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Author Topic:   Morality! Thorn in Darwin's side or not?
Capt Stormfield
Member
Posts: 429
From: Vancouver Island
Joined: 01-17-2009


(6)
Message 303 of 438 (742628)
11-22-2014 12:54 PM
Reply to: Message 300 by Colbard
11-22-2014 12:08 PM


The perfect atheist would never call himself one and never mention or complain about God or any of history of God.
Well duh. But of course the perfect atheist would live in a perfect world where theists weren't intruding their incoherent beliefs into civil society. When we talk about your God, we're not acknowledging the existence of any such being. Neither are we making that concept part of our reality. We are simply using semantic shorthand to describe your beliefs.
Since your gods are the creation of your own minds, our pointing out their immorality and incoherence is just another way of describing you, the believer. We would have no reason to do this if you acted responsibly and ran anti-virus software in your brain.
So a genuine evolutionist does not teach morals at home to his or her children, they can only mention physical or social consequences of certain behaviors...
Interesting use of the word "so". Was it your impression that you had made a point of some kind that led to this bizarre non sequitur?
What on earth gave you the idea that morals have something to do with theism? It seems self-evident that theism is, to borrow Harris' phrase, just one of the "first and worst" attempts to explain the morals we had evolved earlier in our history. "Physical and social consequences" are precisely the subject that morals are intended to address. What else could there be? Or perhaps your somewhat crude version of theism has degraded your ability to understand the implications of the word "social".
A dictator is not "bad" he just has a different instinct.
...an instinct that manifests as identifiable physical and social consequences we have chosen to label as bad.
People cannot be good or bad just different in behavior.
...and those behaviors manifest as identifiable physical and social consequences we have chosen to label as bad. To borrow another phrase (from someone whose name I can't recall): language isn't your first language, is it?
KP

This message is a reply to:
 Message 300 by Colbard, posted 11-22-2014 12:08 PM Colbard has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 311 by Colbard, posted 11-22-2014 9:43 PM Capt Stormfield has replied

  
Capt Stormfield
Member
Posts: 429
From: Vancouver Island
Joined: 01-17-2009


Message 329 of 438 (742722)
11-23-2014 10:46 AM
Reply to: Message 311 by Colbard
11-22-2014 9:43 PM


Physical and social issues as I have pointed out in earlier posts, are things we may or may not want to address, and name morals, which in the process of evolution are only issues relative for the time, and can not be intrinsically right or wrong - they can only be "whatever is." Nothing more or less.
Ultimately, whatever overcomes us is the winning species, be it bacteria or a machine, and regardless of whether we think it right or not, it is ordained by the destiny of chance and survival of the fittest.
Now go and do whatever you have to, but at the end of the day you are nothing better than an expanded worm.
That's right.
If only you understood what you said.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 311 by Colbard, posted 11-22-2014 9:43 PM Colbard has not replied

  
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