To quote yourself, regarding why I must think that "might is right":
you confuse 'is' with 'ought'.
I don't accept the existence of an external moral. If you want to put it like that, do. (-: It's a bit sad that you have to stretch so far to get a point..:-) As I noted, it's irrelevant in practice.
The world is a stark and unpleasant place without the sweet lies about a caring father. I won't sell my intellectual integrity because of that. I accept reality without your teddy bear.
If I did a counterargument, it would be that people with the integrity and the strength of character to accept that cold world are more probable to be good people. We aren't as well trained at self deception, anyway.
As I argued, the statistics from your country support that position.
Moral discussions of what is the correct thing to do is brutally complex. To try to use moral systems that are thousands of years out of date are a bad fit, to say the least.
Arguably those random teachings are worse than accepting that being a nice guy works well. (The start of my personal moral system.)
Do yourself a favor and read up on the game theory argument. It's quite fascinating. You won't treat moral arguments so simple, afterwards.
Besides, I don't agree that "might makes right" must be my opinion -- just because I don't think there are some fixed reason for my existence.
Existence is what I make of it. I don't need the sweet lies of Bokononism and take pride in my integrity.
I really can't see how you can make claims about my morals if I e.g. don't do the winter blot and accept Oden and Tor as my role models, then go to the British Isles to murder and plunder.
when deciding between good and bad.
What does good mean again in your bible?
Ahh.. I remember! You should be killed if you mix two kinds of threads in cloth! Excuse me, I have to stop discussing and go visit the the local clothes shop...:-)
The point being that the eternal truths of religions have been rewritten from something your morals hardly would stand -- influenced by utilitarianism for centuries.
And you confuse 'is' with 'ought'. That (some) people behave this way is not the same thing as whether or not people ought to behave that way. Furthermore, we have the ability to transcend our wiring.
You really seem to argue that:
(a) the atheist world view is bad because it doesn't have imposed moral guidelines.
(b) the fact that those moral guide lines don't have any practical effect is irrelevant!?
You didn't get my point -- I wasn't talking about personal moral choices.
I argued that game theory seems to be the relevant description of animal(/human) behaviour.
To understand the argument, you could do worse than start with
this article.
As an aside I pointed out that religious people are probably worse than the athists in your (?) country today, because of social factors. Which supports my position.
Morality is nothing more than personal opinion (for both the Deist and the Atheist). For the Atheist, however, the one absolute that follows from first principles is "might makes right."
Pascal's wager is funny.
It doesn't make a theory more likely if believing it to be true have side benefits. (E.g. "feels good", "smaller chance of Hell", "meet pretty girls in bible study", etc.)
It is hilarious to argue that religion makes people ethical, considering the churches' historical handling of prophylactics (not only the catholic church), etc, etc.
For a good answer, check out game theory in Dawkins' "Selfish Gene", or something. It's probably effective to be quite nice. So it is the logical, selfish, behaviour.
Besides, I doubt that religious people are more ethical.
In the US, you seem to have a violent criminal subculture among blacks in those terrible ghettos. Now, what statistics I've seen says that those black areas are very religious.
So people raised in a very religious background is very overrepresented in your terrible prisons.
But they still are clearly not you, so why should you care?
You shouldn't apply your intellectual reasoning about morals to the real world.:-)
Read about game theory (e.g. Dawkins' "Selfish gene"). Being quite nice guys seems to be a win for humans (in the western world cultures).
We don't know how people works yet. We do know that we will learn more. So your built in (evolved biologically and culturally) morals is probably better than your intellect.
My moral position is mainly based no that how I act have implications on my view of myself as a person.
('rossifer' wrote most of this, but I thought I'd do it from a bit different perspective.)
Ask yourself if this is at all hostile: "It's not that I'm hostile to you, I just don't think that the reasons behind anything you have to say matter in the slightest, except possibly as a hobby."
Well, that position is the end result of reasoned thinking. Should he (and I) lie?
I know (even like) people with political opinions I find close to religion.
They make unfounded claims about how the world works. They support a simple position (e.g. "USA is evil") as if it was a football team.
Supporting data is believed directly while contradictory facts are ignored. They keep double standards -- what is ok for someone else to do is not acceptable for the "enemy" side. Etc.
In short, they let an emotional need of something being true control their intellect.
I'm sorry if it upsets you, but I can't really respect that kind of thinking (maybe for sports:-).
American breweries aren't built "surrounding naturally-occuring urine springs".
There isn't enough taste of anything in those beers.:-)
To be fair, the microbrewery revolution might make US beers better on average then where I live (Sweden). Sometime their standard might reach Germany, Ireland and hmm.. maybe not Belgium.
The point is that this joke was unfair and probably deserves to be modded down.:-)
If there are a literally infinite number of possible theories about something, to believe in a given possibility -- without better reason than Son of Sam had -- is a religion.
What I as an atheist say is that the possibility of one of a small subset (out of the infinite number possible ways that reality can be) to be true is so close to zero that I round of the trivial possibility to be the same as the chance of a pink invisible unicorn reading this over my shoulder. Dismissible.
You might argue that I use sloppy language and I will answer that after you discuss the self contradictions among those theories.
I get your trivial point, please answer mine if you answer -- or I'll think you deserved the Troll mods...
Atheism is as much a belief system as any other religion.
Next you'll argue that being healthy is a disease? Atheism is by definition the lack of a common type of belief system.
The standard counter argument has already been written, so I'll add the standard fun counter argument.
The difference between, say, a christian and an atheist is that the christian is atheist for just one ghod less...
That is, very few christians believe in the existence of Ganesh, Oden, Sam-the-god (from Son of Sam), etc, etc. There are literally hundreds of gods that the average christian (and atheist) doesn't believe exists.
The christian doesn't accept the existence of those weird gods because those crazy theories based only on internal feelings and indoctrination of young people at an early age.
The atheist just notes that the description is applicable to christianity, too.
To get religious people, you have to indoctrinate kids at an early age -- otherwise very few become religious. See e.g. Scandinavia. (As a Swede, I can add that most of those people that still go to some church seems a bit less than stable emotionally. They are... to be kind, seekers.)
The atheist either lack the indoctrination at an early age (that's me) or has the integrity and strength to look beyond the indoctrination inflicted upon him/her.
I'm not sure what this says about our lawyers today.
Was there any punishment for cheating? If not, it was allowed.
And, yes, that is a cynical attitude. Please read about game theory, prisoners dilemma, etc.
(Dawkins' "The selfish gene" is really good. It'll change your view of the world.)
What I find problematic is when you are dishonest with people that trust you. That you have a "social contract" with and you know they will get very angry if they find out that you cheat. I.e. "real" betrayal.
You're probably a troll (and/or an intellectually dishonest religious guy), but I'll add a serious answer.
Your definition doesn't differentiate between the cells on the skin of my right little finger and me personally.
A reasonable definition (which doesn't assume magic like spirits, etc) is that to be a human from a legal (etc) perspective we need a functioning brain (or at least that there has to have been a functioning brain).
If there never has been a working brain, there has never been a person.
I don't care about the rights of my skin cells that die and fall of; I don't care about an embryo -- I care about a child when it's born.
(Where is the limit embryo/person? That is another can of worms -- but it should encompass a working brain.)
If something is alive and is genetically a human, then it is a human.
The conclusion would be that an embryo is a human. One of the many problems with the argument is that:
About half of all embryos are spontaneously aborted.
According to the anti-abortionist argument above, this is a terrible mass death -- every day!
What's worse is that there is no medical research into how to save those embryos, which are half of all the people dying!
What's interesting is that not even the anti-abortionists argue that a large fraction (much less half) of all medical research should go into how to stop those deaths!
If the rest of the world wants to affect our election...
The rest of the world cares about the US election because it will have an influence on us. Because of the political standpoints .
I have all the respect for the US. Arguably, with France and Great Britain, the inventor of the modern democracy. It's a tradition to be proud of.
But it took hundreds of years for western Europe to get rid of the heavy opression of religion. (The Middle East countries haven't even pulled the teeth of their religion yet.)
We really don't appreciate when fanatical evangelists from the US want to push the dark ages back down our throats.
when we can turn it into devices which make it impossible for anyone to field an army it essentially makes conventional warfare into suicide. Isn't that what you wanted?
I believe that Alfred Nobel argued exactly that.
But he did it about his own invention -- dynamite! He was obviously right there, eh?:-)
My personal opinion is that with all the space applications I'm all for antimatter research. Give NASA's budget to DARPA for a decade and humanity will have a better space program...
If we ever get the entire population to live for 100+ years, just think of how bad it's going to get. There will be fuel shortages. There will be food shortages. (some say there already are). Air and Water will be dirtier and dirtier.
The rate of getting children might have to go down a bit.
But the Earth has enough resources. Assume fusion or really good solar cells and energy isn't a problem. One of those (or something totally different) will almost certainly happen.
If we do it right, we could have most people in the world living well, getting education and safety. People living well don't get as many children -- the ones getting large families are the poor.
Eventually, we will get to a point where the seas are over-fished, the ground is over-farmed, and then we're ALL screwed.
The western world's civilisations have always had problems. We always will have them. We have solved them through technology for centuries. To insist that the only solution is to waste billions of people when you know that you haven't understood the problem, is some sort of caricature of a troll.
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I don't accept the existence of an external moral. If you want to put it like that, do. (-: It's a bit sad that you have to stretch so far to get a point.. :-) As I noted, it's irrelevant in practice.
The world is a stark and unpleasant place without the sweet lies about a caring father. I won't sell my intellectual integrity because of that. I accept reality without your teddy bear.
If I did a counterargument, it would be that people with the integrity and the strength of character to accept that cold world are more probable to be good people. We aren't as well trained at self deception, anyway.
As I argued, the statistics from your country support that position.
Moral discussions of what is the correct thing to do is brutally complex. To try to use moral systems that are thousands of years out of date are a bad fit, to say the least.
Arguably those random teachings are worse than accepting that being a nice guy works well. (The start of my personal moral system.)
Do yourself a favor and read up on the game theory argument. It's quite fascinating. You won't treat moral arguments so simple, afterwards.
Existence is what I make of it. I don't need the sweet lies of Bokononism and take pride in my integrity.
I really can't see how you can make claims about my morals if I e.g. don't do the winter blot and accept Oden and Tor as my role models, then go to the British Isles to murder and plunder.
What does good mean again in your bible?
Ahh.. I remember! You should be killed if you mix two kinds of threads in cloth! Excuse me, I have to stop discussing and go visit the the local clothes shop... :-)
The point being that the eternal truths of religions have been rewritten from something your morals hardly would stand -- influenced by utilitarianism for centuries.
(a) the atheist world view is bad because it doesn't have imposed moral guidelines.
(b) the fact that those moral guide lines don't have any practical effect is irrelevant!?
That was funny!!
I argued that game theory seems to be the relevant description of animal(/human) behaviour.
To understand the argument, you could do worse than start with this article.
As an aside I pointed out that religious people are probably worse than the athists in your (?) country today, because of social factors. Which supports my position.
A reality check which your argument failed.
It doesn't make a theory more likely if believing it to be true have side benefits. (E.g. "feels good", "smaller chance of Hell", "meet pretty girls in bible study", etc.)
It is hilarious to argue that religion makes people ethical, considering the churches' historical handling of prophylactics (not only the catholic church), etc, etc.
For a good answer, check out game theory in Dawkins' "Selfish Gene", or something. It's probably effective to be quite nice. So it is the logical, selfish, behaviour.
Besides, I doubt that religious people are more ethical.
In the US, you seem to have a violent criminal subculture among blacks in those terrible ghettos. Now, what statistics I've seen says that those black areas are very religious.
So people raised in a very religious background is very overrepresented in your terrible prisons.
Read about game theory (e.g. Dawkins' "Selfish gene"). Being quite nice guys seems to be a win for humans (in the western world cultures).
We don't know how people works yet. We do know that we will learn more. So your built in (evolved biologically and culturally) morals is probably better than your intellect.
My moral position is mainly based no that how I act have implications on my view of myself as a person.
('rossifer' wrote most of this, but I thought I'd do it from a bit different perspective.)
I know (even like) people with political opinions I find close to religion.
They make unfounded claims about how the world works. They support a simple position (e.g. "USA is evil") as if it was a football team.
Supporting data is believed directly while contradictory facts are ignored. They keep double standards -- what is ok for someone else to do is not acceptable for the "enemy" side. Etc.
In short, they let an emotional need of something being true control their intellect.
I'm sorry if it upsets you, but I can't really respect that kind of thinking (maybe for sports :-).
Even your comment might be fun in a week or two when I know if friends died there or not.
(Some people I like, with their kids, usually goes to Thailand for vacation.)
It would have been better if the modder had written a motivation why that product (and method) was bad.
Anyone with answers?
American breweries aren't built "surrounding naturally-occuring urine springs".
There isn't enough taste of anything in those beers. :-)
To be fair, the microbrewery revolution might make US beers better on average then where I live (Sweden). Sometime their standard might reach Germany, Ireland and hmm.. maybe not Belgium.
The point is that this joke was unfair and probably deserves to be modded down. :-)
If there are a literally infinite number of possible theories about something, to believe in a given possibility -- without better reason than Son of Sam had -- is a religion.
What I as an atheist say is that the possibility of one of a small subset (out of the infinite number possible ways that reality can be) to be true is so close to zero that I round of the trivial possibility to be the same as the chance of a pink invisible unicorn reading this over my shoulder. Dismissible.
You might argue that I use sloppy language and I will answer that after you discuss the self contradictions among those theories.
I get your trivial point, please answer mine if you answer -- or I'll think you deserved the Troll mods...
The standard counter argument has already been written, so I'll add the standard fun counter argument.
The difference between, say, a christian and an atheist is that the christian is atheist for just one ghod less...
That is, very few christians believe in the existence of Ganesh, Oden, Sam-the-god (from Son of Sam), etc, etc. There are literally hundreds of gods that the average christian (and atheist) doesn't believe exists.
The christian doesn't accept the existence of those weird gods because those crazy theories based only on internal feelings and indoctrination of young people at an early age.
The atheist just notes that the description is applicable to christianity, too.
To get religious people, you have to indoctrinate kids at an early age -- otherwise very few become religious. See e.g. Scandinavia. (As a Swede, I can add that most of those people that still go to some church seems a bit less than stable emotionally. They are ... to be kind, seekers.)
The atheist either lack the indoctrination at an early age (that's me) or has the integrity and strength to look beyond the indoctrination inflicted upon him/her.
After you have defined it -- could you point to what, say, Dawkins has written that support your description?
Instead consider e.g. the cheating a few years ago in Counterstrike and all the people that quit playing that game. Not all the cheaters where kids.
(See my other comments for more.)
And, yes, that is a cynical attitude. Please read about game theory, prisoners dilemma, etc.
(Dawkins' "The selfish gene" is really good. It'll change your view of the world.)
What I find problematic is when you are dishonest with people that trust you. That you have a "social contract" with and you know they will get very angry if they find out that you cheat. I.e. "real" betrayal.
1/2 a :-)
What scares me is when I wonder what that kind of people do in real life -- and how many are in my social groups. :-(
Shudder...
Your definition doesn't differentiate between the cells on the skin of my right little finger and me personally.
A reasonable definition (which doesn't assume magic like spirits, etc) is that to be a human from a legal (etc) perspective we need a functioning brain (or at least that there has to have been a functioning brain).
If there never has been a working brain, there has never been a person.
I don't care about the rights of my skin cells that die and fall of; I don't care about an embryo -- I care about a child when it's born.
(Where is the limit embryo/person? That is another can of worms -- but it should encompass a working brain.)
If you remove the arguing with the religious nuts, then you can have a serious discussion on the nature of the embryo.
(If you're not just another anti-abortionist that tries to remove an argument he can't counter. 1/2 :-)
About half of all embryos are spontaneously aborted.
According to the anti-abortionist argument above, this is a terrible mass death -- every day!
What's worse is that there is no medical research into how to save those embryos, which are half of all the people dying!
What's interesting is that not even the anti-abortionists argue that a large fraction (much less half) of all medical research should go into how to stop those deaths!
A contradiction.
I have all the respect for the US. Arguably, with France and Great Britain, the inventor of the modern democracy. It's a tradition to be proud of.
But it took hundreds of years for western Europe to get rid of the heavy opression of religion. (The Middle East countries haven't even pulled the teeth of their religion yet.)
We really don't appreciate when fanatical evangelists from the US want to push the dark ages back down our throats.
(Goodbye Karma, but I needed to say it.)
But he did it about his own invention -- dynamite! He was obviously right there, eh? :-)
My personal opinion is that with all the space applications I'm all for antimatter research. Give NASA's budget to DARPA for a decade and humanity will have a better space program...
Caffeine and endorphines are the only drugs I trust.
Work on stopping your serious problems instead, like sugar intake.
What I do is limit my intake to every other hour during the day. Any more just make me jumpy.
Note to Moderators: Do not mod Funny. I've seldom been more serious. No jokes about propaganda from Brazil either; I'm Swedish.
But the Earth has enough resources. Assume fusion or really good solar cells and energy isn't a problem. One of those (or something totally different) will almost certainly happen.
If we do it right, we could have most people in the world living well, getting education and safety. People living well don't get as many children -- the ones getting large families are the poor.
The western world's civilisations have always had problems. We always will have them. We have solved them through technology for centuries. To insist that the only solution is to waste billions of people when you know that you haven't understood the problem, is some sort of caricature of a troll.