If the state has the means to fund fire departments and doesn't think such a thing is a worthwhile usage of its resources, then it has a moral responsibility when people die in fires. If someone is living in a precarious building with poor fire safety provisions because they cannot afford anything else, and a city effectively says, "You chose to live there, we're not going to patrol that area, and furthermore, we're going to prosecute any vigilante fire fighter who wants to help you," then it is the state who is committing a moral wrong.
I would generally agree...because that is a part of why governments and nations are created. They exist because a group of people with a shared culture, shared interests, and shared beliefs recognize their commonalities and join together to promote and protect their interests.
The people we're talking about are foreigners though....and the state of Italy has no obligation to them. Italy exists for the Italians....and as axiomatic as that sounds, it is true. The interests of foreigners will always fall well behind the interests of Italians. It is the duty of the Italian government to make choices based upon that principle.
Not really. To borrow from legal terminology, the policy is not serving as a proximate cause here. It might be true that the policy is a necessary condition for this type of smuggling to take place, but it is not itself the direct cause of the harm. The existence of a moral actor, the smuggler, means that there is a very clear break in the chain of responsibility.
I don't know another way to put this....the child smuggling happens because of the policy. Men are buying children to get released once they cross the border. If the policy didn't exist....they wouldn't be buying children, smuggling them, and lying about being their father.
Of course migrants are morally responsible for their deeds. It's not morally acceptable to buy children off the black market because you're a migrant.
Then the same must be said of those migrants who fail to adequately plan to cross the Mediterranean and drown. They know it's a risk....they took it anyway. The prevalence or lack of rescuers doesn't change their responsibility.
Except that you are conflating different issues. Again, there's an entire theological aspect of my thought here, because I view the world as fallen. I do not think it's possible to be truly moral, so there is a difference between what I think Italy ought to do, and what I think it can be reasonably expected to do as a bare minimum.
We're definitely talking about the latter...as I don't see much to discuss with the former. Perhaps I'm assuming too much though...if you're truly only concerned about saving people from the imminent risk of drowning (a situation they put themselves in) would you be satisfied if instead of being taken ashore in Italy, they were returned to a location reasonably close to where they entered the Mediterranean? Yes, this would mean they are returned to the nation they are fleeing sometimes and yes, they would likely be taking the same risk again soon.
Italy should certainly do more than pluck people out of the water to avoid drowning, but if that is too much of a burden on its social structures, then deportation is an understandable, if morally suboptimal, solution. Leaving vast numbers of migrants starving to death on the streets of Rome, on the other hand, is an idiotic solution even on a consequentialist calculus, since it's likely to end up in civil unrest and possibly an epidemic.
All of which costs money as well. I think the problem politicians have is that once they are in country....they can engage in all sorts of behavior in an attempt to stay, making deportation a long and potentially expensive process.
Sure, and if we want to insinuate that people don't really believe what they think they believe, I could just as easily quote Romans 1:18 and tell you that you're a moral abolutist who is suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.
Lol sure....you could....but there's a difference between an unsupported claim and something evident. I mean, even the Christian god himself appears to be a moral relativist.
All moral claims appear to be entirely subjective and relative....regardless of how they are rationalized. People may claim that they are a set of external or universal facts....but those claims are never substantiated (I've never seen anyone substantiate them). I'm not trying to give offense...I don't doubt your belief is genuine.
Because it doesn't specify that it was the mother who killed him. All it says is that they both cooked him, so I interpret the murder as a joint endeavor.
It's a fair point that it says they boiled and ate him together. The woman says "give up your son" though...which implies the decision was the mother's.
They have shared responsibility for that, but only one has further compounded the moral guilt with deception.
I can't argue that they share responsibility for the murder. The mother clearly chose it....and it doesn't seem like it would have happened otherwise.
I don't see that as a relevant question at all, unless we think that it is only the Europeans who ought to be helping refugees. If they're risking their lives fleeing in a different direction, and many no doubt are, then other people ought to help them instead.
Well...that's an interesting idea.
The majority of the refugees are Syrian, Iraqi, Libyan...generally from that region. They have, generally speaking, Saudi Arabia to the south and Turkey to the north. If Saudi Arabia takes any refugees at all, it's hard to say. They didn't sign the UN Refugee agreement....on paper, they take no refugees at all. They claim to have about 500k....but that's questionable, since they seem to be on work permits. When a nation goes to efforts to obfuscate the issue, I'm inclined think they don't take any.
Turkey on the other hand has taken a considerable number. A great many stage in Turkey to prepare to enter Europe. A quick check tells me that Turkey has plans to dump their millions back into Syria....despite the war. They believe there's a relatively safe area in the north (the section near Turkey) which sounds like an excuse to get rid of them.
This of course, doesn't change the morality of how European nations are handling the refugee crisis. I'm merely pointing out that as a matter of perspective, European nations have been exceedingly generous....yet seem to be taking the lion's share of criticism for it.
Do you know many secular humanists whose starting point is theology?
It might as well be.
We're operating under completely different paradigms, and I'm skeptical that we have enough common ground to be able to have a conversation at all.
Right....you have your moral rationale and so do they. I've no doubt that you can go into great detail about the foundations of your morality...as can they. If we keep the moral questions simple enough, general enough, I'd bet you and the secular humanist can draw a straight line the foundations of your morality to the answer to a moral question. For example...
A starving man asks another man who has bread for some food. What should the man with bread do?
Pretty easy I'm sure. If only life was as simple. The question gets more complicated when it's a million men asking for bread from a million men. It gets more complicated when the men with bread have already fed a million other men. It's more complicated when some of the starving have taken the time to go through proper channels and obey the laws of those who have bread....and some simply show up. Even moreso when those with bread are asked to help indefinitely, with no clear end in sight.
I could keep going but hopefully you get the idea....
By the time we get down to those specific beggars choosing a particularly risky route of travel across a sea, and what is and is not the appropriate response to them....my guess is that straight line from moral foundation to moral judgment is gone. The same goes for a secular humanist as well.
I've no doubt that you can come up with an answer, you have done so after all. The secular humanist can do the same. You can probably tie it back to your moral foundation in some way. If I were to pose the same question to another Augustinian moral absolutist....he might have the same answer, he might not. Even if he doesn't though, I bet he too can tie it back to the foundation of his morality in a roundabout way regardless. If not on this question....then your judgments surely differ on another....despite having the same foundation. The point isn't that you're right and he's wrong or vice versa....it's that the foundation is too general to handle the complexities of almost infinite moral dilemmas. The result is that you both fill the gaps with personal values, biases, experiences, emotions, peer expectations, etc, etc, and so on.
It's not a criticism...it's just a fact. It's been awhile since I read the bible, but I don't recall Jesus's stance on the righteousness of extrajudicial drone strikes on US citizen terrorists in foreign lands. There's no guidebook for the vast majority of behavior....no all encompassing set of values to address them all.
We may have different starting points....but we arrive at the conclusions in much the same way.
