Can things like lying, cheating, stealing, or even killing ever be Justified?

Sure, if your standards aren’t too high.

I’d kill if it meant saving loved ones, and, sure, I’d steal to live.

Nazi comes to your front door. “Any Jews hiding here?”
You (lying): “No.”
Nazi: “Oh, okay, have a nice day.”

Yay!

Of course. We all contain the ability to do what has to be done in extreme circumstances.
Stealing, killing, lying, ( don’t know how cheating would factor in to survival ) to feed ourselves, protect ourselves or loved ones, etc. is absolved on the morality scale.

It is only when there is dark and duplicitious INTENTION that crosses the line of ethics and morality. All of the above behaviors performed out of greed, anger, lust, power over, monetary gain are considered immoral…self preservation is a horse of a different color entirely.

There are exceptions to EVERY rule dependant on circumstance.

Unfortuneately our world is NOT black and white, there are numerous shades of grey. This being said sometimes the ends justify the means and as long as the greatest good for the greatest number is always kept in mind it will be justified.

Yes, justification lies in the offset of the detriment of other party’s interests in contrast to your own motivations to pursue your actions.

If you can save your children’s live by stealing some water from someone else’s well, I feel there shouldn’t even be a discussion, for instance.

Depends on which moral theory you’re going by… The categorical imperative and utilitarianism are the two main schools of thought on this subject, but there are many others as well.

As @misterx said, the world is not black and white. I could probably think of at least one reason why some normally illegal or immoral thing might be right under certain circumstances.

I am a pacifist by nature….funny as all the men I date always want to ‘arm’ me with guns because I live my life of bohemian rhapsody on my own little Walden pond. lololol

I always tell them, if I HAD to truly defend myself with violent action I’ll just hit an intruder over the head with my marble Buddha! haha

Besides…my killer geese would goose the life out of anyone that was foolish enough to invade my turf! lololol

Well, killing is certainly justifiable in some cases (self-defense comes to mind).

It sounds like that movie is proving once again that people will do terrible things to stay alive.

The problem with doing these things, is if it hurts someone else, you accrue bad karma.

This is an expert in the field, Dr. Bruce Goldberg, the past-life-regression hypno-therapist, he pioneered the technique and has healed 35,000 patients since the mid-70’s, he knows a thing or two about people having to live really unpleasant lives to learn what it feels like being done to them, what they did to others, it’s the universe’s way of waking you up. Awareness seems to be the universe’s goal, and if you hurt other’s the universe will be guaranteed to wake you up, whatever it takes.

Now some interesting reading about Karma:
http://www.drbrucegoldberg.com/karma.htm

All of those things are justified daily in the military. In politics. In the banking industry. In the legal profession (lawyers, judges, cops etc…). In the Real Estate profession. ...
ad nauseum…

To me you’ve just described what war is like.I’ll leave it up to the individual to decide if they’re justified or not.

It’s contingent on the circumstances and motives and who gets to play judge.
See ya….Gary/wtf.

I would imagine this could be a real dilemma for people with a religious conviction… luckily for me I’m an atheist so I think the end can often justify the means, even if those means are morally reprehensible.

It seems many of you advocate various utilitarian positions. It might be worth considering that sometimes truly despicable acts (infanticide, rape, genocide) may be the morally obligatory behavior if the ending result has an overall higher utility “score” under variants of utilitarianism. Not to say the other theories don’t have their problems as well, I just thought I’d point out one of utilitarianism’s weaknesses.

@chamelopotamus Really? That’s your expert? Go read a real book.

@dpworkin Isn’t that a bit crude/harsh?

Many people can learn from very poor books, while some can’t learn from the best

Yes to all if it will save your life or the life of someone you love.

Life has always been survival of the fittest….Do what you gotta do to survive in those situations, but know full well there will be Colt and Glock as judge and jury out there waiting for you.

@Cruiser We’re a social animal. Survival of the fittest is not about your ability as an individual to survive. It is about how well a set of genes within a population and that population itself survives.

Genes that predispose an individual to sacrifice his (or her) life to the benefit of the group will therefore still have a good chance to come out ‘on top’ of those that are creating pure selfish behavior.

There is no use in surviving if you’re gonna be the only one left.

@whitenoise Huh? The question has nothing to do about social animals?!? When the system is broken like the question posited, you are on your own…you will want to avoid the crowds and fend for yourself to survive so your own gene pool can carry on. If things go to hell in a hand basket and if I have that need, I will come and steal everything you got in order to survive.

@Cruiser you’re right. In my mind, I mistakenly transferred your answer on this thread to another one, where I was reading in on as well.
Maybe I should report my own answer as blatantly stupid. Sigh…

Lying to shut someone up.
Cheating (bending the rules) to get ahead.
Stealing when playing baseball.
Killing… Go ahead, fuck with my livelihood. And, ya just might CHEAT death.

So yes.

You are babysitting a child. A homocidal pedophile comes to the door and asks “are there any children here?” You, of course, reply “No”. You just lied for the good. Someone tries to kill you-you kill them first-You just killed for the good. You are starving-you steal bread. You just committed a crime for the good, but sadly, you will get into trouble with the law. Can’t have everything I guess.

@whitenoise What’s crude is citing as a rational source a past-life hypnotist. One can never be too harsh in slapping that crap down. Of what earthly use is it?

I’ll let you know by Monday.I’m only mid-list at this point.;)

These things are only illegal when they serve our purposes to be illegal, we ignore all that when needed.

I reckon so. If I were hungry I would steal food. I am not a thief by nature. Just thought I’d point that out. I am glad and have avoided owning a gun, because if someone does threaten me I will shoot them no questions asked.

Hells to the yeah!!! I would feel justified killing someone if it was in defense of someone I love. There are always “what if” situations and until you’ve experienced one you will never really know what your true reaction would be.

People justify all sort of awful things they do. Justifiability is a morally flexible concept.

@Captain_Fantasy morals as being societies or your own? as personal morals are values.

@dpworkin

Oh… but I certainly agree with you there.
I just think i have seen you trash other people’s nonsense in a more elaborate, friendly way.

Never. Not ever. If someone is slowly killing your girlfriend right in front of your eyes you should obviously call the police and attempt to reason with this individual.

If a person comes to your door and tells you that he’s there to kill your girlfriend in this manner and then asks, “Do you know where she is?” then it would be reprehensible of you to lie and say that you don’t, if you do.

If this person sets down his knife, gun, handcuffs, garrote, or whatever else he’s going to use to kill your girlfriend it would be completely beyond the pale to take these things from him and hide them, or worse, use them on him. That would be stealing, and we all know how bad this is.

I suppose everyone has to ask a first Q on Fluther, and I’m happy to see you here, but I hope for all our sakes that you can learn to write a more nuanced question sooner or later. Or we’ll have to kill you.

Yes.

@CyanoticWasp ”...but I hope for all our sakes that you can learn to write a more nuanced question sooner or later.”

Actually, moral dilemmas are still being debated by ethics scholars so I don’t think it’s a stupid question at all. It’s through conducting thought experiments such as these that we’re able to generate moral theories which ultimately help us put together intelligent ethics policies when it comes to areas such as medicine, science and law.

@gorillapaws I have no problem at all with thought experiments and questions of moral dilemmas. I’ve seen a lot of good ones. This hardly rises to that level, does it? It’s a stark “is it ever okay or is it always bad to do this or that?”

If I ever face a ‘moral dilemma’ that is so starkly worded, then it would probably be as a member of the US Senate, if I had to debate whether it was ever okay to not wear a flag lapel pin, or something equally inane.

@dpworkin Yes really and it is a real book by a real Dr thank you very much. I’m not going to read the same book as you or give the same advice or reccomendations as you so don’t expect me to, savvy? Im sure plenty of people recognize the magnitude of the books you have read, and your education, etc: discrediting something you don’t even know about doesn’t add to that “magnitude”. Now with that being said, what is your idea of an enjoyable book? You know, the kind that everyone else and I should be reading???

@dpworkin when answers about “past-life-regression-hypno-therapists” get 3 GAs (the second-most of any answer in the thread to date), then it signals the beginning of the end of Fluther, doesn’t it?

It was nice while it lasted. Obviously time to take off our “serious-hats” and don our party garb. And get drunk before we answer.

Well that’s an elitist thing to say. Knowing nothing of the thing you are discrediting gives you no clout or credibility. You know nothing about it and still have the authority to discredit it? Now that’s taking off your serious hat. And putting on your bullying hat, for god knows why. Are you seriously expecting everyone to give the same answers you give, because you’ll be disappointed.

@chamelopotamus if everyone gave the same answers I give, then I’d never get any lurve unless my dorg was much cuter than she is. (And she’s pretty damn cute—she used to be Cleopatra, you know.)

Ok cool, so live and let live

@chamelopotamus if everyone gave the same answers I give, then I’d never get any lurve unless my dorg was much cuter than he is. (And he’s pretty damn cute—he used to be Julius Caesar, you know.)

TGIF!

Isn’t this horse beyond dead now? lolololol

Time to call in the backhoe! ;-)

@Coloma There’s already a question about that – Oh, wait – it’s black Hole – sorry

Hahahahahaha…....beating a black hole…hmmm…catchy! lol

@chamelopotamus
“This is an expert in the field, Dr. Bruce Goldberg, the past-life-regression hypno-therapist, he pioneered the technique and has healed 35,000 patients since the mid-70’s, he knows a thing or two about people having to live really unpleasant lives to learn what it feels like being done to them, what they did to others, it’s the universe’s way of waking you up. Awareness seems to be the universe’s goal, and if you hurt other’s the universe will be guaranteed to wake you up, whatever it takes.”

This just made my stomach role. Smacks too close to manifest destiny crowd.

So someone gets raped then that is just the universe showing them what a bad person they are, or were in a past life, as this is coming from a past-life-regression hypno-therapist?

As to the original question: in all three…yes, there are situations where I would do all three.

@tranquilsea I have never heard of manifest destiny im just talking about plain old karma. I didn’t give specific examples like rape, cause that’s controversial. People can mess up and do bad things to underserving people. And perhaps that victim will have something good happen to them either later in this life, or in the next life, while the predator becomes the victim in this or the next life? Maybe thats how it works?

@chamelopotamus Ever notice that people who pay someone to tell them about their past lives never seem to have been prostitutes, slaves, bathroom attendants, goat herders, or mentally retarded? If we all listened to people as “brilliant” as Dr. Goldberg we would be left with no choice but to believe that there probably weren’t any undesirable careers in the past… Also, isn’t it strange that hundreds of women all seem to have been Cleopatra in a past life (oh right, that’s because the fake hypnotherapeutic past-life regressionists are lying, unlike the “brilliant” Dr. Goldberg—he’s the one telling the truth…).

Ever stop to think it’s a lot of fanciful wishful thinking?

@gorillapaws maybe they took turns being Cleopatra…. like in Quantum Leap

@gorillapaws where are you coming from on this stuff? who said any of that? what are you citing in your example that no one ever comes out prostitutes and slaves? sure they do! I’ve read many cases like that from him and other Doctors. In fact thats the REASON they do regression therapy: to heal traumas of the past! Hello? I don’t know why you’re saying any of that, nor do I know why you’re sarcastically referring to Dr. Bruce Goldberg as “brilliant” either. Where you are getting this attitude, I don’t know. You obviously haven’t looked into anything he’s done.

@chamelopotamus the guy’s a dentist who never puts the DDS on the end of his name because it adds a false sense of legitimacy to his hypnotherapy stuff.

I’m getting the psychic impression that in a past life you were frequently taken advantage of by charlatans and snake-oil salesmen because you lacked the critical thinking skills to realize you were being exploited. Perhaps you should go talk to the dentist Dr. Goldberg to see if he can heal those past wounds?

@gorillapaws Well that’s all speculation, and holds no credibility. Fact check next time: former dentist. He pioneered the technique, and it’s now being used by several highly regarded doctors, like Brian Weiss, a former therapist.

How about you go heal 35,000 patients over a 30 year period, and then you and I can talk on the matter, otherwise whats the point? You’ve made up your mind without knowing anything about it. You act like this is my only interest, or an obsession. It’s just an interest among many, and you can’t really read into it as much as you are, to try to find any means of discrediting me, my comment, and the Dr. You really can’t discredit the reality that you don’t know about. Now that’s a lack of critical thinking, and an overdose of speculation.

The only fair reply for you to do, is actually check out Dr. Bruce Goldberg’s cases, on a specific, detailed level. You will reject it anyways, but you will see that there is absolutely no lack in critical thinking.

This is all a sideshow distraction from the original topic, and my off-hand: explore-it-if-you-want-to-or-simply-leave-it-alone-if-you-don’t-want-it comment. I never intended to be the Champion defender of Dr. Bruce Goldberg, but I also wont ignore ignorant, lack-of-information comments. You accuse me of the thing you are doing, not getting information. And as unpleasant as this is, it’s better than being bullied and doing nothing.

Next time you see a comment you don’t agree with, or don’t know about, either do some real research about it, on a detailed level, or leave it alone, because I’ve done my homework.

@chamelopotamus ok, let’s talk critical thinking then. 35,000 over a 30 year period? Assuming Dr Goldberg worked every single day for the past 30 years (including weekends, holidays, etc) then he would have to have “cured” 3.2 patients a day. Practically speaking, that means he’s curing these people in only 1–2 sessions which seems a little suspect no?

@gorillapaws You made the comment, so I went to his website to check it out, and I have a slight correction. Dr. Bruce Goldberg has conducted 35,000 past-life regressions over a 30 year period, on 14,000 individuals.

Whatever questions you have you can ask him yourself

Telephone:
800–527-6248

Go to FAQ’s:
http://www.drbrucegoldberg.com/faqs.htm

Or listen to an interview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoBdJ27lVho

Cause I don’t want to play middleman anymore! lol

The only person I want to represent is myself, and my comment: which was that unchecked inflicting of pain on others, can have karmic repercussions. If you don’t like that I cited Dr. Bruce Goldberg (so I could use his interesting, educational and concise article on Karma), then just look up Karma in a dictionary instead and don’t worry about the article or Dr. Bruce. If you’re genuinely interested, by all means, let me get out of the way so you can do the same thing I did, research. I wont do it for you.

Killings are sempiternally justified during times of war & in daily life. These are constructive killings(self-defense).