Physical attraction is part of what makes a romantic relationship, and so if romance was what you wanted, not being attracted would matter. This also explains why it would be strange to say that a heterosexual is discriminating in an objectionable way against people of the same sex just because s/he doesn't have romantic relationships with them. (We can turn this around, of course. A gay man isn't discriminating against women in some untoward way just be cause he doesn't want to have romantic relationships with them.) That much is obvious. But there's still some subtlety in the background. You said you didn't pursue this possibility because the woman "wasn't attractive enough." That could mean a couple of things. One is that you didn't find her sexually attractive: for whatever reason, there was none of that sort of spark. More on that below, but so far, no foul. However, you might have meant that she didn't meet some conventional standard of attractiveness, quite apart from your own reaction....

Lots of good questions here. I see two main issues in what you write. The first, which you close with, is whether the killing was appropriate in the first place. The second, implicit in where you begin, is what to make of the celebration of bin Laden's death. Start with the first. The administration claimed, at least as of a few days ago, that the intent was to take bin Laden alive, but that he was killed because he resisted in some not-clearly specified way. However, let's assume for the sake of exploring what to say that the intent was never to take him alive in the first place. You say that even he deserved a legal process rather than a killing, and there's no doubt: the idea that the government should be executing people without judicial process is a very disturbing one. Ideally, one might think, bin Laden should have been brought before some judicial body, whether an American court or the International Criminal Court, though there's room to doubt the prudence of that project. In any...

I'd suggest that atheists have more or less the same reasons that theists caring about others, treating others well. Of course, there's a possible reply that I'd like to set aside: perhaps some theists are decent to others only because they're afraid God will punish them if they aren't. But I don't think most theists think that way. They think, for example, that cruelty is just wrong. Atheists generally think the same. Now it might seem that the theist has an advantage: the theist, it might seem can say why cruelty is wrong: it's wrong because God disapproves of it or because God commands us not to be cruel. But that by itself isn't very satisfying. Did God just arbitrarily decide that cruelty is wrong? What if he'd decided that it was right? Would that make it right? It's hard to see how. We're now in the territory of the so-called Euthyphro argument (named for a Platonic dialogue in which Socrates makes a similar point.) There's a lot of appeal to the idea that God would forbid...

Thanks for your question You've raised more than one issue, so let's divide up the territory. The more straightforward question has to do with whether animals can be judged morally. But in the background are questions about whether morality is objective in the first place. Start with the simpler matter. For the moment, bracket skeptical doubts about whether there's an objective difference between right and wrong. What makes action what they are is in part the intentions, beliefs, etc. behind them. Two bits of behavior that look the same (say, firing a gun at someone) might be very different actions. Suppose one person is trying to kill someone for the insurance money. That's murder. But suppose the other is defending himself against a homicidal maniac. That's not murder, but self-defense, and the difference is in part a matter of what's going on in the minds of the people firing the guns. There's nothing mysterious here: whether we judge someone to have done something wrong is partly a matter of...

You're right, of course: there's a tangle of problems here about causation, consequence and the like. It seems a little odd to my ears to say that by fathering a child, I am a cause of its eventual death, but that may just be me. Perhaps we can avoid the issue about "cause" by simply noting this: a foreseeable -- and inevitable -- consequence of fathering or conceiving a child is that the child will eventually die. And so we can put the apparent principle another way: I'm morally responsible for the foreseeable, not to mention inevitable consequences of what I do. If this is right, then when my children eventually die, I will be morally responsible for their deaths. But what about that "if?" Let's agree: If I didn't feed my children, or didn't get them needed medical care and they died as a result, I'd be morally responsible for their deaths. I'd also be morally responsible if they died as a result of my negligence -- because, for example, I let them play by the swimming pool at the age...

Part of the problem is to decide what counts as "tampering with the natural order." In at least some senses, we "tamper with the natural order" all the time. Modern medicine is a clear example, but you could even make the case that selective breeding of the sort that farmers and gardeners have practiced for centuries is another case. Most of us don't see these as wrong. It may be useful to step back and look at the phrase "playing God." If there is a God, and if that God has designed a providential plan that works to our benefit and if some sort of intervention would amount to thwarting that plan, then that would be a reason for not making the intervention. Those, needless to say, are big "ifs." However, even if we grant them, we're left with the problem of deciding which sorts of interventions would count. God's plan -- even if there is one -- isn't as clear as some would like to claim. But let's leave the theological issue aside. You ask whether tampering with the natural order is...

The Golden Rule needs to be treated carefully, as you are in effect pointing out. As a formulation of a moral principle it's at best a rule of thumb. One obvious problem is that overly-specific interpretations don't work. An example: suppose John is terrified of public speaking. He would like never to be asked to give a speech. Does that mean that if John accepts the Golden Rule, he should never ask anyone to give a speech? Presumably not. After all, suppose Rachel loves giving speeches, is good at it, and John is part of a group of people who need a speech on a topic Rachel could talk about. It would be very odd to say that fidelity to the Golden Rule would call for John not asking Rachel to give the speech. So the first point is that following the Golden Rule doesn't call for treating one's idiosyncrasies as having some general moral significance. Now let's turn to the self-sufficient person of your example. Is their aversion to taking charity a mere psychological peculiarity? Or is it that...

You're quire right: it's a moral judgment. It's arguable that there's no logical bridge that can take us from non-moral judgments to moral judgments; this is a way of putting the old point that you can't derive an "ought" from an "is." But I'd like to pause a bit on your last question: what morality is this judgment about hurting others based on? And I'd like to suggest that there needn't be any interesting answer to that. Moral judgments come before moral theory, and we don't need a moral theory to be justified in making them. This is a good thing, because moral theory is a contentious area. In spite of this, people who disagree in matters of moral theory might well agree that it's generally wrong to harm others, even if they give different account of what the wrongness consists in. As for where the judgment comes from, there's more than one thing that might mean. It might be a way of asking for a historical story, or a psychological story, or an evolutionary story, or -- quite differently --...

I think it might be helpful to unravel a couple of things here. Let's start by way of an example. Bob and Sally work for the same organization. To avoid irrelevant issues, let's suppose it's a generally well-run non-profit, much admired for its good work. Suppose Bob is bragging over drinks that he routinely pads his expense account in various hard-to-detect ways and gets reimbursed for a lot more than he's actually spent. Sally says: "That's unethical. You shouldn't do that." Bob replies: "Who gave you the right to define what's ethical for me?" Bob's response is shallow to say the least. Sally isn't "defining" what's wrong for him. What Bob is doing is wrong, period. It's not just that his employer has the right to make this kind of theft grounds for firing. That's true, of course, and so his bosses can "define" at least this much of the code Bob has to abide by if he wants to stay out of trouble. But even if the company never says any such thing and never formulates any such policy, Sally is right...

I'd suggest that the line isn't really very sharp. Here's a case: you are at the door. you see someone who's struggling under a burden of carried boxes. You aren't the worst person in the world if you don't hold the door, but you really should - and not just in some conventional sense. Why? One reason: you'd hope others would do the same for you in similar circumstances. That's an ethical consideration. Still, there are some things that really are matters of custom. It's said (can't say for sure if it's true) that in some cultures, belching at the end of a meal is a way to compliment the host. That's not so in other societies (US society, for example.) There's obviously no general answer to the question "To belch or not to belch?" However... Here in the USA, if I deliberately belch at the end of a meal and embarrass my host, I can't plead that it's a compliment in some countries, and I also can't plead that my act is a mere violation of custom, hence not really wrong. Customs are part of what...