Atheism , religion , ID etc
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Stan Shannon wrote:
But it is difficult to avoid a conclusion that something was 'built into' the emergent potential of the universe for some reason.
Why does there need to be a reason? Who is to say that there are not other universes whose initial conditions do not lead to life? Who is to say that this universe does not contain other life forms with a completely different concept of "morality"? Who is to say that our concept of morality is even a "correct" one? (I would argue that it is only "correct" for us to the extent that it enhances the likelyhood of the survival of our species, and that that is in fact the fundamental source of that concept - that which is clearly immoral is that which, applied universally, has a negative impact on the chances of our survival. Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power Eric Hoffer All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke
Rob Graham wrote:
Why does there need to be a reason?
I didn't say there 'needs' to be a reason, only that emergent properties, consciously or not, suggest purpose by the mere fact of their emerging. Why does consciousness exist? Why does the universe contain consciousness?
Rob Graham wrote:
Who is to say that there are not other universes whose initial conditions do not lead to life?
No one - which is kind of the point.
Rob Graham wrote:
Who is to say that this universe does not contain other life forms with a completely different concept of "morality"?
Certainly not me. This post didn't refer to morality.
Rob Graham wrote:
I would argue that it is only "correct" for us to the extent that it enhances the likelyhood of the survival of our species, and that that is in fact the fundamental source of that concept - that which is clearly immoral is that which, applied universally, has a negative impact on the chances of our survival.
I don't disagree with that. "You get that which you tolerate"
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Stan Shannon wrote:
I don't believe I'm required to give any examples.
You are if you want to be taken seriously. It's my contention that ALL early societies were religious (primarily due to ignorance). "If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done." - Peter Ustinov
Mike Mullikin wrote:
You are if you want to be taken seriously.
No I'm not. The abscence of primitive athiestic societies is my evidence.
Mike Mullikin wrote:
It's my contention that ALL early societies were religious (primarily due to ignorance).
Than obviously, religion has been a better response to ignorance than athiesm is. If athiesm was a more advantageious response to ignorace than religion, it simply stands to reason that it would have been employed by someone, somewhere. "You get that which you tolerate"
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espeir wrote:
For morality to be effective, it needs to be derived from a higher authority so that society agrees on what is moral and what is not. Otherwise, your neighbor could determine that murder is moral and whack you
nonsense. anyone who realizes other people are alive too knows murder is wrong. that people don't always care is a different matter - and one your religion hasn't, despite having 2000 years to work at it, fixed.
espeir wrote:
but secular morality is self-defined morality which results in moral relativism which results in immorality.
sheer nonsense. it would be hard to make so few words as that add up to a greater number of unsupported conclusions.
espeir wrote:
However, your example only supports my claim that morality is not innate.
the fact that they have the death penalty means that they have crimes that are severe enough to be worthy of death. sounds like morality to me. sounds like christian morality even. cannibalism as a punishment is simply the death penalty with an added insult to the survivors. big deal. once i'm dead you can have me stuffed and mounted on the roof of KFC for all i care. the fact that you're going to kill me is the only part that really matters. i'm sure there's a widely-ignored commandment about killing, somewhere.
espeir wrote:
That act also saved an estimated million more. Japanese morality was derived from an emperor.
go tell the innocent dead. go explain your justification. i'm sure they'll be very interested. six year olds have pretty good grasps of foreign policy (espcially the ghosts of six year olds!). maybe you can read them the part of the bible that justifies it - it'll be good for them to learn where your superior morality derives from.
espeir wrote:
No, you can attribute that to moral relativism. Compare movies today to movies 60 years ago when moral relativism had not yet taken hold.
you mean all those detective movies about murderers, the western gunfights, and WWII battle movies ? yeah... good stuff. those were the days: back when killing was only in black and white, as god intended it. well, thankfully there aren't more "atheists" like myself around, or we'd all go around thinking "no, maybe the lives of innocent children shoul
Chris Losinger wrote:
nonsense. anyone who realizes other people are alive too knows murder is wrong. that people don't always care is a different matter - and one your religion hasn't, despite having 2000 years to work at it, fixed.
That's absolutely false. Just look at Saddam Hussein and his former regime. That government was run by secularists and they believed murder to be just fine.
Chris Losinger wrote:
sheer nonsense. it would be hard to make so few words as that add up to a greater number of unsupported conclusions.
You dismiss it without evidence. However, there are numerous examples of societies without absolute moral authorities that inevitably declined morally over time. Islam is the notable exception on the religious side, where their society has descended because of an absolute moral authority. However, the Muslim religion lacks a central religious authority to sensibly interpret thir books.
Chris Losinger wrote:
go tell the innocent dead. go explain your justification. i'm sure they'll be very interested. six year olds have pretty good grasps of foreign policy (espcially the ghosts of six year olds!). maybe you can read them the part of the bible that justifies it - it'll be good for them to learn where your superior morality derives from.
So you're saying that you would rather America invaded mainland Japan and caused 1 million death (including numerous innocent children)? Or are you saying that the US just shouldn't have gotten involved and allowed Nazi Germany to reign supreme? Those are really the only other options. If you're going to criticize our use of the bomb, you need to prefer the other side of that equation.
Chris Losinger wrote:
you mean all those detective movies about murderers, the western gunfights, and WWII battle movies ? yeah... good stuff. back when killing was only in black and white.
yes, actually if you watch an old western, you'll see that it's always a moral story. There's a bad guy (as there always is). Then there's a good guy who puts a stop to the bad guy. In fact that's the theme of pretty much every action movie 60 years ago. That's a far cry from the endless supply of "Saw" type movies that have no morally redemptive quality to them. Texas chainsaw massacre was released in 1974...just a few years after atheism's mainstrea
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bwhittington wrote:
The point of this post was to try to point out that believing in evolution is a leap of faith and is not proven by undeniable evidence.
Undeniable evidence? Maybe not, but that's why evolution is considered a scientific theory not a natural law such as gravity. At the same time, science can produce boat-loads of real evidence that supports the theory of evolution. While religion cannot produce a shred of real evidence that supports the existance of any god. "If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done." - Peter Ustinov
I don't see fossils of dead animals as being very good evidence of the theory sure it gives us some idea of some animals that have died out but how do we know that our ancestors were not living at that time too. (I am not talking about primates either.) Fossil evidence should only be taken into account if there was a way to know of everything that lived during a period of time. Who is to say humans did not live back in the time of dinosaurs. Just because we have not found any fossils does not imply that we did not exist. It is rare enough to find fossils of animals because the process to preserve them takes the right conditions. To able to certainly say we as humans did not exist is if we had fossil records of every species of living thing that lived during a certain time period. It would be hard enough now to find evidence because we still do not know of every living thing on this earth. Everyday new insects are found. To summarize, because we cannot prove we did not exist during the time of dinosaurs we cannot prove we evolved from apes. Brett A. Whittington Application Developer
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Stan Shannon wrote:
Why doesn't it grow up to be athiesm?
Because the folks spreading the superstition see the power & control it enables and naturally grow it into a full blown religion. ;) "If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done." - Peter Ustinov
Mike Mullikin wrote:
Because the folks spreading the superstition see the power & control it enables and naturally grow it into a full blown religion.
Well, power and control are inhrent to any complex social order. So, yeah, I suppose that might well be part of the equation. Maybe that is why athiestic societies don't exist long enough to leave evidence of thier existence. ;P "You get that which you tolerate"
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Mike Mullikin wrote:
You are if you want to be taken seriously.
No I'm not. The abscence of primitive athiestic societies is my evidence.
Mike Mullikin wrote:
It's my contention that ALL early societies were religious (primarily due to ignorance).
Than obviously, religion has been a better response to ignorance than athiesm is. If athiesm was a more advantageious response to ignorace than religion, it simply stands to reason that it would have been employed by someone, somewhere. "You get that which you tolerate"
Stan Shannon wrote:
Than obviously, religion has been a better response to ignorance than athiesm is.
That's not logical. Science had not yet advanced to the point that we could explain certain phenomenon. Religion provided the path of least resistance. It was easier to say "Birds can fly because God made it so", than to research/develop/test aeronautical principles. A better statement: "At that time, religion was a "better" response to ignorance than atheism." Times change. "If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done." - Peter Ustinov
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bwhittington wrote:
Point Proven: If a mutant of a species appears on the scene, it (and its mutation) will be bred out of the scene.
That's not proven at all. Mutations introduce new information for natural selection to work on. Over any short period of time, you are unlikely to produce a significantly different creature because mutation is adding differences slowly. Over a short period of time, all you are doing is redistributing the existing genetic alleles. The claim that mutations are "bred out of the scene" is true if the mutation is harmful. It's inaccurate to say that it's always eliminated. I know creationists like to point-out the problem of using sickle-cell anemia as an example of evolution, but I'm going to use it to make a very limited point. In general, sickle-cell anemia is harmful to humans; people with two copies of the allele will die. However, a person with a single copy of the sickle-cell anemia allele are more likely to survive malaria. More specifically, they are ten times less likely to die from malaria. In malaria-prone areas, the result is that a certain level of sickle-cell anemia genes in the population is benefitial. You end up with a balancing act: people with two copies of the sickle-cell anemia allele are going to die (usually between 20 and 40), people with zero copies of the sickle-cell anemia allele are more likely to be killed by malaria, but people with one copy of the gene are the most likely to survive. And, it's true that sickle-cell anemia is quite common in some malaria-prone areas (almost 10% of Africans have the sickle-cell anemia gene). Which brings me to my point: sickle-cell anemia is a mutation which was not "bred out of the scene" (as you say happens to all mutations). ----------------------------------------------------- Empires Of Steel[^]
I can see your point but I disagree. A human with the genes for sickle-cell anemia is still a human correct? If we could humanely do an experiment of people with the allele and could introduce them into a “normal” population, the offspring of that person would eventually be bred back in to a “normal” human. And I cannot see into the future but would this defect mutate us humans into another species or would we still be humans with a genetic defect? I do not know and neither of us are going to live long enough to find out. Brett A. Whittington Application Developer
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I don't see fossils of dead animals as being very good evidence of the theory sure it gives us some idea of some animals that have died out but how do we know that our ancestors were not living at that time too. (I am not talking about primates either.) Fossil evidence should only be taken into account if there was a way to know of everything that lived during a period of time. Who is to say humans did not live back in the time of dinosaurs. Just because we have not found any fossils does not imply that we did not exist. It is rare enough to find fossils of animals because the process to preserve them takes the right conditions. To able to certainly say we as humans did not exist is if we had fossil records of every species of living thing that lived during a certain time period. It would be hard enough now to find evidence because we still do not know of every living thing on this earth. Everyday new insects are found. To summarize, because we cannot prove we did not exist during the time of dinosaurs we cannot prove we evolved from apes. Brett A. Whittington Application Developer
But fossils certainly provide a source of evidence in support of the theory. The theory of evolution is supported by massive amounts of direct, and indirect evidence. Its fine to reject the theory of evolution, but you are required to provide an alternative which explains all the observable phenomenon as concisely and consistently as the theory of evolution does. "You get that which you tolerate"
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bwhittington wrote:
Point Proven: If a mutant of a species appears on the scene, it (and its mutation) will be bred out of the scene.
What does that have to do with evolutionary theory? Theoritically, a new species will not arise until random genetic drift over time between the two populations has rendered them incapable of interbreeding. The theory of evolution does not require that just because a species has been bred for different attributes doesn't mean it will automatically become a new species.
bwhittington wrote:
intermingling of species is not going to cause evolutionary change. If breeding between horses and donkeys will bear mules and lions and tigers will bear ligers (All Napoleon Dynamite jokes aside). Inter-species in most cases will not occur and if it does the offspring are sterile and cannot pass its genes to another generation.
I don't recall that ever being advanced as a mechanism for evolutionary change. "You get that which you tolerate"
Stan Shannon wrote:
What does that have to do with evolutionary theory? Theoritically, a new species will not arise until random genetic drift over time between the two populations has rendered them incapable of interbreeding. The theory of evolution does not require that just because a species has been bred for different attributes doesn't mean it will automatically become a new species.
I'll be honest and say I do not have a response at this time. I'll have to do some more research. Brett A. Whittington Application Developer
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Chris Losinger wrote:
nonsense. anyone who realizes other people are alive too knows murder is wrong. that people don't always care is a different matter - and one your religion hasn't, despite having 2000 years to work at it, fixed.
That's absolutely false. Just look at Saddam Hussein and his former regime. That government was run by secularists and they believed murder to be just fine.
Chris Losinger wrote:
sheer nonsense. it would be hard to make so few words as that add up to a greater number of unsupported conclusions.
You dismiss it without evidence. However, there are numerous examples of societies without absolute moral authorities that inevitably declined morally over time. Islam is the notable exception on the religious side, where their society has descended because of an absolute moral authority. However, the Muslim religion lacks a central religious authority to sensibly interpret thir books.
Chris Losinger wrote:
go tell the innocent dead. go explain your justification. i'm sure they'll be very interested. six year olds have pretty good grasps of foreign policy (espcially the ghosts of six year olds!). maybe you can read them the part of the bible that justifies it - it'll be good for them to learn where your superior morality derives from.
So you're saying that you would rather America invaded mainland Japan and caused 1 million death (including numerous innocent children)? Or are you saying that the US just shouldn't have gotten involved and allowed Nazi Germany to reign supreme? Those are really the only other options. If you're going to criticize our use of the bomb, you need to prefer the other side of that equation.
Chris Losinger wrote:
you mean all those detective movies about murderers, the western gunfights, and WWII battle movies ? yeah... good stuff. back when killing was only in black and white.
yes, actually if you watch an old western, you'll see that it's always a moral story. There's a bad guy (as there always is). Then there's a good guy who puts a stop to the bad guy. In fact that's the theme of pretty much every action movie 60 years ago. That's a far cry from the endless supply of "Saw" type movies that have no morally redemptive quality to them. Texas chainsaw massacre was released in 1974...just a few years after atheism's mainstrea
espeir wrote:
That's absolutely false.
christians are still committing crimes. how come that special morality hasn't stopped them ? if it's so superior to other moralities, shouldn't there be some, ya know, evidence ?
espeir wrote:
However, the Muslim religion lacks a central religious authority to sensibly interpret thir books.
not that i want to go down this road... there are realtively few branches of christianity that have a "central authority" to interpret things for them. getting away from such a central authority was the root of the Protestant Reformation. and while i'm not an islamic scholar, i believe within islam, "imam" and "ayatollah" are the people who do the central interpreting for the various sects.
espeir wrote:
Those are really the only other options.
not really. but i'm asking you to go to your bible or your special superior morality and find the justification for killing 30,000 children in the blink of an eye. take the example (from below in the thread) of the guy walking past the burning building (does he save the child or not?) - except the guy in this case doesn't just walk by the burning building with 1 child in it. no, this time he blows up 1,000 busy day-care centers in one day (we'll give him 24 hours to do it, since it would be tough for him to get them all in 1/100th of a second). i don't think there is any valid reason. and i don't want any part of any "morality" that would try to justify such an action - and here i sit with my hollow and baseless morals. woe is me.
espeir wrote:
That's a far cry from the endless supply of "Saw" type movies that have no morally redemptive quality to them
i'm not arguing that those are good movies. i'm saying your superior morality should have put a stop to it by now. after all, America is a country where over 80% of the people claim to be christian, and less than 3% claim to be either atheist or agnostic. Cleek | Image Toolkits | Thumbnail maker -- modified at 20:15 Friday 7th April, 2006
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espeir wrote:
Obviously it can because atheism has adopted aspects of morality which have never been considered moral by most religions. For example, Orgies and abortion are not considered immoral by atheists, but are by pretty much all religions.
do you have an link to the official Atheist Moral Framework ? i want to verify things for myself - i'd hate to learn i've been believing the wrong things all this time.
espeir wrote:
because it lacks a specific source for that morality
the source is within us all. i don't believe people are morally hollow. i believe that there is knowledge of a set of fundamental "rights" and "wrongs" within all of us. i don't think we need irrational beliefs to recognize or to make use of that knowledge. however, i will credit orgainized religion with being a workable way to unify a community on some things that fall outside that core set of rights and wrongs (since pretty much everyone who isn't insane agrees on the big stuff anyway no matter what their religion). since unity on smaller matters of morality makes for a more homogenous community, and that generally makes for a happier community, it's not all bad. in fact, i believe that's organized religion's basic purpose: a way to enforce community norms. but then, as you'd expect from human institutions, individual religions claim in their own name that which is fundamental to all of us, and then tell the big lie that non-believers don't share those same core values (in effect, making them in-human, as i see). and then they encourage followers to give in to that base a-moral tendency we all share: to persecute non-believers.
espeir wrote:
That's what happened to Rome.
you just said moral relativism arose in the 20th century. Cleek | Image Toolkits | Thumbnail maker
Please visit http://www.atheists.org/ for answers to what we Atheists believe.
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I don't see fossils of dead animals as being very good evidence of the theory sure it gives us some idea of some animals that have died out but how do we know that our ancestors were not living at that time too. (I am not talking about primates either.) Fossil evidence should only be taken into account if there was a way to know of everything that lived during a period of time. Who is to say humans did not live back in the time of dinosaurs. Just because we have not found any fossils does not imply that we did not exist. It is rare enough to find fossils of animals because the process to preserve them takes the right conditions. To able to certainly say we as humans did not exist is if we had fossil records of every species of living thing that lived during a certain time period. It would be hard enough now to find evidence because we still do not know of every living thing on this earth. Everyday new insects are found. To summarize, because we cannot prove we did not exist during the time of dinosaurs we cannot prove we evolved from apes. Brett A. Whittington Application Developer
bwhittington wrote:
Fossil evidence should only be taken into account if there was a way to know of everything that lived during a period of time.
No, you can say with reasonable confidence that they did not exist if there is a conspicuous lack of fossils. Out of the millions of (placental) mammal fossils found, we really don't find any older than 125 million years. It's a conspicuous gap since multicellular life goes back 600 million years. Why, out of millions of species, are they all clustered into the most recent 20% of history, even though we find fossils of other types of animals? "They didn't exist" is a perfectly good answer.
bwhittington wrote:
To summarize, because we cannot prove we did not exist during the time of dinosaurs we cannot prove we evolved from apes.
(1) There are thousands of fossils of hominids, but they only appear in recent history. In addition to this, there are a series of fossils over the last four million years showing creatures with ever-enlarging skulls. http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/05/clueless_creati.html[^] (2) There is an amazing degree of similarity between humans and apes - both in the structure of the chromosomes, and in the actual genetic sequences. It would be very hard to explain this degree of similarity if you believe that humans existed as a species separate from the apes for the last 65 million years+. chromosome comparisons[^] Cytochrome-C sequence comparisons[^] ----------------------------------------------------- Empires Of Steel[^]
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>>we know about them because a universe that relies on them exists. well, that doesnt prove they dont need to be sustained in some way, does it? humans relies on air to live, that doesnt mean that air can exist just by itself (w/o rules deciding how atoms bind together etc). >>there's simply nothing more fundamental: they are what determines everything. yes , I fully agree. however, that feels just as weak as the religious arguments "it has always been that way , tehre is no reason to question it , nor what it comes from" with that logic you can defend any beleif.. "donald duck has existed forever and he created everything ,its fundamental" , how do one know that or verify it?
Roger J wrote:
however, that feels just as weak as the religious arguments "it has always been that way , tehre is no reason to question it , nor what it comes from"
In science if you don't know something or why something works, you simply state that. You may make conjectures to help you define experiments to find out why but you label them as hypotheses and theories. Then you proceed to test and validate. Sometimes you have to just suck it up and say I'll never know in my lifetime because the body of work necessary to crack this isn't going to happen for some time. The religious pseudoscientists, however, when encountering the unknown or a problem that's very difficult to solve, want to use the good old fallback of let's just attribute it to god and move on. That's simply absurd. The evolution of the human genome is too important to be left to chance.
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Alvaro Mendez wrote:
ke I know my sister
Dude...That's sick!
Alvaro Mendez wrote:
I think you misunderstood me. When I said they "claim to know the supreme being", I didn't mean "know" as in know him personally, like I know my sister. I meant "know about him", like we know the president.
If you personally believe any religious texts then this is true because religious leaders spend their lives learning the inticacies of those texts.
Alvaro Mendez wrote:
You seemed to have missed my point. It was people who wrote morality into religious books. And they did it based on their ideas of what morality should be. Some are based on common sense (like not killing or stealing), others aren't (like no sex before marriage or covering your legs if you're a Jewish woman).
Then it's not common sense. Common sense is...common, in that it's self-evident to everyone. Even an atheist should recognize the importance of centralized moral authority. You claim that religious leaders defined morality long ago through their own opinions of what it should be. Even via your belief, that implies that there are competing moral theories. One of the many problems with atheism is that it does not recognize a moral authority. That's a big problem.
Alvaro Mendez wrote:
Common sense dictates that if I use the dishes in the kitchen where I work, that I should clean them up afterwards. Still, there's a note posted over the sink telling people to do so. Have you heard the expression, "Common sense is not that common"?
That's not common sense. That's common courtesy. Common sense is something that is clearly self-evident...like if nobody cleans the dishes and people leave them in the sink, then they will pile up and be dirty. A common moral code could say that evyerone cleans their own dishes. Moral discord could result in everyone thinking that managers should clean the dishes since they do the least work while managers think only workers do the dishes since they're the workers...resulting in no dishes being done.
espeir wrote:
One of the many problems with atheism is that it does not recognize a moral authority. That's a big problem.
Care to cite some authoritative source for that opinion? I think you meant to say that atheism does not recognize a supernatural supreme being as the source of moral authority. Atheisim, in fact takes NO position on moral authority, it only takes a position on the existence or non-existence of a supreme being. Athiests as a group have a very diverse set of opinions as to what is moral, not all are hedonists (relatively few, in my experience), nor are all unequivocally supportive of abortion. (as you suggested in an earlier post). I would argue that anyone whose only moral foundation stems from a belief that what is moral is that which was dictated by some entity whose existance can't be proven has a rather weak moral foundation. Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power Eric Hoffer All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke
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Stan Shannon wrote:
Than obviously, religion has been a better response to ignorance than athiesm is.
That's not logical. Science had not yet advanced to the point that we could explain certain phenomenon. Religion provided the path of least resistance. It was easier to say "Birds can fly because God made it so", than to research/develop/test aeronautical principles. A better statement: "At that time, religion was a "better" response to ignorance than atheism." Times change. "If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done." - Peter Ustinov
Mike Mullikin wrote:
"At that time, religion was a "better" response to ignorance than atheism."
OK. I have no problem with that modification. Obviously, as social ecosystems change new adaptions will occur. Perhaps athiesm is a better adaption to the current social environment. "You get that which you tolerate"
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I can see your point but I disagree. A human with the genes for sickle-cell anemia is still a human correct? If we could humanely do an experiment of people with the allele and could introduce them into a “normal” population, the offspring of that person would eventually be bred back in to a “normal” human. And I cannot see into the future but would this defect mutate us humans into another species or would we still be humans with a genetic defect? I do not know and neither of us are going to live long enough to find out. Brett A. Whittington Application Developer
bwhittington wrote:
A human with the genes for sickle-cell anemia is still a human correct?
Yes, my point was not that "they are not human", but rather, it's a counterpoint to your claim that mutations are eliminated. Here's your words: "Point Proven: If a mutant of a species appears on the scene, it (and its mutation) will be bred out of the scene."
bwhittington wrote:
If we could humanely do an experiment of people with the allele and could introduce them into a “normal” population, the offspring of that person would eventually be bred back in to a “normal” human.
I'm saying that the mathematics of the situation says that sickle-cell anemia will continue to exist in humans in areas where malaria exists. It's possible to write-up an actual formula to describe how common sickle-cell anemia will be based on factors such as "how frequently do people get infected with malaria?" It's not going to be bred out of existence in that particular environment, and if the incidence of malaria infection increases, I can predict that the frequency of the sickle-cell anemia gene will increase. It's an example of a mutation being *favored* by natural selection, not "bred out of the scene". Similarly, other mutations CAN be favored by natural selection and can spread across the entire species (in contrast to your claim that this can never happen). As for the "can it create a new species?" claim, well, take a look into the genetics comparisons that I posted above[^]. What makes a human versus a chimp or a gorilla? We could talk about large, obvious differences, but we should actually look at the genetics since that's what really determines the differences in the first place. Based on the genetic comparisons, you could start by saying something like "small mutations make the difference between humans and chimps". But, once you acknowledge that a whole bunch of small mutations can make the difference, and acknowledge that natural selection can favor certain mutations, you suddenly realize that, given the right environmental factors, there's nothing to prevent apes from evolving into smarter creatures. There's nothing to prevent an ape ancestor
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espeir wrote:
One of the many problems with atheism is that it does not recognize a moral authority. That's a big problem.
Care to cite some authoritative source for that opinion? I think you meant to say that atheism does not recognize a supernatural supreme being as the source of moral authority. Atheisim, in fact takes NO position on moral authority, it only takes a position on the existence or non-existence of a supreme being. Athiests as a group have a very diverse set of opinions as to what is moral, not all are hedonists (relatively few, in my experience), nor are all unequivocally supportive of abortion. (as you suggested in an earlier post). I would argue that anyone whose only moral foundation stems from a belief that what is moral is that which was dictated by some entity whose existance can't be proven has a rather weak moral foundation. Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power Eric Hoffer All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke
Right on Rob!
Rob Graham wrote:
I would argue that anyone whose only moral foundation stems from a belief that what is moral is that which was dictated by some entity whose existance can't be proven has a rather weak moral foundation.
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espeir wrote:
That's absolutely false.
christians are still committing crimes. how come that special morality hasn't stopped them ? if it's so superior to other moralities, shouldn't there be some, ya know, evidence ?
espeir wrote:
However, the Muslim religion lacks a central religious authority to sensibly interpret thir books.
not that i want to go down this road... there are realtively few branches of christianity that have a "central authority" to interpret things for them. getting away from such a central authority was the root of the Protestant Reformation. and while i'm not an islamic scholar, i believe within islam, "imam" and "ayatollah" are the people who do the central interpreting for the various sects.
espeir wrote:
Those are really the only other options.
not really. but i'm asking you to go to your bible or your special superior morality and find the justification for killing 30,000 children in the blink of an eye. take the example (from below in the thread) of the guy walking past the burning building (does he save the child or not?) - except the guy in this case doesn't just walk by the burning building with 1 child in it. no, this time he blows up 1,000 busy day-care centers in one day (we'll give him 24 hours to do it, since it would be tough for him to get them all in 1/100th of a second). i don't think there is any valid reason. and i don't want any part of any "morality" that would try to justify such an action - and here i sit with my hollow and baseless morals. woe is me.
espeir wrote:
That's a far cry from the endless supply of "Saw" type movies that have no morally redemptive quality to them
i'm not arguing that those are good movies. i'm saying your superior morality should have put a stop to it by now. after all, America is a country where over 80% of the people claim to be christian, and less than 3% claim to be either atheist or agnostic. Cleek | Image Toolkits | Thumbnail maker -- modified at 20:15 Friday 7th April, 2006
Chris Losinger wrote:
christians are still committing crimes. how come that special morality hasn't stopped them ? if it's so superior to other moralities, shouldn't there be some, ya know, evidence ?
Because I'm not arguing that religion stops immorality. I'm saying that religion recognizes immorality. Moral relativism does not.
Chris Losinger wrote:
not that i want to go down this road... there are realtively few branches of christianity that have a "central authority" to interpret things for them. getting away from such a central authority was the root of the Protestant Reformation.
Most actually do have a central authority, including protestant religions. For example, the Southern Baptist church is unified under a somewhat democratic authority. However, I do agree that they are less organized than Catholicism. That's why I like the Catholic Church, because when you fragment a church, each will come up with its own interpretation conjured up by some backhills weirdo. In the Catholic Church, you have lifelong scholors with PhDs running the joint.
Chris Losinger wrote:
and while i'm not an islamic scholar, i believe within islam, "imam" and "ayatollah" are the people who do the central interpreting for the various sects.
Yes, but each interprets according to his own ends. There is no unifying religious belifs. It's still tribal in nature.
Chris Losinger wrote:
not really. but i'm asking you to go to your bible or your special superior morality and find the justification for killing 30,000 children in the blink of an eye. i don't think there is any valid reason. and i don't want any part of any "morality" that would try to justify such an action - and here i sit with my hollow and baseless morals. woe is me.
There is a valid reason. Because the only other option involved killing 300,000 children over. I never said there are never moral dilemmas that don't require and act of evil in lieu of a greater one. This is the real world, though.
Chris Losinger wrote:
i'm not arguing that those are good movies. i'm saying your superior morality should have put a stop to it by now. after all, America is a country where over 80% of the people claim to be christian, and less than 3% claim to be either atheist or agnostic.
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espeir wrote:
One of the many problems with atheism is that it does not recognize a moral authority. That's a big problem.
Care to cite some authoritative source for that opinion? I think you meant to say that atheism does not recognize a supernatural supreme being as the source of moral authority. Atheisim, in fact takes NO position on moral authority, it only takes a position on the existence or non-existence of a supreme being. Athiests as a group have a very diverse set of opinions as to what is moral, not all are hedonists (relatively few, in my experience), nor are all unequivocally supportive of abortion. (as you suggested in an earlier post). I would argue that anyone whose only moral foundation stems from a belief that what is moral is that which was dictated by some entity whose existance can't be proven has a rather weak moral foundation. Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power Eric Hoffer All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke
Rob Graham wrote:
Care to cite some authoritative source for that opinion? I think you meant to say that atheism does not recognize a supernatural supreme being as the source of moral authority. Atheisim, in fact takes NO position on moral authority, it only takes a position on the existence or non-existence of a supreme being. Athiests as a group have a very diverse set of opinions as to what is moral, not all are hedonists (relatively few, in my experience), nor are all unequivocally supportive of abortion. (as you suggested in an earlier post).
You're in complete agreement with me. I said there is no moral authority... as in it "takes NO position on moral authority". That means that atheists do not recognize any authority as delegating moral responsibility. The result is, again as you said, "a very diverse set of opinions". What that means (moral relativism) is that nobody's moral stance is necessarily "right". In other words, hedonism is OK (even if it's not practiced by most atheists). Eventually the definition of "OK" expands indefinately as moral sensibilities are slowly chipped away. History has shown that to be true.
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Please visit http://www.atheists.org/ for answers to what we Atheists believe.
I thought atheists become atheists because they don't want to be lemmings and follow organized religion. :rolleyes: