Where are the Morals?

[Harris]

Nope, Natural Selection doesn't make mystical stories of the creation of man. It only deals with how species change over generations. It is also not blind and not random. So please throw your strawman versions away.

Please share with us your fabulous information on the mechanism of NATURAL SELECTION if, according to you, it is not blind, random, and unguided process.

On one side, you are claiming that Natural Selection is not BLIND and UNGUIDED process whereas atheist celebrity, DAWKINS, thinks otherwise:

“Natural Selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, and no sight at all.”
Page 5
The Blind Watchmaker
Richard Dawkins.

Atheism doesn't have a moral code. It also doesn't have an us-vs-them mentality, superstitions, and so-called-gods moralilty. In fact it doesn't have anything other than the lack of belief in god(s). So an athiest is forced to come up with their own morality. Considering they're under represented in prison (excluding states that outlaw athiesm), they're doing a pretty good job.

By nature man is a selfish being who is least bothered about moral criterions of other people. At the liberty, he has the power to rationalize almost anything carelessly that fits in the models of his satisfaction and pleasures. If everyone get freedom to fabricate his own morals according to desired preferences that freedom has the power to create monocracy, dictatorship, and tyranny in the society because people are more inclined towards their pleasures and have serious limitations to see the future consequences.

Quote:Aisha was not the only woman who has a historical significance and who was married at a young age.
Irrelavent. Other people commiting paedophilia paedophilia doesn't excuse them nor Muhammad.

What is the source of your information? On what authority are you accusing Prophet Mohammad for paedophilia?

Atheism doesn't provide a moral code. However, atheist don't lack morality. The come up with one of their own.

I repeat my comments:

By nature man is a selfish being who is least bothered about moral criterions of other people. At the liberty, he has the power to rationalize almost anything carelessly that fits in the models of his satisfaction and pleasures. If everyone get freedom to fabricate his own morals according to desired preferences that freedom has the power to create monocracy, dictatorship, and tyranny in the society because people are more inclined towards their pleasures and have serious limitations to see the future consequences.

We know he (Mohammad) was a paedophile. So lets hear it Muslims, "paedophilia is ok."

You have to show me undisputable source on the authority of which you are accusing Prophet Mohammad for Paedophilia in a Heroic manner.

Science can modify primal senses, feelings, and emotions. It's called drugs.

Are you a drug addict? If not then why are you reluctant in having some fun by having those SCIENTIFIC DRUGS to MODIFY your PRIMAL SENSES, FEELINGS, and EMOTIONS?

Plus, didn't Mohammad split the moon in half according to you? We've been to the moon, and no trace of a splite exist.

People until recently did not know about Halocline, process of child birth, the way the universe came into being, and many other things which Quran had pointed to about fifteen hundred years ago.

Simply science has not reached to the point where it can discover everything about the moon. Else, if by now those facts are already available, do you think that people who detest Islam would let that information to escape in the public domain? Never, for them that information has a high strategic value.

And if you do not bring them a miracle, they say: "Why have you not brought it?" Say: "I but follow what is revealed to me from my Lord. This (the Quran) is nothing but evidences from your Lord, and a guidance and a mercy for a people who believe."

Al A'raf (7)
-Verse 203-

Quote:If you were a Muslim (which I doubt) then most probably you left Islam to have free sex. Free sex is one of the major temptation that causes theist to become an atheist.

OR ... someone left because they reliaze how bad shit crazy it is.

I would be obliged if you show some illogical things mentioned in Quran and Hadith.

1.6% of atheist in the US. 0.07% of atheist in prison. Who is doing the misrepresentation?

Please provide some government source that confirm these statistics. Otherwise, your statement is nothing but a Blah!

Let me correct that for you
"Religion gives NO knowledge about good and bad therefore it is not like atheism that faces dilemma of distinguishing between what is good and what is bad. Even the belief that God is the creator of everything is WILL NOT give a distinction between good and bad."

You have added two words “NO” and “WILL NOT” without references that may serve to support them. Both these words are insignificant.

Homosexuality was never immoral. Stupid religious people only claimed it was. You should learn the difference between claims and reality.

Oh! Another supporter of homosexuality.
It is so intimidating that you (atheists) have replaced God with science but when you talk about homosexuality, you utterly ignore your own Majestic Science.

Quote:I have already expressed my views that out of 7 billion people, Atheist have not yet reached even 200 million mark. This fact is enough to state that atheism is irrational, illogical, and goes against the nature of man.

Appeal to popularity fallacy.

If you have solid argument then bring in that instead of throwing FALLACY expression. These FALLACY lingos normally work well to confusion general audiences.

Godmade laws lead humanity to atrocities.

19 and 20 centuries had shown otherwise. In the contemporary world, this authoritarianism continues in the countries where atheists are in power.

Quote:Quran teaches that fornication, adultery, incest (based on consensus or not), homosexuality, alcoholism, gambling, disrespect to elder parents, disrespect to neighbours, meanness ... are the acts which are illogical, irrational, and against nature of man and therefore sins. I committedly agree with all that.

I wonder that it includes pedophelia .... nope not here.

I will wait to see the source on which you have founded your LOUD CLAIMS.

What part of "there is no athiest spokes person" do you not understand? You seem to always want to tell us what we think instead of listenning to what we actually think.

I do not care whether there is a spokesperson in atheism or not. I do care about rational and logical arguments no matter whether presented by some spokesperson or by you.

Because the atheist can come up with better morals if they discuss them instead of proclaiming a higher morals because I-have-god-on-my-side.

Yes, we know about atheist dictators and their wonderful morals.

I can show you many creation stories involving eggs, either the universe, or a god coming out of an egg.
It doesn't prove or disprove anything about gods existing, coming out of eggs, or anything of the sort.

I can show you many creation stories involving gods with a wife, and children.
This doesn't disprove Islam which says god had no wife or children or show anything. It doesn't mean that there is a god or that he had children or a wife.

Women, children, clay, birds, snakes are things that primitive cultures used often in their stories, myths and legends.

See! The Hadith that you had presented was about “creation of man from clay” and I have structured my response accordingly.

If you give me a Hadith that shows “creation stories involving eggs, women, children, birds, and snakes, either the universe or a god coming out of an egg,” I will then structure my response according to that.

First you will have to explain in laymans terms what you mean by Natural Selection has no defense and so on, if I'm to understand what you mean.

You have to understand one simple thing. When scientists start quarrelling with each other that means there is something missing in the observable and testable facts.

I will do my best to explain why evolutionary biologists fail to explaining Meiosis in terms of Natural Selection. But before you will go further, please watch this video so you will have some elementary understanding about the Terms that are used in the argument.

http://vimeo.com/22416575

Things are complicated with sexually reproducing organisms. Reproduction does not operate with entire genomes; it continually shuffles existing genes into new combinations produced in the course of meiosis and fertilization that weed out the less advantageous combinations. By no means is this process of selecting combinations the aftermath of trial and errors (or chance).

Evolutionary biologists typically picture this process beginning with a gene duplication event. The most common mechanism occurs during the crossing-over step of meiosis (a kind of cell division that produces sex cells, or gametes, in sexually reproducing organisms). During this division, homologous chromosomes swap segments of DNA. Sometimes, however, chromosomes swap genetic material of unequal length. When this happens, one chromosome (the one that gets the smaller piece) ends up losing some DNA. This results in duplicate copies of a gene on one chromosome.

When this occurs, one of the two genes may begin to vary without adversely affecting the function of the organism, while the other performs the original function. In the jargon of evolutionary biology, mutational changes in gene duplicates are “Selectively Neutral.” These gene-duplication events allow nature room to experiment safely.

Eventually, as mutational changes accumulate, a new gene sequence may arise in a new organism that can code for a novel protein fold and function. At that point, Natural Selection can favour the new gene and its protein product, preserving and passing it along to future generations—OR SO THE STORY GOES.

This scenario has the advantage of allowing portions of the genome to vary freely through many generations, giving mutations many opportunities to “search” the space of possible base sequences without being punished for drifting into valleys of lost or diminished function.

But this scenario faces an overriding problem: the extreme rarity of sequences capable of forming stable folds and performing biological functions. Since Natural Selection does nothing to help generate new folded, functional sequences, but rather can only preserve such sequences once they have arisen, Random Mutation alone must search for the exceedingly rare folded and functional sequences within the vast sea of combinatorial possibilities.

However, folded, functional sequences of amino acids are exceedingly rare within sequence space. A folding domain is a portion of a larger protein that exhibits a distinctive fold. For sequences 150 amino acids long, only 1 in 1074 sequences will be capable of folding into a stable protein.

For a sequence to achieve a protein fold is only a first step, however. A protein must be folded to be functional, but a folded protein is not necessarily a functional protein. And although sequences capable of forming stable protein folds are necessary to any significant evolutionary innovation, Natural Selection cannot select for the presence of a fold unless it also performs a function that confers a specific functional advantage on an organism.

A telling conclusion follows from this: The probability of any given Mutational Trial Generating (or “finding”) a specific functional protein among all the possible 150 residue amino-acid sequences is 1 chance in 1077—that is, one chance in one hundred thousand, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion.

HOW MANY TRIALS?
When statisticians or scientists assess whether a chance hypothesis provides a plausible explanation for the occurrence of an event, they do not just evaluate the probability of that particular event occurring once; they evaluate the probability of the event occurring given the number of opportunities it has to occur. If the conditional probability of the chance hypothesis, given the number of opportunities it has to occur, is less than ½, then it is more likely than not that the event will not happen by chance. It will be viewed as implausible—more likely to be false than true. Conversely, if the conditional probability of the chance hypothesis, given the number of opportunities it has to occur, is more than ½, then it is more likely than not that the event in question will occur by chance. It will be deemed plausible—more likely to be true than false. And, of course, the smaller the conditional probability associated with a hypothesis, the more implausible the hypothesis—the more likely the chance hypothesis is to be false than true.

What you just typed would seem to be completely irrelevant to what I was saying about the ridiculous myths in Islam involving different colored clay explaining the diversity among humans.

Yes, it is relevant because you are frequently switching between Hadith, myths, and science. I had given you responses according to you questions.

I've briefly searched the topic of the adaptive function of sex, and at a glance it would seem that biologists have concluded that there's many different reasons why sexual reproduction began but they just haven't agreed which one of the many possibilities is correct.

It would be illogical to think "Scientists can't agree which hypothesis is correct so all the hypothesis must be wrong" This would be like looking at the big bang theory and the steady state theory before the discovery of microwave background radiation and just saying "Ok well there's two different theories here, scientists can't agree on so both are definitely wrong."

Please check my response above.

I never accused Muhammad or anyone of being a child molester to begin with, although he would be considered one in this day and age in any English community.

I think even most Muslim communities in England would be against the marriage of an older man to a 9 year old just because they're used to living under secular laws and customs.

As for English society, in 1533, England enacted the first secular law criminalizing "the abominable vice of buggery" and making it punishable by hanging. Today picture shows different values.

Therefore, if some Muslims feel hesitant and shy under changing trends that only shows their lack of knowledge and understanding about Islam.

I'm wondering if you read or understood my post at all because you seem to be arguing against points I never made, I never said Aisha didn't like Muhammad, or that she spoke badly of him.

My point is that it's my opinion that marrying a 9 year old is wrong in this day and age in England, this isn't just due to what the 9 year old wants, it's for the sake of a society which isn't perfect but does have some standards of how long children should be in education for and when a person who's growing up can make a decision based on wisdom and maturity.

Also it's my opinion that the actions of a man 1400 years ago should not be seen as something to emulate in modern society.

I took your comments as if you are maligning Prophet Mohammad for marrying a 9 year old. My response was an attempt to remove misconception about that marriage.

I agree that in today’s world education plays a vital role in any flourishing society. Early marriage may even hinder a person from getting elementary education. But that was one of the major reason why Prophet Mohammad married young Aisha. He took her for the purpose to educate her after looking her intellectual capacities. This is perfectly justifiable fact because she in reality became the teacher of some renowned scholars in Islam and played a crucial role in spreading the message of Islam.

Quote:Here I believe that atheist is vulnerable to all immoral acts due to lack of morality in atheism. Uncontrollable personal desires have power to structure, control and derive personal preferences, which in general are very much prone to wickedness.

No because I could be an atheist and kill prostitutes or I could be a theist and worship the god of killing prostitutes. It makes no difference.

Please elaborate what does that mean.

And yes personal desires can lead to things which you may call wicked but not in general. In general most humans desire safety, cooperativeness, efficiency, kindness and so on.

“IN GENERAL,” people do not have liberty to implement their beloved desires universally. If a person has no fear of accountability and somehow gain power and possession, it only takes blink of an eye for him to become a nasty monster.

Quote:Rapist who “rape the girl, kill her, then cut the body up, and send the limbs to the parents” is a retarded person who has no brain for saying:

"No, it's not right to marry a girl that young, she should probably finish her education and mature properly"

No you misunderstand me............

I'm not saying one specific atheist goes out and rapes a girl and cuts up her body, then he also says that girl should probably finish her education........

I'm making a point that yes an atheist can be barbaric and there's no codes or laws within a disbelief in god to tell him to do otherwise.

But there's no god there to tell him he has to rape and cut up a girl either, there's no god there telling him he can't say that marriage to a 9 year old is wrong, he can have his own opinion.

In Chinese and Hindu cultures, people practiced marriages even with unborn child for social and economical motives. Those marriages did not hurt anyone. The age at which marriage is consumed regulates the standards of good and evil.

We have proof that Prophet Mohammad consumed his marriage when Aisha was mature enough to bear a child and mature enough to make decisions based on her likeness or dislike. Further, she had a firm consent of her parents and other community members. That happened when she was 12 – 13.

In Massachusetts, minimum age of marriage for male is 14 and 12 for female with parental and judicial consent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_marr...of_America

So, what is the point you are trying to make here.

And I have just about enough faith in society to believe that the majority of people are altruistic enough to form functional, and non wicked societies.

True, but one monster is enough to create unforgettable misery. In order to reduce any chance of having such monsters moral accountability is inevitable.

And also wise enough to form opinions based on knowledge of the consequences of actions in the real world. Not just made up consequences of what will happen in a fictional place after people die.

Man has a power to rationalize any immoral act. Hitler (for example) had built a whole system to rationalize the idea that abolishing Jews is a noble deed.

What's funny is that when I lost my faith I was a prude by Muslim standards (I'm still a prude by western standards)

And 3 months ago, I was against open marriages

Do you believe that the Jews worshipped Ezra? How can the hadiths be reliable?

You seems to be a confused person.

Religion tells you to commit genocide and other detestable deeds in the name of God.
Is that the kind of morals you're advocating, OP? Because I'm fine with my own moral standards, thank you.

Do you have any idea who these people are?

Stalin
Mao Zedong
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Pol Pot
Benito Mussolini
Hideki Tojo
Nicolae Ceausescu
Slobodan Milosevic
Kim Sung