Intelligent Design?
When it comes to the Evolution v Creationism debate, I have wondered for a while now... what sort of intelligent designer would make us in such a manner that we have to do so many bodily functions... Such as eating... excrementing waste.
For example there are animals out there that can produce vitamin C... we cannot, and must get our daily vitamin C from food. If we were designed intelligently, what sort of sense does it make to give some (un?)intelligently designed creatures this ability, and then keep it from the Pièce de résistance so to speak. Or going further to plants... they get most of what they need from the Sun, and then other random nutrients in water that can even be given via a mist. (Aeroponics) Why can't we, as intelligently designed creatures utilize the same process as plants when it comes to aeroponics? .-. It doesn't make sense.
"Your sins are not redeemed, by swearing perjury." ~ Mathias Blad
"Change how you look at all things and what you see will change" ~ Per Nilsson/Henrik Ohlsson
"As the need for knowledge flows through the catharsis of thought, ask a question and the answer will be born."
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That too. I just didn't feel like digging up links just to have them ignored. lol
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
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Will you elaborate on what you mean by "explain morality"? I would really appreciate it.
i have posted my question already, but nobody answered it. So here it goes again :
Based on what ground can you possibly say, your moral code is superior to mine ? If humans are the last instance of morals, everything is permitted. It depends only of each ones individual standpoint and opinion.that is called moral relativism.
There are only two possibilities :
1. Either morals are grounded in ourselfs, that leads to moral relativism, or
2. Morals are absolute, prescriptive, and grounded in God, outside of our opinion, and exist, independently if we agree with them or not.
I believe there are some moral absolutes - you shall not rape, torture, burn and kill babies for fun. Anyone that saw this guy from nigeria slaugthering this english soldier will agree that it was a crude, horrible , uncivilized act of barbarism. Its hard to imagine that someone would justify such acts, independently if you were from the civilized world, or from a jungle tribe, or aboriginee.
So you have basically two oposing view points : absolutism, and relativism. Both cannot be true. If relativism were true, you could not argue against the reasons of the nigeria guy. It was simply his oposing point of view, that it was legitimate to kill the english solidier, based on the argument, that westerners kill many muslims - completely ignoring that most muslims are killed by muslims themselfs. But that simply doesn't work.
So if you hold that there are some moral rules and absolutes, outside of your opinion, like not killing and rape little babies, than i can tell you : you do believe much more than you actually think you do.
I might ask you : what kind of thing is it , that you believe ? Its not a physical thing - morals are not physical - they have no physical properties, its a immaterial thing . You know it exists, but you cannot specify it with touching, smelling, seeing, hearing. So you believe something, but you cannot test or verify it empirically. That has further implications : it proves materialism is false. So lets say you agree that torture,rape, and kill babies is wrong, this moral rule is out there somewhere, independently on your opinion, if you agree on it , or not, the question arises : where did this moral rule come from ? You have two choices : either
1. it came from nowhere, than why should it have any moral force ?
2. it is a moral law that was made by someone that lives in a immaterial realm. Thats the option that makes most sense to me.
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It comes from personal experience and education from friends and family.
Amongst the Germans it was common sense, and the nazi regime " educated " the germans, that Jews deserved to die . And they killed 5 million of them. Based on what ground could you possibly say, they were wrong ?
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where did this moral rule come from ? You have two choices : either
1. it came from nowhere, than why should it have any moral force ?
2. it is a moral law that was made by someone that lives in a immaterial realm. Thats the option that makes most sense to me.
3. It came from evolution.
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Pardon my French, but damn it man! In regards to your first response. I said that this universe does have a beginning and that one particular theory suggests that our universe was born due to a black hole in another existence, I see the flaw in this theory as it requires an infinite chain of universes. Then you pick on my usage of the word infinite, so I made you a simple Summation to prove my point, and then you go right back to square one. What the Hell?
Well, i just made the point that a infinite chain of universes cannot exist, based on philosophical and scientific reasons. The majority of physicists do have the opinion that the Big Bang were beginning time, space and matter.
You quoted someone that said that the universe has been governed by relativity, well, wrong, it is now common knowledge ( amongst the physics community anyway) that the theory of relativity is wrong inherently. To name a couple reasons:
1. It does not account for gravity, just the other fundamental physical forces.
2. The fact that it does not account for gravity causes it to break down on quantum and universal scales. When I say universe I mean visible and invisible.
3. It sure does not account for dark matter or dark energy. For good reason, we don't even know what those things are, we just know they're there.
Interesting. Didn't know that.
You ask me what moral standard it would be okay for the Jews to not kill a bunch of people? Well genocide = bad, I can't even think of a single scenario where THE COMPLETE AND UTTER DESTRUCTION OF A PEOPLE is okay. I can argue for murder and theft, but not genocide.
My question is : based on what moral ground, or standard, can you say its wrong ? Or: How do you know its wrong ? based on what do you know it ?
If someone would teach you, that its the finest and best thing to do, would you believe it ? If not, why ?
That aside, why would an OMNIPOTENT being tell mere mortals to kill people especially children, when he could do it in a fraction of an attosecond.
That happens actually all the time, when God permits natural catastrophies to take place.
Then no one has blood on their hands and fewer groups would then begin to resent the Jews... Seems to me like God is secretly trying to get us all to kill ourselves for his amusement. After all, being omniscient must be boring...
Then for sure you and me, we would not sit now in front of our computers , and have this forum discussion. As said, if you want to understand the issue, take your time, and study the issue further. A good startingpoint would may be here :
http://elshamah.heavenforum.org/t148-did-god-commit-atrocities-in-the-old-testament
I asked YOU to define time, not for you to look up a definition that someone else made up. Though my statement still stands, particularly because of a little thing known as Gravitational Time Dilation... that is the more gravity is on something the slower time passes for it.
which we know because of the theory of relativity. Did you not mention the theory is wrong ?
You said that my postulation was on blind faith? No, no it wasn't I was using my knowledge of the way that species change and survive to produce a conjecture. The evidence for my claim would be the way EVERY LIVING THING evolves.
Well, that will not be a postulate of blind faith, as soon as you are able to back up your claim with solid scientific evidence. We can see still today many species, which seem not to have evolved, since they are pretty the same even in the oldest fossil records.
P.S. Name one scenario when it is okay to kill infants en masse, of all different backgrounds and genetic makeups. (I'm getting at that they're not crippled or disfigured.)
As said, the Nazis thought, genocide was ok. Based on what moral standard can you possibly say, they were wrong ?
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angelobrazil wrote:where did this moral rule come from ? You have two choices : either
1. it came from nowhere, than why should it have any moral force ?
2. it is a moral law that was made by someone that lives in a immaterial realm. Thats the option that makes most sense to me.3. It came from evolution.
Evolution has to do with physical change. Could you point out, in what sense morals are something physical ?
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x wrote:angelobrazil wrote:where did this moral rule come from ? You have two choices : either
1. it came from nowhere, than why should it have any moral force ?
2. it is a moral law that was made by someone that lives in a immaterial realm. Thats the option that makes most sense to me.3. It came from evolution.
Evolution has to do with physical change. Could you point out, in what sense morals are something physical ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality#Evolution
The development of modern morality is a process closely tied to the Sociocultural evolution of different peoples of humanity. Some evolutionary biologists, particularly sociobiologists, believe that morality is a product of evolutionary forces acting at an individual level and also at the group level through group selection (though to what degree this actually occurs is a controversial topic in evolutionary theory). Some sociobiologists contend that the set of behaviors that constitute morality evolved largely because they provided possible survival and/or reproductive benefits (i.e. increased evolutionary success). Humans consequently evolved "pro-social" emotions, such as feelings of empathy or guilt, in response to these moral behaviors. Conversely, it has been argued by other biologists that the humans developed truly moral, altruistic instincts.[15]
On this understanding, moralities are sets of self-perpetuating and ideologically-driven behaviors which encourage human cooperation. Biologists contend that all social animals, from ants to elephants, have modified their behaviors, by restraining immediate selfishness in order to improve their evolutionary fitness. Human morality, though sophisticated and complex relative to other animals, is essentially a natural phenomenon that evolved to restrict excessive individualism that could undermine a group's cohesion and thereby reducing the individuals' fitness.[16] On this view, moral codes are ultimately founded on emotional instincts and intuitions that were selected for in the past because they aided survival and reproduction (inclusive fitness). Examples: the maternal bond is selected for because it improves the survival of offspring; the Westermarck effect, where close proximity during early years reduces mutual sexual attraction, underpins taboos against incest because it decreases the likelihood of genetically risky behaviour such as inbreeding.
The phenomenon of 'reciprocity' in nature is seen by evolutionary biologists as one way to begin to understand human morality. Its function is typically to ensure a reliable supply of essential resources, especially for animals living in a habitat where food quantity or quality fluctuates unpredictably. For example, some vampire bats fail to feed on prey some nights while others manage to consume a surplus. Bats that did eat will then regurgitate part of their blood meal to save a conspecific from starvation. Since these animals live in close-knit groups over many years, an individual can count on other group members to return the favor on nights when it goes hungry (Wilkinson, 1984) Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce (2009) have argued that morality is a suite of behavioral capacities likely shared by all mammals living in complex social groups (e.g., wolves, coyotes, elephants, dolphins, rats, chimpanzees). They define morality as "a suite of interrelated other-regarding behaviors that cultivate and regulate complex interactions within social groups." This suite of behaviors includes empathy, reciprocity, altruism, cooperation, and a sense of fairness.[17] In related work, it has been convincingly demonstrated that chimpanzees show empathy for each other in a wide variety of contexts.[18] They also possess the ability to engage in deception, and a level of social 'politics'[19] prototypical of our own tendencies for gossip and reputation management.
Christopher Boehm (1982)[20] has hypothesized that the incremental development of moral complexity throughout hominid evolution was due to the increasing need to avoid disputes and injuries in moving to open savanna and developing stone weapons. Other theories are that increasing complexity was simply a correlate of increasing group size and brain size, and in particular the development of theory of mind abilities. Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion suggested that our morality is a result of our biological evolutionary history and that the Moral Zeitgeist helps describe how morality evolves from biological and cultural origins and evolves with time within a culture.
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Evolution has to do with physical change. Could you point out, in what sense morals are something physical ?
morality is an abstract concept. abstract concepts are created by neurons firing. colors have no "absolute" reality either, yet we have evolved eyes and brains that perceive (or rather superimpose) colors, while other creatures have not. we have evolved the means of complex analytical thought, probably to compensate for our piss-poor bodies, while other creatures have not. this postulate cannot be proved conclusively, but logically it is a much more plausible option than some supermind did it.
we could be wrong. this supermind could indeed exist. purple dragons in the north pole could exist too. but the evidence for either just isn't compelling, so the logical choice is to reserve judgment.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
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Based on what ground can you possibly say, your moral code is superior to mine ?
The same grounds I could say any belief I have is superior to yours. The same grounds I could say democracy is better than a dictatorship.
If humans are the last instance of morals, everything is permitted.
No, because humans create a lot of laws and work together to prevent other humans from doing undesirable things.
There are only two possibilities :
1. Either morals are grounded in ourselfs, that leads to moral relativism, or
2. Morals are absolute, prescriptive, and grounded in God, outside of our opinion, and exist, independently if we agree with them or not.
I hate to break it to you, but you simply declaring that there are only a certain number of possibilities does not make it so. Morals are neither grounded in ourselves or in god. Morals are a set of cultural conventions that arise within a particular culture and come from a variety of things ranging from the necessary moral standards for a culture to continue to exist, to popular preferences.
I believe there are some moral absolutes - you shall not rape, torture, burn and kill babies for fun. Anyone that saw this guy from nigeria slaugthering this english soldier will agree that it was a crude, horrible , uncivilized act of barbarism.
Where does that abdolute come from? Not your god, he has ordered people to do exactly that. So either your god ordered them to do an immoral act or your god's morality is not absolute.
Its hard to imagine that someone would justify such acts, independently if you were from the civilized world, or from a jungle tribe, or aboriginee.
Whether it is hard to imagine or not is irrelevant. The fact is that people have justified (or rather attempt to) such acts. It is only in the context of modern civilization that we regard such acts as unimaginable. Fortunately, morals change and I think most of us can agree that the morals we have today are generally better than those during biblical times. For example, most people in modern society would have a moral problem with stoning people, even people who are really undesirable. Today, we generally put a much higher moral value on pain and suffering and even those who support the idea that some people are so bad they have to be killed for the good of society, there is some sense that the killing should be done in a quick and not overly painful matter. Even when we go to war, we implement rules on ourselves in an attempt to reduce the horrors of war.
None of these morals come from the Christian god. He explicitly ordered his followers to kill undesirables in some of the most painful ways imaginable, he explicitly ordered them to kill all men in war, to pillage and to rape. If a group of soldiers today went through a village killing every male child and all of the non-virgin women and then forcibly taking the virgins (pretty much the underage girls) as their "wives" we would call them immoral and try to stop them.
So you have basically two oposing view points : absolutism, and relativism. Both cannot be true. If relativism were true, you could not argue against the reasons of the nigeria guy. It was simply his oposing point of view, that it was legitimate to kill the english solidier, based on the argument, that westerners kill many muslims - completely ignoring that most muslims are killed by muslims themselfs. But that simply doesn't work.
Why can't we argue against other people's opinions? We do so all the time. It is the entire basis of most modern governments and is in fact exactly what we are doing here.
So if you hold that there are some moral rules and absolutes, outside of your opinion, like not killing and rape little babies, than i can tell you : you do believe much more than you actually think you do.
Obviously it isn't an absolute because many people rush to defend the idea of a god that killed hundreds of thousands if not millions of babies as morally good. It completely befuddles me how people can make that argument with a straight face, but they do. Even people who appear to be decent otherwise. I am having an argument in another thread with a fellow named Caposkia who seems to be quite nice. I don't think he would ever consider killing a baby, yet he steadfastly defends the decision he believes his god made to commit mass genocide as morally good.
I might ask you : what kind of thing is it , that you believe ? Its not a physical thing - morals are not physical - they have no physical properties, its a immaterial thing . You know it exists, but you cannot specify it with touching, smelling, seeing, hearing. So you believe something, but you cannot test or verify it empirically. That has further implications : it proves materialism is false. So lets say you agree that torture,rape, and kill babies is wrong, this moral rule is out there somewhere, independently on your opinion, if you agree on it , or not, the question arises : where did this moral rule come from ?
It comes from our thoughts and our thoughts have many physical properties.
You have two choices : either
1. it came from nowhere, than why should it have any moral force ?
2. it is a moral law that was made by someone that lives in a immaterial realm. Thats the option that makes most sense to me.
Again, you declare there are only two possibilities when there are many more. Just because you can only think of two doesn't mean there are only two. It simply shows the limits of your thought process.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality#Evolution
The development of modern morality is...................................
If that'd be true, then on what moral ground could you blame me, if my opinion on morals would be different than yours, and if my opinion would be, that rape, torture, kill your wifes new born baby would be the most sublime and best thing to do ?
But the key issue here is : morality is not a physical thing. In the same way, as consciousness, thoughts, feelings, will , intelligence are. These are all spiritual things, essencially different to the physical body. They cannot be explained through evolution.
This is a problem, that Einstein has brought so nicely straight to the point :
On the one side, we find the real world of objects, events, and tensional space-time relations. On the other side, we find fully abstract representations that contain information about the material world. That articulate information is abstracted first by our senses, secondarily by our bodily actions, and tertiarily by our ability to use one or more particular languages (e.g., English, French, Navajo, etc.). Between the two realms shown in figure 1, we find what appears to be an uncrossable gulf.
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we could be wrong. this supermind could indeed exist. purple dragons in the north pole could exist too. but the evidence for either just isn't compelling, so the logical choice is to reserve judgment.
I conclude logically a intelligent designer for several reasons :
1. The universe is not a illusion, neither is it self created, or out of nothing, neither could it exist eternally , based on philosophical and scientific reasons, therefore it had a beginning, and a cause, which exists above the natural world.
2. The universe is finetuned to life, a tuner is therefore a logical deduction to explain fine tuning.
3. Life comes always from life. Abiogenesis is a failed hypotheses.
Dr. Monty White:
a. There is no proof that the earth ever had an atmosphere composed of the gases used by Miller in his experiment.
b. The next problem is that in Miller’s experiment he was careful to make sure there was no oxygen present. If oxygen was present, then the amino acids would not form. However, if oxygen was absent from the earth, then there would be no ozone layer, and if there was no ozone layer the ultraviolet radiation would penetrate the atmosphere and would destroy the amino acids as soon as they were formed. So the dilemma can be summed up this way: amino acids would not form in an atmosphere with oxygen and amino acids would be destroyed in an atmosphere without oxygen.
c. The next problem concerns the so-called handedness of the amino acids. Because of the way that carbon atoms join up with other atoms, amino acids exist in two forms—the right-handed form and the left-handed form. Just as your right hand and left hand are identical in all respects except for their handedness, so the two forms of amino acids are identical except for their handedness. In all living systems only left-handed amino acids are found. Yet Miller’s experiment produced a mixture of right-handed and left-handed amino acids in identical proportions. As only the left-handed ones are used in living systems, this mixture is useless for the evolution of living systems.
d. Another major problem for the chemical evolutionist is the origin of the information that is found in living systems. There are various claims about the amount of information that is found in the human genome, but it can be conservatively estimated as being equivalent to a few thousand books, each several hundred pages long. Where did this information come from?
4. Evolution cannot explain phenomenons like :
- the echo location of bats and whales.
- consciousness
- sex
- morality
- the hability of speech
- bombarier beetle mechanism
- wings of birds
- the eye
- blood ( its irreducible complex )
- the flagellum
and many more.
5. Religious experiences like answered prayers, healings, miracles
Theists are therefore granted to have their faith justified based on natural theology, aka. can deduce the existence of a Intelligent Designer based on observance of the natural world.
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The same grounds I could say any belief I have is superior to yours. The same grounds I could say democracy is better than a dictatorship.
So you confirm any opinion is equally valid. You cannot say objectively, that rape small babies is wrong, since its just your personal opinion.
No, because humans create a lot of laws and work together to prevent other humans from doing undesirable things.
Genocide of jews was a desirable thing for the Nazi regime.... based on what can you say, they were wrong ? In their society, it was justified and ok.
I hate to break it to you, but you simply declaring that there are only a certain number of possibilities does not make it so. Morals are neither grounded in ourselves or in god. Morals are a set of cultural conventions that arise within a particular culture and come from a variety of things ranging from the necessary moral standards for a culture to continue to exist, to popular preferences.
That would categorize it to be no.1. They would come from us, humans, and would be relative, depending on each nations subjective standard.
Where does that abdolute come from? Not your god, he has ordered people to do exactly that. So either your god ordered them to do an immoral act or your god's morality is not absolute.
God ordered it based on a higher good. War is morally acceptable, when the reasons justify it.
Was it morally ok for the u.s. to invade europe, to free it from nazi germany, despite the fact that many human lifes were brough to death ? The canaanite genocide was a isolated event, and had clear reasons to be, which are described in the bible. If the absolute of morality does not come from us, it comes from a higher being, which is God.
Whether it is hard to imagine or not is irrelevant.
Its actually not irrelevant, but the crucial point. Where does the inborn knowledge come from, that certain things are bad to be done ?
The fact is that people have justified (or rather attempt to) such acts. It is only in the context of modern civilization that we regard such acts as unimaginable.
Absolutely not. You can visit a jungle tribe, that had never contact to modern civilisation, and they know as we do, that certain things are bad to be done.
Fortunately, morals change and I think most of us can agree that the morals we have today are generally better than those during biblical times.
But certain behavior, like kill, rape, torture, lie, betray etc. are held as bad things, independently if in modern, or ancient civilisations.
None of these morals come from the Christian god.
Where do the ten commandments come from ?
He explicitly ordered his followers to kill undesirables in some of the most painful ways imaginable, he explicitly ordered them to kill all men in war, to pillage and to rape. If a group of soldiers today went through a village killing every male child and all of the non-virgin women and then forcibly taking the virgins (pretty much the underage girls) as their "wives" we would call them immoral and try to stop them.
Do you know the first commandment of the new testament ? Which is it ?
Why can't we argue against other people's opinions? We do so all the time.
Sure we can. But based on what ground are they objectively valid ? If they are not objectively valid, anything can be justified. Everything is just relative, based on subject opinion.
So if you hold that there are some moral rules and absolutes, outside of your opinion, like not killing and rape little babies, than i can tell you : you do believe much more than you actually think you do.
Obviously it isn't an absolute because many people rush to defend the idea of a god that killed hundreds of thousands if not millions of babies as morally good. It completely befuddles me how people can make that argument with a straight face, but they do. Even people who appear to be decent otherwise. I am having an argument in another thread with a fellow named Caposkia who seems to be quite nice. I don't think he would ever consider killing a baby, yet he steadfastly defends the decision he believes his god made to commit mass genocide as morally good.
You have not answered the point. If you disagree that killing small babies is objectively wrong, then it depends just on personal opinion. If that is the case, based on what can you say, kill young babies is wrong ? It will be just your personal opinion.
It comes from our thoughts and our thoughts have many physical properties.
No kidding.....
Can you specify what physical properties thoughts do have ????
Again, you declare there are only two possibilities when there are many more. Just because you can only think of two doesn't mean there are only two. It simply shows the limits of your thought process.
You have only then a point, if you can point toward a third point.
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Vastet wrote:It comes from personal experience and education from friends and family.Amongst the Germans it was common sense, and the nazi regime " educated " the germans, that Jews deserved to die . And they killed 5 million of them. Based on what ground could you possibly say, they were wrong ?
If that were true then explain why the Nazi's ended up resorting to gas chambers to prevent their soldiers from disobeying orders to kill jews, based on their morality that it was wrong.
Only a very few Germans supported the killing of the jews. Otherwise their defeat wouldn't have changed anything, and they'd still be at it today.
And I base my position on my ethics. My ethics say it is wrong to kill anyone without having a damn good reason and facts to back it up. The fact that someone can have a different view proves ethics aren't absolute.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
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1. The universe is not a illusion, neither is it self created, or out of nothing, neither could it exist eternally , based on philosophical and scientific reasons, therefore it had a beginning, and a cause, which exists above the natural world.
All of which is your opinion, not fact. Truth is the universe could be an illusion. Nothing was necessary to create it beyond the quantum effects we've observed happening all the time, everywhere. There's no evidence to prove it could not have always existed in some form. And there is no evidence of anything which is not natural.
2. The universe is finetuned to life, a tuner is therefore a logical deduction to explain fine tuning.
Horse shit. The universe, if fine tuned for anything at all, is so tuned to destroy life, not support it. Hence your logic is actually fantasy based on a lie.
3. Life comes always from life. Abiogenesis is a failed hypotheses.
A lie.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
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Re :: Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam, that is a phrase from a fictional language from Star Trek.
A leader is judged not by the length of his reign but by the decisions he makes
¬ Kahless (quoted), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, " Tacking into the Wind"
I hate to break it to you, but you simply declaring that there are only a certain number of possibilities does not make it so. Morals are neither grounded in ourselves or in god. Morals are a set of cultural conventions that arise within a particular culture and come from a variety of things ranging from the necessary moral standards for a culture to continue to exist, to popular preferences.
That would categorize it to be no.1. They would come from us, humans, and would be relative, depending on each nations subjective standard.Where does that absolute come from? Not your god, he has ordered people to do exactly that. So either your god ordered them to do an immoral act or your god's morality is not absolute.
God ordered it based on a higher good. War is morally acceptable, when the reasons justify it.
Was it morally ok for the u.s. to invade europe, to free it from nazi germany, despite the fact that many human lifes were brough to death ? The canaanite genocide was a isolated event, and had clear reasons to be, which are described in the bible. If the absolute of morality does not come from us, it comes from a higher being.
That is presuming that this wasn't all done in the name of God, and a sort of manifest destiny doctrine borne out of necessity, as much as orders from On-High. Which cause me to begin to despise the unsophisticated view of holy writ.
The same grounds I could say any belief I have is superior to yours. The same grounds I could say democracy is better than a dictatorship.
So you confirm any opinion is equally valid. You cannot say objectively, that rape small babies is wrong, since its just your personal opinion.
This is a distortion, I have been on the board for roughly 21/2 yrs (guessing), if anything people have said the exact opposite. Nobody of any stripe be it religious, areligious, philosophical you name it, and/or ideological belief systems holds the view all opinions are equally valid. NOBODY!! It is some people's 'opinion' the planet I live on (the planet Earth) is actually a Hollow Earth contains a substantial interior, including a mini-Star to provide light and warm to the lands underneath the planets crust. Can any of us take that seriously ?! In the late 19th Century there was a division of the London police department exploring the 'science' Physiognomy as an indicator of criminality. Enough said
No, because humans create a lot of laws and work together to prevent other humans from doing undesirable things.
Genocide of jews was a desirable thing for the Nazi regime.... based on what can you say, they were wrong ? In their society, it was justified and ok.
It is thinking like this that lead to the (European) Inquisition! X (a Username) already provided a link, you personally might not have bothered with (and I have yet to get to), talking about a moral sense being an inherent trait (if not completely intrinsic) to 'our' make-up. Germans are with us today. Irrespective of how you answer. That can be debated in strictly evolutionary terms (not dependent upon your own personal understanding). From this, I can tell you are willing to sacrifice much for a tactic or point you insist on
blacklight915 wrote:angelobrazil wrote:
I will get the answer back to you, and ask : based on what moral standard, it would be wrong in the given and described circumstances, the jews to obey Gods command, and to do as they were told to do ?
Unless a person cares nothing for his/her own well-being or the well-being of others, he/she should, in most cases, avoid treating other people in ways he/she wouldn't want to be treated. Therefore, unless those particular Jews cared nothing for the well-being of any group of people, they should have refrained from committing genocide.
Well, the situation was a littlebit more complex than that.
Au contraire, mon frere. It is itself simplicity so I hardly see why Blacklight shouldn't be spared the search. I could have guessed the reasoning is one of two things ..
a.) The attempted eradication to supplant
b.) Or to mete-out punishment
Angelobrazil IS no Newbie, I checked around and he has been doing this on at least 3-4 other boards before. So, There is no excuse or explaination for why he wouldn't have thought out ahead and anticipated and foresee issues like genocide may come up.
it was not done because they were canaanites, but because of their sins.
Based on this kill the sinner policy, I can only surmise the sins must have been greatly heinous; working back I come across this
First, The archaeological discoveries at the Phoenician, now that's Phoenician, the tophet at Salambo, Carthage, Tunisia, where in 1921 over 6,000 burial urns were found containing the remains of cremated infants. The horror of the Canaanites’ sinfulness, I am guessing would be both rampant idolatry and the adoption of child sacrifice. That may reveal reason for commanding their death was not genocide but capital punishment. Theocracy of the Tribes of Jacob could easily justify the indefensible. Later, "And they built the high places of Baal (actually the Amurru, Amorite Storm god, a different 'baal'), which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin." There are exactly 'two' neighboring cultures with the gods of both Amurru and Molech, small babies were offered to these specific Ancient Near East gods each of these Molech and Amurra, situated very near by Canaan. > Background Information :: In the Ugartic or more properly the Akkadian sources (and religious texts) baal is mentioned. Guess who else was a storm god, baal. "Myth of Atrahasis," which, in motif, shows a relationship with the account of the creation of man to relieve the gods of toil in the "Enki and Ninmah" myth, and with a Sumerian account of the Flood in the "Eridu Genesis." The Atrahasis myth, however, treats these themes with noticeable originality and remarkable depth. It relates, first, how the gods originally had to toil for a living, how they rebelled and went on strike, how Enki suggested that one of their number--the god We, apparently the ringleader who "had the idea"--be killed and mankind created from clay mixed with his flesh and blood, so that the toil of the gods could be laid on man and the gods left to go free. But after Enki and the birth goddess Nintur (another name for Ninmah) had created man, man multiplied at such a rate that the din he made kept Enlil sleepless. At first Enlil had Namtar, the god of death, cause a plague to diminish mankind's numbers, but the wise Atrahasis, at the advice of Enki, had man concentrate all worship and offerings on Namtar. Namtar, embarrassed at hurting people who showed such love and affection for him, stayed his hand. Next Enlil had Adad, the god of rains, hold back the rains and thus cause a famine, but, because of the same stratagem, Adad (storm god) was embarrassed and released the rains. After this, Enlil planned a famine by divine group action that would not be vulnerable as the earlier actions by individual gods had been. Anu and Adad (another 'baal') were to guard the heavens, he himself earth, and Enki the waters underground and the sea so that no gift of nature could come through to man. The ensuing famine was terrible. By the seventh year one house consumed the other and people began eating their own children. At that point Enki--accidentally he maintained--let through a wealth of fish from the sea and so saved man. With this, however, Enlil's patience was at an end and he thought of the Flood as a means to get rid of humanity once and for all. Enki, however, warned Atrahasis and had him build a boat in which he saved himself, his family, and all animals. After the flood had abated and the ship was grounded, Atrahasis sacrificed, and the hungry gods, much chastened, gathered around the offering. Only Enlil was unrelenting until Enki upbraided him for killing innocent and guilty alike and--there is a gap in the text--suggested other means to keep human numbers down. In consultation with the birth goddess Nintur, Enki then developed a scheme of birth control by inventing the barren woman, the demon Pashittu who kills children at birth, and the various classes of priestesses to whom giving birth was taboo. Willfully I am acknowledging the biblical injunction against the worship of baal Biblical passage reads:
"And they built the high places of Baal (actually the Amurru, Amorite Storm god, a different 'baal'), which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin."
I mention all that to state the argument is that would this type of heinous behaviour would justify the mass extinction of a people. I am only surmising.
I have not found any formal arguments for genocide via any search engin only a simply list (laundry list) of 'sins' giving the Jews the moral imperative end them 'by any means necessary'. With the added practicality of not having to mess with or worry over the dead coming back to make claims to the land (I sound like jcgadfly all of a sudden, odd). I'm suggesting the 'real' story is the one that is more 'complicated',.
. . .
So you not only fail at spelling and grammar and logic, but at English comprehension and basic continuity as well; yet you think you can have a philosophical discussion with me? lol
Philosophy is irrelevant. Come back when you have something worth arguing.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Yes, you said that. But what evidence do you have, to say likely ? On what ground have you said that ? Or shall i conclude, you said that just based on wishful thinking ?
my native language is not english. Its based on a english course of 3 month i made .
please point out, where i failed in my logic.
You just proved the relevance of philosophy, as you use it by yourself, but keep making the same nonsense assertion. Shall i conclude, you have some difficulty with learning ?
Then your spelling and grammar are excellent. Better than many native speakers.
But your logic and capability to keep on track of continuity in a conversation have nothing to do with English skills. We were discussing ID and evolution in this topic, not philosophy.
You failed when you switched subjects instead of addressing points.
Ignorant people always see the learned as crazy or handicapped, never realising they're simply projecting. Maybe if I repeat myself ad absurdum it'll sink into your thick skull.
Philosophy is irrelevant. Philosophy is irrelevant. Philosophy is irrelevant.
Philosophy is irrelevant.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
What does that have to do with logic ?
You can repeat this as many times as you want. I just proved you are wrong.
But maibe you explain , why you think philosophy is irrelevant.
Philosophy is irrelevant because the discussion is about intelligent design/evolution. Neither one of those things has anything to do with philosophy.
You've still ignored most of my reply to you. .-. only taking out one sentence.
"Your sins are not redeemed, by swearing perjury." ~ Mathias Blad
"Change how you look at all things and what you see will change" ~ Per Nilsson/Henrik Ohlsson
"As the need for knowledge flows through the catharsis of thought, ask a question and the answer will be born."
Quite a bit. Look up "Red Herring".
As I just showed, you have failed horribly. You are simply projecting your failure, as most theists do when they've been owned completely in a single paragraph.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Opps, just noticed this...
The evidence to say likely, is that that's how evolution of a species works... a new mechanism brought about by mutation happens to bring about more offspring, and the older less effective mechanisms slowly die out. The basis for my earlier postulation would be that eggs are how everything produces now on a macroscopic scale... Even us humans reproduce via eggs.
"Your sins are not redeemed, by swearing perjury." ~ Mathias Blad
"Change how you look at all things and what you see will change" ~ Per Nilsson/Henrik Ohlsson
"As the need for knowledge flows through the catharsis of thought, ask a question and the answer will be born."
We have several reasons to believe, the universe had a beginning :
Richard Dawkins -famed Oxford evolutionary biologist reflecting on the sheer wonder of the emergence of life on Earth and the evolutionary process in his classic The Ancestor's Tale.
Alexander Vilenkin is Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute of Cosmology at Tufts University. A theoretical physicist who has been working in the field of cosmology for 25 years, Vilenkin has written over 150 papers and is responsible for introducing the ideas of eternal inflation and quantum creation of the universe from nothing.
Vilenkin is blunt about the implications:
from the book, a case for a creator :
I will get the answer back to you, and ask : based on what moral standard, it would be wrong in the given and described circumstances, the jews to obey Gods command, and to do as they were told to do ?
According to Wiki, Time is a dimension in which events can be ordered from the past through the present into the future, and also the measure of durations of events and the intervals between them.
You have just made a postulate based on blind faith. You have not presented any evidence whatsoever to back up your claim. Why should i embark into your explanation, and believe it ?
Nope. you have not showed it to me.You have not been able to show, that it was a failure of logic. You need to show me, in what sense i failed in valid reasoning.
Your unwillingness and/or inability to see the simple truth does not make it less true. It only shaves away your credibility and proves you are irrational.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
What simple truth are you talking about ?
Unless a person cares nothing for his/her own well-being or the well-being of others, he/she should, in most cases, avoid treating other people in ways he/she wouldn't want to be treated. Therefore, unless those particular Jews cared nothing for the well-being of any group of people, they should have refrained from committing genocide.
Again the attempt to derail the conversation. You keep trying and I'll keep owning you.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Well, the situation was a littlebit more complex than that. You should consider what i posted in my previous post in regard of this matter. If you want to reiterate yourself a littlebit better, i suggest you take your time, and study about the genocide of the canaanites. you will find many links on google.
Genocide is never acceptable or ethical.
And god is not only immoral but also extremely lazy to have ordered people to commit genocide instead of doing it himself.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Yeah because if god orders you to kill babies they must be evil and it is moral. You twisted freaks make me sick and it is utterly absurd you can support genocide and call people like me immoral.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
I did. I also read through all of Numbers 25 in the two Bible versions I own. Neither of my Bibles specified any action taken by the Midianites that could justify slaughtering all of them but the virgin women.
Oh, I have. Seeing a well-educated and intelligent man (Dr. William Lane Craig) justify genocide was quite...enlightening.
Based on what moral standard do you say that ?
Name calling is the last refuge of the truly ignorant.
Where have i done so ?
He can do so, because he aknowledges objective moral values exist. If you do not believe in Gods existence, you cannot even explain morality.
Common sense and human decency.
"Very funny Scotty; now beam down our clothes."
VEGETARIAN: Ancient Hindu word for "lousy hunter"
If man was formed from dirt, why is there still dirt?
So where does this common sense and this decency come from ? based on what can you say, what is decent, what is not ?
Well, I really should have said "attempt to justify"
Will you elaborate on what you mean by "explain morality"? I would really appreciate it.
Wow, Jeffrick just did the impossible. Maybe he should get a show in Vegas.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
Mine.
It comes from personal experience and education from friends and family.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Pardon my French, but damn it man! In regards to your first response. I said that this universe does have a beginning and that one particular theory suggests that our universe was born due to a black hole in another existence, I see the flaw in this theory as it requires an infinite chain of universes. Then you pick on my usage of the word infinite, so I made you a simple Summation to prove my point, and then you go right back to square one. What the Hell?
You quoted someone that said that the universe has been governed by relativity, well, wrong, it is now common knowledge ( amongst the physics community anyway) that the theory of relativity is wrong inherently. To name a couple reasons:
1. It does not account for gravity, just the other fundamental physical forces.
2. The fact that it does not account for gravity causes it to break down on quantum and universal scales. When I say universe I mean visible and invisible.
3. It sure does not account for dark matter or dark energy. For good reason, we don't even know what those things are, we just know they're there.
You ask me what moral standard it would be okay for the Jews to not kill a bunch of people? Well genocide = bad, I can't even think of a single scenario where THE COMPLETE AND UTTER DESTRUCTION OF A PEOPLE is okay. I can argue for murder and theft, but not genocide. That aside, why would an OMNIPOTENT being tell mere mortals to kill people especially children, when he could do it in a fraction of an attosecond. Then no one has blood on their hands and fewer groups would then begin to resent the Jews... Seems to me like God is secretly trying to get us all to kill ourselves for his amusement. After all, being omniscient must be boring...
I asked YOU to define time, not for you to look up a definition that someone else made up. Though my statement still stands, particularly because of a little thing known as Gravitational Time Dilation... that is the more gravity is on something the slower time passes for it.
You said that my postulation was on blind faith? No, no it wasn't I was using my knowledge of the way that species change and survive to produce a conjecture. The evidence for my claim would be the way EVERY LIVING THING evolves.
P.S. Name one scenario when it is okay to kill infants en masse, of all different backgrounds and genetic makeups. (I'm getting at that they're not crippled or disfigured.)
"Your sins are not redeemed, by swearing perjury." ~ Mathias Blad
"Change how you look at all things and what you see will change" ~ Per Nilsson/Henrik Ohlsson
"As the need for knowledge flows through the catharsis of thought, ask a question and the answer will be born."
Technically we don't know for sure that dark matter and dark energy exist. They have been hypothesised to explain the apparent accelerating expansion of the universe and the reason galaxies don't appear to be subject to the same physics that explain the activities in solar systems. But both of these could be wrong or subject to forces we haven't accounted for yet.
Though I definitely agree that relativity is incomplete at best.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Dark matter and Dark energy are sort of "place holders" in physics. We know one thing is true, but all of our figures don't add up, so, we just created these while they're being researched. There is no general consensus on the detection of it yet, so it may or may not exist.
"Your sins are not redeemed, by swearing perjury." ~ Mathias Blad
"Change how you look at all things and what you see will change" ~ Per Nilsson/Henrik Ohlsson
"As the need for knowledge flows through the catharsis of thought, ask a question and the answer will be born."
http://www.skepticink.com/tippling/2013/01/04/found-altruism-brain-cells/
Brain cells that fire only when monkeys act unselfishly may provide clues to the neural basis of altruism, according to a new study.
http://vridar.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/our-moral-nature/
Babies can recognize good and bad behaviour, and demonstrate that they believe good behaviour is preferable, and even believe that it is right to punish bad behaviour.