Of gods and language.

[Peter]

There is never any justification for what Hitler did, and there have been wars in the names of religions also. Any ideology/ism can lead to wars, torture, discrimination and so on. When people are ruled by ego and superiority complexes therein lies the danger.

But they did justify it didn't they? That's the point - who are you to say your 'right' is any more 'right' than anyone else's if there is no objective morality?

When we realise that no religion is "better" than another, that no tribe or ethnic group are "better"than another, when we can look into the eyes of someone "different" and see ourselves looking back at us, then we will progress forwards.

So when we realise a tribe is quite right to engage in cannibalism or that other countries are entitled to their values that disagree with ours such as North Korea or China?

Being "aware" of what doesn't exist? One cannot be unaware of what is not there. Nothing out in space is popping thoughts into my head like Oh I will give that change to that homeless man, oh I will help this person and so on. My actions, my thoughts, my deeds, nothing or noone else's. I take full credit for any good I do, as similarily, I take responsibility for any negative things I do. I am not a robot- nothing is controlling me!

Then the advertisers are wasting their money - people are brainwashed daily through technology!

St Francis was very kind yes! Buddha never spoke of god.

Not speaking of God doesn't = Atheist or else Richard Dawkins would have kept very silent about God!

[AeolianHarp]

You speak a lot about Buddhism so I would like to ask if you believe in reincarnation?

Yes, I find Buddhism to be a helpful philosophy, but I wouldn't class myself solely "Buddhist". Yes, I do believe in reincarnation.

[Peter]

You speak a lot about Buddhism so I would like to ask if you believe in reincarnation?

[AeolianHarp]

He (and many others) thought he was doing the 'right' thing for the world by exterminating Jews and other 'undesirables'. From an atheistic perspective you can't argue he was 'wrong' to think that way, only that it offends your own or your society's values - if you consider that it is for the greater 'good' of the human race to eliminate certain elements then you can justify your actions. Therein lies the danger.

There is never any justification for what Hitler did, and there have been wars in the names of religions also. Any ideology/ism can lead to wars, torture, discrimination and so on. When people are ruled by ego and superiority complexes therein lies the danger. When we realise that no religion is "better" than another, that no tribe or ethnic group are "better"than another, when we can look into the eyes of someone "different" and see ourselves looking back at us, then we will progress forwards.

Not believing is not the same as being unaware.

Being "aware" of what doesn't exist? One cannot be unaware of what is not there. Nothing out in space is popping thoughts into my head like Oh I will give that change to that homeless man, oh I will help this person and so on. My actions, my thoughts, my deeds, nothing or noone else's. I take full credit for any good I do, as similarily, I take responsibility for any negative things I do. I am not a robot- nothing is controlling me!

He left his pregnant wife for another woman and yes today he would probably divorce - all very 'moral' by today's standards. I think a better word is selfish. If a person dumped an animal for another one he preferred you would presumably be horrified?

Of course dumping an animal is wrong. But Shelley and his wife were not getting along, and she had found a new man herself. Are you saying people should stay married in misery? Divorce is not wrong.

Like you also made yourself and have full control over your life? You have choices and the natural good in us is our conscience as Harvey says quoting St.Paul, 'engraved on our hearts'. Evil exists only as a perversion of what is naturally good, in other words a rebellion against the natural order.

We all have a conscience unless one is a psychopath.

Precisely - this right and wrong you talk about in atheism are variable depending on where and when you live, in other words they cannot exist of themselves. From the Christian point of view that isn't true - there is objective morality.

Morality cannot be absolute as we don't allow for circumstances- religions say stealing is a sin/wrong- and in the past children were hung for stealing food. Obviously we need to look behind the motivations for transgressions. You cannot have black and white laws- life is not that simple.

Of course love isn't exclusive to Christianity, but neither is love of animals exclusive to atheism - Christians are perfectly capable of loving animals, think of St.Francis. I have two lovely cats that I adore and I'm also loathe to kill even a fly. In fact, Buddhism is generally considered to be not atheistic but agnostic, in that, the Buddha himself did not deny the existence of God.

St Francis was very kind yes! Buddha never spoke of god.

[AeolianHarp]

We're all agreed on this - we only disagree where it comes from!

It comes from within. I am master of my own thoughts and actions.

[AeolianHarp]

Buddhism is all over the place in what it believes - it really depends on what mood you're in. Like a lot of Christianity (and I suppose other religions) it is a supermarket where you pick and choose the bits you like.

It isn't all over the place- it is quite consistent in the main tenets.

At it's heart it is good and has much truth and very decent ethical values - the Dalai Lama is well intentioned enough, but he is ambivalent on much, often contradictory and frequently evasive. He of course only represents the Tibetan school of Buddhism, there are many others.

The Dalai Lama is in a difficult political position. Yes, he does represent the Tibetan school only.

[Peter]

There are and have been people in this world who are illterate and live in remote tribes, never heard of Christianity, but are still capable of good, moral, loving behaviour. People can and are good, moral, lving, kind without god or knowing the bible.

We're all agreed on this - we only disagree where it comes from!

[AeolianHarp]

The reason that anyone knows right from wrong apart from the Bible:
"Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law ... they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts..." --Romans 2:14,15 NIV84

There are and have been people in this world who are illterate and live in remote tribes, never heard of Christianity, but are still capable of good, moral, loving behaviour. People can and are good, moral, lving, kind without god or knowing the bible.

[Peter]

Is it Buddhism that teaches reincarnation, like you come back as an animal?
What would be the point in that. Is it some kind of judgement?

Buddhism is all over the place in what it believes - it really depends on what mood you're in. Like a lot of Christianity (and I suppose other religions) it is a supermarket where you pick and choose the bits you like.

At it's heart it is good and has much truth and very decent ethical values - the Dalai Lama is well intentioned enough, but he is ambivalent on much, often contradictory and frequently evasive. He of course only represents the Tibetan school of Buddhism, there are many others.

[AeolianHarp]

Certainly emotions can lead to morally good acts. But that does not explain why those acts are morally good. Obviously they are not good because one felt emotionally compelled to do them. People are emotionally compelled to murder as well. The question is what makes those things good or bad.

People have gone over this theme for centuries and they will do centuries to come. It is not that difficult really what is good or bad- good brings happiness, seeks to bring happiness, kindness and so on, bad causes physical pain, seeks to bring hurt and upset to others, likes to make others suffer. We don't need gods to tell us what is good and bad. And the god of the old testament is not exactly moral- people are told to kill and this god is angry.

You are looking for absolutes- and that is a mistake- there are no absolutes- there are only relatives. If Bob pushes Jim over for no reason he is being mean, if Bob pushes Jim over to stop a car running him over then he is being helpful. Intent is important.

People took the "moral" commandment do not steal to the absolute which meant hanging starving children for stealing a loaf of bread. Children even a mere 150 years ago were thrown in prison for stealing food due to abject poverty. See how absolutes can lead to wicked acts? Relativism allows for us to see things in a wider way.

I do not know what you mean by "meaning." Our choices may lead to lives of greater or lesser significance, in some sense. But is that the only meaning of our lives? Is the life of someone who has been badly crippled from birth, unable to move, unable even to speak, and thus unable to act, meaningless? I do not think so. I think the "meaning" of a life lies fundamentally in its nature.

If one enjoys a sunset, a concert, creates art and so forth that gives someone's life meaning. I would argue that someone who is as extremely disabled as you describe cannot enjoy life the same- I have worked with such people are they often show distress. Life for life's sake doesn't always lead to happiness for such individuals.

No, animals cannot be rational. They lack the ability to conceive of abstract concepts and reason from one to another.Animals cannot conceive of something like man or mortality. They can recognize individual men. They have instincts that help keep them alive. But they do not reason.

Until you can see inside a cetacean's or ape's head that you cannot know that for sure. They are highly intelligent. Intelligence is over rated anyway- look at what "human intelligence" has led to- creating weapons, racism, idelogies that lead to war and poverty. In many ways animals are our superiors.

This is merely anecdotal. Even if it is true as reported, how do we know that Rex was not responding to some sort of stimulus that was unrelated to the woman? Or that he was instinctively reacting in a certain way to something he perceived from her? And even if he deliberately sacrificed himself for her, on what basis would we conclude that that was a moral choice instead of the result of instinctual behavior? Self-sacrificing behavior could be very beneficial to a species (say, a mother for the sake of her young), and could breed true through generations.

It is a true story- I still have a the magazine article, and there have been countless incidences of animals comitting selfless acts. Did you read the article that monkeys would not shock a fellow monkey even when there was a food reward in it for them? That shows the ability to empathasise. Buddhist scholars have acknowledged that animals can show compassion. Animals are not machines- they have thoughts and feelings too-humans often like to reduce animals to walking automotons- in this way they can justify torturing them in laboratories and factory farms.
Morals can arise from various impetuses- love, compassion, thoughts.

These examples do not show that animals understand abstract concepts and so can comprehend the natures of things, nor that they can understand what ends those natures imply, nor that they can know what is good or bad for a thing based on those ends, nor that they posses the capacity to make a choice to do or not do a thing based on that knowledge.

Some animals are capable of abstract concepts- elephants understand death- they mourn their dead and collect their bones. Apes use tools. But some human conceptual thinking is false and detrimental to our wellbeing, so I wouldn't laud it too much. We spend far too much time wasting our time in useless concepts and agonising over trite issues when we could be like the dog lying sunning herself, and just being present in the moment. Animals have much to teach us.

If that were true, then the opposite should be true. Do we say a dog has done something immoral when he mauls a child? Or when a chimp kills another chimp? Or when a blue jay steals the eggs out of another nest? Of course not. We say that they are acting on instinct. If they were capable of making moral choices, we should be putting them on trial for these things.

People have! An elephant was publically hung in the USA about 150 years ago for a "crime." We kill a a dog or bear who has killed a child, we beat animals when they don't submit to our will- so we do decide if their behaviour is good or not.

[Peter]

Hitler could not possibly have thought mass murder was compassionate behaviour.

He (and many others) thought he was doing the 'right' thing for the world by exterminating Jews and other 'undesirables'. From an atheistic perspective you can't argue he was 'wrong' to think that way, only that it offends your own or your society's values - if you consider that it is for the greater 'good' of the human race to eliminate certain elements then you can justify your actions. Therein lies the danger.

Atheists don't believe in god so they are not close to what they don't believe in.

Not believing is not the same as being unaware.

Nobody is perfect- Shelley was estranged from his wife and yes, she was pregnant, but he didn't leave her alone and penniless.

He left his pregnant wife for another woman and yes today he would probably divorce - all very 'moral' by today's standards. I think a better word is selfish. If a person dumped an animal for another one he preferred you would presumably be horrified?

We will have to agree to disagree on that one Peter. The good things I do have nothing to do with god- they are my actions, my thoughts.

Like you also made yourself and have full control over your life? You have choices and the natural good in us is our conscience as Harvey says quoting St.Paul, 'engraved on our hearts'. Evil exists only as a perversion of what is naturally good, in other words a rebellion against the natural order.

Some of that is cultural norms and social changes.

Precisely - this right and wrong you talk about in atheism are variable depending on where and when you live, in other words they cannot exist of themselves. From the Christian point of view that isn't true - there is objective morality.

Buddha taught love and kindness 500 years before Jesus was said to have lived. Many spiritual teachers of communities in ancient times taught love and kindness- that is the natural human way. Those who teach otherwise are deranged- like Hitler. Love and kindness is not exclusive to Christianity. My atheist friends promote love and kindness and extend this to animals also.

Of course love isn't exclusive to Christianity, but neither is love of animals exclusive to atheism - Christians are perfectly capable of loving animals, think of St.Francis. I have two lovely cats that I adore and I'm also loathe to kill even a fly. In fact, Buddhism is generally considered to be not atheistic but agnostic, in that, the Buddha himself did not deny the existence of God.

[Harvey]

The reason that anyone knows right from wrong apart from the Bible:
"Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law ... they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts..." --Romans 2:14,15 NIV84

[Chris]

Fine emotions can lead to morality- when we encounter a suffering being and feel compassion and are thus motivated to assist them.

...

I am not trying to qualify for sainthood here by the way - just giving an example of how the heart and emotions can lead to moral acts and kindness.

Certainly emotions can lead to morally good acts. But that does not explain why those acts are morally good. Obviously they are not good because one felt emotionally compelled to do them. People are emotionally compelled to murder as well. The question is what makes those things good or bad.

We give our lives meaning by the acts we do.

I do not know what you mean by "meaning." Our choices may lead to lives of greater or lesser significance, in some sense. But is that the only meaning of our lives? Is the life of someone who has been badly crippled from birth, unable to move, unable even to speak, and thus unable to act, meaningless? I do not think so. I think the "meaning" of a life lies fundamentally in its nature.

Animals cannot be rational? They can show compassion and some, like cetaceans and apes, have very high levels of self awareness.

No, animals cannot be rational. They lack the ability to conceive of abstract concepts and reason from one to another.

All men are mortal
Socrates is a man
Therefore, Socrates is mortal

Animals cannot conceive of something like man or mortality. They can recognize individual men. They have instincts that help keep them alive. But they do not reason.

I would like to tell you a true story about a dog.

...

This is merely anecdotal. Even if it is true as reported, how do we know that Rex was not responding to some sort of stimulus that was unrelated to the woman? Or that he was instinctively reacting in a certain way to something he perceived from her? And even if he deliberately sacrificed himself for her, on what basis would we conclude that that was a moral choice instead of the result of instinctual behavior? Self-sacrificing behavior could be very beneficial to a species (say, a mother for the sake of her young), and could breed true through generations.

These examples do not show that animals understand abstract concepts and so can comprehend the natures of things, nor that they can understand what ends those natures imply, nor that they can know what is good or bad for a thing based on those ends, nor that they posses the capacity to make a choice to do or not do a thing based on that knowledge.

If that were true, then the opposite should be true. Do we say a dog has done something immoral when he mauls a child? Or when a chimp kills another chimp? Or when a blue jay steals the eggs out of another nest? Of course not. We say that they are acting on instinct. If they were capable of making moral choices, we should be putting them on trial for these things.

[AeolianHarp]

Quote:
Originally Posted by AeolianHarp
Well it is logical- an immoral debauched society fails ...eventually. Co operation and community keeps community together. We cannot exist alone.

True enough, but this is just pragmatism. We can all agree that stealing is bad because society functions a lot better when we are not all going around taking whatever we want whenever we feel like it. But what happens when we discover that more people are better off if we are free to take what we wish from a small subset of the population? Is this moral, then, because society is better off as a whole? And what happens when things change over time, and it is no longer good for society to steal from this smaller subset of people? Is it then immoral?

I think you'll find that stealing is from the larger subset by the smaller subset!


[Dawkins] does, and makes sense what he says about morality.

What he says about morality makes no sense whatsoever. He knows there should be such a thing and tries to come up with a justification for it after the fact, but his philosophy makes it impossible. He tries to justify it through biology first. But in his mind, biological things have no ends in themselves, so there is no way to get to a true objective morality from there. There can only be the as-if morality I was talking about before. His other appeals are emotional, and emotion is not reason.

Fine emotions can lead to morality- when we encounter a suffering being and feel compassion and are thus motivated to assist them.

A few years ago I came across a weak Bumblebee lying on the pavement. Now, I was cycling and something made me look down- I sensed her preseence- this tiny little being. I put her on a leaf in my bag and took her home. I got a box, put leaves in it and some honey disolved in water and a blob of honey next to her. She crawled to the honey and ate some.

I could see that her wings were old and she kept trying to fly but wasn't doing so well. I knew she wanted to be outside, so I made her a leaf shelter outside and put her in it that night- I thought I'd give her the chance to try to get back to her Nest.

This went on for two days- with her crawling out of the leaf shelter overnight and trying to fly.The third day she was too weak to try and stayed in the box and passed away. I made her a coffin out of a matchbox and buried her. Why? you might ask. My heart went out to her- I felt compassion; I helped make her last few days more bearable instead of leaving her to die of hunger/thirst on a hard pavement.Nobody put this in me- it came from my own heart...I honoured her life- bees do so much for the eco system.

I am not trying to qualify for sainthood here by the way - just giving an example of how the heart and emotions can lead to moral acts and kindness.


Atheism is not about living in an immoral fashion.Ever read anything about Percy Bysshe Shelley the Regency poet? He was an atheist and was all for social justice. This has been common with atheists and agnostics throughout history. Kant saw reason as natural.

As I said, it is certainly possible for an atheist to arrive at true objective morality - IF he is working from the correct philosophical foundation. The materialism of Dawkins and the other "new" atheists is not such a foundation.

Now Kant is another kind of thing, and this is important, because his philosophy has permeated the world, even in Christian and other theist circles. But there are serious questions we should raise about how Kant arrives at his morality. He says we are "autonomous" and "self-legislators", "ends in ourselves", and that a moral community is one which strives to create a "kingdom of ends." But this is highly problematic when trying to establish a system of true objective morality. That is a system that requires us to acknowledge the reality of the natural ends of things. And human beings are in no sense the source of the nature that determines our ends. It is nature - not the preferences, emotion, or even reason of a human being - that grounds the content of the moral law and gives it obligatory force.

We give our lives meaning by the acts we do.

One other point I would make is in response to this:

Even some animals know right from wrong- ever seen a guily expression on a dog's face when he sneaks food from someone's plate and he knows he's not supposed to?

I disagree. Animals cannot be capable of moral and immoral behavior. Morality is by definition the function of a rational creature, which (non-human) animals are not. They are not capable of knowing abstract concepts like good and purpose. I think you are anthropomorphising here. Yes, I remember that guilty look on my dog's face when he'd sneaked some food! But it wasn't because he was a moral creature. It was because he knew the pattern of what behavior was praised and what behavior was punished, and he knew which was coming! This is nothing more than the hope of reward and fear of punishment that Dawkins was attributing to theists as the source of their morality. And indeed, that would not be true morality! Morality, for the theist or atheist, can only truly exist on a philosophical foundation that does not appeal to mere consequences, either divine or human.

Animals cannot be rational? They can show compassion and some, like cetaceans and apes, have very high levels of self awareness. I know about this as I studied animal communcation and behaviour as part of my studies into human evolution, hominids and human language evolution at university.

Animals understand far more than we give them credit for. They are not lesser beings, just different.

I would like to tell you a true story about a dog.

A woman had a dog called Rex. She used to walk him by a railway line. One day he ran off- this was not his usual behaviour- in fact he never had done so before. And to her horror he went and sat on the railway line- and a train was approaching! As she screamed his name, he looked at her right in the eyes, but didn't move. The train came and Rex was no more.

Then a trembling young woman came over to the woman and said that Rex had saved her life as she was about to commit suicide by throwing herself on the line. Rex knew. How could he know? How could such selfless altruistic behaviour come from a "mere animal"? Could you honestly say you would have been so heroic? I couldn't. This dog was special. He had a soul, a big heart, love, showed great courage.

It is now being realised that animals are far more like us than we previously gave them credit for. Like us, they love, have fears, lies and dislikes, personalities....and they can understand right from wrong at times.

Animals Are Moral Creatures, Scientist Argues

The book, "Can Animals Be Moral?" (Oxford University Press, October 2012), suggests social mammals such as rats, dogs and chimpanzees can choose to be good or bad. And because they have morality, we have moral obligations to them, said author Mark Rowlands, a University of Miami philosopher.

"Animals are owed a certain kind of respect that they wouldn't be owed if they couldn't act morally," Rowlands told LiveScience.

Moral behavior?

Some research suggests animals have a sense of outrage when social codes are violated. Chimpanzees may punish other chimps for violating certain rules of the social order, said Marc Bekoff, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and co-author of "Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals" (University Of Chicago Press, 2012).

Male bluebirds that catch their female partners stepping out may beat the female, said Hal Herzog, a psychologist at Western Carolina University who studies how humans think about animals.

And there are many examples of animals demonstrating ostensibly compassionate or empathetic behaviors toward other animals, including humans. In one experiment, hungry rhesus monkeys refused to electrically shock their fellow monkeys, even when it meant getting food for themselves. In another study, a female gorilla named Binti Jua rescued an unconscious 3-year-old (human) boy who had fallen into her enclosure at the Brookline Zoo in Illinois, protecting the child from other gorillas and even calling for human help. And when a car hit and injured a dog on a busy Chilean freeway several years ago, its canine compatriot dodged traffic, risking its life to drag the unconscious dog to safety.

http://www.livescience.com/24802-ani...rals-book.html

Animals are our equals, just different beings. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations.

[AeolianHarp]

Is it Buddhism that teaches reincarnation, like you come back as an animal?
What would be the point in that. Is it some kind of judgement?

There are many schools of Buddhism and various ways of looking at reincarnation; Hinduism also teaches reincarnation. It is a complex subject and to do with karma- the actions one performed throughout life that determines where one goes after "death."

There is no outside judgement in Buddhism. Each of us must judge our own behaviour, motivations, actions.