Iggy

If morality submits to that reasoning then it is somewhat unique. You can't say that different people's views on evolution differ widely therefore evolution is subjective. There are other considerations before public opinion rules the day. People who lack empathy (psychopaths or sociopaths -- the terms are somewhat interchangeable) aren't necessarily, or usually, insane (insanity usually implies not knowing right from wrong). uh huh My values aren't based on consensus, and really no one's should be. We shouldn't need a consensus to tell us that being cruel to children is morally wrong. If morality is based on a culture's consensus then imagine the following: In a certain culture 90% of the people believe slavery is morally good and 10% believe it is morally bad. We're left with the awful conclusion that the 10% who are anti-slavery are, in fact, immoral for holding that belief. Anti-slavery is an immoral position to be holding under the consensus assumption. The two traps here are that 1) morality has no objective basis, and 2) without god morality has no objective basis. The 10% who are considered immoral for being anti-slavery are hoping that both are wrong.

No doubt math is the very model of objectivity. Godel's incompleteness theorem is good on showing that some axioms must remain unproven by a math theorem. Come to think of it, I hope I don't imply that a theory explaining morality would be as objective as a math theorem. No hope of that. It's just that they have in common the idea that first principles are judged by their usefulness rather than the ability to prove them true. I may be unfamiliar with how you're using the term. There is, to my knowledge, no requirement that objective quantities be constant. Planetary mass is objective because different astronomers independently find the same mass for any given planet -- that is to say, because the method of finding mass doesn't depend on the astronomer's subjective interpretation of personal experience it is an objective matter. The same could be said for tailors measuring a person for a suit. The tailor could be a computer devoid of subjectivity and the arm could belong to a dead person for whom all subjectivity is lost and the result would be the same as anyone could predict. That is my understanding of something that is entirely objective... even if it is a body part If you ask a psychopath which is the greater moral good: giving blood at the blood bank or mocking the mentally handicapped, they know the answer. They recognize morality without feeling empathy. Yeah, I agree there is no true morality, but truth and objectivity are different beasts altogether. Newtonian mechanics (for example) is objective, and it was objectively derived, but it isn't true. Objectivity makes a well marked path that anyone can follow regardless of how their personal perspective is colored by their feelings, but... right, it doesn't guarantee the truth of the destination. To be fair to psychopaths I would doubt the law's ability to inform anyone of morality. Although... thinking about it... that might explain why there are so many sociopaths in congress. They tried looking into the law to sharpen their skills in faking morality and almost all of the legal statutes ended up being a long ongoing story of political hackery that taught our young sociopaths to be politicians. It suddenly makes perfect sense Seriously though, psychopaths certainly aren't like replicants from Blade Runner where a few questions from an empathy test reveals them for what they are. They know moral right from wrong. Even when considering a unique moral dilemma previously unconsidered, morality isn't so hard to reason -- even without the feeling of empathy pulling them toward morality they can still find it and recognize it by reasoning out a concept which isn't overly complicated. And what exactly is this objective quality? I'm curious. ok, when I say quality I mean things like... I'll make a list... A drive towards solidarity The tendency to value others Having compassion for others When I say objective quality I mean that we know enough to objectively say, Humans do better with a drive towards solidarity. We benefit from our tendency to value others. We thrive when compassion strengthens our connection to others. and to say, even, that our drive toward morality owes its existence to the objective value of those qualities. As far as first principles go, those don't appear half bad.

At the foundation of every science, and I imagine every human idea, there are premises. They are the axioms of math, the first principles of philosophy, and the postulates of physics. They can't be proven true. They're arbitrary, and not everyone agrees with them. If morality is subjective for this first reason you give then I'm positive nothing would not be. No doubt there is a big difference between those things, but you've got the cart before the horse. Empathy evolved into a human characteristic because animals -- particularly our primate ancestors -- which made certain choices were, on average, more successful than animals making different choices. Before humans defined morality and decided to call these decisions moral choices, and before human empathy ever existed, solidarity amongst group animals could still be recognized by the force of natural selection as an asset. Empathy only exists because our ancestors made moral choices and they were rewarded for doing so. Empathy is absolutely rooted in morality and not the other way around. If the length of an arm is subjective then there would be no aspect or quality of any person that could be called objective. As it is, I think the length of body parts can safely be described as objective. Indeed. Moreover, if feeling empathy were the only way to recognize an act as moral then morality would be 100% subjective. I don't believe and I'm sure I never said "because we feel empathy morality is therefore objective". I meant to give the example of the psychopath who doesn't feel empathy but can recognize morality to dispel that idea. I wonder about morality though. If you start by defining morality in terms of solidarity and compassion and recognize the premise "solidarity and compassion are good for humanity" it should be possible to deductively and objectively sort moral choices from immoral ones, and even assert that we should make the moral choices. edit: I think this is good because it gives a person an objective leg to stand on when hearing that someone else's idea of morality is just as valid in terms of that person's subjugation of women, or child abuse, or whatever it might be. I can't objectively tell someone to stop eating ice cream because it is disgusting, but I should be able to objectively tell them to stop being cruel to their children because it is morally wrong. It is certainly good that there is far more objective quality in the latter.

I wonder, though, if it might be possible to say that morality is objective. I think Sam Harris has made a good case for it. The way I look at it to convince myself is that psychopaths who are devoid of feelings of morality could, nonetheless, determine a morally good action and distinguish it from a morally bad action. They may not act on that information, or have the drive to act on it, but determining its truth from simple principles is possible. So, morality would have an objective basis. I think this is a good thing because I want to object to morally disgusting acts that another culture may be comfortable with on something like objective moral reasons. I still think an important argument would be... Epic non sequitur. Why do humans have hair? I'm in the group that believes in a designed universe, thus the relevance of seeing the existence of an intended amount of human hair with regards to the intended design. Why do humans enjoy sex? Well... I believe the universe was designed, thus the relevance of there being an intended way for me to get off properly. Why do puddles of water fit potholes so well? With a designed universe it is relevant to see that potholes are intended to fit puddles perfectly. Such reasoning makes an epic example of both confirmation bias and non sequitur.

There are two events -- one on the moon and one on earth. You can figure out, using your clock and your knowledge about how far away the moon is, that the event on the moon happened before the event on earth according to you. If the event on earth is in your present then the event on the moon would have happened in your past. Someone else in the solar system traveling a different velocity from you (maybe they are on mars or in a spaceship) can use their clock and their knowledge of the distance to the events and figure out that the event on earth happened before the event on the moon (quite opposite from the conclusion you made). If the event on earth is in this person's present then the event on the moon is in their past. The matter of which event happens first is relative. You must include the bolded part of this statement: this event is in the present and that event is in the past relative to a certain person or a certain frame of reference. If you don't include the bolded part of the statement then you are making a universal statement which may not be universally true.

"If the statue of liberty could speak, she might say... I cannot be broken... If you hurt me I'll get stronger." I think the song's author has confused the statue of liberty with the incredible hulk. "Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, with conquering limbs astride from land to land... She cries with silent lips, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

I don't see the significance of how the two are superimposed in the vertical. AS a 2D plot of potential it wouldn't matter -- it wouldn't have physical meaning -- where it's attached in earth's 3rd dimension. That would make it two curved spatial dimensions. No depiction of time. I think the rubber sheet / bowling ball analogy does a lot more harm than good. As an analogy for a gravity well... or more specifically for gravitational potential... ok, but it doesn't really communicate the fabric of spacetime. //edited wording

First, I don't care what some random naval surgeon said in 1917. It wastes my time to read it as much as it would waste my time listening to Rush Limbaugh today. The rationale behind the Smith-Hughes vocational education act is given in the 1914 report on which it is based. You can read the very well defined, and very non-military, reasons for its existence in that report available online here: Vocational education: Report of the Commission on National Aid to Vocational Education... 1914... Chapter 1: The Need For Vocational Education Your long-winded preaching doesn't change the fact that you were mistaken on that point and mistaken on the act's effect on liberal education. Second, when you say "our politics are now as reactionary as German politics were" you lose all credibility, and people will frankly stop putting up with you. Comparing a free and fair democracy to racially genocidal fascism shows such a lack of judgement, and such a lack of moral seriousness, that I am forced to notice that no amount of reasonable points could have any effect on the mindset from which you're preaching.

Looking at the first link... uh... it lists roughly 70 scientists, all of whom died in the past 8 years from homicide, suicide, and accidents... I notice skimming the causes. I'm not sure what you mean when you say "just coincidence". People who are born do, coincidentally, end up dying. Is a list of dead scientists coincidental? No, I think it was bound to happen.

I don't understand the image. It is the first result from a google image search for "spacetime" or "the fabric of spacetime". Wikipedia's spacetime article has almost the exact image at the top of the article. But... It looks to me like a plot of gravitational potential -- what comes to my mind when I think of a gravity well. The fabric of spacetime around the earth (ie 'the spacetime continuum' or just 'spacetime') would evoke in me something closer to this: curved spacetime simulation Unfortunately, almost all of the image results from searching "spacetime" are what look to me like gravitational potential so maybe I'm missing something.

The best interpretation, in my non-expert opinion, is given with the help of cosmology's standard model and its FLRW metric. Space is expanding over time. Expanding exponentially faster and faster most likely too.

I assume the 1917 reference is the Smith-Hughes Vocational Education Act and the 1958 reference is the National Defense Education Act. Where you said that 1917 was added for military reasons -- it was the 1958 act that was added for reasons of national defense (in an effort to compete with the Soviet Union) -- it wasn't the 1917 act. The National Defense Education Act gave federal money for math and science in primary and secondary school. You appear to speak very highly for those subjects. It also gave college aid with fellowships and loans for students. In no sense can this be described "liberal education... was replaced with education for technology". However, even if we grant that you are correct that there is not enough progressive and liberal education -- that it has been replaced by 'technology education' -- in what possible sense could teaching god help that situation? If kids aren't learning critical thinking skills, or 'abstract thinking skills', certainly the worst help we could offer them is teaching them God!

The only premise necessary in recognizing that slavery is morally wrong is a sense of compassion toward fellow human beings. Because people evolved in groups it is natural to have an evolved sense of compassion toward our fellow primates. It is no more surprising than finding that wolves have a sense of solidarity with other wolves. You don't seem to recognize a refuted point when you see one. By the way, morality is different from "good and bad". Chinese food is good. That doesn't make it moral. Morality has the added aspect of coming from a place of compassion and solidarity.

I think people in the US, on average, are more willing to assume the risk of liberal gun laws. On a scale between a statistically safer country, and a country which gives one the trouble of self-reliance, we do often want to push the scale toward the risks and responsibilities of self-reliance. I confess feeling a mushy sense of dignity at Jefferson's... "The man who would choose security over freedom deserves neither." Even if cases like this... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7ZMlxNSx-Q&feature=related are infrequent compared to gun accidents or murder... most people in the US seem to feel like the infrequent case where having a gun is a definite benefit should outweigh the dangers of living in a society where everyone else is equally legally unrestrained. In other words... Yea guns!

Not that I see. That doesn't seem like a useful definition to me. I gave an example -- people have an instinct toward avoiding dangerously hot or cold temperatures. This doesn't make it impossible for someone to go ice swimming or to throw themselves in a volcano -- that's not the point I was making. The point is that such an obviously evolved pattern of behavior that clearly originates from a benefit in survival doesn't imply, let alone necessitate, a designed universe like Beanieb insists. I can't figure out why you're saying that. When evolution selects for a trait it doesn't necessitate that all other traits or all other concerns be selected out of existence. If light hair and eyes have been selected for in Europeans it doesn't follow that dark haired Europeans must have been selected out of existence. The context is that no quality of humanity requires the universe be designed. Spirituality suggests that our actions are explained by spirits and religion suggests that we were created by a god in his image. Both ideas turned out to be mistaken guesses and neither deserves any credit.

People invented gods and spirits before they invented the chariot wheel because the wheel was the greater exercise in abstract thinking. Technology is abstract thought. It is literally the materialization of something that has never existed before from pure thought. People who understand math and logic even a little know it is the ultimate abstract expression. You shouldn't be worried that the twenty-year-old grandchildren you mention can't (or won't) discuss in your terms how God is like time. If their ability to think abstractly is your concern you should ask how they understand calculus... or how zero can be used as a number. Your post only makes sense to me if I imagine you see technology as a lot of memorization and meticulous procedures. That's how people see math when they don't get it. It is a lot of meaningless rules to memorize. That's how people see computer programming when they don't get it. My 17-year-old niece, about a month ago, was explaining her understanding of object oriented programing to me, and she got the concept of it very well... and taught from a public school! Is that the problem with abstract thought and teaching natural law is the solution? That makes no sense to me.

Your logic condensed goes...: If the universe isn't designed then our human sense of morality... our judgements about what is right and wrong... are entirely subjective and man-created. We know from experience that morality is not entirely subjective therefore the evidence suggests a designed universe. Using a different quality of humanity shows easier the problem with the logic... If the universe isn't designed then our human sense of temperature... our judgements about what is hot and cold... are entirely subjective and man-created. We know from experience that thermoception is not entirely subjective therefore the evidence suggests a designed universe. Thermoception as evidence of a designed universe has the same problem as morality as evidence of a designed universe. What I mean is, if you replace "good or bad" with "hot or cold" in some of your statements... like... But that brings us to the next questions: 1) when we say something is hot or cold.. who's standard do we refer to? if we say the standard just comes directly from the society we live in.. and is purely (100%) subjective... then we should also be able to say our tolerance and standard to define a frigid or scorching conditions are purely subjective too... its just takes a matter of conditioning or shrewd reasoning to allow ourselves to change our mindset on them to say "there is nothing uncomfortable actually".... However, in reality, despite coming from different cultures or backgrounds, people are still able to discern what is hot and what is cold.. 2) and from 1), if we were the group to say "there has to be a true version of hot and cold"....so where does that standard of hot and cold come from? Because if it is not subjective anymore (but absolute..) then it wouldn't have come from society...but has to be beyond us.. and that implies we are operating against some invisible rules that governs our "spirituality". The argument's logic looks like a problem for sure then. The solution would just be that morality is a human quality and most people have similar notions of morality because 'most people' are all human. Our instinct for morality evolved so that we could survive and prosper in a group environment. It is no more mysterious than our instinct for thermoception evolving so that we could survive and prosper an environment with temperatures hot enough or cold enough to harm us if we couldn't avoid them. Morality with an objective basis doesn't imply spirituality or a designed universe. It implies that groups populated with liars and murders don't do as well as groups populated with people who have an instinct against lying and murdering.

Fair enough, I suppose. Oh, no, it's far more than bizarre. It's down right inhuman. I come from a state in which this mild form of prohibition is a reality and I can only tell you that it has caused me great personal harm for which I'll never forgive my state senate. No, I do understand that some laws are pointless shackles placed on the arms of those for whom no restriction of freedom is needed. I get that, and I sympathize too that no immediate harm can be noticed by my buying liquor on sunday or to buy it in a plastic bag... as it were. But, this... for all its truth... and all our willingness to affirm it... doesn't solve the issue you brought up. Where do we draw the line? Imagine there is a US senator who visits an Australian fishing trawler and finds nothing in the pacific of value but trashed plastic bags. Imagine a great number of scientists telling this senator that this is a great problem for which our country is largely responsible and about which very little is needed to be done to fix the problem. Wouldn't it be this senator's moral obligation to pass exactly the type of law you scorn? Or would it not? I just mean to ask where we draw the line. The plastics industry may hurt certain animals. Slaughtering kittens in the street also hurts certain animals. I'm not sure if you value one kitten over 100 turtles and tuna or if it's something else entirely that draws the line for you between the two. I don't think this thread has yet touched on what really separates what is legislative and what isn't. Despite the long post, I don't think I'm making my case well... If 16 ounce cups are killing more people in New York than cyanide is killing in New Mexico then why shouldn't the former be legislated more than the latter? Maybe there's a very good answer to that, but I don't think we've touched on it.

Although, that's a fair description of any law. I mean... if we don't want laws to do that then I think we're pretty much left being anarchists.

Humm.... I've seen better renderings. I'd be willing to bet that if you don't go blind from looking in the direction of a nuclear blast you wouldn't die immediately from acute radiation poisoning. Too close to a blast and you'd obviously be incinerated or die from some kind of kinetic trauma immediately. A little further away with the wrong exposure and wind conditions you'd die some 24 or 48 hours later of infection or whatever other secondary complication from the radiation. The space between these things... that is to say, the physical space in distance... is not much, by my understanding. It's like dying in a fire. You either die immediately in the fire from smoke inhalation and the temperature and so on... or you die a couple days later in the hospital because too much of your skin has been exposed to burns and you can't recover. There aren't a lot of cases where someone dies 20 minutes after being rescued from a fire. I'm sure it can happen, but it isn't the norm. If it doesn't kill you straight away then it's probably going to take a day or two.

Lately, the Wheel of Time series. It's quite good, even if a bit slow paced. I was thinking "homo unius libri" while I wikied your reference. The first sentence read, "At the dawn of time, a deity known as the Creator forged the universe and the Wheel of Time, which, as it turns, spins all lives..." Even if they deny you ever had a skeptical bone in your body, never let them say you didn't have a sense of irony! Absolutely hilarious!

You're saying Gandalf couldn't speak magic without God's permission? Elrond wouldn't have the gift of foresight if not for a God? Absurd! What book have you been reading?

Quite clearly the opponent attacked the arguer and not the arguement. That's the essense of an ad hominem attack in my opinion. I'd say that at this point we can agree to disagree. In this case he used the "He's out to get me." excuse. I suspect you know, in a legal proceeding it is called declaring a hostile witness to say "we are at cross purposes as evidenced by your constant attempts to prove me wrong". It wouldn't be any kind of argument fallacy or a personal attack for a lawyer to make that statement to a Judge, and it wouldn't be uncommon for a judge to declare the witness hostile for the reason given. If all the answers to a questioner are designed to prove the questioner wrong then the two are at cross purposes. Just pointing that out isn't itself invalid or fallacious. It can be necessary.

No, no. I'm sure you're just not familiar with the kosher recipe for peanut butter cups. It's given in Deuteronomy 32:14... Butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape. Deut 32:14 You may have to substitute some modern ingredients to get it right. If you don't have "pure blood of the grape", just use wine. If you don't have "butter of kine", just use kine bud. They say not to translate these things literally. Everything in moderation though, or the next verse will catch up with ya... But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness Deut 32:15 The original "your mama art so covered with fatness" joke

So... your argument is that a superman with super-intelligence would see the super-order of the universe as suggested by supersymmetry, and that super-ordered supercomputer would be God? To quote Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word -- I do not think it means what you think it means.