Christian Thread: My opinion on the 12 Universal Laws

a reply to: AinElohim

Nice of you to finally realize what I've pointed out to you over the course of several threads now.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

Which is moral nihiism. Which I am perfectly ok with. It is rational. I think moral absolutism is just as rational.

You don't need Good or evil to be empathetic but why ought one be empathetic rather than narcissistic? Or is this simply a choice?

a reply to: ServantOfTheLamb

Empathy is likely an evolutionary advantage that we evolved to help us work together in groups to further our survival. It is no surprise that other apes in the world are also social animals. Teamwork has shown to be a quite a powerful evolutionary advantage. Though consider this, empathy isn't the best way to implement teamwork in nature. The best form of teamwork that has evolved in the animal kingdom would have to be the hive mentality. It gets the most accomplished with zero push back. All the animal think in terms of the furthering the hive instead of themselves. It's an interesting approach and a bit too impersonal for me, but then again I am an animal that evolved empathy instead of a hive mind. So I'm a little biased in that regards.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

Are you suggesting we use empathy and cooperation out of survival instinct?

So it seems that in your view we could has just as easily evolved a hive mind mentality, rather than an illusion of moral systems based on empathy?

The question I would also have to raise is what is the nature of empathy to you? Is it solely the work of a chemical reaction? Are we leading to philosophical reductionism here? Which is almost an oxymoron imo.

a reply to: ServantOfTheLamb

Are you suggesting we use empathy and cooperation out of survival instinct?

I'm not speaking for KrazyShot, but yes - I would say so.

We are empathetic and cooperative so that we all can survive. Like ants. But that doesn't lessen the impact that empathy and compassion have in ANY 'social' society - whether apes, or birds, or ants, or multi-species human homes.

I live with 1 human, 2 dogs, and 2 cats. A male and female of each species. We get along fine.
We look out for each other. We protect each other. At the end of the day, we all curl up on the same bed.

You have a problem with that........how?

And.....it isn't JUST about 'survival' of our own species. It is about survival of ALL SPECIES. An ECOSYSTEM.

Look it up. Learn. We are all connected, and need each other.

originally posted by: ServantOfTheLamb
a reply to: Krazysh0t

Are you suggesting we use empathy and cooperation out of survival instinct?

Yes. Is that really so far fetched? Humans are largely inefficient in the animal kingdom except for our intelligence. Naturally we'd have to think up solutions to get around this. Safety in numbers is a pretty good solution to many of those inefficiencies.

So it seems that in your view we could has just as easily evolved a hive mind mentality, rather than an illusion of moral systems based on empathy?

Possibly, but I doubt it. Hive mind mentality requires simple intelligence. Humans have complex intelligence. With our complex intelligence, we can resist instinct and question it. This doesn't work very well with a hive mind.

The question I would also have to raise is what is the nature of empathy to you? Is it solely the work of a chemical reaction? Are we leading to philosophical reductionism here? Which is almost an oxymoron imo.

Empathy, to me, is a good idea that our ancestors came up with to help further their survival. It is a crucial cog in our society and goes a long way to making it work. We probably wouldn't even HAVE a society without it.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

Yes. Is that really so far fetched? Humans are largely inefficient in the animal kingdom except for our intelligence. Naturally we'd have to think up solutions to get around this. Safety in numbers is a pretty good solution to many of those inefficiencies.

Not at all. You have already said previously Good and Bad don't exist. I said if you are a moral nihilist then your view is most likely logically consistent, but is it coherent with the way you live your life?

Possibly, but I doubt it. Hive mind mentality requires simple intelligence. Humans have complex intelligence. With our complex intelligence, we can resist instinct and question it. This doesn't work very well with a hive mind.

What is the nature of intelligence? Whats the difference between simple and complex?

We resist instinct? How can we do such a thing in your worldview? The more we talk the more I feel that in your view of reality thoughts are just chemical reactions. If that is so, the act you call resisting instinct is just a more complex form of instinctive behavior.

Possibly, but I doubt it. Hive mind mentality requires simple intelligence. Humans have complex intelligence. With our complex intelligence, we can resist instinct and question it. This doesn't work very well with a hive mind.

Why do you doubt it? Natural selection is random, and has no agenda? We could have just as easily evolved simple intelligence and hive mentality. The number of possible outcomes of our evolution is limitless as long as it fits an environmental circumstance that we aren't currently adapted to. So I don't see any reason to doubt that was just as possible.

Empathy, to me, is a good idea that our ancestors came up with to help further their survival.

Empathy is not an idea??? Its a subjective feeling. To say our ancestors created empathy is contradictory to your previous statement that empathy is a part of survival instinct.

It is a crucial cog in our society and goes a long way to making it work. We probably wouldn't even HAVE a society without it.

What if I consider empathy terrible and therefore the destruction of society? You statements keep implying that survival and society are GOOD things. Why should one care if society exist or work?

a reply to: ServantOfTheLamb

Not at all. You have already said previously Good and Bad don't exist. I said if you are a moral nihilist then your view is most likely logically consistent, but is it coherent with the way you live your life?

You're really stuck on Moral Nihilism, but, from what I've seen, most of us posting on empathy seem to be Moral Relativists.

Moral Nihilism is the meta-ethical view (see the section on Ethics) that ethical claims are generally false. It holds that there are no objective moral facts or true propositions - that nothing is morally good, bad, wrong, right, etc - because there are no moral truths (e.g. a moral nihilist would say that murder is not wrong, but neither is it right).

It differs from Ethical Subjectivism, and Moral Relativism, which do allow for moral statements to be true or false in a non-objective sense, but do not assign any static truth-values to moral statements.
www.philosophybasics.com...

Moral Relativism (or Ethical Relativism) is the position that moral or ethical propositions do not reflect objective and/or universal moral truths, but instead make claims relative to social, cultural, historical or personal circumstances. It does not deny outright the truth-value or justification of moral statements (as some forms of Moral Anti-Realism do), but affirms relative forms of them. It may be described by the common aphorism: “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”.

Moral Relativists point out that humans are not omniscient, and history is replete with examples of individuals and societies acting in the name of an infallible truth later demonstrated to be more than fallible, so we should be very wary of basing important ethical decisions on a supposed absolute claim.
www.philosophybasics.com...

a reply to: ServantOfTheLamb

Hey - why don't you just come out and say what you think? (And I don't mean this is in the sarcastic tone of "you already did so go ahead" - I mean it literally. Tell us what your platform is. What you think and believe.)

Just tell us what your values are, and how they are supported by whatever you think supports them.

What is with this freshman exercise in discussing morals and ethics?

People are empathetic because our species is a herd species. People who have babies fall in love with those babies on sight (if they are normal people) - and that happens regardless of our political or religious leanings.

Do you have any children?
If not, then you can not - can't - can NOT - speak to the inherent, instinctive impulse to protect those we love.
Empathy, apparently, is beyond your comprehension.

It means being able to relate to how someone else would "feel". If you don't get that, then you are in the category of 'sociopath'. There is no "god" required for a parent (mother or father) to fall in love with their child, and to be able to defend that child against all threats. It is nature.

This morning I read an article about a dog who buried her pups to protect them from a fire that was threatening them.
What do you think about that? Does the 'dog' have a "god" who told them to do this? No. The dog did what was necessary to protect her family - the best she knew how. She showed creativity and compassion, empathy and common sense.

Your argument in this thread has become so vague and frail that you might as well just bow out - do you really not see this?

originally posted by: ServantOfTheLamb
a reply to: Krazysh0t
Not at all. You have already said previously Good and Bad don't exist. I said if you are a moral nihilist then your view is most likely logically consistent, but is it coherent with the way you live your life?

I live my life by analyzing good ideas and trying to implement those ideas. Morality is a good idea. Part of morality is that it is determined by the society you live in. So if I am to follow morality, it behooves me to follow the morality of my society lest I want to be considered an outcast and demonized for going against the moral code.

What is the nature of intelligence? Whats the difference between simple and complex?

Simple and complex are subjective terms. They aren't extremes. But the difference here is that a more complex intelligence can interpret more data than a simpler intelligence.

We resist instinct? How can we do such a thing in your worldview? The more we talk the more I feel that in your view of reality thoughts are just chemical reactions. If that is so, the act you call resisting instinct is just a more complex form of instinctive behavior.

That is the likely scenario that I align with until further evidence comes along to say it isn't so. But you bring up an interesting point. Something I haven't considered before. I guess in the sense you are referring, resisting instinct would be the process of resisting urges a simpler intelligence would make you do. In this sense, if we were to evolve a more complex way of thinking further down the line, this line of thinking could overrule rational decisions we make now and call it resisting instinct.

Why do you doubt it? Natural selection is random, and has no agenda? We could have just as easily evolved simple intelligence and hive mentality. The number of possible outcomes of our evolution is limitless as long as it fits an environmental circumstance that we aren't currently adapted to. So I don't see any reason to doubt that was just as possible.

I did say it is possible. The reason I say it is unlikely is because all mammals have a more complex form of intelligence than animals with hive mentalities. With the complexity of mammal intelligence to go on, our environment just didn't make it conducive for us to evolve in that direction. As mammals, our intelligence would first have to evolve to be less complex so that we would become hive societies before then reevolving to be more complex again. It certainly IS possible, but less likely than our intelligence just increasing from where it was from before we were what you'd call human.

However, I could see it being more possible that a hive mind could increase in intellectual capacity and not be so simple minded. Perhaps by combining the brain power of the entire hive, create a higher complexity intelligence that way. I'm sure such an intelligence would process things much differently than we do.

These are all interesting things to postulate.

Empathy is not an idea??? Its a subjective feeling. To say our ancestors created empathy is contradictory to your previous statement that empathy is a part of survival instinct.

Not necessarily, not all evolutionary advantages are chemical. What if the idea for empathy came first then the chemical bias for it evolved afterwards to help the current crop of proto-humans better utilize that idea. Even if the chemical bias evolved first, humans or proto-humans had to think to utilize it

What if I consider empathy terrible and therefore the destruction of society? You statements keep implying that survival and society are GOOD things. Why should one care if society exist or work?

Well survival is a basic impulse of all life. Society is just a construct that humans have made to help them survive longer and easier. My arguments aren't meant to say that society is a good or even a bad thing. Society is just a product of humans using their evolutionary advantage. However, the longer society exists, the more that humans will grow to actually NEED society to survive. Keep in mind that evolution never stops. Therefore as humans continue producing offspring, eventually evolution will make it impossible for us to live in the wild. Things like this are already occurring with our mouths adapting to cooked food (we don't need wisdom teeth anymore).

Evolution will also evolve newer life that can deal with our society better than the ones that are ending up extinct by it. Eventually, if we are at it long enough, society and nature will be one and the same.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

I live my life by analyzing good ideas and trying to implement those ideas. Morality is a good idea. Part of morality is that it is determined by the society you live in

What makes morality a good idea? Why can't one think it is a bad idea?

Part of morality is that it is determined by the society you live in. So if I am to follow morality, it behooves me to follow the morality of my society lest I want to be considered an outcast and demonized for going against the moral code.

So if you in nazi germany murdering innocent jews was good, and not doing so was bad. You see to hold to this view you would have to re-define everyone considered to make massive reforms to moral thinking a moral nuisance. Rose parks shouldn't have taken that seat. It was literally the immoral thing of her to do in that view.

That is the likely scenario that I align with until further evidence comes along to say it isn't so. But you bring up an interesting point. Something I haven't considered before. I guess in the sense you are referring, resisting instinct would be the process of resisting urges a simpler intelligence would make you do. In this sense, if we were to evolve a more complex way of thinking further down the line, this line of thinking could overrule rational decisions we make now and call it resisting instinct.

Not necessarily, not all evolutionary advantages are chemical. What if the idea for empathy came first then the chemical bias for it evolved afterwards to help the current crop of proto-humans better utilize that idea. Even if the chemical bias evolved first, humans or proto-humans had to think to utilize it

I am sorry to ask you to define so many things but it unfortunately a major flaw in language. Its easier for us to understand each other if we define certain words uni-vocally when we speak. The issue I am having here is how you view your thoughts and others thoughts. You speak as if empathy was an idea it wouldn't be a chemical reaction. Are ideas and feelings not both just the effect of the chemical reaction that fires between specific neurons?

originally posted by: ServantOfTheLamb
What makes morality a good idea? Why can't one think it is a bad idea?

They could, but they would be a minority and quickly ostracized from the population. Since we have invented so many tools to help us survive on our own morality isn't such a necessity anymore, but someone making this decision a few thousand years ago would have a tough time surviving on their own. Consider this, a popular punishment before the modern era began was banishment from a town. Banishment was largely considered a death sentence though. Sure there is the chance the person could survive on their own, but the likely outcome is that they ended up starving or getting killed.

So if you in nazi germany murdering innocent jews was good, and not doing so was bad. You see to hold to this view you would have to re-define everyone considered to make massive reforms to moral thinking a moral nuisance. Rose parks shouldn't have taken that seat. It was literally the immoral thing of her to do in that view.

I said it behooves me to follow the morality of the society, that doesn't mean that I have to listen to it. I just have to recognize that there are consequences for going against the norm.

I am sorry to ask you to define so many things but it unfortunately a major flaw in language. Its easier for us to understand each other if we define certain words uni-vocally when we speak. The issue I am having here is how you view your thoughts and others thoughts. You speak as if empathy was an idea it wouldn't be a chemical reaction. Are ideas and feelings not both just the effect of the chemical reaction that fires between specific neurons?

Currently yes, but we don't understand everything that goes on in the human brain.

WHAT ARE THOUGHTS MADE OF?

Maybe empathy started as a normal thought, but as mammals realized the importance of it, it evolved into an emotion which would be a different chemical reaction. It's really hard to say because I don't know the evolution of empathy. I'm really just winging it here.