Posted on 06/27/2009 7:55:19 PM PDT by Fichori
“So sin is now an evolutionary feature, huh?” [excerpt]How does science define sin?
Sure, we care about ourselves. We care about reproducing and having sex, and stealing and all of that fun stuff :)
From a cursory study of my children, I’m not exactly sure how we ever created a civilization to begin with. Yikes!
Forget about the chicken and egg — which came first, civilization or children?! :)
On a more serious note: I’m not exactly sure where inviolable natural rights came from. It seems to me a strongman can violate these inviolable natural laws.
If any pill would do the trick, it would probably be something along the lines of Valium and would have to be given lifelong. This kind of behavior shows up in many mammals under conditions of environmental stress. He'd be better off to figure out the sources of stress. Factory farming can't be helping (even PETA gets something right once in a blue moon).
Today’s empirical science used to be considered united with theology under the broader rubric of natural philosophy.
“How does science define sin?
Is science now a religion to define what is moral?”
Science does not define sin. God, society, individuals, or whoever does. The previous poster was saying, I believe, that scientists take what actions have been declared sin by others, and apply to them evolutionary features.
“We care about reproducing and having sex, and stealing and all of that fun stuff”
A lot of us do. Then again, a lot of us become frightened when other people do it too. As such we design ways not to fall prey to them. One way is defend ourselves with violence. Another is to get people to agree to treat us as they would have themselves be treated. It works part of the time.
“Forget about the chicken and egg — which came first, civilization or children?!”
Children. They are menaces, yes. Governed by their emotions. But they’re also governed from without, by adults for instance. Children grow into adults, who for the most part are smarter, because they’ve had time to learn. Through a long, slow process of learning over thousands of years and many more generations, adults learned how to live together relatively peacefully and prosperously. They continue to attempt to pass that knowledge on to their children, who sometimes listen, sometimes don’t.
“It seems to me a strongman can violate these inviolable natural laws”
To say that certain rights are inviolable is not to say they can’t be physically violated. It means they can’t be morally violated. Your strongman can take my rights, but if he does so he is no longer abiding the underlying moral system. That’s the theory, anyway.
A necessary corollary to the second item is that the two ideals or role models in the evoloser system are going to be the serial rapist, and the welfare mother.
What is an “evoloser”? Sounds like a schoolyard insult.
“’Survival of the fittest is the only moral law in nature.’”
The laws of nature are not moral. Nature simply is. It is humans, God, or the intrinsic Nature behind the apparent “nature” of science that passes moral judgment. Remember, science is about things as they are, whereas morality is about the way things ought to be.
One can use evolutionary theory to aid in drawing moral conclusions. Lots of people have done it. We usually call them “Social Darwinists”. Despite the disrepute that appelation has met, it barely means anything. A social darwinist could be a libertarian like Herbert Spencer or an authoritarian like Adolf Hitler.
“the two ideals or role models in the evoloser system are going to be the serial rapist, and the welfare mother”
The serial rapist is by no means a repeatedly successful tactic. It is only intermittently successful. As I indicated, most often it is undertaken by men who are already losing the game. Those who are best fit to reproduce begin engaging in sex at a young age, as soon as women become fertile. They are the leaders of their age groups as children and most importantly in the first blush of puberty.
Rapists are commonly loners. Definitely not born leaders. Danger drives away the otherwise successful. Rape is perilous under otpimal conditions. Under conditions of general peace and with birth control, it is hardly practicable at all.
As for welfare mothers, they need an entire civilization—and a modern, socialistic civilization at that—before they can mooch off others. For most of human history, that was nowhere to be found. However, as you may have noticed, welfare motherhood is a good strategy nowadays. Poor people have more kids than the well-off, and subsidized poor people have even more.
Come to think of it, mooching is always a central strategy of the female persuasion. Understandably, since they are physically weaker, especially when with child, and are better off with someone to protect them. Men, on the other hand, are expert exploiters, often leaving women to stew for nine months while they go shop around. Different strategies, roughly equal success rates. That’s why we compliment eachother so well.
The laws of nature are not moral. Nature simply is. It is humans, God, or the intrinsic Nature behind the apparent “nature” of science that passes moral judgment. Remember, science is about things as they are, whereas morality is about the way things ought to be.
Morality and all of its associated ideals are rooted entirely in the presupposition some higher power defines what is correct for human behavior.
Nature is pure war, with every man against another. Fear of death is the only way to keep peace; so man is civilized by the restraint of violence against him for transgressions upon his neighbor.
The argument of some higher purpose is religious fallacy and those who preach it are no different even if they CLAIM atheism. Some just want to set themselves up in a temple for others to genuflect before an assumed divinity.
The notion that children need to be indoctrinated and badgered into thinking a certain way is the insecurity of adults, a universal dissatisfaction with mortality reaching out for an eternal ideal. Whether this is done by atheists or by religionists, it is exactly the same.
[16] And whereas a man can fancy shapes he never saw, making up a figure out of the parts of divers creatures, as the poets make their centaurs, chimeras and other monsters never seen, so can he also give matter to those shapes, and make them in wood, clay or metal. And these are also called images, not for the resemblance of any corporeal thing, but for the resemblance of some phantastical inhabitants of the brain of the maker. But in these idols, as they are originally in the brain, and as they are painted, carved moulded or molten in matter, there is a similitude of one to the other, for which the material body made by art may be said to be the image of the fantastical idol made by nature. (Hobbes, p 444)
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668. Ed. Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/hobbes/leviathan-contents.html
Then there is rape that occurs as a result of victory.
War is a Darwinian event. It is triumph of the successful and strong over the unsuccessful and weak. Women become part of the spoils and sex either forcibly or by reluctant consent transforms the gene pool to eliminate the weak.
Germany is an example. The current population contains lots of individuals with genes from Russia. To a lesser extent because the Americans and Brits did not rape, there are still lots of Anglo genes from the occupiers in the society.
History will show the result of the war loss and gene pool dilution away from the Hitlerian Arian super race.
“Morality and all of its associated ideals are rooted entirely in the presupposition some higher power defines what is correct for human behavior.”
That’s only true for those who hold that morality is absolute. Or if not absolute, flexible only to a certain extent. On the other hand, there are many of us who are perfectly arbitrary in our moral choices, who pull haphazardly from personal opinion, tradition, or what-have-you. Wouldn’t say they rely on any higher power, only a mixture of their own reason and accident.
“Nature is pure war, with every man against another. Fear of death is the only way to keep peace; so man is civilized by the restraint of violence against him for transgressions upon his neighbor.”
Have you been reading Hobbes?
“The notion that children need to be indoctrinated and badgered into thinking a certain way is the insecurity of adults”
Yes, and most adults are rightly insecure, because they don’t just want their kids to survive; they want them to prosper. Any random kid can learn how to live on his own, slowly, as he goes. He could benefit from guidance, even if he doesn’t have to listen to anyone if he chooses not to.
“a universal dissatisfaction with mortality reaching out for an eternal ideal”
Not sure how this fits the previous clause, but hey, yeah. Except most people aren’t dissatisfied with morality, at least not much more than they are disastisfied with flat tires and such. They are upset with particular parts of traditional and speculative morality, especially the parts that haven’t worked out for them. But their moral system is an iceburg. Only conscious of one-tenth. The rest they integrate into their thinking unthinkingly.
“Whether this is done by atheists or by religionists, it is exactly the same.”
I tend to agree. Lots of atheists are hardliners. Never understood why they carp on and on about how theists are wrong when they contend that there is no morality without god. You’ve just unbound yourself from Prometheus’ rock. Live a little!
They’re so damn quick to assert that we can have our Not-God and eat morality too. We can get rid of ugly, old prostration, trading it in for utilitarianism, “objectivism,” or Marxism. Oftener than not, trading it in for a more rigid system, and a system less likely to be sustained since, as I’ve mentioned, it is natural for people to be unconscious of most of their morality. Who wants to be a vegan, drive Yugos, take a bag along with you to the grocery store, etc., when it’s much easier to go to church once a year.
All this is why I enjoy people like James Fitzjames Stephen. I don’t want to say people who are honest, but people who are smart enough to realize that fine distinctions between good coercion and bad coercion are too clever. Coercion is coercion. Morality is about Force. Government is about Force.
In order to make people live a certain way, you’ve got to have Force, to use or for deterrence’s sake. At least in the beginning. After a while, you may use habit. But habit has to be butressed by Force.
I see you have, in fact, touched Hobbes. There has never been a political philosophy book that has so excited me at first and so let me down in the end.
“Then there is rape that occurs as a result of victory.”
I believe I mentioned war already. Rape is attractive to warriors because they need not worry about the violent reprisals that await rapists in regular civil society. First, because they have the means at hand to defend themselves. But more importantly because the male protectors of the potential rape victims are otherwise occupied.
“History will show the result of the war loss and gene pool dilution away from the Hitlerian Arian super race.”
I’m no expert, but I’m not sure that race ever existed. If they were so superior, how’d they allow themselves to be invaded and raped out of existence by marauding slavs?
Back to Hobbes again...
"...these are also called images, not for the resemblance of any corporeal thing, but for the resemblance of some phantastical inhabitants of the brain of the maker."
Morality is about Force. Government is about Force.
The only thing that makes man civilized is the ability for the weakest to kill the strongest.
So long as there is someone willing to pay, there will always be someone willing to collect...
The issue for most has now become who holds the collection plate in their temples for the god of communism or the gods of religion.
There is no morality without one singular source defining what morality is.
Plato’s Euthyphro is a great illustration.
Socrates advanced the argument to Euthyphro that, piety to the gods, who all want conflicting devotions and/or actions from humans, is impossible. (Socrates exposed the pagan esoteric sophistry.)
Likewise, morals are such a construction of idols used by the Left as a rationale for them to demand compliance to their wishes in politics, which most often are a skewed mess of fallacies in logic. Morals are a deceptive replacement for the avoidance of sin.
Today, "morals" are defined by a quasi-religious pagan philosophy based on esoteric hobgoblins. A greater number of "atheists" and "pagans" adopt the same hackneyed tenets of a false Judaic-Christian ideal (golden calf). They also subscribe to the Judaic fetishism of "sin," but will fight to their death in denial of it. Most of them are so wrapped up in their own polemics that they have become nothing more than pathetic anti-Christians with the same false hypocritical philosophy. They just slap a new label on it hoping nobody will notice - - they replace the idea of "avoiding sin" with "morals."
Morality and all of its associated concepts are from the belief some higher power defines what is correct in human behavior.
“Selfish, immoral behavior is not a bottom-up problem of evolution, but a top-down problem of rebellion against our Maker. Men need the fear of God. They need salvation. People know what is right. It’s not Darwin in their genes, but true moral evil in their souls that causes them to violate their consciences.”
This of course is a convenient “creation science” argument. All sin is blamed on belief in evolution.
So that way even when priests, fundamentalist pastors, or avowed Christians sexually molest their flock or other vulnerable people, or otherwise behave immorally, it’s the fault of science and the theory of evolution.
It’s such a stupid argument, spawned from intellectually ill-equipped “creation scientists” that it becomes a humorous caricature of an elementary school playground fight. This is the character of all “creation science” though - foundation-less science, skeptical faith.
You “creation science” types are seriously sociopathic and in need of the best therapy that science can conjure.
“Morals are a deceptive replacement for the avoidance of sin.”
How would anyone ever know what constituted “sin” if they themselves had not discovered it, or if they had been told by other men? That’s my problem. I’d like to ascribe to an absolute morality, but have no basis on which to decide. That’s a problem for me in much of life. I’m like a dog between two bowls of food that starves to death instead of eating one or the other.
“(and no, young dogs deer etc. do not engage in homosexual behavior no matter how desperate homo’s are to interpret acts of dominance assertion during play between male pups as homosexual behavior)”
Is your point is that anyone who believes in science and the theory of evolution a rapist, homosexual deviant, or that “creation science” types are like animals?
Please clarify.
” Note that evolution is only possible with HETEROSEXUAL relationships...
This is one scientific fact a lot of the so-called Darwinists want to run away from. “
Why would science run away from this? Are you saying that if you do not believe in the theory of evolution, like “creation scientists”, that you are more likely to be a homosexual?
Please clarify
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