Lying under oath is perjury and therefore illegal. Lying to an employer claiming to be sick is legal. Both can be considered immoral. You want to put people in prison or fined for telling a personal lie in a private capacity? You want to fine or put people in prison for adultery? I'm sure there are many archaic laws on the books but try to enforce them.
What is your "PhD" in ? Don't you think it's a bit odd and pretentious to tell everyone you have a PhD on a locker room type bbing board? You are obviously not a lawyer because a case is never made on the morality of the act but rather the legality. Morality implies a religious reference point. The separation clause prohibits that.
Yes, it's incredibly pretentious and that was the point. It's obvious satire mocking the average individual on here with their professed genius-level IQ, IFBB Pro-like stats and other exaggerated claims of accomplishment. Nobody in their right mind would seriously give themselves my screen name, but it fits with the 'locker room' aspect of this place. Happy to have a discussion about how one's words on here might be a reflection of their true nature (I happen to believe that to be the case in many instances), but for now let's just keep things specific, without the irrelevant tangents, illogical rhetorical questions or meaningless pejoratives ('you're a leftist', etc).
I addressed a very specific claim that you made, namely 'morality and legality are two different issues entirely and you should not conflate the two'. I argued that actually, that very issue has been at the heart of a massive body of literature concerning positivist and natural law philosophy. I gave you the name of a famous debate between two of the most important figures in the field, and then addressed your two examples to demonstrate why they failed. You have stated that you would 'never make an argument that [you] knew was wrong', so after having at least a cursory read over the examples I gave, would you still stand by your claim regarding morality and the law? If so, then please defend the two initial examples you gave against my criticism. We do not yet have to go to the additional examples you gave, which only further demonstrate your confusion.
'You are obviously not a lawyer because a case is never made on the morality of the act but rather the legality'. See Dworkin's 'Hard Cases' and the generation of judicial decisions through principle and policy. Here is a small segment to illustrate the complexity of this: 'Lawyers believe that when judges make new law their decisions are constrained by legal traditions but are nevertheless personal and original. Novel decisions, it is said, reflect a judge's own political morality, but also reflect the morality that is embedded in the traditions of the common law, which might well be different' (1977, p.81).
Furthermore, you state that 'morality implies a religious reference point'. No, it doesn't. Not necessarily. And I believe you might be referring to the
Establishment Clause, which is not related to what we are discussing. Once again, you've touched on an entire field of study that you're clearly not too familiar with. For example, the idea of natural law and natural rights are often argued to be fundamental to the Declaration of Independence. What, then, are rights? Let's just define them simply as moral guarantees for a minimum standard of treatment. What is that morality then grounded in? Well, natural rights theorists themselves are divided between secular and theistic interpretations. Secular conceptions based on the idea of human dignity have, however, been enunciated by various Enlightenment figures and continue to rest on a solid naturalistic foundation today.
It might be possible to make a sound argument to defend your initial statement, but you haven't done so and most of what you've written in this thread is simply incoherent. Someone like Kahn would be much better qualified to fully explore this subject, but I'd suggest at least reading up on legal positivism, the separability thesis, and arguments for and against this - your opinions might then change. I'd rather hear your conclusions after reading the PDF and Al Doggity's criticism of your interpretation, though.
