RE: Is the universe God?
February 8, 2014 at 7:01 pm
(This post was last modified: February 8, 2014 at 7:03 pm by Simon Moon.)
(February 8, 2014 at 4:55 pm)Sword of Christ Wrote: If God doesn't exist we are the only beings who exist can decide what right and wrong is as it's entirely limited and contained within our own brains. There would be no basis for morality beyond that.
The fact that we all inhabit the same physical world, subject to the same physical laws.
I can easily extrapolate that what I would not like to happen to me (death, pain, disease, slavery), most likely the vast majority of humanity would not like to happen to them, is plenty of motivation to treat others to maximize their well being.
Quote:If harming someone else brings benefit to yourself and/or the people you care about then whats the problem with it? We get to say what is moral after all.
It's easy to find out what the problem is. Just ask the people that are being harmed if they're alright with it.
If it harems the well being of others, it is not moral.
Quote:We had slavery for thousands of years why can't we just bring it back? There is nothing stopping us and it wouldn't do us any harm.
It would harm the well being of those being enslaved. That is the only reason necessary not to do it.
Quote:These aren't religious talking points just the facts of the world as you view it. You still haven't explained why slavery is wrong. Slavery is as old as civilization itself so why can't we have it?
Slavery is wrong because it harms the well being of those being enslaved.
Quote:You still haven't said why it isn't ok. If you have no reason then whats your objection to these passages? I know why I'd object to them.
It's wrong because it harms the well being of others.
Quote: I'm happy to admit that the Bible is flawed and imperfect much like it's human authors.
Which brings up a different question. If the Bible is flawed, how do you know which parts are the flawed parts and which ones aren't? What is your method of determining this?
Quote:God is reality that's what I'm saying here. The arguments from morality are particularly strong imo, you know you're on shaky ground here.
Nothing but unsupported assertions is all you have.
Quote:The Bible was written by people who had a covenant with God but they weren't perfect they had their own cultural and their own values and the Bible reflects all of this. They got some things wrong fair enough.
Again, what algorithm do you apply to the Bible in order to discern the wrong parts from the right ones? There are over 30,000 Christian sects that differ quite a bit on this. How do you know you are the one that got it right?
How did you figure out that Exodus 21 is one of the flawed parts?
Quote:Why is there such a thing as human empathy? Don't say it's evolution either as evolution doesn't work like that. Even Dawkins wouldn't advise evolutionary morality, Adolf Hitler would.
Actually, evolution explains it just fine. All social species have some level of empathy for members of their group.
What does Hitler have to do with this? He was a creationist.
Quote:We get empathy from the struggle to survive and competition to pass on our DNA the strong surviving and weak perishing? You can say we're a social species but Alequeda terrorists, the Mafia and the Nazi's are sociable enough with their own people. Evolution doesn't operate on a whole species but individuals within the species. So if we want African slaves that's fine. It wouldn't detract from our own survival it would enhance it if anything.
You really don't get this. Evolution works on populations, not individuals.
Quote:Again evolution does not operate on that scale, there is a good reason why you would look after children, family and be co-operative with your social group of people who benefit you. What benefit to us our Africans and why can't we have some for slaves? You can't say "evolution says we can't" evolution doesn't care.
The fact is, empathy is part of our evolutionary past. It was a survival mechanism. The same empathy that causes those of us that are mentally healthy not to want to own another human being.
Quote:They're a different group of humans living in Africa and we have out-competed them, so we can have dibs on some African slaves. Good hardy physical specimens I'm sure they will be of some use to us. Ah no wait there's something still wrong with doing that isn't there? What could that something be I wonder?
They are still human beings.
Bonobo chimp females will adopt orphaned babies, even from competing groups. The same evolved trait in action.
Bla, bla, bla...
You just continue to repeat the same misunderstandings, same unsupported assertions...I'm done for a while.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
