<p>
Wait… so stealing for a good reason is bad because stealing for a bad reason is bad?</p>
<p>No stealing is bad because stealing is bad.
Show me some moral guidelines that say otherwise. I have stated my personal believe that stealing food if you need it to survive (just food not money for food) is ok (not good but I won’t hold it against you and I don’t believe a higher power would either), but I’m hardly a source of moral guidelines.</p>
<p>You commented (on my comment "most people steal for selfish reasons) “Like feeding the starving?” So I replied with what I meant by the selfish reasons people steal for. I also pointed out that I haven’t heard of any real modern day person who actually steals from the rich to give to the poor.
Are you trying some debate voodoo to get me to agree with you?</p>
<p>Dolorous, If you bought lunch for yourself at a store and then briefly went away to grab utensils and discovered that your food disappeared, would you be happy? It would be dishonest of you to say you would not be affected.</p>
<p>
What about stealing if others need it to survive? Isn’t it the same concept? You can commit a crime in self defense or the defense of others.</p>
<p>
Which is relevant to whether or not it’s okay?</p>
<p>
I wouldn’t be okay with that, but if I had about 100,000 lunches piled around me, and someone took 90,000 of them to give to 90,000 children starving to death, that would be totally different, no?</p>
<p>^That scenario would be totally different. But that scenario is also totally fake. How you feel is based on the context of the scenario and in a realistic scenario, you should be able to see why stealing is wrong. If someone disappears with your food without you seeing them, you or I would be enraged. We would think, I used my money to purchase that food while the person who stole the food got it for free. Now if you offered to give the food, you’d feel good. There’s a distinct difference which makes having food stolen mentally worse than offering food.</p>
<p>According to the Church, if someone is starving and has no means to get food, taking food from someone who has excess is morally acceptable because it no longer is considered stealing. The right to private property ends because the universal destination of goods is that all people deserve basic necessities.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if that would entail stealing from the rich and distributing food on a large scale.</p>
<p>I am just clarifying the Church’s position because there was some discrepancy. I neither endorse nor oppose that viewpoint.</p>
<p>I believe that if a father (mother, other family member) steals food (only food) to feed their starving family it isn’t wrong if they could not afford the food. If I go around ransacking grocery stores and handing food out to others it is wrong. I should use my money to help others and I do sometimes.
It’s relevant to whether or not it happens. You can preach all day about stealing from the rich to give to the poor is great all day, but what does it mean if it doesn’t occur? Absolutely nothing, it’s just a hypothetical instance
I don’t know anyone who carries/buys that many lunches. Unless every grain of rice counts as a lunch. I don’t think you could even buy that many lunches at any given place.</p>
<p>^Woohoo now there is one less thing the church and I disagree on</p>
<p>
But if the person is rich and easily able to buy more food, I don’t give a good goddamn about their anger in comparison to the life of someone starving to death.</p>
<p>
Basically sounds like communism. Which I am 100% a-okay with.</p>
<p>
Only food? Stealing some money, then using it to buy food is wrong, though? And why only a family member? What about relation through the human family?</p>
<p>It’s easy to talk about someone else being rich. Imagine YOU were rich.</p>
<p>
I would immediately give away the excess wealth. Then I wouldn’t be rich.</p>
<p>Exactly, you would GIVE. That’s completely different from being STOLEN from.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The idea that it’s ok for person A to take money from person B just to give to person C but it’s not ok for person D to take from person B to give to person C is rather curious.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It’s not really possible to be unilaterally stolen from. There’s only so much a person that possesses something can do.</p>
<p>
And if I refused to give away what should not be mine, it should have been taken from me to go to those who need it.</p>
<p>Dolorous, it’s easy to say what you would or wouldn’t do when things aren’t real 
I personally despise communism. Yep, starvation is terrible, but there’s a reason social class does exist…because we honestly aren’t all equal. If that were true, every applicant to Harvard would be qualified. We need doctors and we need people to work at McDonald’s. That’s just the way the world goes 'round.</p>
<p>
You don’t understand human equality at all, do you? It means that everyone has equal rights, to life, liberty, justice, dignity. Not that they are clones and all have the same abilities and should all be doing the same thing and treated the same for everything.</p>
<p>And the right to life must entail the right to all things necessary for the continuation of life, including food, water, shelter, safety, and health.</p>
<p>
We don’t need people to starve to death or go homeless or die for want of medication, though.</p>
<p>Who gives them those rights? If you want to say a god, then why do I have to furnish them? It isn’t my responsibility to provide human equality, nor anyone’s no matter how rich or poor. Call me entitled, but if I work for wealth then I should be able to decide how to spend it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What about people that work for wealth but aren’t fortunate enough to get any?</p>
<p>Well then, when the poor work hard for their revolution, they’ll decide how to spend the wealth.</p>
<p>That’s fine by me I just don’t think it’s your place to say where someone else’s money should be spent. If I was wealthy I would by all means put portions of it towards the poor, but it should be a personal choice, not a requirement.</p>
<p>But why is it their money? And don’t say “because they worked for it,” because that’s deceptive. Coca-Cola has a lot of money; it so happens that they have a lot of money because they pay their Colombian workers next to nothing, violently suppress unions of said workers, and take water from African tribes. The business men aren’t working nearly so hard as the workers, but by shorting them, it becomes “their money”.</p>
<p>Is that somehow better than a poor man “working hard” to break into that rich man’s mansion and make away with luxurious excesses to sell so he can feed others?</p>