final

a. Alyssa Schaar
b. Bubblesvb2
c. I have completed the 12 posts for the semester.
d. Paper on Euthanasia and Paper on Abortion
e. B+
f. All of the assigned reading was completed
g. I enjoyed the reading on the cloning the most. It was about current topics and it was very interesting.
I like the online sites but I think books are better.
h. I did not have the opportunity to do any extra credit assignments

Final

1. Gandhi is known for his deep commitment to pacifism. Even as a boy he acted in ways that showed that he was a stickler for morals. In school when his teacher tried to have him copy in order to succeed and make him look good in front of the supervisors, Gandhi refused and did not approve of copying or lying. Gandhi throughout his life with the principle that he was a truth seeker. As a husband he wanted his wife to experience and learn the things he learned. He wanted to force her to be a certain way. When Gandhi was a young boy he learned very quickly how he should behave. After stealing he wrote a note of his confession and apology to his father. He learned through his mistakes, just as any other person does. He also was a man that stood by his word. Gandhi found himself to believe in the vegetarianism. He approved of this mainly due to his religion.
Gandhi lived his life to the best of his abilities. He lived by his morals and prided himself in the way that he acted. He was a seeker of truth and does not like living in falsehood. He believes in equality for all mankind. With this in mind, he is an extreme pacifist. A pacifist is someone that does not believe in any form of violence or injustice towards anyone. He believes that people can achieve their goals and get their point across in ways other than violence.
Gandhi can be seen as a moral hero because he lived his life strictly to morals. He learned what he believed in and did what he could to make sure that he lived by these morals. He brought about the idea that violence was not always needed when trying to prove a point or fight for an injustice. He proved that methods of pacifism work. Any person that shows that violence is not needed is a moral hero.
Today, people are so rapped into what they want and do not pay enough attention to the good of others. Gandhi can teach the people of today a lot. He can teach them that people do not need to use violence whenever they want to solve a problem, and that people should be treated equally. If his beliefs and practices were more in use today there would be a lot less casualties at war. I know far too many young men that have lost their lives in combat. War is not always the answer. Gandhi’s ideas and morals are morals that would make the world a happier place if everyone lived according to them.

3. Nietzsche believes that people should pay more attention to others and not be so wrapped into themselves. He also believes that in order for people to have morals they must do away with their passions. Gandhi tries to do away with his passions. He denies himself the lustful desire. He even feels guilty for having lustful feelings in the past. When he looks back on it he is ashamed. Nietzsche would be impressed that Gandhi realized this at such a young age. Gandhi has learned that passions are not good to act on when he was really young. This concept is hard for most people to understand. I think Nietzsche would be impressed.
Nietzsche’s view on truth is that people do not know themselves. Gandhi was a seeker of truth. He wanted to be truthful in all that he did. Nietzsche would agree with Gandhi in the way that he lived his life. Gandhi introduced pacifism to it’s fullest.


4. Einstein believes in Gandhi’s idea that pacifism is the ideal way to conquer evil. When he found the splitting of the atoms he knew that nuclear weapons could be made, however he did not want weapons like this to be made because he was a pacifist. This view changed when Hitler began killing thousands of people and there was no end in sight. Einstein gave this information to the President in order to stop Hitler. He later regretted his decision because Germany failed at making an atomic weapon and he would rather the U.S. not have used one either.
Einstein himself constantly thought about ethical issues. He realized that scientific progression was happening too fast for mankind’s own good. People get excited about new technologies and want to do things, such as alter DNA. They do not stop to think if doing so is ethical. Einstein acknowledged this and placed questions such as “ought” they do something or not. He believed in following our “humanity”. This idea gives reason to why Einstein and his wife Elsa did not go back to Germany once Hitler gained power. He refused to live in a country where there was a lack of political liberty, toleration, and equality of its people.
Einstein is an ethical hero because he is a pacifist and chose to stick to his morals in tough situations. He was able to recognize situations that would create ethical issues and he addressed them head-on. I admire the fact that Einstein used his intelligence for good. He was a genius that not only cared about his work, but he cared about people and the way they are treated.

5. Singer is a Utilitarian and because of this he wants to reduce physical pain whenever he can in order to achieve pleasure. Singer talks about discriminations and how everyone fights to be equal and should be treated equally, but he wants to take it further and offer that same equality to outside of our species. This idea is known as speciesism. With that in mind he argues that people should take all beings’ feelings and sufferings into consideration. They should acknowledge when something is suffering and treat it equally by aiding it and keeping it from suffering more as any other human should do for another. He argues that speciests are no better than racists because they, like racists, consider their species to be better than the other species. A way that humans have this quality is by the fact that most humans only interact with other species for food. They treat them as only being a source of food and nothing more. Humans do not really need to eat meat because they can substitute other things into their diet to obtain the nutrients they need. Therefore he is saying that humans are killing and making animals suffer merely because they are speciests and consider the human species to be more valuable and important than the other species on this planet. Singer embraces the idea of vegetarianism and fights for animals to have equal rights along with humans.
I think that animals should be treated with kindness. They should not, however, have the same rights as human beings. Equal rights are for human-beings. When God made Adam and Eve He told them to take care of the earth and the animals. Therefore people should take care of animals and not let them suffer. They should be under the control of humans. They were not made equal to humans.

6. Singer wishes to get rid of pain and focus on having pleasure. Singer’s views on abortion are not very clear whether he considers himself pro-choice or pro-life. He argues that a person that is pro-choice simply feels that a fetus is not a human being until it is born because it is unable to think and perceive. He points out that, pre-mature babies are less developed than some fetuses and those fetuses are ok to be killed but the pre-mature baby is not ok to be killed. He is saying that people must agree on when a fetus becomes a human. And only then can they make laws about abortion. He talks about both sides and views of the subject. He points out that the only way people will be able to make a universal law about abortion is when the idea of when a fetus becomes a human is understood and accepted by everyone. In order for humans to have the least amount of pain, women should only be able to have abortions before the fetus turns into a human, if there is such a period of time. If there is this period where the fetus is not a human then he deems it reasonable to have an abortion in situations where the parents simply do not want the baby. In cases where the baby will have extreme deformities that will cause the baby pain throughout it’s life an abortion is allowable. In cases like this, parents will be sad and not happy parents. They will not treat the baby the same way other babies are treated.
I think that it is true that it is not fair for women in one country to be able to have an abortion and women in others not be allowed to. Laws must be made consistent in order for the ethical issue to be accepted. What makes a human a human? I believe it is when two cells join together to create a fetus. This fetus is a human from the second it is conceived. Having an abortion is creating an injustice for the fetus humans, because they are unable to talk for themselves and express their pain. No human should have a say as to when someone else is going to die. God made each person for a reason and each baby should have a fair chance at life. When it comes to babies with deformities that will have pain all of their lives, I think that they should live and touch the lives of those that they are around. People need to get rid of this idea of perfectionism in babies and treat each person equally.

7. With this same idea of Singer’s that people should stay away from pain, you can imagine what he thought of euthanasia. Euthanasia is when someone is basically “put to sleep” as you would say for an animal. When a person most likely does not have the ability to get better some people choose to “put their loved ones to rest” in order to keep them from having pain and suffering. Knowing this, of course Singer would be for euthanasia. There are more than one type of euthanasia. One is when the person tells someone that they do not want to live anymore, which is considered assisted suicide. He does not believe in this kind of euthanasia. He is for euthanasia for disabled infants. He says that parents of newborns should be happy, but parents of severely disabled babies may not be and that can be a reason to do so if no other couple is willing to adopt it. Children with spina bifida are usually in such sever pain that some doctors find it hard to perform surgery to keep the baby alive because they do not want it to suffer its entire life. In such sever cases Singer finds it acceptable to perform euthanasia because the baby is unable to be self conscious and decide whether it wants to live or die.
I do not believe in euthanasia. People should not decide when a person should die. This is the same reasoning as abortion. God does things for a reason. I do not believe that others should take a life. In the case of Terri Schiavo, I believe that Singer would not find it acceptable for euthanasia to have taken place. The fact that she was not in severe pain is evidence enough that she should not be taken off of her food tube. The hospital stopped her food tube and let her starve to death. This is leading her to suffer instead of relieving her suffering. Singer would not approve of the Terri Schiavo euthanasia.

9. Stem cell research is done on stem cells found in embryos, adults, and blood stem cells. The main amount of research is done with the embryo stem cells. These cells are taken from human embryos that are no older than 4 to 6 days old. They consist of 50 to 150 cells. The controversy is in the fact that people that believe in pro-life want the human embryos protected because they are humans. People also do not want scientists to begin cloning in order to get these cells. Many people are against cloning. Some people on the other hand want stem cell research to continue because there is hope in finding cures to leukemia and spinal cord injuries, and more. They believe that the embryos at such a young age are not considered humans and therefore should be allowed to aid in the study to help save human lives in the future.
Stem cell research can help people in the future by maybe finding a cure to a disease that many are suffering to this day. However, the moral and ethical battle surrounding the topic is whether or not embryos should die in the process? Many religious people and pro-life people do not think that human embryos should be sacrificed in order to help others later. Those lives are not given the same respect the lives of the sick are given. In all fairness the research to help others should not harm people.
I think that stem cell research should not harm the embryos because they are and should be valued human life. There should not be killings in order to aid research on cures for diseases. It is not ok to harm others. Abortion and stem cell research rely on the idea that embryos at some point are not considered humans. I do not believe this. I believe that as soon as conception the embryo is a human. With this in mind I find it unacceptable to kill embryos. Cloning would be another alternative that I do not believe in either. In the case of stem cell research, I think that people need to find a more humane way to study human embryos.

10. The reading that I think influenced my life the most was the reading of Singer’s views on animals’ rights. He believes that they should be treated completely equal to humans and that all the humans that did not believe this were speciests. This idea seemed a little far fetched. He praised vegetarianism because it saved the animals from human consumption. I am a vegetarian, and have been since I was about three years old. I became a vegetarian after I watched the Little Mermaid one night and I asked my mom what we were having for dinner, and it just so happened we were having fish sticks. I asked if they were made of fish from the ocean and she said yea. Ever since that night I have not and refuse to eat any kind of sea food or meat. My vegetarianism started because I felt bad for the animals and I did not want them to die just so I could eat them. I am a loving and caring person that does not like to see anything suffer. I am a big animal person and I love my pets to death. I now have come to the conclusion that animals can be eaten, that is the way the food chain works. If humans all stopped eating meat, there would be a surplus of animals and the ecosystem would be thrown out of wack. I currently do not eat meat because I do not like the idea of eating something that was alive at one point. The idea that animals should have rights is something that I agree with. I do not think that animals should be beaten or treated poorly. Although the idea is rather interesting that they should have the same moral rights as humans, I believe that humans should take care of the animals and when killing animals for consumption, it is done humanely.