Group prayer on Skype on behalf of our Christian members

[robvalue]

PS: the existence of psycopaths (those incapable of empathy/morality) also runs very contrary to the idea of imbued morality, unless you assume the imbuer makes mistakes.

[I_am_not_mafia]

[SaStrike]

It's so fucking hard being a theist these days. You keep having to make excuses and ignore logic.

[Edwardo Piet]

Ok so you admit that hell isn't a deterrent...

LOL Huggy. This is terrible even for you! Giving a response that I've already dealt with. Really?

Lol, I am so epic I refute you before you even respond:

The ones who rape and molest you mean? They're awful.

I am aware that you are utterly terrible at logic... but the fact that many immoral people who are so immoral that they need to believe in hell to deter themselves from doing awful things doesn't mean that there aren't people who go ahead and do those things anyway.

In case you're still too stupid to realize... (1) Just because it doesn't deter some people doesn't mean it doesn't deter anyone. (2) Even if it really does deter anyone that's not the point at all! (3) The point is some theists say that without God people would all go out and rape and kill and steal... which is rather concerning.

---

Suck it motherfucker. Goodnight.

I've had better offers.  Sweet dreams, Empathetic Prince.

You deny evidence and logic just like a theist.

Also what you said before about the conclusion being the best indication of what came before. That was awful. It's not about the conclusion it's about the sound premises and the valid argumentation of how you get there. Sheesh. No wonder you're irrational.

---

Just to show you it's not a fluke, Kit, I took the 60 question empathy test again today. Here was the result:



Cue the part where you say I do have empathy because I scored 2 out of 80 this time

---

Hmm. I should make a thread for this test.

[Huggy Bear]

As usual the theist does not understand how science works. Just because De Waal claims something doesn't make it doctrine like in a religion. Science is not writing its own Bible. This is typical of the theist mentality of seeing everything from a religious view point.

There is the evidence. Then there is the interpretation of the evidence. So De Waal has produced some evidence and is inferring things from it. But another scientist can look at that same evidence and say that actually it means something else. This opens up an opportunity for new research to find out which scientist is correct. De Waal has been collecting evidence, but that doesn't mean to say that his interpretation is correct.

For one thing, it comes down to how he is defining morality. The very way he is defining it makes it a uniquely human experience, but morality has developed over time and his interpretation means that he is creating an arbitrary cut-off point where it starts and previous biological instincts that are required for human morality are not defined by him as morality. After all, in your last quote "the main conclusion is that morality comes from within, and is part of human nature". And this is my main point. Many of the same neural functions that give us humans morality also exist in other animals for similar purposes. There will never be a one to one equivalent because we are different species.

De Waal was the source YOU provided as corroborating the idea that animals have a sense of morality. De Waal claims no such thing, so instead of admiting you were wrong, you start backpedaling, that is typical atheist behavior.

Againg De Waal was YOUR source not mine.

What sets human morality apart, he believes, depends on our greater powers of abstraction, and involves "a move toward universal standards combined with an elaborate system of justification, monitoring, and punishment. At this point, religion comes in."

What sets human morality apart. Sure, I can agree with that. But that doesn't mean to say that the other primates don't have their own less developed morality. It's the same error of thinking that leads people to argue that animals don't have emotions (and therefore souls) because they don't have human emotions.

Also the quote makes it look like he is stating that this is the purview of religion when it is not. It is what religion tries to control.

There aren't degrees to morality, morality is simply the ability to know right and wrong, it's basic human understanding.

Knowing right from wrong means you understand WHY something is right or wrong. If you don't know why murder is wrong, I'd argue you don't have any sense of morality.

Animals have absolutely zero ability to reason, therefore they cannot be moral.

[I_am_not_mafia]

[Amarok]

[Anomalocaris]

[Amarok]

[Huggy Bear]