Peter Singer: When Doctors Kill

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/psinger55

Bertrand Russell and Christianity

"There are a great many ways in which, at the present moment, the church, by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering."
Betrand Russell, 1927

Why I Am Not A Christian

Les Misérables Lite: A posit on a solution

Q: A man escapes from jail one year into his ten-year sentence. He lives on a new name, starts a business, gives to charity and is a good citizen for 8 years after. You find him and know what he did. Should you report him?

To judge or not to? How do we balance a respect for the judicial system and the inherent human virtue to not judge your fellow man?

In respecting the judicial system, it follows that we respect that society has assigned the task of judging to the learned, as the case may be; judges in courts of law. A jury of peers is the closest we get to community-agreed judgement.

As the judicial system is one that is separated clearly and is independent, all acts of judging are reserved for the few, and all consequences of a judgment are assigned and dealt with by the executive; another independent institution.

For the commoner, to report the man would be to take over from the independent societal institutions. The argument is bounded by this, therefore making the man's crime*, his subsequent actions and his character utterly irrelevant.

A: No.

*In respecting the judicial system, it suffices to say that he was given a fair trial. A common contradiction while claiming to respect the judiciary is to pass a second judgment based on the severity of the man's crime, which is subjective.

Acatalepsy

Incomprehensibility of things; the doctrine held by the ancient Skeptic philosophers, that human knowledge never amounts to certainty, but only to probability.