So a country that holds that all religion is bad, outlaws the church, and embraces the idea of the state, would be attributed to a model of the catholic church?

Yea, I would lose with those rules.

You suffer from a lack of historical knowledge. You are spouting lines you've heard from other people, without knowing why they fail.

Look into the Church's involvement in the systems of which you speak. Not just modeling, but actual sanction and collaboration.

Actually study the issue for yourself, so you don't talk gibberish that you picked up from someone along the way.

Research how the hierarchy of these systems were thought of by their flock.

Incorporate their god-status and how this reverence acted as the catalyst for their atrocities into your currently weak and ignorant understanding of people, places and events.

Or continue to toil in your delusions.

Either way.

Yea..my bad.

All true historians see communism as an offshoot archtype of the Southern Baptist women's sufferage movement.

I wonder if the communist would have existed first, if the church would be seen as just another exmaple of this governmental institution.

Yes, the prohibition against graven images and the instruction to keep the sabbath holy were undoubtedly instrumental to both the success and the detriment of those countries you mention.

I know, I know.

Actually learning about things is more difficult than defending one's position by propping up the slim and spurious arguments of others.

Also, applying strict reason and logic to one's beliefs runs the risk of collapsing one's beliefs.

These prospects are not to be taken lightly, and I rarely expect a person to go about fixing their system of thought.

This is why I, for the most part, just hurl words.

It is not for the believer, but those who are observing who may be on the fence when it comes to critical thought, and to show those who utilize critical thought that it is ok to call absurdity absurd.

baby rapist!

i assume you think always stopping when turning right doesn't have any real benefit for society, so kind of a trivial example in relation to the point i'm trying to make. but i'm not making my point very well so my fault

to put it another way, assuming societies got started at all (i think they would), IMO humanity would eventually evolve to instinctively and/or intellectually consider the biggies like stealing/murder/rape etc. immoral in a social context, and most mentally stable people would evolve not to do them whether they were punished at any point in history or not, even if there was some form of personal benefit to the actions. that's the direction i see social evolution taking us now in fact, or at least i'm optimistic about it.



i know you can't actually separate fear from behavior. i'm just saying the specific behavior that leads to social fitness wouldn't change either way.

yawn

your god would be proud.

they certainly don't see it as an offshoot of using reason rather than faith to parse theism, which is all atheism is.

After some cursory thought, I would challenge this statement.

I think that behavior in regards to social fitness would vastly change for the better.

I can think of a great many offenses that are a result of a rationally inappropriate response to fears, or appropriate response to irrational fears.

I would love to see everyone debate a civilized society without the use of fear. But could you create a civilized society without reward? Huh? Could the existence of morality have nothing to do with responses to fears and rewards.

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

There is however no species which always eats their young. A species like that very obviously could not last even 2 generations.

Obviously humans have a sense of morality that is unlike that of any other animal. We're also about a zillion times smarter than any other animal. So the argument that God gave us our morality is equally as strong or weak as the argument that God gave us our noses so we can smell, and our ears so we can hear, and our lungs so we can breathe, and our penises so we can reproduce.

The argument that God's existence is most evident in the sense of morality He gave us makes little sense to me. We have intelligence. Along with intelligence comes things like the discussion of morality, where it came from, what it is, and so on. If we weren't so goddamned intelligent and so goddamned moral as a species, we would not exist to ask those questions. It is our intelligence and our common sense of morality that allowed us to thrive as we have. The insistence that God is the reason for that intelligence is no stronger than the insistence that God is the reason for anything and everything.

The fact that without our morality we would not survive simply points to the fact that our species necessarily evolved with a sense of morality. If we hadn't, we wouldn't be here. We did, so we are. If you want to give God credit for that then that's fine, but I don't see why that's a stronger argument than God doing anything else. Like, this thread could be "the existence of livers," expounding the virtues and necessity of the human liver, and how without this piece of miraculous wonder we would not be able to survive in these bodies.

So, why is morality a stronger example?

I am not trying to say; morality exist = God per se

I would argue the best proof of God's existance is in the world around us. The thing that scientist like Einstein said points to God, universal truths and purpose in everything around us from the electron to the spinning universe.


This thread is trying to argue that a moral code could not have evolved along side humans. A while back crow said that Hitchens figured out that morality evolved. I looked into Hitchens side and other's arguments and I found Hitchens to be a typical strawman arguing atheist who spends half his time mistating my side of the issue so that he can tear it down with an arrogant flair. This is a typical trait of many popular atheist authors, and from some of their followers. First post in this thread was explaining why I was wrong to imply that since the logical conclusion of atheism is nihilism, then all actions are of equal value, so raping a child was the same as eating an ice cream cone. Surprise surprise, he was right that that is a bad conclusion. Never noticed that that wasn't my point. But he was very excited to prove me wrong about the point I never made.

vb and I touched on some of his work in Vegas and I told him I thought this would be an interesting discussion, where morality came from.

I would argue that pure darwinian evolution of man theory would counter morality, survival of the fittest has no room for compassion. So how could anyone who holds to darwinian evolution believe that morality evolved in such a short period of time? And since we can't dig up any early examples to prove either side, we are forced to look at this from the information at hand.



Why would you say that without morality we would not survive? Don't we have many examples of primitive tribes in New Guinea etc that have morals so foriegn to us that we consider them savages? Eating people, killing other tribes to enter into manhood etc.? They've survived for a pretty long time.

I would hold we could survive without any morality. Life would be less fullfilling, like communist Russia, but it would still continue. You can't really say that since A = B then C until you first prove A=B. How can you prove that without morality we would not survive?

Apes show cooperation, compassion, and even a sense of fairness (e.g. they are more likely to punish another ape that they've seen act unfairly). Clearly they don't have a bible, so doesn't that prove that at least some of the things we consider morality are naturally occurring and not a product of religion?

i think he believes modern morality evolved via some form of social selection/social darwinism, but i wouldn't say he "figured out" anything. he's a journalist and political activist, not a scientist.



what specifically does he say that mistates your position?



i've never heard anyone say modern human morality is strictly a matter of genetics. speaking of straw men.

There is no such tribe without a morality. Some of their morals are different from ours, but I actually think most are probably the same. A lot of the things that seem so "savage" are exaggerations and misunderstandings by western explorers.

Part of me thinks this direction is fruitless.

You can show examples of a 'moralness' in an animal's behaviour.

I can show examples of the same animal with actions that make the motive for their actions more pavlovian than thoughtful.

Since we can't really ask an ape...do we really gain anything by going in this direction?

Maybe not a truly ammoral tribe, but with morals very foreign to ours. Tim's point that we couldn't survive without morals was the only thing I was trying to refute. Not make the case that there exists a clan of vulcans in the jungle.

This is what he said:

Quo warranto is a very ancient question, meaning “by what right?” You
ask me for my “warrant” for a code of right conduct and persist in mistaking
my answer for an evasion. I in turn ask you by what right you assume
that a celestial autocracy is a guarantee of morals, let alone by what right
you choose your own (Christian) version of it as the only correct one. All
deities have been hailed by their subjects as the fount of good behavior,
just as they have been used as the excuse for inexcusable behavior. My answer
is the same as it was all along: Our morality evolved.





Hitchens tried to make the case that the four Gospels are completely in disagreement about all major issues. He quotes a guy named Ehrman to do this. Erman disagrees with him as do all scholars who have looked at the issue with a modicum of efort. In fact most agree that thirty-three key facts are in accord in all 4 Gospels
This was answered hundreds of times for centuries. Only a person who tries to not find the explanations could achieve this goal and try to claim journalistic credentials

Then he says that all four Gospels are supposed to be based on Q, which is not true, only Matthew and Luke are supposed to be.

Jesus was not the only one to mention Hell. Paul, Peter, Jude, and John did as well.

Jesus did not invent the concept of Hell. It is mentioned in earlier Jewish writings.

No one was killed over the debate regarding which of the Gospels should be considered divinely inspired. Hitchens writes
that “many a life was horribly lost.”

He also has the nerve to make the case that charity and relief work are “the inheritors of modernism and the
Enlightenment,”
Anyone with half a brain would be able to see that Christians dominate in relief and charity work around the world.

These are a very few.




Neither did I. Is that a straw straw man?

You're attacking a straw man. No one asserted that ethics is the only motivation for animals.

I don't really understand the distinction. Let me elaborate to make it more clear.

Here's a recent experiment with chimps. You have a pair of them in cages next to each other and they are trained to give up a rock they have for a small reward - a piece of cucumber. They do this and they also see their partner doing it. In some cases, their partner gets a bigger reward for doing the same thing (hey, unfair!). When that happens, the chimp who received the unfair reward stops trading the rock with the experimenter and begins various protest behaviors. (Note how amazing this is because they are giving up a small reward just to protest the unfairness.

Interestingly, the degree to which they tolerate unfairness changes with how well they know the other chimp. If their partner is from their close-knit group, they don't mind the unfairness as much.

You may not consider this "morality", but the experiment shows that the monkeys are keeping track equity and adjusting their behavior accordingly. As I wrote above fairness is one of the five moral categories, and apparently we didn't invent it. It's born out of the needs of living in a social situation. Since we share some social structure with these animals we also share some of the "rules".

err.. so you don't think the gospels are in agreement about major issues? you think matthew and luke were copied from Q? (etc)

obviously those are most or all just things you think are wrong, not arguments against misstated christian positions.




you've spent a lot of time in this thread arguing that modern human morality couldn't have come from "pure darwinian evolution" or "survival of the fittest" (via genetics), which is a straw man.

It's origin? Empathy.

Actually this is wrong. All studies on the subject show that athiests commit crime at a much lower rate than theists. Much lower.

The also get divorced at a lower rate and have higher IQ's

All round much nicer people us athiests.

It simply shows that behaviour is driven by multiple inputs. Maslow (sp?) and his heirarchy of needs gives a simplistic explanantion as to why you get variation in human behaviour.

People will react with empathy being a primary factor on some occasions and will ignore it in others. The fact that animals follow the same pattern strengthens the argument that altuistic (if you discount emotive rewards) behaviour is biological in it's source.

What we gain by going in this direction is shooting another hole in the God gave us morals theory.

And it allows me to show this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8bMS22xQA8

which is really sweet

Here is a very interesting study on the neural basis of human morals

http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v6/n10/abs/nrn1768.html

Abstract:
"Moral cognitive neuroscience is an emerging field of research that focuses on the neural basis of uniquely human forms of social cognition and behaviour. Recent functional imaging and clinical evidence indicates that a remarkably consistent network of brain regions is involved in moral cognition. These findings are fostering new interpretations of social behavioural impairments in patients with brain dysfunction, and require new approaches to enable us to understand the complex links between individuals and society. Here, we propose a cognitive neuroscience view of how cultural and context-dependent knowledge, semantic social knowledge and motivational states can be integrated to explain complex aspects of human moral cognition."

Washington post article on the study
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...52701056_2.html
"The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable. "


Receiving emotive rewards for empathy based behaviour? Looking more and more like a biological source for morals to me

Another lie by the atheist designed to create an impression that denies the reality. Twist a number, ignore a large group, use numbers instead of percentage, and viola, you suddenly have create a false reality.

Year 2000 study in Great Britain.

38,531 Christians in jail
122 atheist
62 agnostics

These number seem to support your theory, and are used by Hitchens and the other peope writing books that you guys hold as gospel.

But there are also 20,639 prisoners who claim no religion

And this was not simply a case of people falling through the cracks or refusing to provide an answer; the Inmate Information System is specific enough to distinguish between Druids, Scientologists, and Zoroastrians as well as between the Celestial Church of God, the Welsh Independent church, and the Non-Conformist church. It also features separate categories for “other Christian religion,” “other non-Christian religion,” and “not known.”

So 31.6 percent of the prison population claims no-religion, compared with 15.1 percent of Britons who checked no religion, atheist, agnostic or heathen in the 2001 national survey.

So atheist/people who hold to no religion at all are 4 times more likely to commit a crime than a Christian.

They also die younger, are more likely to be childless and unmarried, and smoke, abuse alcohol and be depressed.

Not even 1/10th, from just his god is not great book, but this thread isn't about the validity of the Bible or even how badly your side understands what the Bible says.






I have stated that the two are going in opposite directions, so to imply that they were in action simultaneously to achieve the current conditions of evolved mankind and evolved morality doesn't fly.

I understand that the changing of a fin to a foot is not the same thing as the change of accepting the death of your child sacrificed to Ra, to holding children's lives valuable.

That's actually really interesting about the chimps.

But my point isn't whether or not chimps have morality.

I will even concede that some animals have some actions we consider morality.

But a common Designer would explain why this is true on my side, and if man's morality evolved then having another species with similar traits would be expected as well.

So are you arguing that an animal having a possible sense of morality somehow lends weight to the evolution of morality? Because if you are then we first must establish that my side doesn't believe that God gave them this instinct in the first place.

I mean some people easily accept that the fish evolved into the mammals, I don't see why the idea of a chimp not letting his chimpmate get shortstacked on the biscuits be a real milestone.

Nor does it add to the argument. I guess it's my bad for lending weight to this by not ignoring the flame and shoot techinque when this was first brought up.

Hmm, so you are saying that God could not have created this process because the process is observable?

I guess you probably win a lot of arguments with this style of debate.

Again see above. The fact that something exists isn't proof that it exists seperate from God.

But that video was kind fo cool, it would have been much better if that impala hadn't ended up dead and eaten by the croc.

the trouble is that's a nonsensical statement. evolution is adaptation to changing conditions. there is no "direction". as fully self-aware animals with complex social structures humans have evolved under radically different conditions than whatever species you are taking your simple survival of the mate-stealing fittest example from. it's no surprise we tend to behave differently.

last resort time apparently.

yes, in the same way as saying space aliens from alpha centauri are manipulating our brain waves to make us behave morally would explain it.

No. I'm simply countering your point that morals could not have been developed through evolution, which apart from some smoke and mirrors wrapped around eugenics, you've provided no evidence for other than to repeat it over and over.

It's not a "one or the other situation". There could be countless other possiblities that explain it. Therefore we should look at each case on it's merits and remove those that fail.

The morals from the Christian "God did it" scenario fails to explain
- lack of higher moral behaviour from Christians (not saying they are worse; just no better)
- sociopaths
- 'evil' in children
- common patterns of behaviour between humans and (other) animals
- empathetic reactions that weaken with 'distance'
- physical injury resulting in morally related behavioural changes
- instintive altruism
- Catholic priests
- etc etc etc

An evolutionary/biological/natural model doen't have these problems.

Bring some others to the table and we can discuss those too, but we no longer need the "God did it" explanation as it doesn't meet with the facts

Actually I don't refer to the British 'stats' as they are farcical. You probably not aware but there have been strong movements in the UK to disrupt census taking. Probably due to the fact that you get pulled over by road side police to have data 'gathered' here.

To give you an feel for how ridiculous the census here is, 'anarchists' - for want of a better term started a movement to revolt against the religousity questions and answer 'Jedi' as your preferred religion. It was so successful that the 2001 you mentioned Jedi was actually listed as an official religion. Apparantly 1% of Brits are Jedi's

Interestingly enough it is also the only question in the entire census that is optional.

No, the figures I were referring to were American.

Of course it's all tongue in cheek anyway

Evolution very much does postulate a direction. Upwards in complexity, survivalibilty, intelligence and morality.

to pretend otherwise is just a dodge similr to your definitions dodge you use so often.




Radically different conditions?

What, on different planets?

Pretty sure that the environmental necessity for change part of Darwianin evolution wasn't for isolated locals...

Maybe I don't give you guys credit for the complexity of details that evolution can handle...randomly through accidental mutations.

So your argument for why morality evolved is that I can't prove it didn't?

I've heard that arguement used before...




Uhhh sin nature?





In fact, an evolutionary/biological/natural model doesn't have any problems because there is no benchmark of good or bad to judge these results by.

Tongue in cheek when I refute your original assertion that Christians are more likely to be criminals with data?

Oh..

I think your toungue in cheek comments should be qualified first...maybe with this:

"This is not true, but I will state it to make the Christian side look bad..."

Then no one will assume you really meant what you are going to misrepresent as fact.

Which is a higher possiblity according to some...right?

Moral behavior is symptomatic of a social animal, such as dogs, primates (which, yes, includes us), dolphins, whales, etc. Why does your god grant morality to dolphins and such. Wouldn't he only grant morality to humans, since we are clearly separate and distinct from the rest of the animal kingdom. The idea that morality is passed on by religion only works when the religion in question has a moral base. Issuing ten commandments (one of which is Do not covet thy neighbors goods is the very reason capitalism works) and threatening an eternity of punishment for violating those rules (unless of course you ask for forgiveness before your death) or simply for not wanting or asking for the love of the savior does not make a basis for morality. Far from it, it permits behavior that is free of all morals and ethics. Kill in the name of god and it is okay. Hell, anything in the name of god is okay.

Uhh, now your just being childish. (and anyway you started it so nah nah nah nah nah)

It's obvious the post above is a dig without substance...

As king of the inflamitary trolling you should be able to take your medicine better. Or does "do unto others" not apply to you?

No it isn't. Care to reread and try again?



Oh please try and use that to explain all of the above

please, please, please




Other than empathy?

lol at the "British study" being your ace in the hole.

Haha.

Look at the crime rates in countries by number of citizens who are religious.

lol

What makes this all of this really entertaining is that you guys are so condescending about points where you are so very wrong.

Enjoy your laughable place in history.

You will be seen by later generations in the same way people who threw virgins into volcano's are seen by you.

OK then now I am unclear as to your position.

You are saying that god imbued all living creatures with a sense of morality according to his value system?

I thought you had been arguing that morality came from religion, so that a person without religion would not have a basis for morality. That's why the behavior of the chimps refutes this argument.

If your position is the first, then atheists, christians, and chimps should be the same morally.

which explains why bacteria are the most successful adaptable living things on earth.

any direction to change comes from adaptation to conditions. evolution is just a mechanism and doesn't postulate anything. for all we know humans might be an evolutionary dead end.



when you're talking about evolution of social behavior social conditions are part of the environment.

glad to see you comparing christianity to cults.

Once a society begins to disregard the morality foundations laid down by religion...

It's changing as parts of his argument are clearly shown weak.

It isn't like it started off as some well defined, logically vigorous proposition.

It is undeveloped, apologist tripe, I wouldn't expect much consistency.

this thread was much more interesting when it was just vb and bg.