RE: a bad person
December 6, 2015 at 1:05 pm
(This post was last modified: December 6, 2015 at 1:11 pm by Homeless Nutter.)
(December 6, 2015 at 12:44 pm)Sappho Wrote: You're missing the point. I asked if/why we can judge people over rules that were made up by other people, mostly even in the past.
I see. So it is just a repeat of the same topic as usual. Oh, well...
Making judgments is how our brains work - there's no escaping nature. We make judgments about pretty much everything we encounter - both individually and as societies. Other people and groups of people are no different - we can't stop our brains from assessing their behavior in terms of potential danger to our survival. It's just a matter of what criteria we use and how rational, beneficial and adaptable they are.
So what other criteria do you propose we use? What are available alternatives? Other than judging people using rules that were made up by other people, mostly in the past - except that those people in the past claimed a magic man in the sky told them those rules, while no one else was looking? How is that better - in any practical sense, since morality based on revelation tends to be EXTREMELY resistant to changing circumstances and therefore likely to be harmful? Just look at ISIS - bronze age morality in action.
"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." - George Bernard Shaw