There Is No Sin!

[Amarok]

So you say that moral facts are independent of evolution. 

No it's a fact that prescriptive normative morality does not come from evolution

So where do these morals come from?

Read the freaking links

The intrinsically righteous self?

Nope that statement does not even make sense

I am questioning the values set out in evolution theories.

Their are no values set out in evolution 

What's the difference between a child who died and an old man who died?

Plenty 

If that child has a name, and is set for the resurrection and eternal life and recognition, that's a different story, especially if every treasured moment in that person's life is able to be relived through a restored memory, but I am dealing with the dark side here

Even if your loopy fairy tales were true . Their is nothing light about it. In fact quite the opposite.

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What about "the now" and the "empathy" for the frustrated killer?

Seriously you are dumb  

Who determines what is a crime and who deserves empathy?

Moral reasoning 

How does what people experience matter when they are dead?

Morality is not about death . how many times must point this out 

What is the significance of the unkown Egyptian in 1000 BC who giggled a lot?

So dumb

[Mister Agenda]

Fuck your stupid banned 

What does that matter in your scheme of evolution?

It matters because it matters to Tizheruk. That's literally what 'mattering' is. Something matters because someone cares about it. Anything someone cares about matters, at least to them, whether your 'scheme' is evolution or theocracy.

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What exactly matters to you when you're dead?

Nothing will matter to me when I'm dead. Plenty of things matter to me now. Why should I let what won't matter to me when I'm dead guide what matters to me while I'm alive?

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Why does it matter now?

Why wouldn't it matter now?

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So why is anyone called a criminal when the very lawmakers will be fodder as well?

Nothing matters once they're all dead, in the scheme of evolution.

Nothing matters to the dead when they're dead, you don't need evolution to reach that conclusion. Everything that matters, matters to the living while they're alive, and other people being dead doesn't change what matters now. We want to be comfortable, fulfilled, happy, loved, safe, and secure while we're alive, and hopefully have a long life to enjoy those things. Criminals are a threat to the things that we want, the things that matter to us, so we have to protect ourselves from them. We've quite reasonably concluded that criminals getting what they want doesn't mean it's okay for them to take what we have.

You're coming off as either extremely dense or extremely trollish.

[chimp3]

I think banned is out of shit. Keeps asking the same questions over and over.

[Mister Agenda]

So you think you matter, but a murderer doesn't.
Can you justify your existence, other than being a well developed worm, a resource consuming putz?

A murderer certainly doesn't matter more than me, and therefore has no right to take my life, or anyone else's. We are entitled to defend what matters to us, and have banded together against murderers for our mutual safety. My existence doesn't require justification, I'm here, deal with it.

I find that people who think of other people as putzes are usually the biggest putzes in the room.

[chimp3]

How is the supposed development of an ideology not a scientific fact?

BTW evolution science teaches that morality was developed by the process of evolution.
If you disagree you don't have sufficient backup from that community, to be able to call it accepted by that community.

The capacity for religious thinking is also a trait developed by the process of evolution.

[Mister Agenda]

What makes one moral view any better than another, when in the end, there is nothing but a howling wind in the desert?

Not hugged enough as a child?

I am discussing the evolutionary slant and nothing else.
What is 'moral sense,' when it's temporal, circumstantial, changeable and purely relative?
How can you even start by naming something as if it has an ounce of 'righteousness' ?

The theory of evolution is the explanation for the diversity of life we observe, based on the evidence we have found. It is a description of how something in nature works. It is descriptive, not prescriptive. Just because evolution does something, that doesn't mean you should; anymore than gravity making things fall means you should jump off a cliff.

Our 'moral sense', that is, our innate sentiments of empathy, fairness, justice, and reciprocity shaped by our culture, reason, and upbringing; gives us the motivation to try to be good, to act in a way that is in harmony with our moral sentiments and lives up to the values we hold to be important.

Why does it have to be atemporal, universal, static, and purely absolute in order to be a 'moral sense'? Those qualities don't seem to apply to anything else in our universe, why should they be necessary for anything at all?

It's pretty easy to name something as if it 'has an ounce of righteousness'. We're people. We're going to regard what's good for people as good, and what's bad for people as bad. Those who aren't on board with the program aren't going to be as successful at keeping their genes in the pool because sociopaths are people you want to avoid and they don't make good parents. You don't need some sort of cosmic rulebook to figure this stuff out. It's messy and imperfect, just like everything else, but it's all we've got; it's all we've ever had, and it's gotten us this far.

Here's the thing: You can't escape subjectivity. Your own personal experiences are all you have access to. If you follow an absolute, atemporal, universal, unchanging morality immune to circumstance and situation; you still have to subjectively decide that it's correct, it's real, and that you're interpreting it correctly. Even if adopting an external standard of morality is the last subjective moral decision you ever make, it was a subjective decision. It's on you, right or wrong. Just like it is for everyone else.

[chimp3]

Dawkins on evolution and morality:






And evolutionary roots of religious thought:

[Mister Agenda]

So according to what you have written here, morality of some sort is not temporary, has nothing to do with evolution, is not an accident or purely convenient, and yet is relative - since one is better than another - as if there is an ultimate morality in any given situation - or at least the best one, which in this case is yours over mine, because according to your standard I am WRONG.

Lots of things go on after we die, the society we live in is one of them, unless things have gone horribly, horribly wrong. Surely you are aware of this? There's a point beyond which playing stupid is no different from being stupid. That doesn't mean that morality and society are not temporary, when all the people are gone, their morality and society will be gone as well.

Just as there's more than one way to skin a cat, there may be multiple equally moral actions in a given situation, but in the entire range of available actions, some are going to be more or less moral than others.

According to my moral standard, your statements show you to be more interested in trying to score a 'gotcha' than have a meaningful dialogue, but it's not like I had high expectations.

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Take a breath.......take a breath..are you asking these questions because you're drawing a complete blank, personally?

Is there a complete blank of 'righteousness' in evolution or not?

According to you there are social 'sensibilities' grown from circumstance and human interventions - a product of humans and nature, or even an inherent but very subtle and unspoken righteousness in the whole scheme of things.

Again, the theory of evolution describes how species got to be the way they are. We evolved to be humans, and what is moral for us depends on our nature as human beings. That is unavoidable. We are social and capable of speech, reason, tool use, and culture. We depend on each other for survival. Our moral sentiments are part of what make our cooperative societies possible, and reasoning is how we figure out better ways of cooperating and living together. Morality derives from the situation we find ourselves in, trying to figure out how to have better lives for ourselves and our loved ones, while those lives last. How could we be what we are and not have concepts about what are good things to do and what are bad things to do? Even social apes and monkeys show evidence of moral sentiments, demonstrating empathy, comforting hurt or sick or sad companions; sharing food, and ostracizing or ganging up on those who are disruptive to the integrity of the group. Our moral sentiments plus our ability to reason and transmit culture make us moral agents in a way that no other species can be, able to consider the moral consequences of our actions, understand how they may effect others and ourselves, and grasp both the emotional and intellectual aspects involved.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think banned is out of shit. Keeps asking the same questions over and over.

We just keep breaking our toys, don't we?

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If that child has a name, and is set for the resurrection and eternal life and recognition, that's a different story, especially if every treasured moment in that person's life is able to be relived through a restored memory, but I am dealing with the dark side here.

One wonders what keeps you from skullfucking all the ungodly children who won't be resurrected or recognized...and then one remembers that the religious have a particular history of -not- staying that red right hand..when it comes to ungodly children.

You've got the moral sense of a toaster.

[Mister Agenda]

What are some of the basic objective facts of morality, what are they based on?

Let's take the most obvious - life.

The deliberate taking of life without good reason is a crime - called murder.

How can that be a crime, given the supposed history and tendencies of evolutionary so called life?

As Chimp said, there is no such thing as sin?

You can have an objective system of morality, so long as you take a premise or two as axiomatic. Don't worry, religion does the same thing, so the playing field is level. The vast majority of people would accept as axiomatic the idea that human flourishing (maximizing the opportunity for people to have the best lives possible) is good. From that, you build a consistent, objective morality be comparing actions to whether they help, hinder, or are indifferent to human flourishing. There would be disagreement on how best to accomplish it, but that's something science can help with; determining (within the limits of our tools) whether the results of actions help, hinder, or are indifferent to human flourishing, and to what degree.

So we regard the deliberate taking of a human life except for specified exceptions to be a crime. Most of us agree that we do not want to be murdered, do not want our loved ones to be murdered, and really, most of us don't want to murder anyone. So in the best interest of our society and safety (and human flourishing), we have decided that murderers have to be stopped; and that murder is a crime. To our moral sensibilities it is a crime because it is shameful and wrong; legally it is a crime because we have made it illegal. Since evolution is descriptive, not prescriptive, it does not enter into consideration when determining that murder is a crime. As a bonus, not considering evolution lets us avoid the Naturalistic Fallacy.

Sin is an offense against so-called divine law, not human law. An offense against human law is a crime.

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You bounce from here to there like a rubber ball, Banned.  I keep suggesting that you take breath.  Is there some specific reason that you just can't do that?

If you can't, if you can't help but be the rubber ball....would it really be all that strange if people decided to just run with it, and fling you back and forth between them for the lulz?  Would there even be anything wrong with it?  You are, after all, intent on -being- the ball.

Your earlier statement that morality has nothing to do with evolution - is refuted by the majority of evolutionists like Dawkins, who make it very clear that morality developed in the animal world and that humans are just an extension of that.

So I take it you represent yourself here and not that community.
That's fine - your opinion on its own is important.

Khemikal does a fine job of representing our community. The only thing evolution has to do with morality is that is has produced a species for which moral considerations are relevant. It wasn't inevitable, I suppose evolution could have produced a species of highly intelligent loners that reproduce by rape and otherwise kill each other every chance they get, though I have trouble imagining the circumstances under which such a species would be selected for. Morality wouldn't exist for such a species, culture would be impossible, and there would be no value in them being able to talk. They would not be human at all.

If such a species existed in the real world and was a threat to humans, we would wipe them out through the power of cooperation, language, and the sort of weapon-making that it takes a culture to develop.

The morality isn't in evolution. It is in ourselves, because of what we are.

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BTW evolution science teaches that morality was developed by the process of evolution.
If you disagree you don't have sufficient backup from that community, to be able to call it accepted by that community.

There is much more to morality than our innate moral sentiments. They are what make us care about interacting with others in ways that are fair and kind. On their own, they're weak against our selfish desires to take what we want. They are not morality on their own except in a very primitive sense, if you can say social primates like baboons have morality, that's the sort of morality they have.

The sort of morality humans have depends on cultures that promote pro-social behavior and constrain anti-social behavior. The sort of morality humans have is based on thinking about our actions and their consequences, sharing our thoughts with others, developing moral philosophies and traditions, and changing them when we find a better way.

Evolution got us to being early homo sapiens, barely able to live in a group larger than a family without severe violence. Culture, philosophy, and science got us to a world of nations where we can argue about what morality means on the internet.

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I don't disagree with the value of the moment at all. The point is very valid.
I am questioning the values set out in evolution theories.

What's the difference between a child who died and an old man who died?
Nothing.

If that child has a name, and is set for the resurrection and eternal life and recognition, that's a different story, especially if every treasured moment in that person's life is able to be relived through a restored memory, but I am dealing with the dark side here.

There are no 'values set out in evolution theories'. The modern synthesis is a scientific theory about he natural world. It has no more moral implications than the theory of gravity. You can't get from an 'is' to an 'ought'. If given the opportunity, a puma will kill your sheep. That's an 'is'. It does not imply that you 'ought' to let it do so. The ToE finds that nature selects for those organisms which are adapted to their environment well enough to have more descendants than organisms less well adapted to their environment. That doesn't mean that you ought to have as many children as possible. There are no 'values set out in evolutionary theories' for you to question, you are either strawmanning or projecting.

The difference between a child who died and an old man who died is, for starters, that one was a child when they died and the other was an old man. The child had a short life, and the old man had long one. The loss of the child was a tragic loss, too soon, for the child's parents. The old man's death was a loss to his friends and relatives, but not unexpected and his friends and relatives could find comfort in all the things he had a chance to do with that long life...if he didn't do much for them to find comfort in, they probably didn't like him that much anyway.

You keep asking questions that a person who feels normal compassion and understands how humans work should already know the answers to. Why do you do that?