RE: Scientific knowledge versus spiritual knowledge
January 10, 2016 at 9:37 pm
(This post was last modified: January 10, 2016 at 9:39 pm by God of Mr. Hanky.)
(January 10, 2016 at 8:49 pm)ChadWooters Wrote:(January 9, 2016 at 6:26 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: You're forgetting another possibility -- that morality is a human construct.
Human construct? That rabbit hole can get pretty deep if you aren't careful. Some people also say that the truths of mathematics are human constructs too. Others go even further, saying that universals are conventions based on similar physical properties. Others go still further saying that the notion of physical existence is a human construct too and that all that remains are arbitrary collections of properties. Some go even further than that. They think that personal identity is constructed. Eventually you get to the point where everything in the entire universe is a construct of a construct constructed by nothing.
Sort of like all the above was constructed?

There are 8.5 planets in our solar system, if you count Pluto. There would be that many there with or without us here to observe and discuss that. Therefore, I'm quite sure that the phyisics which caused our universe and the mathematical parameters by which it exists aren't so on account of us. Nope, math is not a contruct, nor are the laws of physics.
Moralizing, on the other hand is something we do, which bears and fish don't. They didn't do that before we existed, and they won't when we're gone. That's because moral ideas are something that we made up and decided to live by, because they make the sort of social living which humanity, and humanity alone requires in order for more of us to survive and pass on our genes. We constructed these, not the fish, and probably not any remote and absentee deity.
Mr. Hanky loves you!