Most corvettes I have seen driven have been a relatively staid and legal speeds, well within the bound of normal driving behavior. Why would this result in such a reaction?
Pick whatever car you'd like. I just used a sports car known for its speed as an illustration. The make and model is not the critical aspect. The critical aspect is figuring out why most people would be beside themselves when a driver was recklessly endangering lives.
And again -- in my experience MOST people speed between 5 and 15 mph over the speed limit ... in every place I have lived. So by this measure it would be moral for others to do the same?
Morality isn't always measured in linear terms. With the law, they come up with a maximum speed that the average driver should be able to both handle, and will still allow for a reaction time. The point is that obeying the limit is virtuous for all the reasons I've listed.
Again, the legality of something stems from a moral framework. If it didn't, laws would be completely arbitrary, like the prohibition of petting lizards between the hours 3:12 pm and 6:36 am. In other words, there is always a moral to a law.
However, the reverse is not always true. Did you know that you have no legal obligation to help someone drowning? You can sit there and watch them die without the least bit of reprisal. If someone is choking on a piece of steak in a resturant, you can look them square in the face, with their eyes screaming for help and watch them die. Nothing can happen to you from a legal perspective.
But, is it moral to sit their and watch someone die without trying to help them? Golden Rule, perhaps...
Its also not illegal to try and save someone by using CPR, even if you don't know how to perform CPR. You are covered by the
Good Samaritans Act. Because even though you did not have the technical know how, out of the obligatory moral of the situation, you tried to save their life, even if your attempts injure them more in the process.
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Then you have to consider why it is against the law to begin with. If nothing comes of it, then why is it against the law? Answer: For the very same moral reason we find it immoral.
But you haven't found it immoral. You seems to have concluded that it is immoral because it is against the law and it is against the law because it is immoral ... notice any problem with that reasoning?
No, because you are misrepresenting what I am saying. Laws are only laws because of their moral implications, not the other way around. Its moral to pay your bills because not paying them constitutes theft (i.e. getting something for nothing), and theft is immoral.
Given that morality is derived independently of religion it is reasonable to conclude that the relationship to religion is false from the start.
Yes, morals are independent of an institutionalized religion. The greater question is whether or not its independent of God. But that's a whole other thread in and of itself.
Given that they grew up walking along roads by themselves - alone - while people were habitually speeding between 5 and 15 mph faster than the speed limits, the point is mute.
Just because you let your kids walk along roads by themselves where people are speeding 5, 10, 15, 20 , 25, 30 miles an hour over the speed limit doesn't make it moot. Saying that its only 5 miles over the speed limit is immaterial and is like saying to the judge,
"Well, your Honor, I only killed 5 people, not 10 or 15." Its minimizing what it is.
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To be clear, I'm not suggesting that the feeling alone always arbitrates the morality or immorality of it. But it is a good place to start, since guilt, anger, empathy and sympathy is like a moral gauge.
How bizarre. And I thought it was from rational consideration of consequences.
Does that mean you discount feelings entirely as a refusal to factor them in to the equation?
it is separating the issue of speeding per se as normally experienced by the majority of people from the issue of causing total catastrophe which occurs rarely and can equally occur going the speed limit.
Then there is a definitive measurement which makes it immoral once you go over a certain speed? Sounds arbitrary. I would say, try not to think of it from a third person observation. Think of it in a personal situation, because personalizing it always brings in the question of morals.
Think of someone falling asleep behind the wheel. Well, what do we know about sleep and humans? We know that all humans need to sleep. Is sleeping then, immoral? No. Is it a moral question? No. Knowing that you are tired but decide to try and fight it for a few extra miles, is it immoral not to stop? I think it is. And apparently the courts see it that way too. The problem is, its hard to prove.
Think of your wife being decimated by a semi-truck because of operator negligence. Sure, you may be willing to forgive in the long run, which is wonderful in its own right. But you are entitled to be angry about it. Not just angry because you lost your wife in a senseless accident, but because that person deliberately placed themselves in a position that increased the likelihood of a catastrophe.
But we are not talking about murder or intended harm to others, just speeding.
Fair enough. The scenario above is not intended to harm either.
Edited by Nemesis Juggernaut, : typos
Edited by Nemesis Juggernaut, : edit to add
Edited by Nemesis Juggernaut, : added a link
“This life’s dim windows of the soul, distorts the heavens from pole to pole, and goads you to believe a lie, when you see with and not through the eye.” -William Blake
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