Re: What's the Problem?

Jim Spaza wrote:


brogers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Jim Spaza wrote:
John Harshman wrote:
Jim Spaza wrote:

Ernest Major wrote:

In message <1153786237.093970.320320@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Jim Spaza <spaza9@xxxxxxxxx> writes

Yeah right. If you saw several tough-looking, muscle-bound men
walking towards you in the middle of the night, would it matter to
you if they had just came from a Bible study?


As opposed to a Buddhist study group, a secular humanist meeting, a
conference on evolutionary biology, or a Star Trek convention.
Given your views on atheists and morality, if you were
representative of Christians, then the Bible study would be the
scarier alternative. --
alias Ernest Major


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You didn't answer my question. Would you feel better?

Anyway, I'd feel good about the Buddhist study group. Then
again...
http://www.hinduonnet.com/2002/05/23/stories/2002052301301500.htm

Secular humanist meeting? No way. Such humanists attend a
biological seminar where they assert that humans are nothing more
than evolved animals and then go to a human rights rally where they
decry
governments for treating humans as animals. Anyone that can
compartmentalize such hypocritical logic without difficulty can
certainly do the same when it comes to morality.

You are confused about what people (not just humanists) would decry
at human rights rallies. It's not treating humans as animals that's
wrong (after all, we are animals), it's treating them cruelly and
denying them the rights that we generally agree should be extended to
human beings, whatever their ancestry might be. The ancestry is
irrelevant. There is no compartmentalization here. You are perhaps
confused because your mental definition of "animal" is something
pejorative, instead of merely recognizing certain biological features
we all share, like mine does.

Yes, I do define "animal" differenly than a humanist and do not include
humans in that definition.

Here's the problem. If we are part of the animal kingdom, where
"survival of the fittest" usually rules, then why decry human versions
of that survivial process?

In the animal kingdom there is also a good deal of collaboration and
plenty of conflict is handled in ritual ways to avoid real damage.

None of which is done as a choice by intelligent beings. It's all
coded by genetics.

Really? All of it? Have you learnt nothing from your time on this
newsgroup about what biologists have learnt?


"Nature is red in tooth and claw" is a bit of hyperbole. More
importantly, we get to decry "human versions of that process," by which
I guess you mean something like killing the rival for your next
promotion at work, because we are free. We get to decry what we want to
decry. And we are likely to decry behaviours which, if adopted by many
people, would make a mess for all of us.

OK. Your statement about decrying that which you WANT to decry smacks
of subjective moral relativism and is the point that I have been trying
to make.

And you have been completely unable, throughout a thread that now runs to
over 500 posts, to show that what you laughably call your own morality is
any less subjective.

I say laughably because it is quite clear that you are unable to distinguish
between morality and obedience.




Why are we to treat others with respect and
establish human rights when there is nothing special about humanity
except for biological complexity?

We want to treat others with respect and establish human rights because
we think, rightly, that doing so is pretty likely to establish a
society in which we are treated with respect and granted human rights.
Biological complexity really has nothing much to do with it.

Biological complexity is at the heart of it, since we don't see any
other animal coming close to our level of cooperation.

Try bee and ants to start with. Think of lions and other pride or pack
hunting animals. Think of chimpanzees particularly. None of those come
close to our level of cooperation?




As a Christian, I can demand respect and rights for all humans because
I believe that there is something special about humanity. I believe
that we have a supernatural origin and are, to a point, special in the
eyes of God.

You can demand anything you want, but making it stick (ie be adopted as
a general moral rule) depends on everybody else.

True.



A humanist cannot say such things. So, the rationale for basic human
rights is to establish some order and cooperation among humanity in
order to survive as a whole species?

Not really, you are conflating two things here. I want people to
cooperate with me, so I cooperate with them. That has nothing to do
with "the good of the species as a whole." It may well be that natural
or cultural selection, acting at either the individual or the group
level, has made it easy for me to be a social animal and cooperate, but
that's a separate question from the individual motivation that I feel.

OK. But, I saw an opposing view in a reply by an atheist above this
post. See how even truth is relative among atheists?

No, I at least don't. You still find it impossible to understand another
difference - in this case between the individual and the collective. It is
the case that cooperation between individuals is to the benefit of the
species collectively; but at the level of the individual, the issues are
individual.





Same thing for the evolutionary biology meetings, except maybe they
only meet in cubicles afterward.

If you would actually be nervous when a bunch of evolutionary
biologists approaches you, then your thinking is seriously warped.
We're not dangerous at all. Your problem here is that your thinking
is so distorted that you don't actually observe the world around you;
perhaps, too, you are so insulated from contact with people outside
your own group that you have no way to form a rational judgment. If
so, you should at start to realize that.

I didn't say that I would be nervous around a bunch of evolutionary
biologists. I said that such scientists tend to have problems by
lumping us in with the animal kingdom but then demanding a higher level
of respect and rights separate and beyond that which we afford other
animals.

What sort of problems do you have in mind? Do you think that scientists
treat their fellows with less respect and consideration than
creationists? Humans are the ones making moral codes. We get to decide
to what extent we want to extend their protection to other animals.
Most people do not feel inclined to extend the rights and respect they
extend to other humans to animals as well (and, leavng aside the Jains,
certainly not to plants). It would be pretty surprising if we did. Are
you looking for religious reasons not to be a vegetarian?

The problem is inconsistency in the application of our supposedly being
100% part of the natural world. Biologically, humanist will state that
we are part of nature. Morally, we are considered above nature. Other
than selfish personal desire, why would natural human beings be so much
more important than natural animals?

I do not think that scientists, in general, treat their fellows with
less respect and consideration than creationists.

I don't care about vegetarianism. I care about making humans separate
from the rest of the animal kingdom to buttress one's personal morals
but then declare humanity to be a part of nature like anything else
when declaring the origin, meaning, and destiny of man.

You are perhaps terminally confused here. Humans are a part of the animal
kingdom. That does not mean that they are, for example, lions. Humans
have qualities that between them distinguish them from virtually every
other member of the animal kingdom. We have both self-awareness, and
intelligence, for example. We make moral choices where other members of
the animal kingdom do not. None of that makes anyone a hypocrite, and I am
at a loss to understand the kind of confused thinking that suggests it
could.



That there is no absolute, eternal moral code delivered from on high
does not mean that there is no moral code at all. We have a moral code;
we evolved it. And, I think, we evolved religions to help enforce it.
But if religions all disappeared, we'd still have a moral code; we'd
just find other mechanisms to help enforce it.

Actually, that is exactly what it means. Here's why. To have a law or
moral code, there has to be an origin or source for it. A law needs a
law giver.

Law != morality.

This is where some of your confusion arises; you confuse obedience to law
with morality. Indeed, you abdicate your responsibility to make moral
choices - your morality - and simply obey what you see as law. "I was only
following orders" is not a moral statement - whatever the source of the
orders.


For this law to be legitimate and binding on all humans, it must be
given by a source with moral authority over all humans. The only
source imaginable is the Supreme Being.

But if the "goodness" of the orders given relies entirely upon the supremacy
of the entity giving them, rather than its "goodness", you are confusing
obedience with morality.


Otherwise, morality is nothing more than a group consensus of
individual choices and desires with zero moral authority over any one
individual.

Unpack this argument please - don't go straight from assertion to
conclusion, show your working.






Trekkies? Now there is a dangerous lot. Many of them get picked
on in
school and then buy assault weapons when they turn 21. Don't think
that they never consider a little payback.

Are you serious? When has a trekkie ever hurt anyone, that you know
of?

I was just kidding. Goodness. I should have put a :-) after the last
post.

It wouldn't have helped. Perhaps you could have addressed the point being
made, and not tried to avoid it by making what you considered a joke.

--
Robin Levett
rlevett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (unmunge by removing big blue - don't yahoo)

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