Morality on the Brain

Reason ^ | January 27, 2006 | Ronald Bailey

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Uh-huh. Same logic used by tyrants throughout history.

All the tyrants of history were pagans...

Jefferson overlooked something, and so did you... history occurred long before that...

Conquered by the Assyrians, some scattered tribes of Israel joined the Scythians and the Cimmerians (later becoming Gauls, Danes and Celts, etc.).

Even the genealogy of English common law you cited earlier as coming from Anglo-Saxons is directly from Judaism.

700 B.C. is one hell of a lot earlier than the 598 A.D Jefferson talked about.

Our system of laws as evidenced by the words of the Declaration of Independence and the judicial system (as evidenced by the Ten Commandments displayed prominently there) are all based on the Mosaic Law.

Now, if you got an ax to grind with the Chistians and the Jews, fine. But history shows you are clearly wrong.

[orionblamblam]

> All the tyrants of history were pagans...

Pagans, Jews, Muslims, Christians, atheist commies... every group big enough to get a tyrant, gets a tyrant.

> Our system of laws as evidenced by the words of the Declaration of Independence and the judicial system (as evidenced by the Ten Commandments displayed prominently there) are all based on the Mosaic Law.

Doesn't matter how many times you repeat nonsense, it remains nonsense. And since you've nothing to offer but repeats, I again challenge you: try reconciling the 10C with "freedom of religion." Where in US law does it say not to make or even worship graven images? Where are the blasphemy laws that somehow circumvent "freedom of speech?" How about laws requiring respect for ones parents, or not working on Saturday, or having some other god? How about laws against wanting to have the same useless overpriced crap your neighbors have?

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Doesn't matter how many times you repeat nonsense, it remains nonsense.

So why do you repeatedly keep doing it?

Answer: You just have an ax to grind with the Jews and Christians. This is why you split hairs and nitpick.

Even though I am an atheist, I recognize the Christians and the Jews are the civilizing factor in the world.

Paganism in whatever form it takes, always leads to tyranny and they always go after the Jews because they hate what Moses brought into the world.

I'll bet you either follow some kooky pagan religion or you are just one of those pathetic anti-Christians.

So, you propose tearing the Ten Commandments off the U.S. Supreme Court? Or how about tearing the first sentence off of the Declaration of Independence because you don't like Genesis being the foundation of our civil rights?

I am not an ecumenical atheist... there is no such thing.

[spinestein]

[Observing this as an atheist, I prefer the paradigm of a Judaic culture to the chaotic death cult of New Age neo-pagan absurdity.]




Makes sense to me.

[orionblamblam]

> Even though I am an atheist....

Riiiiiiiiiight. And I'm the Pope.

> I recognize the Christians and the Jews are the civilizing factor in the world.

Except for the fact that the non-Judeao Christian world has known civilization for longer than there have been Jews.


Look. Your claims was that American law is base don the 10C. You've been challenged to back that up with facts; you have failed. You have, in fact, *avoided* answering the simple challenge in posts 40 and 42. I think that that, coupled with your weird ad hominems, speaks for themselves.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Look. Your claims was that American law is base don the 10C.

No. My claim was that Mosaic Law (of which the Ten Commandments is just a part) is the foundation of Western Civilization. Genesis is the primary focus of the Declaration of Independence, from where our Constitutional rights are derived. The Ten Commandments are the foundation of our judicial system.

You just want to tear it down and are the type who would break the crosses off of our war memorials... ain't gonna happen...

[orionblamblam]

As always, your post was unrespeonsive and irrelevant.

So, goodbye.

[r9etb]

I propose that the industrial age inventions simply made slavery less economical. A cotton gin could do the work of dozen slaves who needed to be fed, clothed, housed, etc.

Actually, the invention of the cotton gin may actually have made slavery profitable for the South: it allowed for a much greater productivity in "clean" cotton.

The problem with trying to set slavery against technology seem to leave out the fact that the two actually go together very nicely, and it leaves out human nature. And if your aggressive industrialist can trade chattel slavery for wage slavery -- which was the genesis of the Union movement -- then you get the best of both worlds.

[steve-b]

Greene and his colleagues found "that brain areas associated with emotion and social cognition (medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate/precuneus, and superior temporal sulcus/temperoparietal junction) exhibited increased activity while participants considered personal moral dilemmas, while 'cognitive' brain areas associated with abstract reasoning and problem solving exhibited increased activity while participants considered impersonal moral dilemmas."

The shriveling of the regions of the brain used to arrive at moral decisions is known as "Clinton Syndrome".

[Little Ray]

The trolley question is flawed - you don't switch the trolley or throw the fat stranger on the tracks - you warn the folks about to be hit and / or flag the trolley to brake.