Recently in Human Ethics Category

Not content with the destruction on our own world, we now lob explosives at other celestial bodies. What a piece of work is man.

Just kidding. I think it's marvelous we're studying water content on the moon, and I'm excited about space exploration as the next person. But, as I said in a prior post, I'm concerned about the costs. And now I'm concerned about our methods.

Why must we use such crude forms of observation to get our scientific data? The moon may be our nearest neighbor in the solar system, but who says it belongs to us? If there's water on it, who's to say there aren't also some strange, unimagined new forms of life -- that we're potentially destroying with our little bomb?

We shouldn't make snap decisions, right? At least, that's the message I believe one of our commenters was trying to get across when he (or she) wrote in response to our David Letterman post, "Hero Or Creep":

Might there not be an ethical question in deciding whether you can judge someone as creepy without knowing the facts as you admittedly do not? --gmo2

It's a good rule of thumb: don't judge too hastily. And on this blog, I generally like to pose open-ended questions when the moral and ethical dilemmas we discuss don't have easy answers, or when all the facts aren't in. However, in Letterman's case...

Today in the grocery store checkout line, a regal-looking elderly woman gave me a hard time. It burned me up so much I walked out of there fuming and practically muttering to myself, rehashing the incident and thinking, boy, when I get home, I am SO gonna blog about this.

Why? Because I felt unjustly accused, and I was caught flatfooted without a good comeback line at the moment of confrontation. Here's what happened:

I was buying ingredients to make my famous matzoh ball soup, which I always get a yen to cook up when the seasons change and the weather turns crisp....

My sense of justice vs legal ethics goes a bit askew when it comes to sex offenders. On the one hand, I believe in crime and punishment as well as rehabilitation; on the other hand, I don't know many other crimes that are so offensive to the soul.

In Georgia, sex offenders were pushed literally the edges of society, sent to an unsupervised and unofficial camp colony in the woods because of the state's strict laws restricting a convicted sex offender from living, working or loitering within 1,000 feet of schools, churches, parks and other spots where children gather. At least they were until Tuesday, when it seems authorities started rounding the inhabitants back up and trying to find them emergency temporary housing - I can only assume there was an outcry from local citizens after the first report was published.

Obviously, there are the inevitable safety concerns -- surely an unsupervised colony of sexual predators feeding off each other's baser instincts is a bad idea? But safety aside, was their treatment ethical?

It's being reported upwards of a hundred lives may have been lost in Samoa and American Samoa, tiny South Pacific islands far, far away from most of us (assuming you're a continental American reading this). Closer to home, floods in Georgia recently destroyed parts of 17 counties and cost 5 lives. Which disaster caused a greater pang in your heart?

Is it harder to care about people suffering at a distance? Does your conscience tell you "I only need to worry about my own family," or "my own community" or "my own country"? (American Samoa has hosted a U.S. Naval base since 1899, by the way, and I think it's been considered a U.S. territory that long, but please don't quote me.) Also, at the risk of sounding like I'm taking an anthropological study here, I'll ask this as well: 

A friend who tells you you've got spinach in your teeth is a friend for life, but then there's the stranger in line at the grocery store who reaches over and fixes your dangling bra strap (this has happened to...

I received a lot of flack for my last post. And I'm willing to admit I may just have deserved some of it. I was called out for failing to 'do my research' and 'being ignorant' when I drew a...

My neighbor has OCD--a fact I just recently learned. For the longest time I believed she simply hated me, or that she thought I was a psycho, and here's why: she wouldn't get on the elevator with me. We'd...

I'm pleased to announce that Part II of our Underground Ethics "Subway Series" comes to you from our very first guest blogger: Beliefnet's own Entertainment Editor, Dena Ross. I asked Dena to write a post for us because, well, Dena has...

Welcome to Part I of our exciting new series, Underground Ethics. As the name implies, we'll be talking about things that take place far below the day-lit realm, things dark and ugly, seamy and salacious, perhaps unholy. Yes, that's...

Yep, that's right, now affection is illegal. The New York Times today reported on the new fad for hugging among teens in an article entitled For Teenagers, Hello Means 'How About a Hug?'Kids these days are embracing all over the...

I recently got into a somewhat heated discussion with a close friend. It wasn't meant to be heated - I'd asked a pretty simple question, "Do you think you care more about what happens to an American vs. what happens...

Schadenfreude-nounsatisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else's misfortune. I once had a boss so mean I woke up in dread each morning, and lay awake every night fearfully, fantasizing about what terrors lay ahead for me the next day....

Today I took the coward's way out. Two days ago, I had an appointment with an acupuncturist--someone I hadn't been to before. I'd been suffering from migraines, and was told the treatment might be a good holistic alternative to some heavy-duty...

By way of introduction, I'd like to share a little about myself. (I'd promise not to do it again, but I undoubtedly will.) I was raised by a family who assumed I'd always instinctively understand the difference between right...