -- but it's for the children, right? There's really nothing so bad about that. Wrong!!! The end doesn't justify the means!!!


I agree that a lottery is a tax on the mathematically challenged (though underfunding the No Child Left Behind Act helps to insure that ignorance) and that you should know the risks of gambling before being involved in it, you should also never be forced to gamble. An example that comes to mind is moving from a guaranteed system of retirement (i.e. Social Security) to one that is a gamble on the market (i.e. Privatization) and if you ask anyone who who took the market approach to the tech industry in the early 90s, you were better off going to Las Vegas, because at least in Vegas you got free drinks while being fucked in the ass.


William G. Wells has written: "'The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few' is just another way of saying 'individuals aren't very important.' Jesus strongly disagreed. This is clear in His parable about the Shepherd who left 99 safe in the fold to go and find the one lost sheep."


This is good point and why you should do what you can to help prevent the major flaw in Utilitarianism from becoming rule.


Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying those who argue for a state-operated lottery for education in North Carolina are the Neville Chamberlains, Nazi doctors, and Tuskegee researchers of the world. I am simply saying we need to slow down and think again. The moral premise currently being exercised by some in favor of the lottery sets a dangerous precedent. It has its appeal, but it also creates a terrible injustice for an entire segment of our society. Moreover, it can have its ugly spin-offs that lead to even greater evils.


I'm trying to understand you. And I realize that you aren't trying to bring the conversation to Godwins Law and I also agree so what I think you are saying is protect the minority, which involves protecting everyone, Atheists and gay people included.


In his classic 1967 sermon, Where Do We Go from Here?, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., argues that the worst of sins is when we "thingify" people -- when we make people into things to exploit, manipulate, and use. For those lawmakers in North Carolina who feel the lottery is needed to deal with an even greater evil -- the state's lack of educational resources -- I hope they wouldn't succumb to the temptation to "thingify" those that would be adversely hurt by such public policy. As they consider what they should do, perhaps another of King's admonitions from the same sermon would be appropriate: "[L]et us remember that there is a creative force in this universe working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way."


I'm getting tired now but I think I now where you are going with the "thingify" thing. You should take this to Tom DeLay, as thingifying a woman in a persistent vegetative state should be a very bad thing, especially if you use it to only increase the needs of your political self.