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Well, of course! Do you expect the exact same behavior of 7 billion different people?
Both behaviors are "selfish". Helping others generally statistically increases everybody's chances of survival including your own. Both behaviors in your example are motivated by "selfishness". The future will show if giving up the person to the cops enhanced his chances of survival or diminished them.
Its not an argument from popularity but the emergence of moral patterns in a group. This is a fundamental part of studying cultures and sociological as well as psychological interactions.
Perhaps we should change the course of the debate. I am arguing that it is not simply pure subjective or personal opinion but rather patterns in our own moral actions across societies and the way we interact. We have our own psychological understandings of morality and our own moral compass with a continence and empathy. This is on the personal level. Then we have the moral understandings and ethical reasoning of a group and how order is maintained and what each group decides ultimately to be right and wrong. I am suggesting that it is a complex system of different things that can be studied for better understanding. It doesn't simply end at "it was an opinion". What are the reasons behind that opinion? Why was that opinion held? Does it function? Is function its purpose from the beginning? Does it act as a universal truth or is it an illusion of a universal truth? Is it based purely in our genetic code for behavior or is it learned? Is it both and in what degree of each? To simply say it is "merely an opinion" is a great disrespect to the actual complexity that it is.
For most empathy isn't a choice. It is one of the things that govern our behavior. It also is not the only thing that govern's our behavior.
I don't claim that.
It can be warped to fit anything. That's called rationalization. There seems to be an innate human nature that desires fairness and desires justice. We make our own arguments for why we should or shouldn't do something and if that is accepted by the group then it becomes the moral foundation. But we have squabbles over this every day all day since before our species existed. The fact that this is the way of the world suggests that for better or worse morality doesn't come from an objective moral truth laid down independent of individuals.
We developed as social creatures to see more value in human life than animal life. Some people feel differently and that is their perspective but I wonder if it was their choice? But none the less we see human life as more valuable than other life. We tend to see our comrade's lives as more valuable than other lives. We then further see our own genetic family and mates as more valuable still. Then the most valuable that we tend to see is not ourselves but actually our children or children of others. It is instinctive that we view this.
No I said that the behavior of other animals is in no way a determining factor of our own behavior. You assumed that I had said something about copying lions. I brought up lions because I made the argument we SHOULDN'T act like lions.
I wouldn't call it the quantum leap. I don't see it as any more extraordinary than growing wings. Do you have any evidence that this kind of mutation and path for higher intelligence is somehow more difficult evolutionary than other extreme changes?
Well you are free to your wrong opinion. I can't help that.
I have never forced it. I have said that our morality can be explained by process of evolution. Not that our morality functions the same way evolution does. I know of no one except social darwinist that think this.
Why did you bring him up in the discussion if your points don't depend on it?
It actually implies that it is an "ought" or "ought not'. And based upon the argument you don't have to have an objective moral truth but just a held axiom.
I fully disagree with both of these. And you lack the ability to prove them. You have the ability to showcase your dogmatic belief on them but it does not make it fact. It does not make it evidence. And it barely makes it a **** poor argument. However I have debated this with you till I had my fill. I don't care what you believe and I know there is no logical discussion to be had on it with you. So I shall leave it at this and hopefully youw ill as well.
Hopefully the case.
Yes it is. But it does not mean that the reasons that we come up with and the reasonable answers would be social darwinism. The two are not connected.
No. Taking on the function of evolution and attempting to make it a moral system is Social Darwinism. The concept of secular humanism is the justification of human rights and promotion of morality/ethics that promote human health and rights. They are two totally different systems of morality. Two totally different justifications for their systems and have very little in common.
Your own link said at the very beginning "the meaning of 'nature's god' is unclear'". Though in the grand scheme of things means little either way.
You'll have to get over that eventually. That is a personally issue and if you feel you would rather lie to yourself about the "truth" then by all means. Just don't force it on others.
I stated that our moral behavior was shaped by evolution. Much in the same way our limbs or wings or eyes were. It doesn't mean that the eye functions in the same way evolution does (as that would literally be impossible) but it is the product of it.
Yeah. I agree.
He likes living in the past, any past, the present and the future are far to challenging.
Kind of like most religions today when they are taken to a fundamentalist extreme.
No, there is no God who has revealed an objective moral truth.
Ok, you said it, it is your burden. Prove that God does not exist and he did not send down the ten commandments. You must specifically be able to do exactly that before you have any justification for saying what you did. Since that is impossible, good luck.
Debates occur on common ground. Not how we prefer to define things. The common definition of murder is to take human life without moral justification. Capital punishment has moral justification. Environmental degradation is not murder, if it was every breath you take, every bug you swat, every squirrel you run over, and ever blade of grass you step on would be a murder. You need to be more precise in your language use. The bible does say not to murder and it does say we are to be good stewards of the land. Despite covering everything you did in far more practical language the bible reflect the fact of the matter if God exists. If he does not then why you think is merely your preference and not actually true.
No, religious morality knows for a fact whether justification exists, God even knows what you thought are in that moment. You cannot possible have a better judge than a just and kind one which knows every single detail with perfect clarity. There is not even a theoretical better that can be contrived. Nothing gets better than a perfectly just being with perfect awareness of ever fact.
How bizarre. The thing that makes something subjective instead of objective is that is dependent on opinion. You have it exactly backwards. The more opinions you have you think makes a thing objective.
I do not see how studying populations and making decisions based on those studies is not argument from popularity but lets just forget that part for now.
Well I agree except most of our basic desires do fit evolution. I want to be promiscuous, I want to be free from constraint, I want be my own master, I want to be violent at times, etc........ You may believe other ideas like Humanism contradict those baser desires but only does Christianity contradict them with transcendent truth. You may have a theory which would raise morality from the muck but it contains opinion and preference, then you need another theory as to why we should use your theory, then another to decide which theory about the first theory best produces the other theoretical goal. With God all those theories and opinions are replaced with absolute fact. Society is in great need of moral facts, not so much another theory.
Then that would only mean that instead of looking a nature in general you are instead going to look at the behavior of the most immoral species on earth. I think that is still an argument from popularity and of the worst possible data set. Our history would suggest ceaseless war is the greatest possible God.
Usually other opinions.
Preference
Once you decide which preference in your opinion is the goal.
I did not get this one.
Depends on what your opinion has defined universal to mean.
I do not see any necessity to know this.
There would be an objective fact of the matter to this, however our theories on how much of which would be an opinion.
I did not say it was simple. I said it was opinion.
Anything functions well enough if truth is not the goal. Since without God there is no actual right or wrong, only consistent with a preference or inconsistent with it, anything would work. That why I have said that once you untether morality from it's objective foundation it is free to be plugged into anything by preference.
Of course it is a choice. I and everyone else who has ever lived has acted contrary to it by choice. Human history is defined by much less empathy that self interest. I am sure most people have it but it is primarily aimed at themselves.
I think I have come to understand that but at one time I was convinced of the opposite.
Again with God no rationalization is necessary. Without him we can rationalize anything and your claim that any individual rationalization is wrong is your opinion versus theirs with no actual truth to compare it to.
I agree we see human life as more important than the rest, but only if God exists is that rational, if he does not then we are merely engaging in self interested speciesm who is even less justifiable than racism. God cleans up so many things so neatly it's is no wonder that to abandon him seems to inexorably lead to moral insanity, a lack of reason, and paradoxes without Answers. Before you think I made a biased statement let me paraphrase what just one of hundreds of atheists have said along the same lines.
Which axiom?
I think I got you and another person mixed up on this. At least one other very prolific poster was suggesting evolution is the basis for morality. I at some point carried what they said into this discussion.
First of all growing wings did not occur in a geological blink of an eye, second wings have very slow incremental steps in their development, third wings allows for flight of a few tens of thousand feet. Our minds have sped us a thousand times faster, hundreds of times farther, have carried thousands of time the payload without even having to have organic wings ourselves. Birds poop on your car, we split atoms, birds cannot even protect their eggs, we can put a thousand pound explosive up a camels hind quarters from a thousand miles away, birds get lost when it's cloudy, we have satellites that navigate to the mm whether day or night. If you think other animals have anything that compares with our quantum leap in intelligence lets juts let it drop here. To me that is so absurd it is frustrates me without necessity.
That is not a theory and the fact it happens and often, is proven and provable in all the failed evolutionary theories that have been discarded. It also cannot possibly be any other way since we can not observe the 99.999999999999% of nature that occurred before we recorded it. We can't even hang on to a general model for evolution more than a couple decades.
Since I mistook what you were suggesting for what someone else was I will delete the future claims based on that misunderstanding for the sake of space and time.
I had two points and both were of the type if X then Y. You must assume the existence of X in one and not in the other but I did not assume the existence of X as a fact. It is a conditional deduction. I almost never find anyone outside of engineering, philosophy, or programming that does not get thrown for loops given any conditional argument.
It was not my argument. It was yours. You ascribed an ought without a source. My proposition that if God then objective morality does have a source.
Now you are proving what I have said. I prefer not to be murdered but without God it is not an objective wrong to murder my. Violating a preference that exists objectively is not to violate a moral truth that exists objectively.
Yes it does. Wrong assumes an objective I ought not to. If God does not exist you might not prefer X but that does not entail I ought not to do X. Consider death row.
I hate semantic arguments and this one is not important enough to waste time on in this context. However did you know Jesus has more textual attestation than any other figure in ancient history?
I was waiting for someone to say that.
It is as the definitions said. To pattern behavior on evolutionary principles.
The link said it, Jefferson did not, he knew the exact Christian context he meant it in though he was only a theist. Regardless it is a divine source.
That is the human condition and no one should want to get over it.
I went back and read the entire post once or twice and I have decided to continue not holding any general discussion with you. There were too many accusations and personal commentaries and too few arguments. Don't think your offending me, I would have to care first. However any dialogue so full of emotion indicates the person has a preference for the position and takes the issue personally. No evidence or reason can have any effect on emotion. I will leave with just one example of how pathetically unjustifiable these accusations are.
Actually this is a huge misrepresentation of the facts. The human population is far greater now than it ever has been before for example and there are several mass killings. The most prominent of which was under the Soviets. But we also had WWI, WWII, Holocaust, Korean War ect. Our ability to kill each other because of advanced technology and two corrupted countries have killed more people.