Posted on 01/26/2006 1:47:10 PM PST by jennyp
Some of us conservatives don't care for darwinists. It's like having nazis or commies in the big tent.
Well said.
"fear"? I know of not a single Creationist who is motivated by fear. Another "straw man" argument.
Some of us don't care for racists, either. Gonna explain your Steve Biko crack, or just hope nobody noticed it?
That's exaclty what Nobel-prize winning economist Milton Friedman thinks:
In his television program, Free to Choose, with "The Pencil Story." Friedman held a common yellow #2 pencil in his hand and said:
"Nobody knows how to make a pencil. There's not a single person in the world who actually knows how to make a pencil.
"In order to make a pencil, you have to get wood for the barrel. In order to get wood, you have to have logging. You have to have somebody who can manufacture saws. No single person knows how to do all that.
"What's called lead isn't lead. It's graphite. It comes from some mines in South America. In order to make pencils, you'd have to be able to get the lead.
"The rubber at the tip isn't really rubber, but it used to be. It comes from Malaysia, although the rubber tree is not native to Malaysia. It was imported into Malaysia by some English botanists.
"So, in order to make a pencil, you would have to be able to do all of these things. There are probably thousands of people who have cooperated together to make this pencil. Somehow or other, the people in South America who dug out the graphite cooperated with the people in Malaysia who tapped the rubber trees, cooperated with, maybe, people in Oregon who cut down the trees.
"These thousands of people don't know one another. They speak different languages. They come from different religions. They might hate one another if they met. What is it that enabled them to cooperate together?
"The answer is the existence of a market.
"The simple answer is the people in South America were led to dig out the graphite because somebody was willing to pay them. They didn't have to know who was paying them; they didn't have to know what it was going to be used for. All they had to know was somebody was going to pay them.
"What brought all these people together was an enormously complex structure of prices - the price of graphite, the price of lumber, the price of rubber, the wages paid to the laborer, and so on. It's a marvelous example of how you can get a complex structure of cooperation and coordination which no individual planned.
"There was nobody who sat in a central office and sent an order out to Malaysia: 'Produce more rubber.' It was the market that coordinated all of this without anybody having to know all of the people involved."
If individuals are permitted to direct their productive energies based only on their own individual economic self-interest, markets will spontaneously emerge, leading to accomplishments that no single individual evens knows how to, or could accomplish, even if he had the power of a Czar.
Similarly, other dynamical systems exhibit self-organizing properties; this was explored in detail by Illya Prigogine and his fellow Nobel-prize winners in their research on the thermodynamics of Non-Equilibrium systems. Basically, under the right conditions, if there's a sufficient energy gradient available to the system, self-organization of parts of the system is not only possible, it's unavoidable.
No I hadn't read that. It was very interesting, thanks!
Much of our ethics stem from the genetic link to others of our species, our 'family' groups. If there is any difference between ourselves and Chimps it is our ability to include those outside of our immediate family in socially defined 'family' groups such as the evo group, the creo/ID group, the watering hole group, or any other group where the members are considered part of the 'family'. Once you get outside that family, our moral behaviour towards others resembles quite closely those of the Chimps.
The Chimp grouping is generally around 40 - 100 members where each member is part of the immediate or extended family grouping. Within that group children are taken care of by adults, arguments are mediated, and violence although frequent is generally non-life threatening. Chimps outside that group are treated quite differently. They are attacked, sometimes killed, even at times females are stolen. They may be taunted and if encountered alone tortured.
This behaviour is reflected in human grouping behaviour almost exactly. Our groups can encompass much larger numbers than those of chimps, such as Education level, City, State/Province, Country, Religion, Race, or even entire cultures such as our western culture which encompasses North America and Europe. We generally treat those of our group with respect while those belonging to outside groups can be treated quite differently. This occurs most noticeably during wars.
An interesting aspect of human ethical behaviour is our ability to create not just one group but multiple groups within groups, our interaction with the members dependent on the context, what is important to us in relation to the group identity. We expand or condense our ethical interaction, even our moral identity, with the members of each group contingent on how the actions of members in the larger group affect the members of the inner group.
For example, if you, the other Freepers, were to threaten my family I would react violently. My internal image of you would be as outsiders that I would have no compunction against putting out of my misery. I suspect each and every one of us would react the same. However, if you did not threaten my immediate family I would, as I do, accept you as part of my group, - as belonging in my inner sanctum - so to speak. If we as freepers were threatened by outsiders, such as those nasty little Democrats, I would immediately include all freepers as family and react against the outsiders by pummeling their pointy little heads. Again I suspect the rest of you would do the same. This expansion of group member inclusion, depending on the threat context, could eventually encompass all of humanity and beyond.
Even though chimps do not do this to the extent we upper apes do they do have the initial base of ethical treatment down pat. Family group not only matters to a great extent, but indeed determines the interaction between any number of individuals.
I guess what I'm trying to say in this mind addled mess is that we ain't so different from the other apes in our development of ethics.
It also means that our ethics will not be different whether we believe in a God or not. The religious absolute morals contained in so many religious texts are morals that were condensed from our natural behaviour and our cultural needs. The basic human ethic will always be part of our psyche with only slight culturally driven modifications.
By the by, the only reason culture influences our basic human ethic is population size. The larger and more anonymous the culture the more the society needs to modify and control the moral behaviour of its residents. Laws, laws, laws....
I now have a throbbing headache.
You're not being really objective about this are you?
jennyp, who endows you with your inalienable rights?Reality. The fact that I cannot function as a human being without them. And the fact that the type of society that supports life as a human cannot exist without them. Every historical example of societies working or not to sustain the flourishing of their inhabitants as humans has pointed to individual rights being essential for our survival.
???
You are confusing the process with the agent. The whole point of the comment is that the number of agents, as the number increases, impart cumulatively less and less individual influence on the process. It eventually gets to the point where the agent is irrelevant to the process aside from being just one of the undirected parts of the whole.
O horrible man! By linking together the concepts inherent in both free market capitalism and undirected evolution, you are forcing the creationists to face some very uncomfortable thoughts about what it means to be a conservative.
"It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die."
Uh-oh, another your-brain-on-creationism candidate! :-)
Methinks thou doest presume too much.
Science is not afraid of ID or creationism. Scientists spend a great deal of time trying to eliminate extraneous effects from corrupting the outcomes of experiments. ID and creationism are simply some of those possible extraneous effects. Should they get special dispensation and be allowed to colour not only the results but the process of science?
Methinks not young buddy.
So much for Freedom, eh mullah conspiritor?
But not in groups?
I hope no one else said this, it wouldn't be as funny as mine.
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