it’s called Deism
it was the position of many 18th century philosophers. (and many free masons who believes in a “great architect of the universe”, but reject organized religions).
[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:
So… how many babies does it take to paint a wall ;)[/quote]
apparently just one 
[quote]krsoneeeee wrote:
Out of curiosity - Do any of the religious people in this forum, have a different religion to their parents?[/quote]
Yes.
[quote]ephrem wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:
…there’s an ongoing research project in Canada that looks at the structure of the brain, in particular the amygdala, to assess whether sociopathy can be linked to deformations of the brain…
…we can agree that there are sociopaths who have no sense of “other”, have no guilt, remorse or empathy for another being? Your idea that murder is wrong is an absolute, because that is how it’s wired in the brain, is hereby refuted…
…an absolute truth is a truth that is equally true for everyone, under all circumstances. Clearly when we change the circumstances, like war for instance, murder is suddenly a good thing. It’s not an absolute. That we cannot survive without breathing air; that’s an absolute, but morality is not…
[/quote]
How somebody feels about something and wrong v. right are two different things. Sociopaths cannot empathize, that’s not the same as not knowing right or wrong, good or evil. You can know something is wrong and not feel it’s wrong.
[/quote]
…why is it that children need to be taught right from wrong?
[/quote]
Same reason they need to be taught all sorts of things. That has nothing to do with moral relativism. Even if you think right is wrong and wrong is right, that doesn’t make it so.[/quote]
…see pat, eventhough i don’t think right is wrong and wrong is right, all we have to determin whether right is right and wrong is wrong is our feelings. Now we can argue if those feelings are innate or socially influenced, and i think it’s a bit of both, but how we came to agree on a specific set of morals is through trial and error and those pesky feelings…
[/quote]
When I was younger and someone would make fun of me and push a button that they didn’t know they were pushing and I saw red, and wanted to hall off and knock their block off. My feelings said it was right and I would go and knock 'em down. Now, other folks around me knew it was not, but my feelings said it was. Feelings are not a very good indicator of morality.
[quote]krsoneeeee wrote:
sorry late reply haven’t been on for a few days.
[quote]ephrem wrote:
…saving 6 billion people by killing a baby doesn’t make the killing less immoral, but you wouldn’t let 6 billion people perish in order to save one baby either because that would be more immoral?
…so are there levels of immorality or is any immoral act equal to another immoral act?[/quote]
Im not sure if there are levels of immorality? - But surely when given a choice you’d have to look at the act as a whole rather than two individual cases. Saving the greater amount of people would be the more moral act. I was just curious if others thought this justifies killing the baby and therefore make the act “moral”. I think it does…
[/quote]
No it doesn’t, the end can never justify the means. Sorry.
[quote]
Also, using a baby is a bad example because people get caught up in the emotion(ie the negative connotations of killing a baby) instead of actually thinking about the situation - If you use a 90 yr old terminal cancer patient you’d likely hit less empathy?[/quote]
No, the end still does not justify the means. The situation does change now. If a 90 year old terminal cancer patient knew that if they died 6 billion people would not be killed. Then, there would be no immoral act on the you or the 90 year old, if they took a built from the person that would kill the 6 billion people. However, the person that killed the 90 year old still committed an immoral act. A person has dignity, no matter what the circumstances are.
[quote]forlife wrote:
Cortes, I see where you’re coming from on the baby example. Would you agree though that there is a sort of “macro morality” that says the overall good is sometimes best served by committing immoral acts with negative consequences on a smaller scale? In other words, sometimes the most moral action requires committing an immoral action, because ultimately it accomplishes a greater good. [/quote]
No, the end cannot justify the means. Otherwise it is immoral.
[quote]haney1 wrote:
[quote]forlife wrote:
Cortes, I see where you’re coming from on the baby example. Would you agree though that there is a sort of “macro morality” that says the overall good is sometimes best served by committing immoral acts with negative consequences on a smaller scale? In other words, sometimes the most moral action requires committing an immoral action, because ultimately it accomplishes a greater good. [/quote]
I am interested in his response, but I can tell you that the Bible has instances where that is the case. Rahab lying being the first example that comes to mind.[/quote]
Rahab lying was not an immoral act. Unless you consider all those people that hid Jews during the Holocaust immoral, too. Rahab showed civil disobedience towards an unjust ruling to kill the spies.
As well, the Bible is filled with immoral acts being used as good, by God. As God can bring good from anything, however this does not justify our doing bad to do good. As God never did bad to create good. He just used the bad to do good.
[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:
…what i’m saying isn’t a reflection on the succes or failure of certain sets of morals. Certain sets of moral have been succesful, and other sets have been failures. Christian morality has been succesful, but there are other sets of morals that have been succesful. That something is an idea or opinion doesn’t invalidate it’s value…
…i’m happy to concede that morality has been a wildly succesful invention, like sliced bread or the toilet, but you wouldn’t praise the toilet as a gift of god, would you?
Introducing the army ant: Army ant - Wikipedia Moral behaviour has been observed in primates, but i consider nature to be a-moral. Since i believe we are animals, we are in essence a-moral too. But because we’re highly evolved animals our moral structures and behaviour are evolved aswell, even upto a point where they’re believed to be absolute…
[/quote]
See, I’ve always found the argument for the evolutionary origin of morality to be a square peg. Evolution, along with “climate change” is one of those great subjects where the tables get turned on the so-called scientific-minded folks (ie, the ones who are always making fun of religious folks for attributing everything they can’t understand to God). Somebody gets backed into a corner with something he can’t empirically justify and suddenly out comes, “Well it’s teh evolution.” The truth of the matter is that there is a LOT that evolution does not or cannot explain. You may try and fit morality into it, but you’ll end up with a lot more questions than answers. Not directing the full force of this at you, eph, but you are using the argument, so I will tell you what I think of it.
The thing is, morality, when we are called upon to “exercise” it in very important circumstances, more often than not involves an extreme act of the will AGAINST our very nature, AGAINST our “natural” instincts, in short, it involves making choices that are actually in direct contradiction to what our finely-honed-by-millions-of-years-of-evolution instincts are screaming at us to do. So, it’s part of our evolutionary imperative to do whatever it takes to survive, but there are countless stories of men and women willfully choosing their own deaths to save another, or choosing death rather than violating a principle. I could start a list here and go on forever, but the point is that these drives are, again, very often in direct opposition to our natural instincts.
Now you can give me all sorts of explanations and justifications as to why really it is possible that we have instilled in us an evolutionary drive that is in direct opposition to our other evolutionary drives, but I’ve never seen anything but conjecture on this point. Much like the sociopath who doesn’t fit the mold you require for 100% absolutely absolute morality, just saying that “It’s teh evolution” doesn’t make it so. [/quote]
…just FYI, climate change and evolution are fact. The reasons why it’s happening is theory…
…you talk about acts of morality that go against instinct? I’m not sure, your point was lost in verbosity. Could you give me an example?
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:
…see pat, eventhough i don’t think right is wrong and wrong is right, all we have to determin whether right is right and wrong is wrong is our feelings. Now we can argue if those feelings are innate or socially influenced, and i think it’s a bit of both, but how we came to agree on a specific set of morals is through trial and error and those pesky feelings…
[/quote]
Feelings are nothing to the issue. It simply does not matter how you feel, it’s what you do. Ted Bundy reportedly felt really good when he tortured and killed all those women, his liking it, did not make it suddenly right.
Feelings are less than nothing to morality. Doing the right thing doesn’t always feel good and doing the wrong thing often does.
The truth is we don’t know where morality comes from, but everybody has a sense of it at least in the most basic levels. ← Actually, following the causal chain of morality, you know where I think it comes from. It’s not a biological thing, though biology plays a role, it does not define it.
You have some really bad behavior out there, that doesn’t mean that people don’t “know” better, they just don’t give a shit. [/quote]
…i don’t know what makes you tick, but me personally don’t get off on doing “bad” stuff. Doing “good” makes me feel good, that’s why i’d rather do “good” than “bad”…
…at least there’s plenty of ongoing research on the subject. Interesting stuff…
[quote]ZEB wrote:
[quote]forlife wrote:
In the light of your cherry picked facts, you mean…ALL the facts would include the unanimous conclusions of the major health organizations :)[/quote]
Oh I’m sorry you seem confused. I’m talking about the ugly health statistics revolving around certain activities that you may or may not participate in. There are no major health orgs that claim otherwise. [/quote]
…leave it for another thread Zeb. Don’t poison this one. Pretty please with sugar on top?
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:
…there’s an ongoing research project in Canada that looks at the structure of the brain, in particular the amygdala, to assess whether sociopathy can be linked to deformations of the brain…
…we can agree that there are sociopaths who have no sense of “other”, have no guilt, remorse or empathy for another being? Your idea that murder is wrong is an absolute, because that is how it’s wired in the brain, is hereby refuted…
…an absolute truth is a truth that is equally true for everyone, under all circumstances. Clearly when we change the circumstances, like war for instance, murder is suddenly a good thing. It’s not an absolute. That we cannot survive without breathing air; that’s an absolute, but morality is not…
[/quote]
How somebody feels about something and wrong v. right are two different things. Sociopaths cannot empathize, that’s not the same as not knowing right or wrong, good or evil. You can know something is wrong and not feel it’s wrong.
[/quote]
…why is it that children need to be taught right from wrong?
[/quote]
Same reason they need to be taught all sorts of things. That has nothing to do with moral relativism. Even if you think right is wrong and wrong is right, that doesn’t make it so.[/quote]
…see pat, eventhough i don’t think right is wrong and wrong is right, all we have to determin whether right is right and wrong is wrong is our feelings. Now we can argue if those feelings are innate or socially influenced, and i think it’s a bit of both, but how we came to agree on a specific set of morals is through trial and error and those pesky feelings…
[/quote]
When I was younger and someone would make fun of me and push a button that they didn’t know they were pushing and I saw red, and wanted to hall off and knock their block off. My feelings said it was right and I would go and knock 'em down. Now, other folks around me knew it was not, but my feelings said it was. Feelings are not a very good indicator of morality.[/quote]
…wait, why is it immoral for you to go off on bullies, but when a country is “bullied” war is the moral thing to do?
[quote]ZEB wrote:
[quote]forlife wrote:
In the light of your cherry picked facts, you mean…ALL the facts would include the unanimous conclusions of the major health organizations :)[/quote]
Oh I’m sorry you seem confused. I’m talking about the ugly health statistics revolving around certain activities that you may or may not participate in. There are no major health orgs that claim otherwise. [/quote]
Your recommendations are based only on the facts that reinforce your preconceptions, and completely ignore the consensual recommendations of the major health organizations. If that isn’t confirmatory bias, I don’t know what is.
Enough with the sidetrack, feel free to take it to the other thread if you have a constructive response.
[quote]forlife wrote:
[quote]ZEB wrote:
[quote]forlife wrote:
In the light of your cherry picked facts, you mean…ALL the facts would include the unanimous conclusions of the major health organizations :)[/quote]
Oh I’m sorry you seem confused. I’m talking about the ugly health statistics revolving around certain activities that you may or may not participate in. There are no major health orgs that claim otherwise. [/quote]
Your recommendations are based only on the facts that reinforce your preconceptions, and completely ignore the consensual recommendations of the major health organizations. If that isn’t confirmatory bias, I don’t know what is.
Enough with the sidetrack, feel free to take it to the other thread if you have a constructive response.[/quote]
If you didn’t want to disturb the thread why do you engage? My health facts are based on every single major medical organization that keeps accurate statistics - they are not biased in the least.
[quote]ZEB wrote:
- they are not biased in the least. [/quote]
LOL
Chris, are you taking the position that immoral acts should never be committed, even when they accomplish a far greater good?
In your example, would god punish you for killing a 90 year old to save the life of every other person on the planet? Or would god expect you to let everyone die?
[quote]Makavali wrote:
[quote]ZEB wrote:
- they are not biased in the least. [/quote]
LOL[/quote]
You laugh at the painful statistics on the CDC? Do you also pull the wings off flies?
ZEB, go away!
[quote]krsoneeeee wrote:
Out of curiosity - Do any of the religious people in this forum, have a different religion to their parents?[/quote]
As for me and my mother we don’t see it as religion as many evil things can be done in the name of religion but I see it as a relationship with Christ. But as from your perspective for my mother the answer would be no, however for my father I have no idea.
[quote]ephrem wrote:
[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]ephrem wrote:
…what i’m saying isn’t a reflection on the succes or failure of certain sets of morals. Certain sets of moral have been succesful, and other sets have been failures. Christian morality has been succesful, but there are other sets of morals that have been succesful. That something is an idea or opinion doesn’t invalidate it’s value…
…i’m happy to concede that morality has been a wildly succesful invention, like sliced bread or the toilet, but you wouldn’t praise the toilet as a gift of god, would you?
Introducing the army ant: Army ant - Wikipedia Moral behaviour has been observed in primates, but i consider nature to be a-moral. Since i believe we are animals, we are in essence a-moral too. But because we’re highly evolved animals our moral structures and behaviour are evolved aswell, even upto a point where they’re believed to be absolute…
[/quote]
See, I’ve always found the argument for the evolutionary origin of morality to be a square peg. Evolution, along with “climate change” is one of those great subjects where the tables get turned on the so-called scientific-minded folks (ie, the ones who are always making fun of religious folks for attributing everything they can’t understand to God). Somebody gets backed into a corner with something he can’t empirically justify and suddenly out comes, “Well it’s teh evolution.” The truth of the matter is that there is a LOT that evolution does not or cannot explain. You may try and fit morality into it, but you’ll end up with a lot more questions than answers. Not directing the full force of this at you, eph, but you are using the argument, so I will tell you what I think of it.
The thing is, morality, when we are called upon to “exercise” it in very important circumstances, more often than not involves an extreme act of the will AGAINST our very nature, AGAINST our “natural” instincts, in short, it involves making choices that are actually in direct contradiction to what our finely-honed-by-millions-of-years-of-evolution instincts are screaming at us to do. So, it’s part of our evolutionary imperative to do whatever it takes to survive, but there are countless stories of men and women willfully choosing their own deaths to save another, or choosing death rather than violating a principle. I could start a list here and go on forever, but the point is that these drives are, again, very often in direct opposition to our natural instincts.
Now you can give me all sorts of explanations and justifications as to why really it is possible that we have instilled in us an evolutionary drive that is in direct opposition to our other evolutionary drives, but I’ve never seen anything but conjecture on this point. Much like the sociopath who doesn’t fit the mold you require for 100% absolutely absolute morality, just saying that “It’s teh evolution” doesn’t make it so. [/quote]
…just FYI, climate change and evolution are fact. The reasons why it’s happening is theory…
[/quote]
I have never claimed otherwise.
[quote]
…you talk about acts of morality that go against instinct? I’m not sure, your point was lost in verbosity. Could you give me an example?[/quote]
Sorry, I know I need to work on improving my breviloquence. 
Well, pick one. Living in Japan, I want to have sex with about 50% of the women I see, and, as a reasonably good looking foreign male living in Japan, I could probably act on that desire as often as I pleased. Yay me. But I mysteriously obey this abstract, metaphysical entity called “my conscience” and heroically manage to confine the sex to myself and my wife.
Or, a man has fallen through thin ice and will surely die, another man, a complete stranger, jumps into the icy water to save him, despite the extreme danger to his own life. Say what you will, but acts such as these are examples of overcoming a MASSIVE inner push to do exactly the opposite.
The desires toward survival and procreation are the two strongest instincts we possess. We are pushed from within by these strongest of drives, yet there is this something that clearly comes from without, that is NOT a drive, that acts in direct OPPOSITION to those strongest of drives, and we obey that one. Evolution does a great job at explaining processes that motivate us from within, but it cannot account for the absolutely illogical thwarting of its most deeply ingrained structures.
There is also a logical problem you get into when you try to account for morality via evolution, but I’ll save that one. It’s nearly 4am again.
[quote]krsoneeeee wrote:
- Youve proven multiple times you cannot respond with any manner of respect.
[/quote]
Only to you. Your first posts in this thread, before I ever engaged you, were full of condescension, spite, and meanness. You’ll receive exactly what you give.
If by “apply common sense,” you mean, “completely rearrange what we are talking about so that it means something else entirely, then claim victory and superior intellect in a tone of sneering, mongoloid derision,” then yeah, I admit it, you got me.
The only thing I’m having trouble grasping is your command of the English language.
Your so-called coin flipping is yet another dodge from dealing with the real point, which was that murdering anyone, no matter what the utilitarian outcome, is not moral. Doesn’t become moral. Is not one degree more or less moral.
Don’t agree with me, then quit dodging my question and answer it for crying out loud: Would you feel GOOD about having killed a baby, in the above example? Quit hiding behind your sophistic twisting of circumstances and answer the question.
Uhh, pretty sure I did say that.
Oh, here it is, from way back on page 36, in a response to you, of all people:
All yours. Coin-flip away.