A Skillful Morality

I don't think I'm getting it. Why are you defining morality with the word "skill"?Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

Aaah, okay. That makes sense, thanks. Sometimes it takes me a minute, but I catch up.So morality is being described as being skillful at being alive as a person. Heh, next time someone's being asshole I'll call them a novice So how does this apply to something like stealing from Wal*Mart?If it makes me happy and nobody suffers, then should we say that it is moral?

It seems to me that you're just challenging my conditional.The question was: if it does make me happy, and nobody does suffer, then should we call it {stealing from Wal*Mart} moral?I saw you replying with "well, you really wouldn't be happy" and "others really will suffer", but that doesn't answer the question. But if reinforcing my self-image doesn't make me unhappy, or if its too subtle for me to notice, then how does this Skillful Morality system of your's get around to actually determining that it is immoral?It looks like this system of your's could very easily determine that stealing from Wal*Mart can be a moral thing.

That's all fine and dandy, but I still don't feel like I understand how this Skillful Morality system would identify my scenario as immoral.

Oh, okay. i thought it was a method for identifying what would be moral and immoral.If its just a path to happiness, or whatever, then so be it. I wouldn't say its fruitless, and in fact, and think it can work just fine. All you have to do is get society to come to a consensus on which behaviors they want to label as wrong, and then enforce those with some sort of punishment.You just define stealing as wrong and punish those who still do it. It doesn't matter if it really is truely and objectively wrong or not. At least not in a practical sense. Okay, but by that definition, if I go and take an orange from my tree and eat it, then that would be an immoral behavior. (by the way, its immoral, not inmoral)Also, masturbation would be immoral as one of the ultimate creations of 'me'. Do you agree? **punches you in the nose**Did you just fabricate that blood with your mind? You're now suffering from a broken nose. How does this "'me' and 'the world'" apply to that? Don't forget: "All your suffering is fabricated by you." But how is suffering a byproduct?I'm not trying to be difficult, but I see a whole lot of explaining of stuff and yet you seem to just be assuming the main point rather than deriving it.

And yet we still have laws against stealing. By the way, a consensus doesn't require every single individual to agree. It doesn't need to be based on anything if its simply defined as such. I said it doesn't matter if it really is truely wrong or not, through a consensus society has decided to label stealing as wrong and make laws against it. No it doesn't. Everybody isn't trying to steal from Wal*Mart. Hell, they'll even let you do your own check-out. That one punishment fails does not mean that none of them will work. Don't you think that if stealing was decriminalized, then there would be an increase in the amount of theft from Wal*Mart? Doesn't that prove that the laws against it do prevent some of it?Obviously not everyone is going to follow the laws, but to say they don't do anything isn't correct. Yeah, then I wholly reject this system as a way of determining morality. There is nothing wrong with grabbing an orange from your tree and eating it. Then there's no way it should be considered immoral. If your system defines this as immoral, then that a problem with the system. Meh, it just doesn't seem worth it to me. The monk might claim that I'll be so much happier if I don't eat that orange, but I don't believe it. Besides, I'm hungry. You not being able to explain it and me having to see it for myself have an aweful lot in common with things that are wrong and don't exist. But I don'thave any reason to believe that.

Yeah, you have. Don't get me wrong; I may be coming off as particularly combative, but that's because this is a debate site and we come here to argue.

Sounds like some new-age hippy bullshit to me, but what do i know...

I think I'd prefer to keep the suffering. In exchange for the pleasure, I think its better than nothing. Everybody knows that hippies are recyclers. We do? Are there not different origins for different kind of suffering? I don't think that when people say that god is the origin of everything, that they are discounting more direct origins for things. Its more like that if you go back far enough then god is the ultimate origin. The Christian God wasn't created, he always exists.That question defeats a particular argument for a creator. That is that complexity implies design, therefore the universe was designed.A universe creator would be complex, so it too would require design.So, yeah, obviously that argument is wrong.If you got to Google Sitesearch, and scroll down to the demo, you can put 'evcforum.net' in the url box and your question, 'Who created the creator?', in the query, and then you'll find threads here about that.

So, taking the orange from the tree will lead me towards suffering. And if I don't take it, then I'm on the path to some superior happiness.But you can't explain how or why, and I just have to see it for myself.Thanks, but no thanks.. Then you're misunderstand thermodynamics and/or recycling. If the Universe has been existing forever, then it would have already hit its heat death. We also see in the Big Bang Theory, that the universe has a finite past.That, however, does not suggest a creator, but we can say the universe hasn't existed forever. That being said, in the Big Bang Theory, there is no point in time when the Universe does not exist. It exists at all points in time, there's just a finite number of them in the past direction. But that's a whole 'nother story... Oh, I dunno. There's all kinds of really complex shit that wasn't designed.Besides, "complexity" is not some well defined concept that we have enough data on to know what it suggests or not.

But you're unable to explain why... It takes less energy to collect, melt, and reform an aluminum can than it does to mine and process new aluminum ore. You're better off recylcing it. No, entropy increases over time. If there has been infinite time then there would be infinite entropy... but there isn't, so there hasn't been infinite time. Theories do not grow up to become laws. Laws are mathematically defined truths. F=ma because force has been defined as the product of mass and acceleration.No theory will become a law given sufficient evidence. Theory is as good as it gets.Do you throw doubt onto the Germ Theory of Disease as well? Depends on what you mean by "creationist". Do you include Theistic Evolutionists? They believe that god created the world, but they still accept evolution.That being said, I think that defining a creationist as someone who rejects evolution is practical for a site like this. In that case, I'm not a creationist.But I'd call myself a creationist for the former reason. Still, that doesn't mean that I have to accept bad arguments like "complexity implies design".Enjoy your time away. We'll be here when you get back.