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Author Topic:   Morality is a Logical Consequence of Evolution, not Creation
dwise1
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Posts: 5952
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 23 of 97 (544060)
01-23-2010 3:37 AM
Reply to: Message 20 by slevesque
01-22-2010 5:45 PM


Not having read other responses to your posited scenario:
In the old-folks scenario, we have a classic movie presentation of an Eskimo (or Inuit) family wherein the grandparent has gotten to the point he/she can no longer chew on the hide to make it wearable and so is no longer a productive member of the family. According to the movie, at that point the grandparent went out alone on the ice to be eaten by a polar bear so that that bear could then be killed by the family and eaten, thus continuing to provide for the family.
OK, that was a single family (and Hollywood). A single family or a very small tribe would be living on the edge, such that any single non-contributing member could seriously jeopardize the survival fo the entire social unit. Any social unit that is living right on the bloody edge of sheer survival cannot tolerate any non-contributing member. But that's not where every tribe is, now is it? Desperate measures are needed by social units in desperate situations, but they aren't all there, now are they?
Now, how can the elderly contribute? One obvious way is in helping to raise the young. Grandparents? Ever hear of them? Wouldn't keeping the grandparents around to help care for and raise the children be an advantage? Wouldn't you think?
Now, think of the very word, "elderly". Who is usually presented as being the sage counsel who run the entire community? The "ELDERS". One thing about the old people is that ... THEY KNOW THINGS! Our present society has lost this, because so much of the pertinent information in our present societies is only weeks or maybe months old (FaceBook? What the frak is THAT? -- and now even FaceBook is old), so only the young people know anything about it. But traditionally, the old people had all the information that the society needed. Who sits in counsel for the entire community? THE ELDERS! To indirectly quote from a popular US sit-com, old people KNOW STUFF! -- Cloris Leachman in particular. In the traditional communities where things didn't change that much, you learned everything you needed to learn from your (same-sex) parent and your parent had learned from their (same-sex) parent. So it was extremely beneficial for your entire community to have your and others' grandparents available. Because the only source of information you had was what was passed on to you ORALLY.
OK, so we have two different tribes. One tribe got rid of its elders when they could no longer contribute materially to the tribe, whereas the other tribe kept and maintained its elders. A situation arises which had happened before. The first tribe doesn't have a clue what's happening, but the second tribe's elders had lived through the same kind of situation before. Who has the advantange?
Now, in your revised version:
quote:
Imagine the same two tribes scenario, but instead we are talking about deformed and/or weak babies.
Now, the situation in such scenarios is necessarily how close to extinction the tribes are living. If they are right on the very edge of dying out, then keeping such babies would be the kiss of death. But if they can survive in spite of keeping such babies, then the extra benefit of such sensibilities would benefit them.
Now, if that has escaped you, in dire straits, then dire measures are needed. But if you have lee-way, then taking that leeway can make your society a much more beneficial society for everybody involved.
So, you can dream up all the dire straits scenarios you want to, but for social situations where those dire straits do not apply (which is most of them) then your scenarios would not apply.

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 Message 20 by slevesque, posted 01-22-2010 5:45 PM slevesque has not replied

  
dwise1
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Posts: 5952
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 24 of 97 (544062)
01-23-2010 4:24 AM
Reply to: Message 21 by slevesque
01-22-2010 6:10 PM


OK, let's take some different premises:
none of the gods exist.
certain moral precepts are found to be beneficial for society and hence for the members of society, so that's what's taught.
Conclusions: we arrive at the same conclusions.
Did God decide that some behavior is beneficial or harmful, or did the elders of the society, through generations of bitter experience, decide that some behavior is beneficial or harmful? Either way, the end result is the same.
Now, consider two very different scenarios.
Two groups recognize a particular set of behavior as being detrimental. One group comes to this realization by considering the actual behavior and observing the consequences of that behavior. The other groups has a biblical teaching condemning that behavior.
Now, that second group is taught that if certain things are not true, things that are DEMONSTABLY NOT TRUE, then those biblical teachings condemning that particualr behavior are also not true. FURTHERMORE, that second group is taught that if ANY biblical teachings are found to be NOT TRUE, then ANY BIBLICAL CONDEMNATION is likewise found to be not true, then what happens? Clearly, that second group has been released for following any moral stricture.
OK, do you teach morality as being things that you should do and things that you should not do because of realistic consequences? Or do you teach morality as things that only apply if a particular supernatural entity exists, but that particular supernatural entity cannot exist if the universe is as we find it, so that particular supernatural entity in fact does not exist so we can do whatever we frakin' want to do.
Is morality necessary? Yes! HELL YES!
Does morality depend on any supernatural scenario that denies reality? OF COURSE NOT!
Is morality "good" because it works? OK, yeah.
Is morality good because God made it that way. OK, that could work.
Is morality good because it just plain WORKS? OK, that ALSO works.
If God does not exist, would morality still work? OF COURSE IT WOULD!
If God were to not exist, would morality cease to exist and to work? OF COURSE NOT!!!!!!!!
HELLO??????

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 Message 21 by slevesque, posted 01-22-2010 6:10 PM slevesque has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5952
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 25 of 97 (544063)
01-23-2010 4:39 AM
Reply to: Message 21 by slevesque
01-22-2010 6:10 PM


OK, let me present this differently.
To two groups, you present the same moral teachings.
To the first group, you present the actual reasons why those moral teachings are good and necessary. To the second group, you teach them that those moral teachings are only valid if that one particular supernatural entity exists; furthermore, you teach that if that one particular supernatural entity does not exist, then none of the moral teachings you have imparted are true.
OK, you have set up some artificial tests for the existence of that particular supernatural entity, tests that are doomed to fail spectacularly (as is the nature of "creation science"). The first group who was not primed to expect much will still recognize the moral teachings as necessary. But the second group who was taught that any disproval of their particular supernatural entity also disproved morality would have no other option but to abandon morality.
So which is better? To teach morality in realistic terms? Or to teach that artificial disproval of a supernatural entity also disproves morality?

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 Message 21 by slevesque, posted 01-22-2010 6:10 PM slevesque has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5952
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 39 of 97 (544732)
01-28-2010 1:21 AM
Reply to: Message 38 by slevesque
01-28-2010 12:48 AM


Re: More fit vs. optimally fit
Modulus writes:
But no - the brain does all the processing. If you wear goggles that turn all images upside down within a few hours everything would look 'normal' since the brain would invert it again.
Is this true ?? Because I so have to find myself goggles like those and try it.
It was demonstrated in a science education film shown us in the late 1960's. The film was produced by the Moody Institute, so you might want to check with them for leads.
I seem to recall that they used prisms to invert the incoming image and that the original experiments were conducted on young chickens.

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5952
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 41 of 97 (544740)
01-28-2010 2:55 AM
Reply to: Message 40 by Iblis
01-28-2010 1:38 AM


Re: More fit vs. optimally fit
Since it's been a bit more than 40 years since I last saw that film, I completely forgot about him piloting a private plane. My father was a member of a local private pilots' association and took me to one of their meetings. At that meeting, they showed a Moody Institute film about sense perception while piloting aircraft at night. The main message I remember was that you must trust your instruments, because you cannot always trust your own senses (example was of a pilot flying at night who ended up flying upside-down thinking that the city lights below him were actually the stars above him). Plus, it exhibited an experiment that demonstrated that motion sickness results when our sensory inputs conflict with each other: specifically, when the subject was spin blindfolded, he did not experience any dizziness, but when he was stopped and the blindfold was removed, WHOA!
Interestingly, the Moody Institute had a religious slant to it. Each of their films I saw (there was another one that examined the workings of the heart) ended with a religious statement. However, that was the only religious content or orientation of any of their films (as far as I can recall -- since I had become an atheist half a decade earlier and was more sensitive to inappropriate religious incursions, I'm sure that I would have noticed). And even then, as I recall, that statement at most referenced learning about the world that God had created, though I seem to recall that that single religious statement didn't always seem to apply to the film.
If my memory serves me right, then the Moody Institute's approach was one that creationists might be able to learn from. Don't corrupt the science to fit your theology, but rather just do the science honestly.

This message is a reply to:
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