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@ethang5
My exeprience is that most blokes enjoy porn, even if only very light porn like a photo of Pamela Anderson in a skimpy bikini. But they don't like pictures of 2 guys passionatly kissing and avoid 'gay porn' completely.Queasy at what? Would a bigot also be queasy?
I woudn't call a bloke a bigot just because he doesn't enjoy gay porn. I'd say what make someone a bigot is not their attitude toward gay porn; it's their attitude towards people who do enjoy gay porn.
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@Plisken
i don't think there is anythin to be gained by making a pedatic distinction between 'morality' and 'ethics'. As is common in English 'Morality' is from Latin and 'Ethics' from Greek - there is no consensus about how the differ, or if they do.
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@Plisken
Atheists believe that the universe operates on materialist principles such as causality alone. Their world view does inlcude a god and it is that feature of their worldview that provided the label 'athest'.
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@Alec
The moon is 250 thousand miles away - mars is on average 1000 times further away. I can't think of anything about Mars that could compensate for the vastly greater distance.
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@3RU7AL
Is a self-replicating molecule "alive"?Is a self-replicating virus "alive"?
The words 'alive' and 'dead' have be around a long time, long before there were dictionaries or people had to deal with problematic cases like self-replicating molecules!
I don't know who gets to give words precise meanings, but whoever it is hasn't got around to 'life' yet.
Nasa defines life as "A self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution."
So self-replicating molecules and viruses are both definitely 'nasa-alive', but whether theyare 'catholic church alive' or 'DA.com alive' depends on the precise wording of whatever definition is adopted.
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@Mopac
I can't say if I believe or disbelive in the existence of an 'ultimate reality' because I can't see inside mopac's head to see what he is refering to. Some would say that what scientisrs are looking for is a 'theory of everything', that is an equation from which all other laws of physics follow. Does that count as an 'ultimate reality'? It what mopac means by 'ultimate reality'?
YHWH and God of the bible are superstitions, as are Mars, Allah and Ganesh. As it is, 'ultimate reality' is a label not attached to anythinng definite.
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@PGA2.0
Is torturing a baby for fun okay for Joe because he likes doing it? Can you say with certainty it is okay for him? Please answer.
I don't think either of us like the idea of babies being tortured for fun and I am sure that if either of us were to discover someone doing it we would strive to stop it happening. I think you don't grasp the distinction between 'ethics' and 'meta-ethics'. That is to say we probably have broad agreement on what is and what is not acceptable, or desirable (ie ethics). We differ widely about 'meta ethics', i.e. what lies behind our ethical judgements.
I contend that our moral judgements are driven by an evolved instinct. We are born it with because it has proved useful (in a Darwinian sense)over thousands and millions years to have such a thing. Your contention is that judgements are due to the presnce of some non-physical property or stuff (good or evil) in certain acts. Those are different meta-ethical theories. Both explain why you and I find baby totrure unacceptable but it is unlikely they are both correct and naturally I think it is my meta-ethical theory is correct and yours is superstitious nonsense!
Where we probably differ most in our ethical judgements is where your judgement is too closely tied to your erroneous meta-ethics, such as if you were to oppose gay marriage on religious grounds.
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@janesix
Try living my life for a few weeks, and you would understand the off the wall stuff. I would have thought the stuff I say is off the wall a decade ago.
No thanks...Living my life is hard enough as it is, J!
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@PGA2.0
May be that's how it is. Just because something sucks doesn't mean its not so, unfortunately.If there is no absolute, objective, unchanging source then you can't say your opinion is objective or even good. All you can say is you like it.
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@janesix
Sometimes you annoy me because you mix excellent and intelligent insights such as the above post with some really off-the-wall left-field stuff! I'm glad at least you understand atheism!
I don't deny god or hate god or fight god - Its just that I don't think there are any such thing as gods. I know a lot of people do believe gods exist (or 'God' exists) but i don't.
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@EtrnlVw
I know how neural activity works, but what it doesn't do is transform into a conscious being, or a sentient observer.
No one has worked that out fully, but I began to sketch out a mechanism in my earlier post, which you omited from your reply.
Of course all that doesn't happen for fun - it evolved to help us survive and reproduce. That means the most important thing to represent in your brain's model of the world is your self. So each brain-owner has within their brain a global model of the world within which isan elemnt corresponding to their self. That arrangment is so familiar and inescapable to us that it is hard to put into words!
Suppose that 'out there' is a red square but because of some glitch what gets encoded in your brain is a blue circle. You are going to be aware of a blue circle. I other words what 'seems to be' (ie blue circle) does not have be what is (red square).
I think it is impossible to put into words what one is aware of that we label 'self', but let's say that 'conscious being', 'sentient observer' comes into it..
From the previous paragraph, the fact we seem to be conscious and sentient in a mysterous way doesn't mean we are really cnscious and sentient in that mysterus and seemingly impossible way; all it means is that our brains represent themseves as such.
It may be impossible for brains to really implement consciousness as it seems to be, but not impossible for brains to support the repreentation of such consciousness.
Its the same difference as between making an actual faster-than-light space ship(impossible) and making a sci-fi movie about one (easy).
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@EtrnlVw
It strikes me you don't go for my metaphor! The OP was about the metaphor may be more acceptable to atheists than theists so I think you helping to make my point!
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@PGA2.0
Your relative system of ethics is what wars are fought over because people do not recognize the ultimate best.
I would not call what I posted relativism - it is 'moral nihilism'. Moral nihilism is the stance that there is no such thing as 'morality'. (Nihil is latin for 'nothing'). A moral nihilist says that if slavery seems bad to you then it because slavery seems bad to you - it is how your brain is wired up (by birth and experience) to judge slavery. It is an error to ascribe that judgement to anything other than your own intrinsic nature -in reality you either have a pro-slavery or an anti-slavery brain.
That is not to say that is how it feels! If you are anti-slavery it doesn't feel that you are wired-up to hate slavery; it feels like there is an actual thing - 'evil' - in the world and it feels like we are detecting its presence in slavery. Evil does not exist - we invent it to explain why we hate slavery.
Its a bit like 'heat'. Once people thought heat was 'stuff', a fluid that flowed. it had a name - caloric.
Evil is 'caloric' - something that seems to exist but turns out to be a myth on deeper examination.
Your relative system of ethics is what wars are fought over because people do not recognize the ultimate best.
Wars are fought because the world does not care what moral rules are followed, if any. Wars determine what rules are followed. That doen't seem to be how you'd like things to be - its not how i'd like things to be either! it would be great if there was a force in the world imposing the good, but look around - there is no such force. If you hate slavery the only way to prevent it is to defeat the slavers.. there is nothing else.
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Imagine a vast, clockwork machine. It has millions of finely detailed cogs and levers pulling and pushing on each other. I want you to imagine it is as beautiful and complicated as you can.
If we watch the machine we see the cogs turning and the levers pushing, but it doesn't have any purpose. It runs and ticks, the wheels and cogs spin and turn and the levers push and pull in complicated ways but all without purpose. It will continue to tick pointlessly until the day it breaks and stops forever, having done nothing except spin its cogs and push its levers. As far as we can tell the machine came from nowhere and having done so ticks in futile purposelessness to an end, all for nothing.
That is only an initial at a metaphor of the universe - no doubt it can be criticised and improved! The point it that I can imagine there are people who can and cannot accept it as a metaphor of the universe. If you can then you are probably an atheist - I suggest typical theists cannot accept that the universe is a pointless mechanism that runs for no reason with no purpose, no meaning nor goal to it.
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@secularmerlin
It's possible to be over-sceptical!And I am asking why I should believe in anything that has not been demonstrated?
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@ethang5
Abortion?
Sides with - the killer of defenseless babies
Against - Defenseless innocent babies
A liberal believes an unwanted pregnancy eading to an unwanted child is not a good thing. Liberals do not demand abortions - they do dmand that women are not forced to bring unwanted pregnancy term.
Death Penalty?
Sides with - The murdering criminal
Against - The innocent victim
The innocent victim of a murder is already dead. One death should be enough - Two deaths are not better than one.
Immigration?
Sides with - The law breaking criminal
Against - The law abiding citizen
Unless all immigrants are law breakers and all non-immigrants are law abding I don't think that make sense.
Homosexuality?
Sides with - Disease and death
Against - Abstinence and life
Love is so more than the desire to reproduce.
Euthanasia?
Sides with - Death
Against - Life
Again the liberal seeks only for a choice to exist. Is it right that someone may have to suffer years of painful existence?
Illegal Drugs?
Sides with - Overdoses and death
Against - Sobriety and life.
Liberals don't pretend that drug addiction is easily solved.
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@disgusted
A useful analogy is the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. There we have a story about a real person that isn't true but was made up simply to portray GW as a paragon of honesty from childhood.
The inventor of the isaac episode wanted to do something similar - he wanted to portray Abraham as a fervent follower of YHWH as befits a patriarch and to portray YHWH as willing to test the faith fof hisbelivers but ultimatetly as morally good.
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@Mopac
Even if you don't believe the story is accurate, it seems perfectly reasonable to believe that Abraham was a real person.
But how much slack do we allow? Suppose that there was a man who's real-life story matched about 50% of what in the bible - does that make the bilical Abraham a real prson or only based on a real person? Obviously there is no real answer.
but in this particular case it doesn't really matter because i think the binding of isaac episode was written down as an explanation of the Hebrews ue of animal -but not child - sacrifice.
The writers of Genesis weren't as worried by the continuity and consistency issues that vex Stephen so... possibly simply because parchment scrolls don't support full text search and replace or cut-and-paste nearly as well a decent wp!
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@Stephen
When I was at school we hardly ever spoke of anything to do with the Old Testament, except the few "miracles" . Understandable considering that the OT in truth had nothing to do with Christianity except that the NT at times tries desperately to tie in the Old with the New via "prophecies"
I've long thought so, and so did marcion of sinope 2000 years ago.
The problem I have with your threads is that its not clear if you are saying a) a real person called abraham was backward, or b) the character in a story is backward or c) whoever wrote the story must be backward.
My assumptionsare that Abraham and isaac never existed - they are characters in a story, like Sherlock Holmes and Watson. The writers of genesis invented the episode to make a point about child sacrifice.
What are your assumptions?
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Why is surviving, passing on traits, reproducing 'good' in a universe oblivious to goodness?
Why? Because things don't have to be good to exist or happen. The universe is indeed 'oblivious to goodness' - ebola and smallpox germs thrive not because they are "morally good" but because they reproduce efficiently. Efficiency is all the universe 'cares about', with 'cares about' very much scare-quotes because caring is what the universe does not do!
The universe doesn't care, but people do. Not long ago some people thought slavery was ok, other people thought slavery slavery was not ok. The universe doen't care either way - it just provides the stage for all the action to take place on. There is no slavery now is not because slavery is bad but because anti-slavers won the american civil war.
If the south had won the war would that make slavery good? Wrong question! There is no such thing as good or bad as far as the universe is concerned. There are only pro-slavers (who think slavery is good) and anti- slavers (who think slavery is bad). Whose preference prevail is the result of a battle of wills between them.
If there is slavery in your land are you obliged to accept it as good if you personally hate slavery? Of course not - but your options are limited to accepting the situation or trying to impose your will instead.
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@PGA2.0
If you accept that prophecy is audience specific and accurate to that audience
I don't know what that means. What is descibed in a prophesy comes to pass (or its not exactly a prophesy, is it!). How does 'audience specific accuracy' come into it?
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@Stephen
About 2500 years ago the jewish scribe exiled in Babylon writing what would become genesis could have written anything at all. What he did in fact write is the story of Abraham and Isaac that we can read today. Why did he write what he did and not some other version, maybe where isaac is sacrificed? Abraham and Isaac never existed and the episode never happened - the puzzle I'm interested in is why the text is as it is.
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@janesix
What would you prefer to be called? Evolutionists? Modern Synthesists? Neo-Darwinists? I can't call you evolutionists, that encompasses all evolutionary beliefs.
Evolution means 'change over time'. Darwinism, orthogeneics and lamarckism are alternative theories for why such change tends to be adaptive.
Creationism and ID are non-evolutionary theories becuase they assert that a species - once created or designed - does not change.
I am an evoutionist because i believe species change overtime and i am a darwinist because i think drawinism best explains adaptation.
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As Castin understated, child sacrifices were a feature of ancient societies. The Hebrew/Jews seem to have not practiced child sacrifice, but their close neighbours such as the Canaanites, Pheonicians and Moabites certainly did - attested by archaeological and extra biblical sources.
i think episdes like this one can serve multiple functions, both narratively and symbolically. My guess is that it is a 'just so' story explaning the root of the Hebrews not following their neighbours religious practice of child sacrifice and using animal sacrifice instead.
other theories are available.
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How is that? How do you accept the reality of magic by accepting prophecy or God? I do not accept 'gods.' I accept God.
I try to give avoid the impression that it is only 'God' I don't accept. I do hope you aren't going to get boringly nit-picky over that!
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@PGA2.0
Is it really "reasonable and logical" to throw the laws of physics in the bin to accomodate a shaky claim that a piece of text is prophetic?It is reasonable and logical to believe prophecy and therefore God
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No denominations are added to Christianity by someone making a list. The bible notes no denominations.You think Christianity is something decided by people.
Christianity seems to have had divisions from the start and a list is given by Paul:
1 Cor 1:11-12
"My brothers and sisters, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. 12 What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas[b]”; still another, “I follow Christ.”
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The consensus is that when we see (take that as including hear,touch ,smell etc) something, signals from our sense organs travel to our brains.
There a pattern of neural activity is set up that encodes the information coming in from outside - that is some pattern of activity encodes "blue circle" which is different from how "red square" is encoded. Thus what we are aware of (or conscious of) is not really "objects out there" but of information, encoded as patterns of neural activity inside our brains.
The simple consequnce of that is that if "something out there" doesn't get encoded or gets wrongly encoded we don't see it, or we mistake what it is. On the other hand a 'neural representation' can turn up in a brain with nothing out there at all, producing a dream or hallucination.
The 'take away' is that awareness of X is not a guarantee that X physically exists in the world out there but it is a guarantee that a pattern of neural activity (a 'representation') of X physically exists inside your brain. We can trust our brain's 'virtual world' to be a fairly good approximation to the real world because otherwise we would have been eaten by critters with a more realistic world-picture!
Of course all that doesn't happen for fun - it evolved to help us survive and reproduce. That means the most important thing to represent in your brain's model of the world is your self. So each brain-owner has within their brain a global model of the world within which isan elemnt corresponding to their self. That arrangment is so familiar and inescapable to us that it is hard to put into words!
if it is not clear I'd happy to try to less opaque!
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PZ Myers seems to think its legit.
Perhaps I was being harsh.
So to j6 I can only say that evolution occurs on all time scales. Over large time spans it can turn a fish into a fisherman, but over short timescale it can have visible effects too. Which is no answer at all, of course.
There aren't many examples of evolution acting fast enough on a non-microbe to be noticeable on human timescales. The only one I can think of is the school textbook favourite 'Industrial Melanism'.
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I don't suppose for a moment that PGA is a fraudster nor a propagandist but if he believes prophesies foretell future events he is the victim of fraudsters and propagandists!
I'm not into debunking the bible per se. I am interested in how the early church used tales of miracles and prophesies to grow - i'd say the 'memetics' of Christianity if I didn't dislike the word 'memetics'!
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@SkepticalOne
Let's be honest - evolution isn't supposed to be that quick! Apparently a fully formed and functioning 'cecal valve' arose - essentially a whole new complex organ in maybe a dozen generations! It can't be shrugged off.
Evolution is slow... most critters are exactly the same as they were 300 years ago, let alone 30.
its so quick i'd look long and hard for experimental flaws - possibly even fraud.
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Reductive is good and it is very specific!
It is of course intended as a theory of moral judgement, not of morality per se.
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@Aporia
Also a lot of ambiguity as to what "benefit" and "cost" means in a real sense.
In this context benefit and cost are related primarily to Darwinian fitness. The circuit arose and is maintained by natural selection so it will approximate to promoting whatever optimises reproductive success 'in the long term' and 'on average'.
Of course being just a lump of neurones it will often get things wrong - it only has to be better than 'random' to be helpful for enhancing fitness.
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@SkepticalOne
I think fraud and propaganda are more probable than the laws of physics being violated!
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Well, different denominations may well interpret prophesies differently, but the laws of physics are the same for everyone so the possibiity that actual prophecies exist is not relative. i.e they aren't possible!
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@SkepticalOne
In post #67 pGA wrote:
Working on the presupposition that God is true Christians can make sense of origins, existence, truth, knowledge, morality. Other worldviews are inconsistent. So, God is necessary.Prophecy is another way God has given us that verifies His word....
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@ethang5
That problem disappears once evolution and natural selection can occur, but evoultion and natural selection can't occur until there is a minimum level life-like replication going on... it's a classic chicken and egg situation.None of this is true, but since you have the most lucid and honest take on abiogenesis, I'll let it pass for now.
What I won't let pass is your assertion that I post falsehoods - if you had a better reputation on this board that would be a serious matter!
Abiogenesis is nonsense. It is anti-science. It has no evidence.
As always you are big on assertions, light on supporting argument! The scientific method is to guess something, then do experiments to see if the guess is correct. The guess is then abandoned or refined according the results of the experiments. 'Rinse and repeat'. I don't know what you think science is.
Here is Richard Feynman saying it:
Abiogenesis is the guess (the posh word is hypothesis) that there is a mechanistic, materialistic pathway from non-living matter to life. The scientific community is currently in the phase of doing experiments to see if that is true. It's early days and there isn't really very much effort going but groups such as Flint in at the University of Southern Denmark have made more in roads into elucidating possible pathways from non-life to life than Ethang and co. would be comfortable with!
I believe in abiogenesis for the simple reason that non-abiogenesis means some sort of god-like supernatural entity gets dragged in - and the gods do not exist.
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In the mechanistic terms I am thinking in it wouldn't be 'what one deserves' but 'what one thinks one deserves' that affects behaviour.
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@ethang5
I am not clear what evidence of abiogenesis it is reasonable to expect.
But it is true that the gulf between the most complex non-living natural structures and the simplest living thing isenormous. Creating the first living thing is the 'jumbo jet out of a junkyard' problem. That problem disappears once evolution and natural selection can occur, but evoultion and natural selection can't occur until there is a minimum level life-like replication going on... it's a classic chicken and egg situation.
We might have to wait a long time for the answer to that puzzle - i doubt the budget for such research is 1/10000 of that of the LHC!
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Abiogenesis is the principle that life came from lifelessness. It isn't science nor is aiogenesis non-science; there are abiogenetic hypotheses that stick within the a materialistic paradigm (examples are the 'clay theory', the 'rna theory', the 'deep sea vent' theory and so on and there are theories that do not limit themsleves to materialism - notably creationism, intelligent design and numerous creation myths.
Saying the rna theory (eg) is 'scientific' and the creationism (eg)is non-scientific is not quite right - more correct terms are 'materialist' and 'non-materialist'.
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I propose that our brains contain a neuronal circuit that - when faced with alternatives - makes an estimate of
1 - benefit to self
2 - cost to self
3- benefit to others
4- costs to others.
That circuit does a 'weighted sum' of those estimates the result of which we perceive as how good (or 'moral') the alternatives are. I suggest that is all there is to 'morality'.
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@secularmerlin
So the bare bones is that you are asking pga why an omnipotent, omnibenevolent god permits evil to exist?
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@secularmerlin
you wrote:
I am willing to accept pga2.0's subjective interpretation [of evil] in this case (though probably not in all cases).
PGA wrote;
I see evil as the lack of the light of God.
Are you still willing to accept PGA's interepretation?
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@secularmerlin
I am willing to accept pga2.0's subjective interpretation in this case (though probably not in all cases).
Does PGA's think that evil is something 'subjective'?
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@secularmerlin
if you accept prophecy as accurate and specific then you accept the reality of magic. If you accept magic is is it really justified to not accept the gods? In terms of pedantic logic maybe you can accept prophecy but not gods but it seems a desperate postion to maintain.
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@PGA2.0
Philosophy books are full of arguments over what the word 'evil' means/refers to and it is hotly debated whether abstracts can be said to exist or not.
To discuss 'does evil exist' we could start by saying 'for the purpose of this debate evil means.. and exists means....'. But that means people agreeing to use 'evil' and 'exist' in away they might prefer not to.
If SM specifies definite meanings I will endeavour to give a definite answer, but I reserve the right to give a different answer if the meanings of 'evil' and'exist' are changed!
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@PGA2.0
Sherlock Holmes stories mention real historical people, places and events. Almost every piece of fiction does. The issue is not if Herod (etc)exists but if God exists.
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@PGA2.0
Then Deuteronomy 28 lists the curses, these same curses we witness in the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.
D28 is really over top! but its not prophesy... it is list of dire threats of what the Hebrews should expect if they ever dare to abandon YHWH. It like a preacher threatening his flock with tales of fire and brimstone if they sin.
It is interesting that the penalties for aposasy given in D28 are all earthly. Ancient Judaism had no use for an after-life in heaven or hell; YHWH gave his rewards and punishments right here on earth, during life. The Sadducees rejected after-life upto and beyond the time of Jesus, cf Mark 12;18 "18 Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question."
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IMO there is no single canonical interprtetation of the word 'evil' nor even of 'exists'.
Thus the answer can be yes or no, depending on how the words are interpretted.
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