IS NOTHING SACRED?

I agree completely. My intent was that people describe, each one, what they hold sacred. If i were to elaborate, i would say that although we may not always be able to say "this is justice," each of us knows in our hearts if we have been unjust to someone.

Your post is priceless. Thanks.

That is a truth with modifications, but I agree with what I see as the general idea; we know justice in our laws because we have some "sense of right and wrong". A common misconception is that we have a sense of right and wrong because we have laws.

For myself, I wouldn't use the word sacred about any of my convictions. It is a very emotionally laden word as I understand it. I might say that the love between two people is a sacred, or just love itself, but that statement is more poetic than informative, as I see it.

Yes, I realize what I call sacred has personal connotations and that in the final analysis nothing we know or believe about it is eternal.

Referring to Setanta's statement, "If I were to elaborate, i would say that although we may not always be able to say 'this is justice,' each of us knows in our hearts if we have been unjust to someone," Cryacuz agrees that "we know justice in our laws because we have some 'sense of right and wrong'. A common misconception is that we have a sense of right and wrong because we have laws. "
It seems to me that both are right in a dialectical sense. We have laws to reflect our sense of right and wrong and that sense is generally influenced by our culture of laws. It is like the question of the chicken and the egg. In reality they (our sense of justice and our legal structure) evolved together--in continuous response to one another-- rather than one after the other.

I dissent to the extent that law has become the debauched handmaiden to capital in far too many examples.

You're right. I was expressing an ideal notion of law and justice. In reality many laws represents the interests of the powerful and our sense of justice often merely rationalizes our interests and related actions.

You wouldn't be talking of an inborn conscience, would you?

Wow! Marxist much?

So by this statement, can I assume that you do not believe that, in the main, our laws (meaning Western laws) do not reflect the common man's understanding of justice?

No, I tend more toward the tabula raza notion that babies do not come into the world with values, egos or superegos, only drives. All else is learned as members of social groups.

Animals, with instinct. As you say, they learn as they grow, but the innate qualities can't disappear, I think.

Yes, animals with instincts, but we are also born with great capacity for the development of language (especially grammar) and other human cultural productions.

Yep. Learn as they grow.