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Author | Topic: Atheism Cannot Rationally Explain Morals. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Dredge writes:
Not exactly. Society's morals are influenced by history and culture as well as by current opinions. The "right and wrong" that we learn can change as we are exposed to different ideas and different cultures. The idea that it's wrong to discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. is much more recent than the idea that 's wrong to kill or steal. The morals of societies are formed from the morality of individuals. So it isn't "whatever you want it to be". It's whatever has been assimilated by your culture.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Phat writes:
Monogamy seems to be an obvious example. We all "know" it's "wrong" to cheat on your spouse, boyfriend/girlfriend, etc. but cheating is very common.
Can anyone think of morals that society intrinsically knows to be true yet routinely ignores or rejects? Phat writes:
I don't know about hat. I'd say that rationality is about what we think; it has little to do with what we do.
In order for morals to be rational, they must be something we actually do.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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Davidjay writes:
On the contrary, we define our own meaning instead of having "meaning" spoon-fed to us by some alien overlord. As I define meaning, not only are my children more important than bugs but they're more important than you.
They have to admit according to evolutionary theory that their life is meaningless and an accident of mutations.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Faith writes:
On the contrary, the collective morality of the place where I actually live is far more reliable than the opinion of some spook (who may or may not even exist). As Thomas Paine said: people can manage their own affairs better than some goober an ocean away.
But the point, of course, is that you have no objective or reliable basis for your valuation of human life or whatever you value. Faith writes:
On the contrary, evolution suggests that our genes are important, so our children have to be protected until they can pass them on. That's the foundation of all morality.
We may feel humanity is important, but the ToE is a strong influence we all encounter that says we aren't important at all.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Dredge writes:
So, do you advocate capital punishment for women who have abortions?
Abortion is murder.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Dredge writes:
They think they do. That's all that matters. Whether the human will to survive is based on some woo-woo "meaning" imparted by some alien overlord or whether it's just a blind, mindless, unconscious and uncaring "desire" to pass on our genes, it's all that matters. Evolution is blind, mindless, unconscious and uncaring. It doesn't care if you and your children exist or don't exist. Do you think human beings need to exist? The fact that we want to survive and we want our children to survive is all that propels morality. Even kowtowing to an alien overlord is based on the same will to survive.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Dredge writes:
What about imprisonment then? If abortion is murder, a woman who obtains an abortion should be treated as a murderer, shouldn't she?
Do I advocate capital punishment for women who have abortions? No.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Faith writes:
Inferences are often wrong, particularly when the people making the inferences don't know anything about the subject. Almost every post you make is testimony to that. ... it is INFERRED from (evolutionary) science.... For example, a "primitive" tribe might infer that a man with a flashlight was a god.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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Dredge writes:
If that mindless falling rock lands on your house, doesn't that have significance or meaning to you? Do you really need an alien overlord to tell you whether it does or not?
So the series of mindless accidents that resulted in human life has no more significance or meaning than a rock falling down a cliff. Do mindless accidents have meaning?
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Davidjay writes:
Evolution is about survival of the species, not the individual. Any behaviour that advances the survival of other individuals in our species advances the survival of the species as a whole. Evolutionists can not explain altruistic behaviour, as evolution states it is the survival of the fittest competition.... There is also the obvious advantage that even if we do die as individuals, there are other members of our species, whom we have helped to survive, to help our offspring to survive.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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Faith writes:
Everybody is guilty.
No, God ordained punishment for the guilty. Faith writes:
The command to love your enemy underlines the fact that there is no difference between friend and enemy. Everybody is your friend. Everybody is your enemy, including (especially) yourself.
And in case you think this contradicts the command to love your enemy, the command is to individuals about personal enemies. Faith writes:
On the contrary, we are to give aid especially to the ones we perceive as enemies.
We are never to give aid to haters of God or his people.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Dredge writes:
Non sequitur. Weather is blind, purposeless, mindless and unconscious but it's still about movement of air.
Evolution is not about anything; it is blind, purposeless, mindless and unconscious. Dredge writes:
The beginning of a life may be a result of sheer, meaningless luck but the end of a life is the result of selection. It isn't just luck that the slow zebra is the one that the lion catches.
... survival is a result of sheer, meaningless luck.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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Dredge writes:
It's almost a certainty.
It's possible that I'm even better at philosophy than I am at science!
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Dredge writes:
You have the wrong idea about "correctness". There is no absolutely correct or incorrect handed down to us by some alien overlord. What is "correct" in a given situation is what works in that situation. Since situations vary from place to place and from time to time, it's only natural that morals also vary.
Your answer offers nothing in the way of a solution as to how one can prove a certain moral is correct.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Dredge writes:
Do you think it was absolutely wrong for Hitler to kill millions of Jews and absolutely right for the Allies to kill millions of Germans?
Evidently, morality can be whatever you want it to be; you just make it up as you go along.
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