Believing it is not proving it

Hi, Iano.I agree that when we encounter a paradox, we have encountered a limitation in our language or understanding, not something contradictory about the world: the world seems to me always coherent and consistent (well, maybe not in Cavediver's world, but that's another country entirely). Once one has posited an omniscient, omnipotent being, it seems silly to play word games in order to catch God out in contradictions.But I don't see why God's (yours or any others') morality should be considered logical or objective, or even why morality need be logical.I suppose it should be sensible, in the plain, intuitive sense of the word, but logic is cool, and love and kindness are warm; cold logic has led to as many horrors as heavens.QED. Glad you're still coming 'round, mate.

As you can imagine, I've thought about that a lot.Predominantly, I am simply, profoundly grateful for that gift of life, and do think of it as an act of love...but I also see it in other ways. The poor guy had screwed up: he shouldn't have been where he was; I had often had to wave him away from getting so close to my point position--not only had he come too close again, but he had moved outside the safe track I laid down. I think he knew all that in the instant of that awful *click* and his almost instantaneous reaction of pushing me into the ditch was at once apology, expiation, and the acceptance of responsibility: at last he was all grown up, a split second before he died.Our lieutenant suggested the kid was just trying to push me out of the way so he could run. He lost a lot of respect with that remark; the loss of respect made him reckless; his recklessness got him killed, too. Aren't we strange creatures?As an evolutionist, of course, I have no difficulty in understanding the advantages of altruistic behavior. I could suggest, for example, that I survived to produce progeny with more good sense (or sound instinct) than to act in such a high-risk fashion, whereas he might have produced descendants inclined to get their neighbors killed.Now, as a man of graying years and too many ghosts, I think he was a nice kid who should never have been asked to go and kill people who had more in common with him than the leaders on either side. I had been half-feral since toddling, and a jungle of enmity felt like home to me--I could feel hazard before I could see or hear it, the same instinct that prompted me to leave many bad scenes--bars, parties, deals, family gatherings, managers meetings --before they imploded. Ironically, he was ill-equipped for that jungle because he was a more normal human being. So who was unfit? As always, it is the environment that selects...There was a morality at work that day, a soldier's morality: Thou shalt not get thy buddy killed by fucking up. But I'm not sure that you can get to that credo with logic, and I don't think logic generated human moralities. Our innate capacity for empathy and compassion seem like better candidates to me: we know it is good to love and bad to hurt because we know how good and bad those things feel, and, if we aren't too broken, we can feel the joys and pains of others.

The theory of evolution is more complicated than that, iano. There are circumstances in which sacrificing one's apparent interests, up to and including life itself, can promote the survival of one's genetic line. That being so, the altruistic capability/tendency has become well established, and, in my opinion, a strict calculus is not necessary in every instance now that the behavior is in our species' repertoire. Well, no...he was standing on the bloody thing--there was no escape for him. What was remarkable was his ability to act to save another in the same instant he recognized his own doom. No, Iano, that opinion has nothing to do with the ToE: 'Evolutionist' is not my primary identity in life; it is merely a category at this forum. The grounding of morality in empathy and compassion is my own conclusion after years of living in (and observing others in) "the foul rag and bone shop of the heart." You'd be among the first to know.