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"Whatever emotion you call it, it is obvious you disagreed, and tried humor to mock his view while mis-characterizing it. While I wasn't going to rake you over the coals for your misstatement, you just invited it. So you should say ouch a few times and perhaps we could move on."

If you noticed it was humor, then why did imagine I was offended? It is difficult to be offended by absurdity, and the post is patently absurd. Attempting to draw connections between the age old and unchanged behavior of humans on one instance of scientific discovery is... well... silly. It is the equivalent of me blaming the despotism and genocide of the previous two thousand years on Jesus.

If we are to get angry at a particular science, perhaps you should get all ferklempt over physics rather than biology. After all, the only reason that Nazis and Stalinists were more efficient killers than Mullahs and Popes is that physics gave them better weapons.

And even then it was the religiously motivated Islamic invasion of the Indian Subcontinent that still stands as the greatest mass genocide in all of history.

"On a naturalist view, how should nazism et al actually offend us?"

What an odd question. It should offend us because we possess empathy and understand that what we do not want to happen to us is thereby wrong. I think most people start figuring that out by about age 5. It has never been particularly difficult.

The problem comes when people start proposing moral systems based not on empathy but on "revealed truth." That's when we are most dangerous as a species, because that's when we get God's permission to do unto others that which we would never want done unto us.

"My contention is that naturalism gives no support of the notion of "should" in that sentence."

It is not a contention that you will find easy to defend.

Now... timing is awful because I'm about to head out for free beer Thursday at the University Club with my wife for dinner. So if you want a longer debate on this issue, I'd love to play. But I probably won't be able to get back to the thread until much later tonight.

Ciao.

It is the equivalent of me blaming the despotism and genocide of the previous two thousand years on Jesus.

...

And even then it was the religiously motivated Islamic invasion of the Indian Subcontinent that still stands as the greatest mass genocide in all of history.

Both you and I are able to look back at these social trends and declare them evil. But there is a problem with your theory of why:

It should offend us because we possess empathy and understand that what we do not want to happen to us is thereby wrong. I think most people start figuring that out by about age 5.

The social evils that offended us, were not offensive to all the people involved. Certainly not all of the nazis who thought it was right to exterminate jews were younger than 5. So how is it that they thought they were doing right? So your answer to this implied question seems to be:

The problem comes when people start proposing moral systems based not on empathy but on "revealed truth."

But certainly we both can see that "revealed truth" is not always a common factor in all the goings on we object to. And on the other hand the holding of some "revealed truth" is not always a cause for what we consider evil, but sometimes a cause for what we would call good. I find three of four cases easy to think of examples for:

1) Stalin: Evil with no "revealed truth".

2) Mohammed: Evil with "revealed truth".

3) Mother Teresa: Good with "revealed truth"

While I'm pretty sure there are examples of relative good without "revealed truth", most of the people who epitomize good in my mind seemingly believed in "revealed truth". Perhaps you know of some examples off the top of your head?

But honestly, can we not both admit "revealed truth" as the commonality of evil doesn't pan out?

But I suspect what you were really driving at was being "wrong" about the truth? That the problem comes when people have false notions about what moral truth is? And presumably you think of "revealed truth" as being perilously arbitrary in that regard, and empathy should be our guide.

If so, naturalism still has a problem. Why "should" empathy be our guide? What standard tells us so? And how is such a standard not ultimately just as arbitrary as some false revelation by a religious nut?

Perhaps survival and happiness are what is ultimately good? But then who told us that. Why is it better for life to continue at all? On the naturalist view, the only reason we think so is that such a disposition made us more likely to survive and reproduce et al.

A consistent and thoughtful naturalist is forced to believe all moral systems are products of natural processes, and have no more validity than the result of a coin toss. Even if its a "good" natural cause like a warm fuzzy "empathy"...and if you think it through, you can find times where empathy sometimes leads to bad moral decisions.

Alternatively, if you accept that some things really are good and some things really evil, logic insists you accept it as a transcendent truth that was somehow revealed to us. Otherwise, we are just making arbitrary judgments as the biochemistry in our brains directs us.

Wiggins observed: It is difficult to be offended by absurdity, and the post is patently absurd. Attempting to draw connections between the age old and unchanged behavior of humans on one instance of scientific discovery is... well... silly.

Spirited: In just two sentences you’ve managed quite nicely to make clear the inner contradictions of evolutionary humanism. Either primordial slime magically changed into dinosaurs, then into tumble bugs, fish, humming birds, apes, and then finally man, or it did not. If it did, then your claim of ‘unchanged behavior’ is sheer nonsense. Unchanged? From what?! From that of slime? Seaweed? Lizards?

The claim of ‘unchanged behavior’ has no place within a metaphysical system based on continuous change. It’s place, rather, is found in the Christian worldview.