A_Wanderer
ONE love, blood, life
Do you behave as if you really believe in God?
A_Wanderer said:Do you behave as if you really believe in God?
A_Wanderer at 05-04-2008 03:28 AM said:Do you behave as if you really believe in God?
A_Wanderer at 05-04-2008 04:17 AM said:I want to know; specifically from strongly theistic people, of course they will probably lie, but that doesn't defeat the purpose.
A_Wanderer at 05-04-2008 04:46 AM said:Atheists are boring like that, they have nothing to lie about (at least on those matters; as far as anything else goes they are more or less just as human as the next person)
Although I do find it interesting that having abandoned belief you also abandoned some behaviours. The propaganda from some religious institutions would have it that taking the step to unbelief leads down a sinful path.
A_Wanderer said:Says more about you than it does me, good things though.
A_Wanderer said:Atheists are boring like that, they have nothing to lie about (at least on those matters; as far as anything else goes they are more or less just as human as the next person)
Although I do find it interesting that having abandoned belief you also abandoned some behaviours. The propaganda from some religious institutions would have it that taking the step to unbelief leads down a sinful path.
A_Wanderer said:Do you behave as if you really believe in God?
A_Wanderer said:I was an atheist before I was a hedonist.
A_Wanderer said:
We can have a high confidence in repeatedly verified scientific facts, they are the only things that have real importance in the universe as they are the only things that are real. In the scale of things emotional attachments between sentient mammals on the planet Earth are of little consequence in the universe . This planet could disappear and it wouldn't have an impact. The scales of space and deep time demonstrate how unimportant we are in the scheme of things, and while we are a lone data point of sentience in the universe that could easily be an artifact of our ignorance.
God gives you a standard. To judge an action as moral it must be measured by some code. So is morality like money; setup by man with countless currencies and ever fluctuating exchange rates? Or is it universal like the laws of gravity?(and it could be argued that morality done out of punishment or reward from the idea of God is somehow less of a moral act than one for the act alone).
But we have countless examples of observable amoral intelligence right here. Biological and artificial. Tigers are amoral and so is my Dell. The question is, why is man alone driven -- or nagged -- by the moral consequences of his actions?if an amoral intelligent species was discovered for instance (note that you can have amoral individuals in the gene pool and they may well succeed but a society of strictly calculating self-serving people would be at a disadvantage to one with some cooperation).
Even if I accepted every tenet of scientific evolution I don't see how "morality serves evolutionary ends." Algae, flowers, fish, insects, reptiles, birds and all mammals other than man seemed to have developed quite nicely. How does the interjection of morality after 3.5 billion years of evolution secure the future of life on earth or increase the odds of Homo sapiens surviving beyond that of any amoral life form?Morality serves evolutionary ends, we are evolved creatures and that is the lens to view it's origins through.
Is man a prerequisite for morality? You must answer "yes" since you believe we are it's authors. I believe morality, as old as any laws governing the material universe, has been waiting patiently to be discovered and applied to a greater end.Appealing morality to God is meaningless because it leads to the fallacy that in the absence of God morality ceases to exist, and history shows very well that religiousity is no prerequisite for morality.
I think that you are overlooking rudimentary morality in other species, the classic examples are those of altruistic behaviour in social animals; such as vampire bats sharing blood, parental bonding and kin selection. Even big cats look after their young, of course there are examples where looking out for their genes includes infanticide.Even if I accepted every tenet of scientific evolution I don't see how "morality serves evolutionary ends." Algae, flowers, fish, insects, reptiles, birds and all mammals other than man seemed to have developed quite nicely. How does the interjection of morality after 3.5 billion years of evolution secure the future of life on earth or increase the odds of Homo sapiens surviving beyond that of any amoral life form?