The only thing that bothers me, is that I have a nagging sense that our lives should be better than they are. That existence should be better than it is. But the only way I can see to do that, is to invoke some metaphysical purpose that underlies my observation that all is not well.
Why? Why is it insufficient simply to desire that things be better, and work toward that goal?
I mean can you go out to a restaurant without invoking a metaphysical purpose for hunger?
If existence just is, then how can I say that he is not?
If existence
just is, what makes you think that we don't get to stop him? The nonexistence of metaphysical purpose isn't
carte blanche for bad people to do bad things. The good people who want to restrain them are similarly unconstrained, after all. While there may be no metaphysical laws to enforce, by the same token, it's a violation of no metaphysical or moral law to enforce the
temporal laws we, as the community of humans, decide we want to have enforced.
Anything else is to suggest that bad people are free but good people are prevented from doing anything about it. And why on Earth should that be the case? If Amedidajad is metaphysically free to do whatever he wants to Israel, I'm free to do whatever I want to him - like try to stop him, or help him, or whatever.
I just cannot believe that I am only a machine.
I don't see what your own personal incredulity has to do with anything.
Hitler thought so.
No, actually, he didn't. Hitler was a Christian who believed in the soul, and believed he had God's mandate for the extermination of Europe's Jews.
As to your question, I think that it is the only way we can logically conclude that there is a moral code with which to live by.
Why? Why is practical necessity insufficient?
And if the universe has a moral code, why can't anybody agree on what it is? Why does everybody who seems to percieve this "universal moral code" percieve, coincidentally, the exact moral code that privliges them and outlaws behaviors that they didn't even like in the first place?
If the universe has a moral law, like physical laws, how is it even possible to act immorally? You don't get to break
physical laws; how is it possible to break moral ones?
To deny tuning, is to deny ourselves the ability to tune.
Well, we
don't have the ability to tune. Like Scotty says: "You canna change the laws a' physics, ca'tn!"
So I am curious, what makes you think the ohysical laws are not tuned?
It seems pretty obvious to me. If the universe was fine-tuned for life, life wouldn't be such a miniscule part of the universe, hanging on to existence by a fingernail on an unremarkable planet circling an unremarkable star in an unremarkable galaxy, among countless trillions. If the universe was fine-tuned for life there'd be a lot more life in the universe, don't you think?
Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.
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