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Kia Kaha, I understand your pain mate, but - regardless of how much insensitive bullshit this fella chooses to spout - it's not his fault.
His dad did the wrong thing, and was very lucky to survive, but at least - if there's any consolation from it - he was given the opportunity to learn from it before he caused any real damage to himself, or, indeed, to anyone else. But I still understand your point..... if there is a God, he has a tendancy to reward the bastards and punish the innocent. PsychoEwok can say whatever he likes, but he doesn't really have a leg to stand on in cases like this......
Anyway, it's a sad story mate. I think people of any religion can recognise the injustice in what happenned to your sister - I just hope they locked that bastard up for a long time. 
| quote: | I did wonder about that when I read your earlier posts (not only in this thread): To me my set of values come from a perception of some spiritual connectivity between all creatures in the world, but for someone like you, that have no faith, why would you care if some 5000 people in NYC dies from a terrorist act, famine claims children lives in third world countries etc.? *Your* life would continue as it is, correct?
I'm not saying that you're a cold bastard, but I wonder how you explain the misery you feel in these situations (that is, if you feel misery). |
Well perhaps we are similar in that we both believe that there is something common bonding the whole of humanity together, only you choose to attribute it to a spiritual (or somewhat transcendent) cause, whereas I do not.
I don't think we have to over-romanticise morality - in fact, I'd argue that doing so would be to our detriment. The fact that no human being has been able to satisfactorily tap into its nature thus far gives us some indication that morality is a very complex issue: and perhaps that's all it is - an issue. Nothing tangible, just a collection of ideas, idealogical rhetoric and a whole lotta inherited social ettiquette. We're social animals, perhaps the false imposition of a moral framework is necessary for survival: certainly animals, on the whole, that have been able to initiate a social structure and give off some impression of a binding social ettiquette (especially among higher animals - chimpanzees, dolphins etc.) are more likely to succeed than if these animals were to lead existences independant from one another: how long would a chimp last by himself in the forest? Or if he were directly competing with all the other chimps in a society that didn't have a binding moral code (or at least what looks like a moral code to the observer) present in other chimp societies? I'm guessing he wouldn't last too long - which is why it's in the best interests of the chimp society to erect some sort of a social ettiquette in order to ensure that competition is reduced by the imposition of the notion of "equality" (despite the social heirarchy). A group of chimps working for each other has a better chance of surviving than a group of chimps working independantly.
So am I saying that our moral system is simply a consequence of evolutinary necessity? No not really. Firstly I don't have any real scientific evidence to back it up - I'm only really drawing an analogous picture of how morality could be useful as an evolutionary tool, by using chimpanzees - our closest relatives (which works both ways - chimpanzees are more closely related to us than to any other primate, or, indeed, any other life form) - as an example. I'm not suggesting that morality can be that finely pidgeon-holed as simply a survival tool, but I'm sure we can trace its origins back there. It would have constituted a significant competitive advantage for our ancestors, in what was then, in equatorial Africa, a very competitive environment indeed. And you have to remember that, once you disclude all the intellectual posturing we are prone to, we have essentially the same brains that our ancestors did tens of thousands of years ago. Through civilisation and institutionalised learning we may be more intellectually capable, but we still have the same "neural hardware" that operates in exactly the same way. If morality is hardwired into our brains by evolutionary necessity, it would certainly explain why moral decisions are usually made in the subconscious (or the "primordial self" as Jung put it) and not in the conscious mind. Perhaps our conscience is the voice of our ancestors telling us which courses of action are congenial to the propogation of our species and which ones aren't - but maybe I'm just being a bit too romantic.
Anyway, regardless of what the origins are, morality seems - with the rise of philosophy - to have lost its subconscious roots and firmly implanted itself in the rational conscious-self, which leads to the "heart vs brain" moral dilemas we seem to face all the time: our subconscious morality - our conscience - tells us one thing, but a rational appraisal of the situation tells us another. Neither is necessarily correct, but it's simply two dimensions of thought clashing - almost inevitable in a way. Which brings me to the objection to moral absolutism I raised in an earlier post: how can there possibly be one, single, correct way of acting when, quite apart from there being conflicting trains of thought among different people, there are conflicting trains of though in each individual. Given any moral issue, there is no objective wrong or right, only a subjective notion of the two. But it is this subjectivity - or lack of an absolute - that has troubled philosophers and theologins alike as they grapple to find, and propogate, the one true moral code. But the fact is, there isn't one: what constitutes righteousness in the first place? How can we possibly decide whether an action is right or wrong when we don't really have a notion of what these two terms really mean in the first place? Is killing wrong? All the time? Are there circumstances where killing is permissable? Can we all, as human beings, possibly agree on circumstances where killing can be construed as being permissable?
The fact that there are so many conflicting moral codes - even if they do, by and large, agree on the same things (against theft, murder etc.) - gives us some clue that there can not possibly be an absolute morality. And the moral codes don't just confict on a cultural basis, they confict on an individual basis (both between seperate individuals and inside the one individual). If there were some sort of spiritual, moral bond as you suggest trancaholic, I wonder whether this sort of moral ambiguity would exist to such a disconcerting degree. Even if there is some congenital, seemingly transcendant moral nature to our existence, I would argue that it could be more easily explained as a dormant relic of our evolution than as evidence of some binding spiritual absolute. When ever you talk of spirituality, it is always important to remember, historically, how often a spiritual explanation has been put forward to explain something (whether of ourselves, of our universe, or of anything else) and how, unilaterally, this explanation has been overturned as soon as evidence pointing to a better, more prosaic explaination is discovered. Spirituality has always been used as the glue to hold the pieces of our knowledge together, but has never thus far been utilised as a piece of knowlegde in itself. You may put it down to the transcendent or esoteric nature of spirituality, but I would put it down to the fact that a better, less extraordinary explanation usually turns up when the evidence necessary for assessment is discovered.
I'm not saying that spirituality doesn't exist, just that if it does exist, that it should be subject to the same laws of empirical and rational criticism as all other things that exist, and thus lend itself to analysis in such terms. Nonetheless, accepting a spiritual explanation - in the usual sense of the word "spiritual" - too often demonstrates an impatience in the face of unanswered (and perhaps unanswerable) questions and is almost akin to the internal creation of an alternate universe - where the laws of logic, both empirical and rational, are diluted to allow such ideas to exist unhampered. I'm not saying that spirituality is a form of escapism as such, but it does demostrate a desire for the absolute so insatiable, that it is prepared to accept hypotheses that - for all the wishful thinking in the world - contradict all that we currently understand - in a Stoical, perhaps overly rational sense - about the universe. I've given up on the absolute: as an existential subject I recognise that it is an unacheivable standard of truth unless you are willing to fill in the gaps in your knowlegde with a sort of temporary glue.
I should probably mention at this point, that if my tone appears to be consescending or patronising in anyway, that it was not my intention. I don't proclaim to be right: I'm just offering my experiences to you all. 
Anyway, I think I've said enough on this subject for now. I'll return to it later on maybe, to actually get around to explaining how an atheistic morality is possible and - indeed - preferable.
| quote: | I saw someone claim the Bible put forth a lot of impossibility's, such as events wich defy the laws of Physics, Nature, and the universe in general (the REALLY long post).
Well don't forget that most of the Bible (especially the old stories like Noah's Ark) were passed down from word of mouth for several generations each. Most of these "impossible" stories are probably just normal occurences, just warped horribly warped out of proportion by people who try and pass it down. |
I'm guessing the "really long post" you're talking about here is mine.
And yes I agree with you: some of the stories (note the emphasis on the word "some") do have some historical element of truth behind them. For instance, there is strong evidence of widespread flooding in the Middle-East region in pre-Biblical times, which may have been the real-life inspiration for the Noahs Ark tale (and indeed the similar myths of other religions). But this goes to support my point: that the Bible is not divinely inspired, it is just a collection of myths warped by the "Chinese Whispers" syndrome after having been passed down through the generations and through several different cultures as well as the usual collection of moral fables (stories with no factual content, just used in an almost analogous sense in order to more easily get an otherwise intangible point across - see my post in the symbolism thread) representing the moral standards of the people of the day as well as other myths just blatantly stolen from other cultures (namely the Romans, the Greeks, the Egyptians etc.).
There is some historical content in there, but none of it in any way reliable, and certainly not in any way divinely inspired. That was the only point I was attempting to get across.....
| quote: | | This is getting old. You can't argue with someone that's not open to arguments. |
Well yeah, I'd be inclined to agree, but it doesn't mean you have to let them get away with saying whatever they like.
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