[Instar]

Jack Simth said:

So choosing a starting point where most there is a high probability of a match as a starting point to argue from is automatically a fallacy? Interesting definition you have there.

Argumentum ad populum is a logical fallacy. Just because 99% of people agree that something is right/wrong does not make them right. And I don't understand what the heck you wrote there at all.

Jack Simth said:
A minor point of semantics there - call it randomly killing someone is wrong. It's pretty immaterial nit-picking.

Like I said, sorry. But if we are to talk about philosophical ideas and such, we must use proper terminology and definitions. It is a habit from writing my philosophy papers.
[quote]
Jack Simth said:

Jack Simth said:
Apparently you missed a chunk of the conversation

Yes, I realize that now.

Jack Simth said:
- Will was basically saying that the state shouldn't be allowed to restrict marriage to one man and one woman on the basis that it was a religious issue; it's a religious issue because it is defined Biblically. Murder is also defined Biblically, and it's not an strickly cultural issue because there are vastly different definitions of it in different cultures.

I didn't say they made many of them; I said they made Fundamental assumptions; the use of fundamental usually implies a small number of them.

Except, of course, that many of the schools of ethics disagree on those selfsame assumptions - Kantian ethics would ignore feelings as much as possible, on the assumption that reason is the best guide to ethics, as it is all that separates man from beast, and that nature hasn't provided an essentially perfect guide in our emotions. Meanwhile, there are a number of emotional schools of ethics that take the exact opposite approach, saying let your feelings guide you. Both types of school contain reasonable people, yet they can easily disagree on their assumptions. Moreover, they can never really convince each other, as both cases are fairly reasonable and there can't really be any true evidence on such a fundamental level. Further, they come to different conclusions in the end - sure, they all agree on the obvious things (a fourty-year old man in good health is a person; a rock is not), but they disagree on the nitty-gritty (Are monkeys people? Are unborn human children? Eating meat okay? Be a vegitarian? A veagan?).

Being insulting now? Is that what you are reduced to? There's no point in continuing this, then, is there?

Well, I "called it as I saw it". With the ridiculous equivocation you were making (gay marriage is as bad as murder somehow), there wasn't a shred of decent logic there.

I would say that gay marriage is ok, because of Rule Utilitarianism and the Liberty Principles. There is not enough justification to make it illegal (Liberty Principles). I cannot think of a good ethical system that would condemn it.