(December 1, 2017 at 9:08 pm)PhilosophicalZebra Wrote: Finally, to wrap up this post, I want to make one more point: if you are to fully embrace the cold harshness of rationalism and scientific reasoning as a guide for your philosophical views, you must see that in doing this you also accept that in nature there are no concepts of good or bad - the only guide you can get from it is to take what you can get and maximise your own happiness. No justice, no reward for good, or judgement for bad. Just do as you please. This is what rationalism looks like in practice - not ideal for a cohesive society.
What if maximizing your own happiness and empathy join forces and cause people to rationally behave good'ish. That's a tangible thing. It gets complicated when other people go a different route, and everybody in Uganda ends up with Aids, but for 21st century internet participants in societies where most people arrive at good and bad one way or another, and you get some agreed upon laws out of it, rationalism and religion have very similar endpoints.
Evolution didn't stick all it's eggs in one basket. There seem to be a whole litany of things to get us to behave in a way that keeps us alive and reproducing.
