Social Darwinism: Right or Wrong

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

This is an interesting post. You are willing to face the fact that the value of human life is an evolutionarily beneficial delusion?

Value is another name for utility. When the indirect consequence of permissiveness towards casual termination of other human life upon your own safety is considered, the value, or utility, of other human lives to you is likely pretty damn high - in many cases a very substantial percentage of the value your place upon your own safety - compared to the value of your typical non-human life.

So there is nothing delusional about the utility to YOU of other people's lives. The only delusion here is yours about your own perceptiveness, and about the utility of your strident yet profoundly obtuse rants to others.

No, value is not another name for utility. Values can be non-utilitarian in a philosophically idealistic worldview. They are not one and the same.

And why are you using deliberately obtuse (your word) vocabulary when there's much simpler ways to say it?

"If killing people is morally indifferent, my own life is at risk."

Is what you seem to be saying. But this evo-psych theory can easily be turned on its head:

"If killing people is morally indifferent, I can use that power to increase my resources and protect myself further."

There we go, hard evidence that you are wrong. You should stick to sending me nasty PMs. They were more entertaining.

I bet a lot of people think you ARE special, amigo.

But if your comprehensive abilities didn't depart so sharply from the standard deviation, you would know that it is not what "you find". It's what "it is rational to find".

There are people out there who say they find square circles, and teapots orbiting around Jupiter as well. Don't you wish to be more rational than those?

Is there anything rational about fears and desires? What motivates is what motivates. You can't figure that out from scratch. Whatever premises you may choose to begin with in attempting to reason your way to a set of values, there must at the foundational level be desires which are served. What is rational is always in the service of some valuation which itself is not rational. It isn't rational to think otherwise.

What is all this hippie crap about fears and desires?

Everything needs to boils down to something rational in order to make sense.

Otherwise, Hitchens-forbid we end up in a situation where we have justified murder as a "desire" and subject rationality to fulfilling this desire.

It sure appears that Vinny likes to portray positions which cast the atheist character he plays on these forums in stereotypically despised ways. But why?

I guessing the answer lies behind one of these three doors:


Door 1: Vinny is a theist looking to make atheists look bad.

Door 2: Vinny is a self loathing atheist.

Door 3: Vinny is no theist but harbors the same low opinion of atheists who are vociferous about atheism.


I suspect the correct answer lies behind door 3. Anyone else have a theory? What would you say, Vin? Tell you what, you answer and then I'll tell you whether you're saying it straight or if you're still in character.

It sure appears that "whateverist" likes to cast aspersions on people he disagrees with. But why?

1. Because he's wrong and he doesn't want to admit it.
2. Because he doesn't care about being right and wrong.
3. Because he likes doing shady, unethical things to other people.

I suspect the current answer lies behind....well, I'll let you decide.