Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: jbloedow
The very fact that you find moral objection to raping, baby slaughter, slavery, etc. is exactly my point. What's that based on? Darwinism? You want to tell me how the right to life, the notion of the sanctity of human life, of private property, or anything else derives from a meaningless, random (oh, sorry, undirected) distribution of matter and energy over time?

You mean, raping and murder, in the way God commanded the Israelites to do to the Midianites?

We evolved a tendency to treat our fellow human beings as creatures like ourselves because it's to our advantage to be able to understand them and predict how they'll act, and the best model we have of others is ourselves. We treat them well because we expect that reciprocally they'll treat us well. There is a basic evolutionary reason for moral behavior.

Having said that, we are not bound by evolution in constructing systems of ethics. Just because something is natural, doesn't mean it's right. We can found ethics on reason and logic, although we would be foolish to entirely ignore our own nature in doing so, as Christianity so often does in its strictures relating to sex.

186 posted on 08/04/2005 4:19:48 PM PDT by Right Wing Professor
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 182 | View Replies ]


To: Right Wing Professor
You mean, raping and murder, in the way God commanded the Israelites to do to the Midianites?

I already addressed this elsewhere. Yes, indeed, God did command the Israelites to do some very aggressive and disquieting things to people living in the Promised Land. But as I said, there is no coherent basis for you to object to this.

You think these things were morally wrong? Where does this morality of yours come from? It's either derived from Christianity (let's say theism) in which case, um, you can't accuse God of being immoral if God gets to define moral. Or else it's some arbitrary set of moral rules that are complete fabrications, myths, invented to help you sleep better at night. They may be shared by lots of other people, but as you'd no doubt point out, the belief in creationism is shared by lots and lots of people but that doesn't make it the slightest bit truer does it!!!

And from an evolutionary point of view, rape, murder, and bloodshed have been the norm, the modus operandi if you will, for gazillions of years; why suddenly so squeamish?

We evolved a tendency to treat our fellow human beings as creatures like ourselves because it's to our advantage to be able to understand them and predict how they'll act, and the best model we have of others is ourselves. We treat them well because we expect that reciprocally they'll treat us well. There is a basic evolutionary reason for moral behavior.

Too funny. Um, like the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda? Like the Serbs and the Croats? Like the Bolsheviks in Russia/Eastern Europe? Like the Nazis? Like the Maoists? Like the Imperial Japanese? Like the Aztecs? Like the New Guinean tribespeople? Like the Mongol hordes? Like the Roman legions in Gaul? Like the 35 million babies slaughtered every year by abortion? No. As Hobbes pointed out, the vast majority of human life has been nasty, brutish, and short.

Nevertheless, you want to argue that fabricating some arbitrary morality by which we can all live has a self-serving quality. This argument is so flawed it's almost not worth dealing with, but it's the only argument you have, so I understand.

First, Darwinists love to mock Christians, etc., for believing in a made up fantasy to make their lives work better. How is your position any different? Has evolution caused us to believe in things that have no objective truth to them simply because it is adaptive? What other beneficial fictions have we evolved into believing? Is ToE another example? Do we believe in abstract truths because they are true, or because they make us "fitter" relative to our environment? Under ToE it must be the latter, right?

Second, there are, as I've pointed out, innumerable examples of people who don't find Christian morality to be quite as obviously in their own self-interest. What happened to their evolution? Are they a slightly separate species? Ok, now I'm just laughing at you.

Finally, what authority do you appeal to when confronting someone (either politically, or personally) who does not agree with you morally? There is no objective moral standard or authority that stands above you both to which you can appeal. Reason and logic will never get you to an objective sanctity of human life or anything else without an objective moral authority of some sort as a starting point.

When the first homo sapiens evolved, through a process of immense suffering, bloodshed, survival, death, starvation, competition, how is it that it suddenly became immoral for him to kill other homo sapiens with whom he was competing for survival? It's absurd.

447 posted on 08/05/2005 8:18:10 AM PDT by jbloedow
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 186 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson