I'm sorry but you continue to deny what has been shown to you. According to the Bible, man has the same knowledge of right and wrong that God has, and the Bible says that man is as moral, often more moral than God.
Man decides what is right or wrong, what is moral or immoral, and through consensus reach a position that becomes the standard for the society and era.
It really is that simple.
No God needed.
Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
You havent shown what the standard for morality is or is not. Until you can do this you have no right or wrong, muchless morality or morals
You've been repeating this in this thread for almost six weeks now and I've been continually asking you why not since Message 70. You still haven't explained why, you just keep repeating it.
A single neuron can fire 200 times a second. The brain makes thousands of calculations below the conscious level. You may not be aware that you are thinking when you begin to slip, put your arm out, and catch yourself before you fall, but you are.
We think so fast that we can reach into the storehouse of memory and select a past experience that closely models a current circumstance and make predictions from that earlier experience in order to make decisions about the current circumstance.
Though we may perceive that to be instantaneous, it isn't. It isn't instinct. It is a series of calculations that model a number of outcomes based on the available choices one could make. And at the same time, the brain has to calculate what the choices are.
I found this video to be an interesting look at the nature of empathy. It speaks to morality in as much as empathy is at the root of our morality. (Also an excellent demonstration of doodling skills.)
We are tribal in our nature. When we seek to satisfy that nature we are serving our own interests. The paradox here is that our own selfish interests include being generous. The paradox is not reasonably resolved by subdividing into new entities like selfish genes. It is resolved by adjusting our notions of self, selfish and selfless.
A single neuron can fire 200 times a second. The brain makes thousands of calculations below the conscious level. You may not be aware that you are thinking when you begin to slip, put your arm out, and catch yourself before you fall, but you are.
Oh, that. No, that's not reasoning. Reasoning happens at the conscious level.
What you're describing is on the other side of the coin: reflex.
The article I linked to distinguished them as intuition vs. reflection.
We think so fast that we can reach into the storehouse of memory and select a past experience that closely models a current circumstance and make predictions from that earlier experience in order to make decisions about the current circumstance.
Though we may perceive that to be instantaneous, it isn't. It isn't instinct. It is a series of calculations that model a number of outcomes based on the available choices one could make. And at the same time, the brain has to calculate what the choices are.
But there is a difference. Check it out: after reading this, you are now breathing manually.
Before that, it was an involuntary reaction. It wasn't something you were doing consciously even though the brain was still controlling it all and doing calculations n'stuff.
I found this video to be an interesting look at the nature of empathy. It speaks to morality in as much as empathy is at the root of our morality. (Also an excellent demonstration of doodling skills.)
Well I watched the whole video. How big was that white board!?
I give it a 5/10. I wouldn't watch it again. (the doodling was awesome tho)
It makes well the point that our human empathy can be spread from a local tribe to a global tribe.
We are tribal in our nature. When we seek to satisfy that nature we are serving our own interests.
That's one way to describe it. There are others like the article I linked to.
The paradox here is that our own selfish interests include being generous.
/nod
The paradox is not reasonably resolved by subdividing into new entities like selfish genes. It is resolved by adjusting our notions of self, selfish and selfless.
But those assertions remain unsupported. As it sits, that just, like, your opinion, man.
Your selfish gene and it's expressed behaviour can only be preserved in the population if it benefits the individual to the point where they can reproduce (or else is benign).
No. You obviously still don't understand the whole point of the selfish gene explanation.
quote:Relatives share a substantial proportion of their genes. Each selfish gene therefore has its loyalties divided between different bodies.
"Every decision that a survival machine takes is a gamble, and it is the business of genes to program brains in advance so that on average they take decisions that pay off. The currency used in the casino of evolution is survival, strictly gene survival, but for many purposes individual survival is a reasonable approximation.
Dawkins in 'The Selfish Gene'
What we are talking about in this context are the cases where gene survival and individual self-survival are at odds with each other.
If individual selfless behaviour (e.g. sacrificing one's life to save others) results in the ongoing survival of multiple copies of the genes you carry then selfish gene theory dictates that this selfless behaviour is exactly what will evolve.
And this is entirely consistent with actual acts of genuinely selfless human behaviour no matter how much you continue to deny this.
Dogma writes:
There is no 'you' beyond that.
Sharing genes is not the same as sharing a "self". This has absolutely nothing to do with dualism.
quote:Relatives share a substantial proportion of their genes. Each selfish gene therefore has its loyalties divided between different bodies.
"Every decision that a survival machine takes is a gamble, and it is the business of genes to program brains in advance so that on average they take decisions that pay off. The currency used in the casino of evolution is survival, strictly gene survival, but for many purposes individual survival is a reasonable approximation.
Dawkins in 'The Selfish Gene'
Do you understand that personally selfless behaviour can in some circumstances be beneficial to the ongoing survival of copies of genes being carried by the individual 'self' being sacrificed?
Well I think you are starting to see your extreme delima. Classifying genocide as pertaining to humans only is a clear dodge in any kind of rational discussion concerning what is valid as right and wrong. You are purposely and deliberately killing a life form, when there is no valid reason
There is no dilemma. Our morality is based on our ability to empathise with other sentient organisms. Ants are not sentient, therefore the rules for killing ants is entirely different than the rules for killing other sentient humans.
This is also ties into bioethics. When designing animal protocols in biomedical research you have to justify why you need to use specific species. The rules for doing experiments on fish is different than the rules used for mice, which is again different than the rules used for primates. There is very little regulation on experiments that use zebrafish, a lot of regulations in experiments that use mice or dogs, and a massive shit ton of regulations for experiments in primates. Why is that? Because we consider primates to have feelings and emotions more like ours. Therefore, they are given more protection.
There is no dilemma here, only one that you are trying to invent from nothing.
Ask yourself why you feel no guilt, shame, or sense of obligatory responsibility when you do exterminate a colony of ants
You must have a reason or standard that says it is ok to act in such a way. What is it inside of you that makes you think it is ok?
Ants are not sentient. I think it would make you a small person to kill ants for no reason, but it is nowhere close to randomly killing humans for the fun of it.
You havent shown what the standard for morality is or is not.
It is the standard that we are using now, the level of sentience. If God is as described, then God is sentient. Humans supposedly have a levle of sentience comparable to God's. Therefore, it is very immoral for God to command the extermination of a group of humans. The sad part is that you probably think it is moral for God to make such commands. Just goes to show why christian theology is not a candidate for an absolute moral code.
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