RE: The argument from morality is scary.
January 3, 2013 at 12:02 pm
(This post was last modified: January 3, 2013 at 12:05 pm by Faith No More.)
(January 3, 2013 at 12:29 am)naimless Wrote: It's a fair argument. Once I realised the universe had no inherent morality to it, or I had an insignificant effect to its 13.7 billion years, it did and still does make me question if "good" or "bad" actually exists.
Just because the universe has no inherent morality to it does not mean that humankind cannot assign what it has deemed to be good or bad to certain actions. Rape may not be inherently bad, but that does not lessen the negative attributes that we as humans have attributed to it. Simply put, the lack of a god telling us something is good or bad does not mean that all actions are neutral.
(January 3, 2013 at 12:29 am)naimless Wrote: A classic case is a parent thinking they are doing a good action by providing everything for their kids. It doesn't really work like that though, it could also effect their lives negatively.
Are you trying to imply that because we cannot be certain of the effects of our actions we should simply give up trying to assign any sort of good or bad attributes to them?
(January 3, 2013 at 12:29 am)naimless Wrote: I'm not saying if I rape or kill someone it will be good, but I don't know if it will be bad either.
Well, would you think it would be bad if someone raped you? Would it cause you harm? Obviously, this is not the end all to determining what is and isn't wrong, but it is a very good place to start.
(January 3, 2013 at 12:00 pm)Mark 13:13 Wrote: The term "natural number" refers either to a member of the set of positive integers 1, 2, 3, ... (Sloane's A000027) or to the set of nonnegative integers 0, 1, 2, 3, ... (Sloane's A001477; e.g., Bourbaki 1968, Halmos 1974). Regrettably, there seems to be no general agreement about whether to include 0 in the set of natural numbers. In fact, Ribenboim (1996) states "Let P be a set of natural numbers; whenever convenient, it may be assumed that 0 belongs to P ."
so I,m working on the basis of not assuming 0 belongs to the set.
and as I said someone on the forum challenged something I said on the basis that "nothing" cannot exist in the universe so the idea that we even need to even consider how something can come out of nothing was irrelevant.
I'm still not sure how this is relevant to anything in this thread...
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell