Religion does not belong in our world... anymore

[Mortukai]

K^2 I'm really starting to doubt your claims about getting a degree in physics. Your logical fallacies are amazing. For example:

 

 

If you accept Quantum Mechanics, you MUST accept that Many World Interpretation is a satisfactory model of objective reality. Therefore, if something works in Many World Interpretation, it works in Quantum Mechanics. Therefore, if I can prove that Many World Interpretation dictates that murder is not wrong, then Quantum Mechanics dictates that murder is not wrong, and therefore, if you accept Quantum Mechanics as a model for this world, and you buy my Many World argument, you accept that murder is not wrong.

Your argument looks like this: Many Worlds is a subset of QM. Therefore what works for MM works for QM. Therefore, if QM is true, MM is true.

 

What you are basically saying is this: An alternator is a part of a car. Therefore what works for an alternator works for my car. Therefore if I can drive my car, then I can drive my alternator.

 

Seriously, you gotta be pretty stupid to make such a blindingly incoherent argument.

 

 

Now, there are only two paths. You can either argue against Quantum Mechanis, which I'm sure you have more sense than to do so, or you can argue that my argument that in Many World Interpretation there is nothing wrong with murder is not sound. However, at this point, the validity of Many World Interpretation does not even need to be discussed.

You can't hide your MM sh*t behind the shield of QM, saying "If you've got a beef with MM, take it up with QM". QM says nothing about MM. QM functions entirely well completely independantly from MM. MM on the other hand, needs QM. Not vice versa. QM is NOT equal to MM. I can quite easily attack MM without having to attack QM. Indeed I have done so multiple times. So has jheath. We have also both destroyed your argument that nothing is wrong with murder so long as MM is true. We have actually both stated that even if we take MM to be true (which we most certainly do not and have argued very effectively against), your argument is still false. And yet you cannot progress past your own initial state of inertia and as a result constantly restate the exact same bullsh*t over and over again without once actually dealing with any of the counter-arguments jheath and I have levelled at you.

 

 

And as we all know, most respected Psychologists couldn't make a diagnosis based on a conversation made on an internet board. If so, then my wife (who has a masters degree in clinical psychology) has correctly diagnosed you with narcissism. (I am sure you are familiar with this term from the DSM-IV)

Well it's not like I have actually diagnosed him you know. It's more like you're talking to a mechanic on the phone. You describe all sorts of things that are happening to your car, and he puts together a rought sketch of what is probably wrong with it. Of course, it would be stupid for him to tell you in 100% certain terms that he knows what is wrong without having looked at your car, but you can trust that with his expertise he probably has at least a good idea. K^2 has been exhibiting many symptoms of Asperger's syndrome through his posts. And unlike many other disorders, I'm pretty well equipped to pick up the subtleties of Asperger's because my 22yr old brother has it, so I know the disorder as well as I know my own brother. Just like if you're describing problems you are having with your pontiac firebird, and the mechanic on the phone has owned a pontiac firebird all his life.

 

Oh, and yes, I am technically probably pretty close to being clinically narcissistic. But it'd be hard to diagnose, because when you're as awesome as me, it's difficult to know the difference between objective self-assessment and delusions of grandeur.

 

 

I agree that we have advanced, but isn't it ironic that as jheath has pointed out that religion has receded, morally deviant crimes have increased?

Erm, I would say that this is most certainly not true. Any increase in crime can most certainly be attributed to increases in effective forensic techniques and crime-fighting policies. If one looks back to the greeks, for whom religion was quite a large part of their lives, then one could see that sexual "deviancy" was rampant, where gender and age were no barriers to sexual pleasure. Only a few hundred years ago gruesome torture and elaborately painful executions were the norm. And these were done in the name of religion!

 

But more to the point, religion has not, as much as I'd wish it, receded. As science has pushed forward, religion has held fast, fought back, and is now resorting to guerilla tactics to ensure that science doesn't gain a single foot. On the individual level, people react against science shattering their illusions by looking for "alternative" fantasies to devote their lives to. One of the more recent trends I've noticed is an increased interest in the mayan calander and some doomsday prophecy tied to the year 2012. Another one would be the many "quantum" new-age spiritualities which are springing up claiming to reconcile science with ancient indian superstitions like shakras and psychic powers and sh*t. No, people always have and always will be animals with an intense desire for fantasy. They crave some powerful emotional meaning in their lives, which reality and science cannot provide. Religion is not receding. All that is happening is the established mainstream innert religions are starting to look more and more inaccurate and barbaric since the enlightenment, so people are looking to believe in more "modern" religions. Religions which, it's worth noting, have no less, and often more, moral strictures on behaviour. Although a common trend in new-age religions is to deem violence as much less acceptable than the conventional relgions deem it, and sex as more acceptable. Which, if you ask me, is pretty sensible really.

 

 

Religions have codified morals as 'rules' or 'commandments'. If a religion was the basis of these moral values, where in the sam bloody hell did they come from?.

 

Did someone just think them up?

 

Did Moses sit on top of the mountain, and decide killing was wrong for a lack of better ideas?

 

How is it then that you have hundreds of religions, some of them thousands of years old who think that killing is wrong?

 

It's a pre-programmed perogative. Religion merely codified it.

 

Thank you.

No, thank you for stating in simple point form what I've been saying from the beginning, and few have understood.

Edited December 14, 2005 by Mortukai

[K^2]

 

Your argument looks like this: Many Worlds is a subset of QM. Therefore what works for MM works for QM. Therefore, if QM is true, MM is true.

Again, yous seemed to have just skiped through most of an argument and picked up every other word. No wonder I have to keep restating the things I've said. You simply aren't listening.

 

MM is not just a subset of QM. MM is experimentally indistinguishable from any other interpretation of QM. MM is QM. This is why anything that works in MM works in QM.

 

And speaking of fallacies:

 

What you are basically saying is this: An alternator is a part of a car. Therefore what works for an alternator works for my car. Therefore if I can drive my car, then I can drive my alternator.

Direct implication does not imply the converse. And you say my logic is bad? Does ANYONE take you seriously?

 

 

Seriously, you gotta be pretty stupid to make such a blindingly incoherent argument.

Oh, the irony...

 

 

QM says nothing about MM.

I'm tired of your bullsh*t. I wrote up how the MM is a direct outcome of the QM in mathematical terms. Then I explained it in plain English. Have you even bothered to read any of it? No. So if you want to continue this discussion, shut the hell up, and read something about Quantum Mechanics and Many World Interpretation first, because you obviously do not understand any of it. Once you get the Quantum Mechanics Formalism down, can work with Dirac notation, and understand how the wave function evolves due to at least constant Hamiltonian, come back, and we can discuss this.

 

 

We have also both destroyed your argument that nothing is wrong with murder so long as MM is true.

No. You picked some of the words I said. You have not even attempted to understand the meaning. Now you have convinced yourself that you have proven me wrong, when in fact you have only proven yourself to be incapable to read someone else's argument.

 

You know what, I'll make it even easier for you. I'm going to step back from concepts that are clearly way over your head, because you are too closed minded to give up your overly simplistic perspective on the world. Lets pretend that there is only one world. Lets pretend we are all living in it. No branching. Everything is purely classical. Give me one good reason why I should consider murder to be wrong. Why should I care that someone else's life is ended through my action. And do not confuse it with reasons for murder being illegal. I think we have allready established these.

[Mortukai]

 

MM is not just a subset of QM. MM is experimentally indistinguishable from any other interpretation of QM. MM is QM. This is why anything that works in MM works in QM.

You're f*cking deluded mate. MM is NOT QM. It is not experimentally indistinguishable from QM, it just has no experiments which could be performed to support it. This is in no way the same thing. The reason anything that works in MM also works in QM, is because MM is an interpretation of QM. God is also an interpretation of reality. Anything that works with god also works with reality. Why? Because god was developed as an interpretation of reality! But guess what? God is not the only interpretation of reality. MM is not the only interpretation of QM. It's just the one you choose to believe. MM has just as much experimental evidence supporting it over other interpretations as the god theory does.

 

 

Direct implication does not imply the converse. And you say my logic is bad? Does ANYONE take you seriously?

Probably more seriously than I can take you when you are the one making the logical fallacies which I was pointing out. Let's take a look again shall we?

 

 

If you accept Quantum Mechanics, you MUST accept that Many World Interpretation is a satisfactory model of objective reality. Therefore, if something works in Many World Interpretation, it works in Quantum Mechanics.

You're right, I did misinterpret you. I thought you meant that MW was a subset of QM, but what you're really saying is that QM is a subset of MW. That's quite a claim you're making there. Either that or you are still arguing that MW and QM are one and the same. Either way, both claims are too ludicrous to take seriously. QM does not imply MW. I really don't know how you think it does. It's quite possible to talk about QM without any mention of MW. On the other hand the reverse is not true. But you never were one for seeing things logically.

 

 

I'm tired of your bullsh*t. I wrote up how the MM is a direct outcome of the QM in mathematical terms. Then I explained it in plain English. Have you even bothered to read any of it? No. So if you want to continue this discussion, shut the hell up, and read something about Quantum Mechanics and Many World Interpretation first, because you obviously do not understand any of it. Once you get the Quantum Mechanics Formalism down, can work with Dirac notation, and understand how the wave function evolves due to at least constant Hamiltonian, come back, and we can discuss this.

Lol. No, you wrote up how MW can be an outcome of QM. Your "proofs" could not convince a QM professor and they do not convince me. If it were as obvious as you seem to believe, then every QM scientist would accept your MW interpretation. And yet they do not. Any idea as to why? Maybe it's because they can see that it is only a mathematical interpretation. It's only conceptual. It's only a possibility if a given set of assumptions are made, or if the numbers are looked at in a certain way. But there are many other ways to look at the numbers, and many other interpretations. To tout MW as the One True Way as fanatically as you do speaks of your inability to accept the possibility that you might be wrong. This is an unbecoming trait in a would-be physicist.

 

 

You know what, I'll make it even easier for you. I'm going to step back from concepts that are clearly way over your head, because you are too closed minded to give up your overly simplistic perspective on the world. Lets pretend that there is only one world. Lets pretend we are all living in it. No branching. Everything is purely classical. Give me one good reason why I should consider murder to be wrong. Why should I care that someone else's life is ended through my action. And do not confuse it with reasons for murder being illegal. I think we have allready established these.

I'll give you 6 reasons, corresponding to the 6 ethical reasoning stages as established by Kohlberg.

 

1. Killing is wrong because it is agains the law and will result in punishment. (stage 1 defined by obedience and punishment)

 

2. Killing is wrong unless they did something to deserve it, or unless you can get something out of it. (stage 2 defined by fair trade and acting in self-interest)

 

3. Killing is wrong because it hurts the feelings of others and is very detrimental to social relationships. (stage 3 defined by cultivating and maintaining positive interpersonal feelings)

 

4. Killing is wrong because it destabilises social order, and without social order everyone would suffer. (stage 4 defined by justice and social functioning)

 

5. Killing is wrong because it is a violation of the rights of another human whom you have entered into an implicit social contract with by virtue of both benefitting from the same society. (stage 5 defined by social contracts and human rights)

 

6. Killing is wrong because it violates universal principles and values of life and liberty. (stage 6 defined by universal principles)

 

Note, K^2, that all your justifications fluctuate between stage 1 and 2 ethical reasoning. In effect, for all your "reason", you can't reason ethically beyond the ability of your standard 8yr old child. Also note that nowhere in that scale is there any room for appealing to beliefs about the world. The ethical reasoning scale is independant of how people think the world works, whether buddhist, islamic, christian, hindu, pagan, witch, or quantum physicist. Most humans can understand ethics and morality without having to appeal to beliefs about how the universe works.

 

Of course, as jheath noted, you seem to be an exception to the norm of having basic capacities for empathy and interpersonal understanding.

[BenMillard]

The purpose of debate is not to taunt the other participants. It is for the participants to communicate ideas and experience so that a thoroughly investigated synthesis of ideas is developed. This process improves the reliability of the participants' knowledge as their ideas have been tested from alternative perspectives and methodologies. When used in this way, it is a more constructive process than the obfuscated name-calling competition which is taking hold here.

 

 

I disagree with Mortukai stating that religion has not receeded. In past times, religion was absolutely pervasive; everyone believed it or they got executed. Authority was woven from religious doctrine and the primary ruler occupied that position through a Divine Right of one sort or another. Any alternative religious were deemed as atrocities and their extermination was priority one. The Church was often the largest landowner and the only national business. The influence of the Church upon lawmaking, government, war and other issues was absolute.

 

I don't think this is not the case now. People are, on the whole, agnostic to religion. There are a growing number of atheists who openly reject and even ridicule religion. Modern nations contain people whose beliefs exist alongside each other without the same degree of hostility and state-sponsored persecution which used to be encouraged - many Church leaders openly praise alternative religions and appear side by side at national events. The Church is no longer the largest landowner in most countries and is dwarfed by modern business. The influence of the Church upon lawmaking, government, war and other issues is now minimal. Some nations (such as the USA) have the disempowering of the Church written into their very foundation.

 

I'm sure we are all aware of religion's loosening grip over Science and education. It is accepted by all factions that the Sun orbits the Earth and that neither is at the center of the Universe. Similarly, it is accepted that the Earth is an irregular sphere rather than a flat disc. The sky is known to lead to an incomprehensivly large and almost empty volume. All these things have been flatly denied by religion in the past and people have been executed for believing them. Religion has been forced to submit to science, mathematics and experiment. It has neither the influence to discredit research nor the power to murder the researchers.

 

The role of religion used to be that of absolute power and control, able to demand absolute loyalty. Now it is relatively impotent.

Edited December 14, 2005 by Cerbera

[Dublo 7]

I hope religion dies out soon. It causes so much trouble and turmoil in this world, it sickens me.

Believe should believe in themselves, and not some f*cking overseeing God that doesn't exist.

I especially think its sad when Religion is brought into government/political issues. Politics and Religion should not be synonymous.

 

Sure people should still have morals, but not all morals come from religion. Common sense and abit of confidence would help most people in this world, not Religion or a God.

 

Just my 2 cents.

[K^2]

Mortukai, MW is built on principles of QM, and these principles alone. It does not use a single assumption outside of QM. The fact that you keep going against it only means that you do not understand ANYTHING about Quantum Mechanics. Untill you learn the basics of QM, just learn to accept what more educated on these matters people tell you.

 

 

1. Killing is wrong because it is agains the law and will result in punishment. (stage 1 defined by obedience and punishment)

So if I can commit murder without getting caught, it isn't wrong? That's just ridiculous. Murder is either wrong, or it is not. And based on this argument, I can only deduce that it may be disadvantageous to me in some cases. That doesn't make it wrong.

 

 

2. Killing is wrong unless they did something to deserve it, or unless you can get something out of it. (stage 2 defined by fair trade and acting in self-interest)

First of all, this doesn't say why. But even if I am to accept it, this is just saying that I shouldn't kill unless I can benefit from it. Well, yes, taking a risk with no payoff is stupid. It still doesn't say anythig about right or wrong.

 

 

3. Killing is wrong because it hurts the feelings of others and is very detrimental to social relationships. (stage 3 defined by cultivating and maintaining positive interpersonal feelings)

And I should care why?

 

 

4. Killing is wrong because it destabilises social order, and without social order everyone would suffer. (stage 4 defined by justice and social functioning)

The distabilization I would cause alone is minimal. I will account for it when considering benefits vs costs of choosing to kill someone. However, once more, it tells me, in the worst case, that it is disadvantageous for me to kill someone without getting enough out of it, and that just goes back to point 2.

 

 

5. Killing is wrong because it is a violation of the rights of another human whom you have entered into an implicit social contract with by virtue of both benefitting from the same society. (stage 5 defined by social contracts and human rights)

If I don't get caught, I still enjoy the benefits of the society. This goes back to point 1.

 

 

6. Killing is wrong because it violates universal principles and values of life and liberty. (stage 6 defined by universal principles)

What are the principles, and what is the violation. Argument both based on logic.

 

Your arguments for a certain points are even worse than when you trying to argue against a point.

 

 

Of course, as jheath noted, you seem to be an exception to the norm of having basic capacities for empathy and interpersonal understanding.

Why should I sympathise to anyone else's feelings if it does not benefit me? If my friend is hurt, I will sympathise, because I can get certain benefits from having friends. Total strangers, on the other hand, are of no concern to me.

 

I'll give you another chance. Give me a good reason why murder is wrong. And as I said before, I do know the reasons why it is disadvantageous to me in most cases. Stop giving them to me. The question was, what makes murder immoral.

Edited December 15, 2005 by K^2

[Lazzo]

This is a bit off topic but do any of you feel that big business has taken the place of religion?

[jheath]

 

The purpose of debate is not to taunt the other participants.

 

This being directed at Mortukai and myself, I'll say this for Mort: beyond the aggression and the obvious ostentation is a keen intellect and a sharp wit, but he is not for the timid or the easily bruised. I've learned that asking him to play less roughly is like asking a tiger to kill its prey more nicely. Put on your flame retardant underwear, roll with the punches and concentrate on his logic.

 

As for myself, I suppose I have been a bit aggresive in some of my posts, but I hope on balance I haven't descended into taunting. I've enjoyed reading and posting to this thread; in the process I've revisited concepts and theories I haven't touched since university. I trust that enjoyment hasn't been entirely one-sided.

 

K^2, I've read a lot of your posts in other threads, and many of them are intelligent and insightful. My verbal thrusts, while somewhat barbed, were not intended as personal attacks, and I hope you won't take them as such. If any apologies for hurt feelings are in order I offer them without hesitation.

 

 

In past times, religion was absolutely pervasive; everyone believed it or they got executed. Authority was woven from religious doctrine and the primary ruler occupied that position through a Divine Right of one sort or another. Any alternative religious were deemed as atrocities and their extermination was priority one.

...

The role of religion used to be that of absolute power and control, able to demand absolute loyalty.

 

I think you know better than to make blanket statements like these. It is true that many countries and civilizations in the past have used Divine Right as the lynchpin of authority, and religion as a means of thought control. It is also true that formalized separation of Church and State is a relatively modern invention. Yet history is replete with variation. At the same time as mideval Europe persecuted its Jews and burned agnostics and witches, muslims in the Ottoman Empire were setting the standard for religious tolerance, intellectual curiousity, and academic research. Going back even further, the Roman Empire hosted a plethora of different religions and cultures relatively peacefully within its enormous boundaries for centuries. Earlier still, the land-owners' oligarchy of ancient Athens ruled quite successfully without the need for theological buttresses. Even the Egyptians, with a political superstructure shot through with religion, remained curious and open-minded enough to create one of the finest libraries of antiquity in Alexandria.

 

I would argue that most of the successful civilizations in history practiced some form of religious tolerance, even if only out of necessity. Unless they resorted to ethnic cleansing, the empires of old had no choice but to somehow accommodate the different peoples and beliefs they captured as their territory grew. It is no coincidence that the periods of greatest religious fundamentalism in Europe occurred when the Continent was reeling backwards from barbarian invasion and the destruction of the Roman Empire.

[Dublo 7]

This is a bit off topic but do any of you feel that big business has taken the place of religion?

What do you mean?

That people care more about business/money instead of religion?

[Mortukai]

 

Mortukai, MW is built on principles of QM, and these principles alone. It does not use a single assumption outside of QM. The fact that you keep going against it only means that you do not understand ANYTHING about Quantum Mechanics. Untill you learn the basics of QM, just learn to accept what more educated on these matters people tell you.

It's almost like you can't read properly. How many times must it be said? MW IS NOT QM. Accepting QM DOES NOT IMPLY ACCEPTANCE OF MW. MANY QM PHYSICISTS DO NOT ACCEPT MW. IT IS ONLY AN INTERPRETATION.

 

Get this through your f*cking thick skull. Just because I do not accept MW does not, in any way, mean that I do not "get" QM. Why? Because MW is ONE interpretation of QM. Ghosts are an interpretation of hallucinations. God is an interpretation of existence. MW is an interpretation of QM. What you are basically saying is that unless I accept god, then I know nothing about existence. I shudder to think that people like you are allowed near writing implements.

 

 

So if I can commit murder without getting caught, it isn't wrong? That's just ridiculous. Murder is either wrong, or it is not. And based on this argument, I can only deduce that it may be disadvantageous to me in some cases. That doesn't make it wrong.

No, because you apparently skipped over the "against the law" part. If killing was not against the law and you wouldn't get punished for it, then if you were reasoning with stage 1 ethical reasoning, then yes, killing would be ok.

 

Of course, if you're reasoning with stage 1 ethics, then you are probably less than 6 years old.

 

 

First of all, this doesn't say why. But even if I am to accept it, this is just saying that I shouldn't kill unless I can benefit from it. Well, yes, taking a risk with no payoff is stupid. It still doesn't say anythig about right or wrong.

Stage 2 implies why killing is wrong: because they did nothing to deserve it. Stage 2 ethical reasoning is built on recipricocity and acting in self-interest, thus ensuring that you do well to others to recieve well in return, and do not commit harm to others for fear of having that harm returned in kind. Thus fulfilling both self-interest and reciricocity, and also resulting in a pleasant society.

 

 

And I should care why?

Well, last time I checked, humans were a social animal. Clearly you are an abheration, so let's exclude you from our definition of "human". As humans, we form social bonds with other humans. By cultivating and maintaining positive interpersonal relations with other people, we are able to do many things which we could not do alone. For example: practise mating rituals (teasing, play-fighting, joking, building comfort, etc), establish positions in the social heirachy to increase sexual desirability, enlist the aid of friends to help in a myriad of circumstances (moving house, paying debts, fighting enemies, obtaining food, etc), increasing our knowledge base of general information, increasing our understanding of how other people work to that we are better able to build and maintain social ties in the future, benefit from the social connections of others to both find new potential mating partners and also have our friends put in a good word for us to increase our chances of mating, etc etc.

 

Harvesting positive interpersonal relationships has many beneficial results for both our immediate wellbeing and also our reproductive wellbeing. On the other hand, harvesting negative interpersonal relationships has all the oppposite effects. It makes it harder to reproduce and harder to move through the social web.

 

But to answer your question "Why should I care?" simply, I'd probably just say "because if you don't you're going to have a hard time getting laid".

 

 

The distabilization I would cause alone is minimal. I will account for it when considering benefits vs costs of choosing to kill someone. However, once more, it tells me, in the worst case, that it is disadvantageous for me to kill someone without getting enough out of it, and that just goes back to point 2.

Well, all the benefit in the world won't do you any good if the victim's family beats you to a bloody pulp. The destabilization may be minimal within the context of the whole of society, but it certainly won't be minimal within the small section of society that is relevant to you. Which in your case, is just you. You're basically just like a parasite. Trying to suck on the blood of society without giving anything in return, not even the common courtesy not to kill someone. Whether or not you personally can find no reason not to behave in this way, rest assured, the rest of us can find plenty of reasons not to allow you to behave in this way. And all your MW won't save you when you're locked in a prison cell or being beaten to a pulp.

 

 

If I don't get caught, I still enjoy the benefits of the society. This goes back to point 1.

Yeah yeah, we've heard it before. In your world, the only thing that matters is you. Completely greedy, utterly callous, and totally self-absorbed to the end. Good for you. Let me know how that works out for you when you die alone.

 

 

What are the principles, and what is the violation. Argument both based on logic.

 

Your arguments for a certain points are even worse than when you trying to argue against a point.

You just don't get it, do you? It's not about logic, you f*cking retard. The world was not created on logic. Evolution does not occur based on logic. The optimal behaviour for any species is not decided by logic. Logical thought is a relatively recent occurance in the history of the universe. Humans do not propogate as a species because of logic. The whole reason you are alive today has pretty much nothing to do with logic. This may fly against everything you believe, but the sooner you accept it, the better. Humans are animals. We are animals which are subject to the exact same principles of evolution which all animals are subject to. The behaviour which results in the greatest reproductive potential will always be the behaviour which evolves to be dominant within a species. If you take two individuals of a species, and one of them does behaviour A, and the other does behaviour B, and A results in A^2 children every generation, and B results in B^3 children every generation, then over a few hundred generations, B will be the dominant behaviour for that species. If we account for interbreeding between A and B, then we'll quickly see that A gets pretty much wiped out after an initial period of dilution between the two.

 

So to demonstrate this, I want you to go out and find a girl you feel attracted to, and attempt to impress her with your logic and MW theories. Explain to her your arguments why it's ok to kill someone if you won't get caught. If she protests, destroy her arguments logically. Then try to mate with her.

 

While you're doing that, I'll go out and find a hot chick and I'll first size her up with my eyes and body language. Then I'll tease the f*ck out of her, then I'll play around with pushing her and poking her and tickling her and hugging her. Then I'll push her away and have fun with my friends again. Then she'll come back and I'll tease her briefly, tickle her quickly, then start getting to know her and talking about comfort building stuff like her hopes and dreams and stories about things we've both done and things we have in common. Then I'll get playful again and I'll f*ck her.

 

And what's the point of all this? It's really simple, if you can see the forest for the trees. Humans are here because we reproduce. Humans only reproduce with partners they feel attracted to. They only feel attracted to partners who exhibit certain traits. These traits are nearly always tied very strongly to social status, or they are indicative of potential social status. Therefore cultivating and maintaining a positive social status is of primary importance to all humans, as it is paramount for the purpose of all life: to reproduce. Therefore any behaviours which compromise social status are bad. And it doesn't just have to be behaviours either. It can just be thoughts or ideas. Like how I mentioned you should try to use your "it's ok to kill someone if I can benefit from it and get away with it" argument to try to pick up. It won't work because it's indicative of inferior social integration and thus poor social status.

 

 

Why should I sympathise to anyone else's feelings if it does not benefit me? If my friend is hurt, I will sympathise, because I can get certain benefits from having friends. Total strangers, on the other hand, are of no concern to me.

That's precisely like saying "I can benefit from adults, but not children, so children are of no concern to me". Would you kill a child? Why would you kill a stranger? Every friend you have was once a stranger to you. I find it very difficult to take you seriously when you draw such arbitrary lines in the sand between who you should and shouldn't think it's ok to kill. Especially when you are apparently working from "logic". To me it sounds much more like you are working from an ethic of care: ie: if I care about this person, then it's not ok to do anything bad to them, but if I don't care about them, then it's completely ok". This has nothing to do with logic, and is in fact a very inferior form of ethical reasoning.

 

 

I'll give you another chance. Give me a good reason why murder is wrong. And as I said before, I do know the reasons why it is disadvantageous to me in most cases. Stop giving them to me. The question was, what makes murder immoral.

Wow. You have no f*cking clue. You're trying to get me to point at some imaginary solid absolute rule built into the fabric of existence. I'm going to repeat myself here: morals are RULES of behaviour. If something is "immoral" then it is literally against the rules. Ethics are the reasoning methods behind the morals. A moral rule can be anything. What I gave in my last post was a list of moral rules against killing according to 6 different stages of ethical reasoning. To ask "what makes murder immoral", is stupid, because the answer is "the fact that it is breaking a moral rule". What you should be asking is "what makes any method of reasoning ethically valid", and for that the answer is simply "universality". If a system of ethics can apply consistently across all situations and maintain its internal coherence and purposes then it is valid. If it breaks down in exceptional circumstances or gives unexpected or inconsistent results then it is invalid. Just like any good scientific model. If QM broke down in some circumstances, then we'd have to find a better theory. If it gave conflicting results in some circumstances, then we'd have to find a better model. If a system of ethics says that murder is wrong in some cases, and right in others, then it is inferior and inconsistent and needs to be replaced. This is what I mean by universality. As such, the best system of ethics we have available to us is stage 6 in Kohlberg's scale, which is based on universal principles of life and liberty. In all circumstances the moral behaviour it prescribes will always result in the preservation of life and liberty, and the maintenance of positive social functioning on all levels.

 

But I can't expect you to understand this, because you can't even reason past stage 2, while most people your age are up around stage 4.

[K^2]

 

K^2, I've read a lot of your posts in other threads, and many of them are intelligent and insightful. My verbal thrusts, while somewhat barbed, were not intended as personal attacks, and I hope you won't take them as such. If any apologies for hurt feelings are in order I offer them without hesitation.

It's all good. You were far from crossing the line, and you had good arguments.

 

 

The optimal behaviour for any species is not decided by logic.

Who cares if it is descided by logic? It is determined by the set of conditions and goals, and from there, you can use many methods of finding optimal behavior. You can use random selection, genetic models, gradient descent, or logic. Logic might not allways be the best way to find the optimal behavior, but it is the one that allways works. Sure, animals don't use logic, because they f*cking can't. I'm not an animal. I do not need to live by some generic set of rules that, on average, improves the odds of survival of my kind. I can use logical inferrence to deduce the set of actions that are going to be most beneficial to me.

 

 

Stage 2 implies why killing is wrong: because they did nothing to deserve it. Stage 2 ethical reasoning is built on recipricocity and acting in self-interest, thus ensuring that you do well to others to recieve well in return, and do not commit harm to others for fear of having that harm returned in kind. Thus fulfilling both self-interest and reciricocity, and also resulting in a pleasant society.

First you tell me it has nothing to do with logic. Then you construct the logical argument for how murder is likely to be disadvantageous for me. Well, I know that, you moron. That's what I started this whole thing from. If murder is disadvantageous to me, I will not commit it. If it is to my advantage, I see nothing to stop me. And when I say to my advantage, I do account for something more than immediate gain. If I think that the negative responce of society against me is likely, it is a disadvantage.

 

But not a single word of it still tells me that murder is immoral. It simply tends to be disadvantageous.

 

 

Well, all the benefit in the world won't do you any good if the victim's family beats you to a bloody pulp.

 

Harvesting positive interpersonal relationships has many beneficial results for both our immediate wellbeing and also our reproductive wellbeing. On the other hand, harvesting negative interpersonal relationships has all the oppposite effects. It makes it harder to reproduce and harder to move through the social web.

You are having a really difficult time understanding cost of an action, don't you? If the anti-social action results in problems for me of any kind, which includes simple things like someone not liking me, or more serious, like me getting killed, I have to count it twoards the cost of that action.

 

The entire point is that everything you have been saying does not make murder immoral. It simply adds to the cost of such action, so it would require a greater benefit for me to think it to be worth it.

 

 

Yeah yeah, we've heard it before. In your world, the only thing that matters is you. Completely greedy, utterly callous, and totally self-absorbed to the end. Good for you. Let me know how that works out for you when you die alone.

It works perfectly. I have plenty of friends, including some very close ones. They know very well how I think, but they see on an example that it does not make me a bad person in any way. They know that they can count on me, and I know that I can count on them. The fact that I ultimately do all of this to my own benefit does not prevent me from building tight social bonds, because I do realize that certain things cannot be gained without some investment. As with any investment there are risks, but that's just life. That's free market economy 101.

[jheath]

There's a new topic I've started:

 

Murder

 

We can continue this debate there, where it properly belongs. Further posts to this thread should really have at least something to do with the topic of religion. Let's dig in.

[Eviscero]

 

You are twisting it all arround. I merely stated that Children cannot think that killing someone is wrong if they do not realize what that actually means. That is the statement I made on the topic, and it is the one I was trying to support. You have tried to connect it to my statement that humans can feel bad about hurting others. I added that Children would not know that they are hurting someone by killing them. You have never answered this argument, so I assume you agree with it, by which you must agree with my initial proposition that Children cannot know that killing is wrong.

 

Goddamnit now you've gone full circle. No. Children DO know that killing is wrong. They need to learn what behavious cause killing. Once they discover there mere fact that they have killed regardless of the behaviour that caused it, they feel the innate response. It's like I'm talking to a baby here.

 

 

I was wondering, is this along the same lines that sexual intercourse is a pleasureful act because it generally is beneficial to society, and no one needs to learn that sex is beneficial to society to enjoy it. So too, is there an innate displeasure in killing human beings because it is most unbeneficial to society, etc..

 

Are they the same psychological concepts? Just curious..

[jheath]

Seems like a good analogy, yes.

 

Actually, when I first read Mortukai's statement about the inherent morality in people, I immediately thought of the statement, ascribed by Plato to Socrates, that "people never knowingly do evil. They only do wrong when they don't really know that it's wrong." This is prima facie an untrue statement; I've done many a bad thing knowing full well that I shouldn't. You could argue that I didn't "actually, truly know" the wrongness of my actions, and define "knowing [something] is wrong" to mean "not doing it", but this strikes me as pointless semantics. Seems to me more accurate to say, as Mortukai seems to be saying, that the emotions of regret and guilt are the genetic basis behind our socialized instincts, about as hardwired (and prone to mutation) as our sex-drive.

[Mortukai]

 

I was wondering, is this along the same lines that sexual intercourse is a pleasureful act because it generally is beneficial to society, and no one needs to learn that sex is beneficial to society to enjoy it. So too, is there an innate displeasure in killing human beings because it is most unbeneficial to society, etc..

 

Are they the same psychological concepts? Just curious..

Not so much because it is beneficial to society, but moreso because it is beneficial to the propogation of one's genes. In the case of sex, being that it is the primary method by which genes replicate, we have a very powerful and unavoidable instinct compelling us to seek it and rewarding us when we succeed (and punishing us when we fail).

 

On the other hand, the emotional basis for morality is one step back from that. Instead of being directly relevant to reproduction, it is indirectly relevant. Our social functioning is very important in obtaining sex, and in obtaining sex with the partners we are programmed to find attractive (as opposed to those we don't). When we consider doing things which would harm our reproductive potential indirectly through harming our social standing, we feel fear, apprehension, worry, etc. When we consider doing things which would indirectly advantage our reproductive potential through improving our social standing, we feel anticipation, hope, excitement, etc. When we actually DO these things we anticipate, we feel either remorse, fear, self-hatred, paranoia, and shame, or happiness, pride, empowerment, security, and confidence. If we don't feel that a particular behaviour will have any effect, positive or negative, on our ability to reproduce, then we just flat out don't get any emotional response from considering or performing that behaviour.

 

It all works on precisely the same basis: emotions are evolution's tools for shaping animal behaviour in a direction which is most beneficial to that animal's continued reproduction. When we burn ourselves we feel pain, to teach us to avoid that behaviour in the future, because burning ourselves damages our ability to survive and thus our ability to reproduce (dead things don't reproduce). When we stand on top of a really high sheer cliff we feel terror to teach us not to stand in such places because to do so places our ability to reproduce at extreme risk. When we don't eat we hunger, and when we eat we feel good, both reactions evolved because they help us stay alive and healthy so that we can reproduce. When we don't have sex we long for it (actually there's a whole slew of emotional and psychological repurcussions for not having sex which I don't have time to get into), and when we do we are rewarded greatly (both immediately and in long-term physical and mental health). Reward reproductively advantagous behaviour, punish reproductively disadvanatagous behaviour.

 

So in the end, it's not about being beneficial or not to society, it's about being beneficial or not to an individual's reproductive potential. It just so happens that what is beneficial to an individual's reproductive potential also happens to be beneficial to society (excluding genetic abberations, such as the genetic predisposition to raping or desiring to be raped, mental abnormalities such as being psychotic, and the fringe of humanity where being the "ultimate bad boy" means that stealing and killing and fighting will enhance reproductive potential for males (though never for females), though at this fringe, beating women is also a desirable dominance behaviour). And before K^2 tries to twist this all around to support his "I am the center of the universe" mentality, it should be noted that among the multitude of innate emotional reactions we are born with, across all populations of the earth and all of recorded history, it has always been that concern for others above oneself is considered an admirable, heroic, and enviable trait. Virtues have always been traits which enhance social status in both the eyes of other men and the eyes of women (lead the men and the women will follow). Which is precisely why K^2's position is so repulsive and pathetic, and why he is so alone in defending his stance.

[jizzyman]

Religion has no place in "our world" because "our world" is different from "your world" -

 

We don't believe in the concept of "education" - instead we believe in the concept of indoctrination.

 

We don't believe in the concept of "science" - instead we believe in the concept of tradition.

 

We don't believe in the concept of "right and wrong" -instead we believe in practical philosophies for day to day existences.

 

-iow

 

this is a discussion on semantics and semiotics, alienated epistemology that should die.