You seem to have difficulty staying on topic. The discussion about morality came about because one of you wanted to move away from the topic of perception and reality. Now you want to change the topic again to the application of morality? You seem to be confused on what the difference between what is and what should be. Think about this for a second please or else we are getting nowhere and we are all wasting time here. In the discussion of morality, we were discussing what should be.
Quote:
How exactly do you believe murder to be advantageous? Humans live in social groups. If you murder someone in that social group, you're out of the group and have to fend for yourself.
This is clearly not beneficial to the person performing the action because they lose the resources of the group. Natural selection will have favored those individuals who weren't murderers and therefore kept the benefits of the social group and did not have to fend for themselves. The individuals who get cut off from the group had their reproductive success greatly reduced and most likely they were not as successful at producing offspring.
|
I’m not arguing here for an explanation of how the social structure is set up today. I’m arguing here about the theoretical grounds for an atheist’s morals. I view atheist as basing their morality on evolution and reductionism. I’m not saying what you currently believe due to the influence of Christianity in Western culture and around the world. I’m saying, if we got rid of religions like you want, then where would the drive for morality come from? Will Herberg indicated that modern society tries to use cut-flower ethics to justify a morality without theology. I think what we have here is a classic example of cut-flower ethics. You are saying people will act morally without any theological basis besides materialistic, efficient, and evolutionary ideals. I’m saying I disagree with that. Let’s do a quick thought experiment. Let’s say tomorrow you wake up and you realize there is no such thing as religion (your perfect world). With your intelligence comes awareness of your responsibilities in cause and effect; you realize your actions have consequences (or so they appear). Really, think deeply on this question, why not murder someone if you’re not going to be thrown out of your “social group.” You know, just as well as I do, that every society has minorities. This can be minorities in health, economic status, or personal beliefs.
You want me to show you how murder is advantageous to “advancing” society in the evolutionary point of view?
The Pope of atheism himself, Richard Dawkins, from The Selfish Gene:
“I think ”nature red in tooth and claw” sums up our modern understanding of natural selection admirably.”
Charles Darwin remarked in chapter 6 of the Origin of Species:
“Natural selection will never produce in a being anything injurious to itself, for natural selection acts solely by and for the good of each. No organ will be formed, as Paley has remarked, for the purpose of causing pain or for doing injury to its possessor. If a fair balance be struck between the good and the evil caused by each part, each will be found on the whole advantageous.”
As you can see, this is fair ground for advancing your own survival at the cost of others. Again, I don’t see the moral drive here for the kind we treasure today. Simply telling people to not do it because it was bad in the past seems to be an even worse alternative. Let me point out that for your claims to hold weight, you have to show me somehow that the atheistic theology would have higher moral standards than those seen in religions. And by that, I mean you can’t borrow from religious morals unless there is something intrinsically superior about the morality of Darwinism, of materialism, of nihilism.
Smallz:
Quote:
|
And which of us said that?
|
Quote:
|
And of course right and wrong are relative.
|
Although the statistics is not what we were debating, okay, for the sake of argument I guess I must address it. Otherwise, you would falsely think I’m conceding. It is in fact, irrelevant to what we were discussing because this is what is happens and not what should be happening.
First, I’d like to point out a few things about statistics:
1. Correlation does not equal causation.
2. The individual can not be deduced from a population study.
On point 1, just because America is the fattest nation in the world doesn’t mean that fat people are more prone to crime. Also, as Richard Dawkins said, “just because Hitler had a mustache, doesn’t mean everyone who has a mustache is evil.”
On point 2, there are many scientific studies that have concluded that data about a population is almost useless when you are trying to see what it means about the individual. Do you know why? Because every person is different – an individual. You seem to be trying to say that religion was the sole reason that these people committed crimes. These are the type of statistically irresponsible representations that should never be used in a debate. Rather, it belongs on a ten second sound bite somewhere on cable television. There are so many confounding variables that comes into studies like this that it’s ridiculous to make claims like you are making. I can just as easily attribute Nazi Germany and Red Russia to atheistic utopias, but I won’t even though this would be a better argument. But do you know why I won’t? Because there is also a confounding variable of state power and shifting politics.
By the looks of it, we are not accomplishing much with this discussion. The misrepresentation of statistics and the shifting topics illustrates that we are not interested in an open dialogue but rather pleasuring ourselves intellectually. I think we have accomplished what we set out to do: we have tried to see where the other is coming from. At this point, let’s just agree to disagree.