*smirks* We cats don't need to feel empathy. We know we're evil.. and enjoy this fact.

Sorry SC, but loving Rum does not count as a moral code.

That is correct. It is not instinctual. It is founded on instincts.



Individually, yes. I am, however, speaking of the species in general.



That is incorrect. Many of our daily habits can be traced to our instinctual roots. Our entire economic system is derived from our instinctual supply/demand instinct.



That is correct.



That is also correct. We have found it far more profitable to not discriminate than to discriminate.

By who's standards? *smirks* People have different moral codes all over. Loving rum is one of mine. So isn't trying to help people who need it. Smiting people who get on my already freyed nerves... Pointing out random acts of natural selection... All parts of *MY* moral code. The rest of ya'll can bugger off.

Truth being.. I don't need religion telling me how I should act. My own common sence and somewhat loosely.. what society's codes say. And a good bulk of society's moral codes are common sence.. something that people like to paint with "Well religion says...." Bull.

yes ! lions feel empathy for others in thier pride . as do elephants , horses , whales , dolphines , ect.......... elephants feel empathy and bond with outside elephants as well.

societal needs may not be the reason for empathy , but society , people , react on a personal level. If one can relate one feels empathy. ( and yet how many would pass someone who has fallen on the ground ? most. there was a study done on something similar not long ago , but at the moment I can't recall it)

2 words - frontal lobe. / neo cortex.

as human brain size increased so did our frontal lobes which give way to behavior . it is what has us override our instinct.

It is instinct to relieve ones self. yet we just don't take a leak on the A train in rush hour traffic ( unless your drunk out of your mind) = thanks to the frontal lobe(neocortex). Damage the frontal lobe and you get a guy urinating on the train in rush hour. no self control.

Frontal Lobe or rather the neocortex - associated with reasoning, planning, parts of speech, movement, emotions, and problem solving


http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~taflinge/psych1.html

I have one code and one creed The code is as follows

Loyalty
Bear true faith and allegiance to the U.S. constitution, the Army, and other soldiers.
Be loyal to the nation and its heritage.

Duty
Fulfill your obligations.
Accept responsibility for your own actions and those entrusted to your care.
Find opportunities to improve oneself for the good of the group.

Respect
Rely upon the golden rule.
How we consider others reflects upon each of us, both personally and as a professional organization.

Selfless Service
Put the welfare of the nation, the Army, and your subordinates before your own.
Selfless service leads to organizational teamwork and encompasses discipline, self-control and faith in the system.

Honor
Live up to all the Army values

Integrity
Do what is right, legally and morally.
Be willing to do what is right even when no one is looking.
It is our "moral compass" an inner voice.

Personal Courage
Our ability to face fear, danger, or adversity, both physical and moral courage.

and the creed is as follows

THE SOLDIERS CREED
I am an American Soldier.
I am a Warrior and a Member of a team.
I serve the people of the United States and live the Army Values.
I will always place the mission first.
I will never accept defeat.
I will never quit.
I will never leave a fallen comrade.
I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough, trained and proficient in my Warrior tasks and drills.
I always maintain my arms, my equipment and myself.
I am an expert and I am a professional.
I stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy the enemies of the United States of America in close combat.
I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life.
I am an American Soldier

since both the religious and atheist/agnostics people all hate me i think i'll post in here for fun, don't worry i won't even mention god.

never hurt or kill anybody unless they are trying to hurt or kill you or somebody else
don't steal unless you are taking back what was stolen from you, or if you have to to survive
don't lie unless you have to
never do drugs or get drunk
try to gain more knowledge and wisdom everyday, but always more wisedom
help people who need help
always respect women, even if they are a dog (get it)
get stronger everyday, physicly and mentally
always try your best even if you know you'll fail
don't tell others what to do with their own lifes, suggest something once or twice but don't force it
don't let what others say and do effect what you think and do, think and do for yourself
if you know you're about to die, go down fighting not like a punk
and most important, cats over dogs all day......

The boundaries of one man's freedoms begin where his actions begin to harm those of another man.

Actually lions dont kill the former leaders of their pride, they just overpower them and drive them out. And I've never heard anything about lions killing the offspring of the previous leader, they'd be the children of the females in the pride, and they'd still be raised.




All social animals evolved empathy, they wouldn't be successful if they didn't.

@IAmsSon: you have to be insane to think you have to believe in good and evil in order to sustain moral values. I am an atheist, I don't believe in good or evil but I have strong ethics.

This is an interesting thread.

I do not see that being an atheist, agnostic, or believer has much to do with specific moral decisions. The men who burned Joan of Arc, a specific decision and subsequent act, thought God willed it, while their co-religionists later thought she was a saint.

So which is it? Do we burn the witch or not?

If God exits, then he is a god. God, like all gods, has no problem inciting the witchburners, and encouraging the canonizers, and indeed, forcing upon Joan the fatal gift which ensures that she will be burned for doing a god's will.

I am not picking on the Christian god. The Dark Lord is just as helpful to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita when Arjuna tries to abdicate to prevent wholesale slaughter in a civil war.

Given the quality of divine moral guidance about any specific yes-or-no moral decision, any divinity's guidance, then I honestly cannot see how atheists or agnostics are at any disadvantage compared to others.

Why do christians think that their morality comes from the Bible?

They put themselves down by claiming so. I would sincerely hope that without the bible these folk would still be decent people. If all that is keeping them from doing wrong is a 2000 year old book and the threat of hell for misbehaving then they are not good people full stop.

Those who are good because they think about the concept of ""What you would avoid suffering yourself, seek not to impose on others" are the decent one's because they have the ability to empathise with their fellow man.

I completely agree with you here. I will also add that Good and Evil are a product of human evolution. One doesn't require God for this hypothesis (this thinking neither supports of refutes God). In his book, The Science of Good and Evil Michael Shermer puts forth a very good case for origins of morality:

It's not wrong - to you. But wait until someone more capable and stronger imposes their will on you and enslaves you. Then tell everyone it's not wrong.

Wombat could you expand on this comment a little please. I can appreciate you don't need a biblical sense of morality to codify a set of ethics, but doesn't any ethical framework exist to minimise the effects of evil and maximise the effects of good? (Of course good and evil are almost universally culturally determined values) This would mean that ethics implicity recognises the existence of good and evil (or constructs of a similar type/different name) eg constructive/destructive

For example most ethical systems would say that harming another person was bad/evil, but then place a number of caveats/modifiers on that initial value. So, harming one to save many, harming a killer to save a victim etc.

It gets really interesting when ethics looks at other human constructs, like the value of human life. First you have to define human and life. Then you usually have to add modifiers like age, quality of life etc. So, can you create and destroy an embryo to heal the spinal cord of another. Where does the right of one person end, and anothers begin?

Religions have historically been recorders and codifiers of human values, because the philosophical questioning that creates religions in the first place, is almost identical to the questioning which creates ethical systems.

To put it simply. How do you personally determine what is good and what is evil, particularly when the ethical situation becomes complex? For me it comes back to the things I believe in. I also believe that the things I believe in have a logical basis, because that's how my mind works.

Do I personally believe their wrong? Yes.

Do the people who do own slaves, murder, beat wives, and abuse children believe those things are wrong? Probably not most of them.

What you, me and the other 90% of the world think is wrong doesn't mean the other 10% thinks the same.

Good post, Mr Walker, except I would like to suggest this part is not necessarily correct reasoning.

The philosophical questioning behind religion is more about origins/destinations/superiority and any philosophising about values usually carries an implied cause for those values (i.e. they came from God). This philosophising about values in religion is done because religion adopts these [values] as a tool for projecting itself as a 'total life system', not because they are inherent to religion itself.

Philosophising about pure ethics/morality without any religious overtone has no notion of origins etc., and there is no necessity for any cause for those values to exist - they are purely a societal phenomenon.

Imo, the philosophy of religion is completely distinct from the philosophy of ethics/morality.

QUOTE (Michael Shermer)
If God does not exist, then what is the origin of morality? The answer presented in part 1 of this book is that evolution generated moral sentiments out of a need for a system to maximize the benefits of living in small bands and tribes. Evolution created and cultured honed moral principles out of an additional need to curb the passions of the body and mind. And culture, primarily through organized religion, codified those principles into moral rules and precepts.


And I couldnt let this one go. In my opinion it is wrong, at a very basic level.

Let's ignore its opening premise, which suggests that we have to find an evolutionary reason for ethics, morality etc because god does not exist.

Despite the opinions of some other contributors, there is little, or no, evidence among animals of any moral sentiments. In fact, evolution has nothing to do with either sentiment or morality. Most observations of "moral" behaviour in animals are imputed by humans applying their own cultural values (particularly of the late 20 century. Observers of animals in all the preceding centuries came to completely differnt conclusions.

And some contributors simply refuse to acknowlredge facts. Primates, who live in conditions very similar to those described above as producing honed moral principles, actually display very non moral principles.They kill injured or different young. Senior males do kill not only any potential rival young males, and very young baby apes, but also impregnate all the females as soon as they take over a band.
The killing of breast feeding young promotes fertility in the females, and increases the dominant male's chances of propogating his own genetic material. Young males hunt and kill apes of different species and even from different "tribes" of their own species.

My point is that; morals, religion, ethics and philosophy are only possible in a self aware consciousness, combined with a brain capable of cognitive thought. The evolution of human society and culture, when looked at dispassionately, draws one inevitably to this conclusion. If there was no god, then all the constructs are created by the godlike nature of sentient, and self aware, man; rather than through the forces of evolution.

It may have been culture which codified the principles, but strangely it was only a very few individuals in each culture who did so, and in most known cultures they specifically attributed their codification, not to themselves, but to a supernatural source.

The reason for this phenomenum is, of course, open to even further debate.

Inside each of our minds we develop a map of reality from all of our experiences throughout life. This map is what we base our beliefs and veiws on and it can be very sad occasion when you come across people who thinks that their own particular map of reality is the correct one. Even so if they use it to make choices which will effect their whole existance. This is because all maps of reality are a distortion.

Popular culture in the Western World promotes a very negative map of reality. This is because we live in a consumer society where companies want you to buy their products. The aim of this map of reality is to make you negative so that you will buy products promoted as cool or popular.
It is a sad state of affairs when nations allow religion to be targeted in this way to further their companies ability to make money. Our nations and especially the USA could be seen as being contracending as we are supposed to be about freedom and human rights yet we ignore the negative impact a consumer society has on peoples lives and in this case afterlives too.

You need to go away and seriouslly question your map of reality. You need to ask yourself -

Am I being led by a consumer society?
Why is the consumer society trying to lead me?
What does it have to gain?
Why is Atheism legal in my nation?
What people made it legal?
What do they have to gain from it being legal?
Do I have the ability to question things?
Am I really questioning things or am I really just following the popular culture?
Have I taken a biased veiwpoint?

Then I recomend you go and study philosophy because a hell of a lot of it is brushed under the carpet and ignored in order to get materialism to work.

I can see your pov leonardo, but answer me this, how do you differentiate between the reasoning which creates cultural attributions of good and evil; and the reasoning which causes people to respond to concepts of good and evil, by constructing faith based answers to the big questions, which encapsulate those cultural attributions.

Or, again, is there any point in having an ethical system which does not encapsulate the spiritual and emotional needs of people, as well as their physical needs

To me, any religion is simply, or not so simply, a cultural response to all these concepts/big picture questions, in the same way morality or ethics is.

I separate out religion here from faith which is a personal pov growing from ones own unique experience. We can all hold personal ethical positions, and personal faiths, but so called universal ethical positions or societal ethical positions are much like religions in that they codify a more universal approach to individual experiences and impute certain value positions.

By recognising ethics/morality encapsulates a code for living, and religion encapsulates a code for dying and what, in that belief, happens after death. Religion only encapsulates ethics/morality [a code for living] insofar as it promises some sort of afterlife reward/punishment for 'good' or 'bad' behaviour in life.



I don't see ethics/morality as any attempt to answer 'big questions'. There are no big questions in deciding how to live, the only unknowns [your big questions] are in what, if anything, happens after we die. I agree religion is a cultural response to this, but not ethics or morality.

Christianity does not just focus on what happens after death, it also includes our relationship with God during our physical life.

To what end, WWF?

Morality is following the rules of conduct based in societal laws, which are founded in religious dogma. Evey society is different, which precludes "common" sense...imo, of course.

It's different for each person.

We're an odd lot, we humans. Think "dominatrix" or "master"...and S & M... Some people live to be enslaved, others delight in enslaving. It's win win for some.

We are instinctual creatures...but I don't think right and wrong is part of the instinctual process. Instinctively we are fearful or fearless...which, I suppose, over the passage of time, has been bastardized into "good or bad"... We are not "good or bad" instinctively. That's learned, not instinctual.

I mostly agree... : ) However, I will take issue with "love" being instinctual... It's not, imo.

They do kill them COF, in fact, I recently watched a documentary on Discovery where they show the new leader killing the off-spring of the lion he disposed of, and at least according to that documentary, the previous leader is usually killed, or so severely injured that he dies soon after.



So, then you agree, that there is nothing wrong with enslaving others if, you have the capability to enslave them?

Well...I wouldn't go that far. I consider right and wrong to be our interpretations of our instinctual process, but "good and bad" imply something a little beyond human concept. They imply a more global force. I consider good and bad (Good vs Evil) to be a product derived from spirituality (not to be confused with religion).



I would agree. Good and Bad come from the spirituality that a given society follows.

For someone who seems to be a stickler for context, Iams, you sure do like to misrepresent what others are implying when it suits the argument you wish to make. Try looking at what I said from a social, and not a selfish (individual), perspective.

There is a mutual and voluntary contract entered into in that kind of situation though.

Trying to sexually enslave a person who wants no part of it is totally different and obviously wrong purely from the fact that one party is not voluntarily compliant.

IAMS does it ever boggle your mind when someone claims evil or bad - doesnt exist?? I find that weird...don't you??

I am with you on this one..I mean we all know that doing harm and hurting people is bad and wrong and in many cases evil to the core..so why the feeeck are there people wearing rose tinted glasses that don't see this??


I'll bet the mindless killers that are left to rot in the jail cells are all saying - But bad and good dont exist..neither does evil..so whats the problem?

Well if it never existed buddy, you wouldnt be rotting in your cell now would ya??

How so??

Let me get this straight...


IAMS quoted someone that posted up the following...



So IAMS saw this and thought WTF?? <--well to sum it all up and I fully thought the same...W T F???

because when you say BAD doesn't exist..you can fit evil into that category too...and dont tell me you cant because..you can..evil is seen as BAD .. so IAMS has pulled this quote up and if he didn't...I would have...difference is IAMS is more lenient than BM lol ..

WHY THE HELL would anyone say BAD or EVIL doesnt exist?? what kind of silly statement is that?? i mean I have seen some stupid posts in my time but this one is in my top ten silly statements ever quoted good and bad doesn't exist !!!!! that doesn't make sense...it's not even in the same zip code as sense !!!!!!!!!!!!

So if I called anyone that doesnt believe they exist.. an evil git <---they wouldnt be offended because in their eyes its just an opinion..and its NOT a bad opinion..no...no no cuz see..they feel BAD doesn't exist either...so YAY

you take the word - WRONG and look it up..you will find bad in there ...evil...if you looked up any one of those words they all go hand in hand...

BUT guess what..the people that say bad and evil dont exist..are finding it easy to call something wrong ..WOW

SIGH!!!


Acck just pretend that the word WRONG means something else IAMS LMAO when in Rome !! lol

Me and you would say that the terrorists who blew up the twin towers were evil and wrong correct? But they figured they were doing something Good and that they were going to get rewarded in the after life for their supposed good deed.



We see it as Evil and wrong they saw it as Good and right.

But bad is not necessarily evil. While I don't agree that bad does not exist (I define it as processes contrary to instinctive history), I will say that evil (and good), do not exist as absolutes, but merely as interpretations of a given societies spiritual structure.



Perhaps it was meant that they do not exist as absolutes.

No, Leo, I am merely restating what you said into the context of my analogy. You pointing out that someone else will eventually come and be powerful enough to enslave me only reinforces my point. It seems we are saying that the only thing which makes something right is whether it benefits us or not.

It does boggle the mind, BM.

You didn't read what I said?

You weren't restating what I said, you changed the meaning of it entirely. I said...



...meaning that, from the individual (selfish) perspective it isn't 'wrong' as it benefits that individual. This is true from that individual's selfish perspective.

What you 'restated' was...



...meaning in the general (societal) sense there is nothing 'wrong' with enslavement, which is obviously incorrect as it does not bring benefit in the general sense.

So, by redefining what I said you changed the meaning to represent what you wanted to project as your argument, when that was not what I stated.

Now, we adopt the societal morals/ethics as our primary behaviour (generally) unless in extreme/stressful situations or if isolated or in a condition known as sociopathy. So what is right/wrong changes according to the situation we are in, but usually it is not simply because it benefits us in the individual sense - although that does affect how we view the things we do.

There's a lot of diversity in experiments and most of them can be traced as exaggerations or replications of mammals with less capacity to abstract life and death. Humans can avoid abstraction and often do, it does work well in certain respects - ants survive well. However, simple abstraction about life and death with respect to game theory of social networks presents some very basic choices. Do the same thing and die or try something else. One thing that seems to work is that rather than taking advantage of someone because you have a cognitive ability that they don't, and ensuring that you remain a resource for that ability so you can live well but die certainly - to actually work to translate these cognitive advantages between people to level the playing feild and increase the average processing speed of the species and have a chance that a critical mass will be approached. If I'm the only person on the planet who can do complex math in my head and this calculation process hasn't been translated to everyone my odds of survival are 0%. If I say, invent the calculator, they just went up a bit. If I waste my time encrypting the wealth of this cognitive translation to become some sort of elite or whatever, then I've stopped devoting my resources towards translating more ability to more people and my chance of survival goes back down to 0%. In fact, in order to be an elite I'd not only have to stop translating abilities, I'd have to actively attack people who try to do so. It ends up being negative survival value = suicide. It only takes a small breakthrough, say a 100 year extension to substantially increase the odds of another 300 year extension etc...

So yeah, it's easy to take advantage of people, but it's suicide. The argument of it facilitating survival is absurd when one looks at the fact the the leading cause of death thus far has been birth. It's been 100% fatal. We might be able to change that. If you encrypt wealth the odds are 0% = suicide. If you translate wealth the odds are above 0% = trying to survive. It's the difference between whether or not a human being has abstracted human level cognition or not - actually understands what suicide and survival mean rather than parroting the terms to have sex and a feeling of being sophisticated. It's not clear why people parrot so much and encrypt wealth, but then again, it's not clear why people abstract suicide in the first place and then commit it. There may actually be a translation in and of itself that toggles this switch in human cognition to turn off the parrotive cognition.

Here is the exact quote I was replying to. And when you see the WHOLE quote, you do seem to be saying it's only wrong because someone else may eventually come enslave me, which supports my point.

Fortunately, we're capable of more complex thought than lions. When such a primitive and wasteful system can be broken away from, it's only the fearful and unadaptable who object.

Just my opinion anyway.

This is a fascinating discussion, although I think we may end up having to agree to disagree, My definition of religion encompasses everything from early cromagnon hunting rites to modern gaeaism. I think that religion was one legitimate response to the questions like, why are we here? what is our innate purpose in life. How can we best relate to our fellow humans, and make sense of the world around us.

Even in christianity, only half of the ten commandments relate to our relationship with god,.The others promote an ethical relationship with our fellow humans. The old testament has more laws and rules about safe living, and practices designed to strengthen communities, than it does about worshipping god. Certainly these were enforced using the authority of god but they were positive ethical and logical practices,without that element, as well.

I believe ethics and morality are human constructs designed to look logically at the same big questions about what it means to be human. For example the "value of a human life" has ethical, moral and religious connotations, and it is very difficult to separate out one from the other. Most religions attach specific values to human life and so do ethicists and moralists.

It is a good discussion, Mr Walker and while we might not agree on pov's it makes for much thought provoking.




While I disagree with the first sentence in this snippet, I agree that ethicists and moralists do place a value on life - but not for the same reason as religion.

Ethics and morals place value on life because of ownership, not because of any perceived purpose, and so there is no implication of what it means to be human in the sense of "why are we here", but only in the sense of "we are here". There is no attempt to address the big questions of purpose, death, after-death etc in this.

Religion is humanity's attempt to explain why we are here, and it has to encompass the fact that we are here before it can do that. Thus religion includes the ethical and moral values of life, but also places a value because it presupposes our purpose.

Oh no, I'm sure they saw it as wrong... what they felt was that they were justified. I think there's a subtle difference.

Kinda like if you go out and kill someone who abused your or your kid... you know it's wrong, but you feel justified.

I know to some people the idea that there is absolutely no purpose is unpleasant but why do people feel that there is a purpose at all?

I don't think there is any purpose to human existence in the grand scheme of things in the same way there is no grand purpose for a top level predator. There are immediate purposes for sure but not huge universal ones. It is enough that I am. You can define your own purpose as long as the golden rule is not broken. Do no harm.

I sort of agree, Papaver.

While there is no evidence life has a purpose, there is none that it doesn't either, so I'm sitting on the fence with this. However, I am entirely comfortable with either outcome, as I put my efforts into the joy of living, not preparing myself for dying.

Agreed