It's still premature to analyse statistics you haven't even got yet...
alas I can only find graphs for a few specific countries: Japan, Australia and India; and Scotland which shows the opposite.
I mention religion, in fact I wrote "Christianity" first but then I thought Islam and Judaism don't approve of it either. The point is that other ethical systems come to different conclusions, and religion was a much bigger social force in this country historically, now it's on the wane society is going a different way. (Individual clergy, however, sometimes don't even believe in God, but there you go.) I don't think the secular world has some special claim on being right about this.
True enough, rights claims are essentially moral absolutism, but it rather seems more a case of rule utilitarianism since this new right cropped up, it seems like rule utilitarianism based on Peter Singer's Preference Utilitarianism. The primary idea is that of the satisfaction of the will, the rights come along to facilitate that, or to post-justify it more likely. Call this an oversimplification if you will. I rather call it a distillation. Obviously social forces are in reality far more complex than that.
But to make a point, personally I don't believe that the satisfaction of the will is of primary importance, and that we have not just rights but duties.
I'm glad to discuss this with you anyway because you seem like someone who knows what they are talking about.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 17:18,
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