Zero Probability of Evolution. Atheism wrong?

[Truly Enlightened]

How about DO THE MINIMUM HARM POSSIBLE. In the case of the terrorist, killing the terrorist saves the kids, and is thereby moral.

Yes, it may save the kids, but only by doing the MAXIMUM AMOUNT OF HARM to another member of society. Therefore, NOT a moral act. It is a justifiable, necessary, excusable, and tragic act.

 

[Truly Enlightened]

What makes them objective?



In the same sense, if humans didn't exist would morality exist? I would say that it wouldn't. Morality is based on our subjective views of how we want to be treated and how other humans should be treated. If there are no humans then this morality doesn't exist.



That is not what an objective morality is. Knowing precisely what everyone's subjective views are doesn't make those views objective. In order to be objective it has to be independent of humans.



Evolution selects for traits that increase the number of offspring that survive in the population, not what is moral.

Since we did not create or program our own genes and alleles, they must be objectively created and programmed as a result of evolutionary trial and error. We have no more conscious/subjective/direct control over them, than we have in controlling our liver function, or any other unconscious bodily process. Obviously, since babies are not in control of, or consciously aware of their actions, their actions are objective, and outside of their conscious control. Their actions are based only on their hardwired inherited and instinctive evolutionary traits, which are objective. Do you think that a child's dependency and trust in adults is subjective, or objectively the result of their genetic program?

I have already stated many times before that objective morality does not exist, and why. It is only a mental construct or social concept. So please stop the straw man. My personal belief is that the concept of morality WOULD EXIST, even if there were no humans on earth. This concept is like logic or mathematical principles, which also exists with or without the presence of humans. I believe that all organized autonomous life form will at some point in their evolution develop some form of innate moral behavior. A behavior that is intuitively understood by both organisms. When two one-celled organisms touch each other, they simply move away without drama or attacking each other. In other words, as long as life exists anywhere in the universe, morality can be applied(like energy) to that life form. If no independent life exists, then morality simply can't be applied.

Evolution instills traits that will give the organism the best chance of surviving long enough to pass on this genetic information on to their offspring. It is this entire process that is OBJECTIVE. It is these objective traits that will program the morality that is specific for that species(shark pups devouring weaker ones in the womb, infanticide by male lions). Unless you can tell me just how this is subjective? Or is it just easier for you to simply deny that it is?

 

[Truly Enlightened]

Of course it does. That is why it's better to lose just one terrorist life than to lose the lives of a lot of innocent children.I don't know.No.It is a moral act. People get medals for stopping terrorists from harming others.Well, are their acts beneficial or detrimental to the society they live in and its people? Do you have anything specific in mind?No, in this case it's THOU SHALT DO NO HARM EXCEPT WHEN NOT DOING HARM RESULTS IN MORE HARM BEING DONE THAN THE HARM YOU DO! If you want we can just put in THOU SHALT DO NO HARM EXCEPT WHEN NOT DOING HARM RESULTS IN MORE HARM BEING DONE THAN THE HARM YOU DO AND YOU SHALL DO JUST AS MUCH HARM AS NECESSARY. Since the point is to minimize harm the last bit isn't really necessary but we can put it in just for you since you seem to need it.Sure. If you have to do harm to avoid a lot more harm from being done you should of course do as little harm as possible. But isn't that obvious given that what we are after is the least amount of harm?

Okay, I get it. You have no idea of the concept of preemptive killing, or its dangers and abuses. You have no idea of the policies and practices of extremist racists groups. You have no opinions regarding the killing of an unborn child. And, you believe that a moral act should be applied only to those that can see exactly what will happen into the future. You also believe that a moral act should be interpreted by consensus, on a case by case basis.

All I can say is thank God that more saner minds prevail. I have given you many examples of abuses, and why your definition of a moral act is dangerous. Why didn't you address those issues?

 

[ArtieE]

Yes, it may save the kids, but only by doing the MAXIMUM AMOUNT OF HARM to another member of society. Therefore, NOT a moral act. It is a justifiable, necessary, excusable, and tragic act.

Saving the kids was the right thing to do. And right and moral are synonyms.
I found great synonyms for "moral" on the new Thesaurus.com!
You can't break up saving the kids into two acts, one of which is immoral.

 

[ArtieE]

You also believe that a moral act should be interpreted by consensus, on a case by case basis.

ROTFL. Never said a moral act should be interpreted by consensus. I said the moral act is the one that is most beneficial and/or least detrimental to the well-being and survival of the society and people in it.

If I was in a position to kill that terrorist before he managed to blow up the children I would do it because it would be the right and moral thing to do. The question is: Would you have killed the terrorist? Of course not since your moral rule is THOU SHALT DO NO HARM with no exceptions and you would have done him harm. How would you explain that to the parents of the children? All I can say is thank God that more saner minds prevail.

 

[Polymath257]

Yes, it may save the kids, but only by doing the MAXIMUM AMOUNT OF HARM to another member of society. Therefore, NOT a moral act. It is a justifiable, necessary, excusable, and tragic act.

OK, for my understanding, a justifiable, excusable, and necessary act will be moral. You cannot have a necessary immoral act.

 

[Polymath257]

Since we did not create or program our own genes and alleles, they must be objectively created and programmed as a result of evolutionary trial and error. We have no more conscious/subjective/direct control over them, than we have in controlling our liver function, or any other unconscious bodily process. Obviously, since babies are not in control of, or consciously aware of their actions, their actions are objective, and outside of their conscious control. Their actions are based only on their hardwired inherited and instinctive evolutionary traits, which are objective. Do you think that a child's dependency and trust in adults is subjective, or objectively the result of their genetic program?

I have already stated many times before that objective morality does not exist, and why. It is only a mental construct or social concept. So please stop the straw man. My personal belief is that the concept of morality WOULD EXIST, even if there were no humans on earth. This concept is like logic or mathematical principles, which also exists with or without the presence of humans. I believe that all organized autonomous life form will at some point in their evolution develop some form of innate moral behavior. A behavior that is intuitively understood by both organisms. When two one-celled organisms touch each other, they simply move away without drama or attacking each other. In other words, as long as life exists anywhere in the universe, morality can be applied(like energy) to that life form. If no independent life exists, then morality simply can't be applied.

Well, I would argue that mathematics and logic also do not exist independently of humans.

Evolution instills traits that will give the organism the best chance of surviving long enough to pass on this genetic information on to their offspring. It is this entire process that is OBJECTIVE. It is these objective traits that will program the morality that is specific for that species(shark pups devouring weaker ones in the womb, infanticide by male lions). Unless you can tell me just how this is subjective? Or is it just easier for you to simply deny that it is?

So the subjective attitudes we have are objectively defined? Interesting take on things.

 

[Audie]

Well, I would argue that mathematics and logic also do not exist independently of humans.

Math as a field of study would not exist but I kind of like theory that
ultimately there is nothing but math. (Tegmark)

 

[Polymath257]

Math as a field of study would not exist but I kind of like theory that
ultimately there is nothing but math. (Tegmark)

I understand the sentiment. I don't agree, but I understand it. I've been a professional mathematician for 32 years now.

 

[Audie]

I understand the sentiment. I don't agree, but I understand it. I've been a professional mathematician for 32 years now.

I just do not have the mind for math. I can brute-force my way, but I've no intuition for it. To me it would so improve my way of seeing the world, if I saw the numbers.

 

[BilliardsBall]

She made her point. You were claiming that rape was always wrong and that that was an absolute. Absolute means without exception. Then you agreed to an exception. That pretty much defines that the proscription against rape is relative, this is might vary according to context, and therefore not absolute. I'd say that she made her point convincingly.

You frequently write that others labor fending off the notion that there are moral absolutes or objective moral values in order to justify not accepting the existence of God, correct?

It seems to be the other way around. You are doing verbal gymnastics trying in vain to make a case for such things in order make a god necessary, although it has also been explained to you that identifying moral absolutes wouldn't do that anyway.

It's just another god-of-the-gaps argument - finding a job for this god that makes it necessary.

The problem is that God is running out of jobs to do. We don't need Him to keep the cosmos running day to day, and we didn't need him to build the universe or generate the tree of life from the first population of living cells. What's left? The origin of the early universe, the origin of the first life, the origin of consciousness, and the origin of abstractions like moral values and mathematics. These are the remaining gaps.



The consensus here has been that you are a provocative and condescending representative of your religion. You told me recently that you sensed enmity between us, and you were correct - something rare for me. I did feel hostility toward you then (not now, however), and apparently failed to conceal it.

My apologies for that.

You have written many offensive comments about atheists, so you should expect that at least some people will dislike you because of it. Your overall message is that atheists are intellectually inferior (you have the truth, while atheists are lost), emotionally inferior (only a Christian can love an enemy, which you imply is a virtue), spiritually inferior, and morally inferior.

I only bring that up now because it is relevant to how people perceive you evangelizing face-to-face. What we know is that you provoke people - you have made what you call enemies on this thread - and are being spat at and having books knocked out of your hand.

So it's hardly cruel to speculate that you might be the cause or part of the cause of your problems.

Well . . . I agree with the last sentence in your post, and wish we lived adjacent to one another, so I could buy us both a beer and shoot the breeze. I'm not always one of the good guys, but I try to be a nice guy. I think we would actually get along superbly and that's in no small part both of us are pretty sharp dudes.

I appreciate you! Thanks for caring enough about me to tell me the truth.

 

[BilliardsBall]

Which is your moral absolute here - theft is OK, or theft is not OK? Pick one, and adhere to it absolutely, that is, without exception.

Then go back to your question.



Yeah, blessed are the meek.



It's not about deserved. It's about whether you are contributing to the physical hostile reactions you receive.

My experience is that you have to make somebody pretty angry to have them spit at your or slap a book out of your hand. I don't think either have ever happened to me even in my street corner proselytizing days. Why you?



This went on for five minutes? You weren't spat at immediately?

You were obviously insensitive to the rising anger in your subject. By your account, you went on for five minutes with somebody that obviously wasn't interested and eventually exploded. Part of your job as a salesman of any kind is to take the pulse of the situation and understand how you are being perceived.



Do you think you project love here?

And yes, you condemn.

Also, I noticed that your answer to me at post 983 completely ignored the last half of my post to you regarding your apparent lack of insight about the image you project.

If you didn't care about that topic when answering that post, what reason is there to think that you ever consider it? You were told that you come across as condescending at multiple levels, but had no apparent interest in the topic, and seem unaware even after being told.

Perhaps that's part of the issue - dealing with feedback and assorted cues in social situations

One form of insight can be thought of as effectively projecting oneself outside of his body, turning around, and looking back in at oneself to assess how he appears to others. A lot of people don't do this well, and they get negative reactions from others that seem to come out of the blue and catch them off guard, unaware of how they contributed to the problem. Could that be you?

Would you care if any of the things I posted to you were correct? Suppose I was right about your lack of insight about how others perceive you? Would you want to know that? It doesn't seem like it.

But shouldn't you given what matters most to you and how much time you spend at it? This is potentially constructive criticism, but only if you take it as such and consider it impartially and dispassionately.

You are right on a lot of this. I do think of one incident though, where the fellow spat upon me and walked off in great anger, and during those minutes he was weeping in contrition.

I'm not Jesus Christ but the Bible posits that one reason people attempted to assault Jesus prior to His cross, even years before, is that as He unearthed sin in others, sometimes they released it to Jesus and sometimes they just really didn't like having their "rhubarb rubbed" (as Nicholson's Joker told Keaton's Batman) and exploded.

I mean, I was internally saying, "Man, this guy is really feeling it," and I guess he was!

 

[BilliardsBall]

Do you have any idea how completely irrelevant your response is?
But then, it is so ungrammatical that I really cannot puzzle out what
you are asking. I can say this tho, that "justified" has nothing to do with it.

It is just cause and effect. You call n word, you will get it, and there is
absolutely nobody responsible but yourself.

You think the cops would say oh you poor dear? When they find out
what you did?

You act like the so-innocent victim or all this nastiness you say you get

What you say and how you say it is totally on you, and if you get beat up
for misreading your audience you've only yourself to blame.

I am aware that many nominal Christians feel they are supposed to get martyred if they can swing it, and it will get them lots of brownie points
later on. If that is your game, go for it, but dont whine.

I can rephrase. In the USA, when you call someone a name and they strike you and you never strike them, courts say unless the physical assailant believed they were in imminent danger from the name caller, the one who strikes is guilty of felonious assault.

The police I know would actually say "poor guy" if I spoke a word in anger and was struck until my face is bloodied and I said, "Sorry I angered you!" to my assailant, sure!

While I'm delighted you do not work in law enforcement, I love your passion for these topics. You remind me of . . . me.

 

[BilliardsBall]

No moral absolute for you about letting a thousand people be
slowly tortured to death, when you could have stopped if if
only you raped a prostitute who was drugged and never even
found out what you had done.

Is that so?

Oh, on the "hard skeptic" nice try at insulting people who think differently and
evidently a lot deeper than you. Nobody but you here is trying to "avoid".

Extraordinarily difficult moral dilemmas come up in life. Some of us find it
worthwhile to think things through as best we can. You seem to be avoiding that
with a rigid one-size-fits-all "morality".

I apologize for the confusion. I thought about our discussion carefully, and believe 100% I would be unable to have an erection and rape a woman or man, even if lives were based on the outcome, because I feel inherently that rape is never justified.

But if I'm using a one size fits all and you're not, why can't you understand that sometimes theft is good and sometimes it's bad? But rape is always heinous?

 

[BilliardsBall]

You seem very evasive for someone who has "Christ" in you.

Lets try this again.

A commandment says, dont steal.
Fine.

Would you steal a weapon from someone who was
out to kill school children?

Would you steal medicine to save your mother's life?

On the latter, the decent thing is to go asap, take responsibility for
the theft, and pay for it plus take any consequences like arrest.

If it came out that you could have easily have saved your mother's life
but refused to do so,
would you be found innocent in the eyes of the law and your fellow
humans?

So, would you steal to save your mother's life?
yes or no

Yes, yes, yes, I'd steal every time, because both of us know how it is than many laws may be broken because higher needs/laws/priorities are precedent.

So here's the gedanken I'm trying to share with you and in a friendly way, "are any laws or morals immutable?" I believe there are, let's start with the other side of rape--bodily autonomy. Should a woman or man sometimes have bodily autonomy or always?

I have some thoughts on the matter and would actually put sometimes in. What do you say? I honestly don't know if you're absolute or not on this point.

 

[BilliardsBall]

Well, that is understandable and who knows what any of us would actually do in such a situation. But that's not what we're talking about.

We're talking about whether it would be the most moral action to take. And you agree that it would be. Which means you have agreed that morals are not absolute, and actually depend on the situation under discussion.


Ah, but thanks to this little exercise, we have now determined that the eternal absolute morality you claim, doesn't actually exist.

Thought exercises harm no one, and they actually help us hash out the intricacies involved in making moral decisions. As we've seen here.

Jury out on this, so let's go the other side of rape, if you don't mind, "should men and women sometimes enjoy bodily autonomy or always have this right?"

 

[Audie]

I apologize for the confusion. I thought about our discussion carefully, and believe 100% I would be unable to have an erection and rape a woman or man, even if lives were based on the outcome, because I feel inherently that rape is never justified.

But if I'm using a one size fits all and you're not, why can't you understand that sometimes theft is good and sometimes it's bad? But rape is always heinous?

I feel well qualified to say that rape is a bad thing.

But

So is theft.

You do know about dilemmas, moral conflicts,
"no right answer""damned if you do, damned if
you don't". Right?

You also know that there is no precise
definition for rape; what is a crime here, is not, there.

As in, say, the girl will be "legal age" at midnight, she is
willing, and it is half an hour till midnight.

How do you make an absolute out of something
with such blurry edges?

I dont care for the role of victim, but if harming me were
the only way to save the ship, I'd hope someone would
save the ship.

Note that "we" send soldiers out to face unspeakable
horror and harm, often enough for no good reason at all.

Is there a moral absolute there? How about using a flame
thrower on an enemy soldier who is there involuntarily?

How about if a soldier is ordered to rape a girl, or the
commander will boil her alive and slaughter the whole village?

I am using improbable scenarios, sure, but then,a
lot of very improbable things do happen. And
absolutes are things that can stand any test-
right?

You say there are moral immuteables, or something.
Moral absolutes.
You have not identified one.

 

[Audie]

I can rephrase. In the USA, when you call someone a name and they strike you and you never strike them, courts say unless the physical assailant believed they were in imminent danger from the name caller, the one who strikes is guilty of felonious assault.

The police I know would actually say "poor guy" if I spoke a word in anger and was struck until my face is bloodied and I said, "Sorry I angered you!" to my assailant, sure!

While I'm delighted you do not work in law enforcement, I love your passion for these topics. You remind me of . . . me.

At five ft and + or - 100 lbs, I wont make much of a cop.

No point it trying to go into when there would or would not be assault charges.

As as rule though,you provoke someone, and you get clobbered, few will say you did not get what you had coming to you. Or, "what did you think would happen?"

If you cannot figure out what will or will not provoke
strangers to say or do things to you in response, you might want to avoid going out there.

Side note here, your story about all this abuse rings hollow. You've given no credible account indicating what you said and why you got said reaction.

You made the claim of a "scandal" in another thread, and
have failed utterly to provide any evidence at all that you did
not just make it up. The lack of credibility in one reinforces
lack of credibility in the other.

Sorry-ah, as we'd say in HK,but that is how it is.

 

[dfnj]

The likelihood that God did not participate in the creation of the universe is negligible (and likely zero). Why be an Atheist?

Well, think for yourself, no matter how many garbage there is in the landfill, the rhinoceros will not be born there. From lifeless only lifeless comes - scientifically proved by Dr. Pasteur.

To say that the probability of the godless origin of life is 100 percent (because we are alive) is not scientific. This is the so-called "conditional" probability. Unconditional probability is negligible.

I disagree. It's a problem of mathematics. Give trillion bubbles over a trillion years it is very likely some bubbles will start having qualities necessary for cellular life. From what I've studied of Abiogenesis it seems very plausible life came into existence without any help from God.

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

Since we did not create or program our own genes and alleles, they must be objectively created and programmed as a result of evolutionary trial and error.

But that doesn't make our preferences objective. Also, the process of evolution doesn't select for objectively moral outcomes. It selects for increased fitness.

We have no more conscious/subjective/direct control over them, than we have in controlling our liver function, or any other unconscious bodily process. Obviously, since babies are not in control of, or consciously aware of their actions, their actions are objective, and outside of their conscious control. Their actions are based only on their hardwired inherited and instinctive evolutionary traits, which are objective. Do you think that a child's dependency and trust in adults is subjective, or objectively the result of their genetic program?

That's not what objective means. Just because you can't control your subjective preferences does not make them any less subjective. Objective means it is independent of humans, and our preferences are obviously not independent of ourselves.

My personal belief is that the concept of morality WOULD EXIST, even if there were no humans on earth. This concept is like logic or mathematical principles, which also exists with or without the presence of humans. I believe that all organized autonomous life form will at some point in their evolution develop some form of innate moral behavior. A behavior that is intuitively understood by both organisms. When two one-celled organisms touch each other, they simply move away without drama or attacking each other. In other words, as long as life exists anywhere in the universe, morality can be applied(like energy) to that life form. If no independent life exists, then morality simply can't be applied.

But will that moral code be the same for all species? I don't think it would.

Evolution instills traits that will give the organism the best chance of surviving long enough to pass on this genetic information on to their offspring. It is this entire process that is OBJECTIVE. It is these objective traits that will program the morality that is specific for that species(shark pups devouring weaker ones in the womb, infanticide by male lions). Unless you can tell me just how this is subjective? Or is it just easier for you to simply deny that it is?

The very fact that morality would be different for different species demonstrates how subjective they are.