flimsy moral standards? Lets see here.
If I were to shoot your wife, would you have a problem with that?
-michael martin
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An elaborate spoof on Intelligent Design, The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is neither too elaborate nor too spoofy to succeed in nailing the fallacies of ID. It's even wackier than Jonathan Swift's suggestion that the Irish eat their children as a way to keep them from being a burden, and it may offend just as many people, but Henderson, described elsewhere as a 25-year-old "out-of-work physics major," puts satire to the same serious use that Swift did. Oh, yes, it is very funny. -- Scientific American
Hey, Alchemist and Nikkie,
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I know not Atomic Heart Mother. Nor much Floyd, to be honest (though I do have a laser pen). I love Dark Side… but am not *wholly* sold on The Wall (I still think an education is actually a rather good idea, and find the notion of a bunch of public school* lads bellowing that they don’t need one a bit…odd). I nearly bought Pulse just for the LEDs, but I suppose I’m just too sensible**.
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I have put footnotes into a post and should therefore be banned. FSM, why do you allow such abuses?
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*Dear Americans: read ‘private school’. England is terribly odd.
**aka tediously predictable.
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Lets get back to fighting about god. That’s the biggie.
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(Or Portishead. They’re at least equally big (by virtue of *actually existing*).)
@ Nikkiee,
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‘Just having a go at them for complaining about getting old……at their age?
;)’
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Ah, that’s okay then. For a second I felt separated from you, by this weird vision of you as some nine-year-old child prodigy, turning up to work wearing a giant white labcoat like a parachute with sleeves. All is well again. :)
J - private school - not you too? I still have my yellow and black scarf (well, the dog has it now). It did me soooo mush good
much, much, much. I keep telling the huskies no. PS J the hobnobs are asking after you
I don’t remember if I’ve ever heard Portishead J, are there samples on the net?
Don’t worry gill, being 18 ain’t all bad… beer, strippers, cars, rum, beer, jaegermeister, vodka, cider, more beer, better strippers, porno, the list goes on (:P).
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IT GETS A BIT HEAVY FROM HERE ON IN
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Seriously though, I feel I have to respond to nic’s muslim morality post. If he doesn’t respond within the next day or so, I’ll post this to him.
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You asked me to read your post to gill. Here’s my rebuttal.
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“Imagine you are in pre 9/11 Afghanistan. A group of men kidnap you and kill you. Why? 1.) You are unwilling to bow to Allah. 2.) You let some one see your pretty little nose. 3.) You are a Jew. 4.) It is the moral thing for these men, who are faithful Muslims, living in a society of faithful Muslims to do.
/
Is wrong for them to murder you? Or to please One Eyed Jack let me rephrase the question: Is it wrong for them to “kill†you?”
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By my morality, yes it is wrong for them to kill me. By their’s, it is not. All viewpoint’s are entirely relative after all.
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However, my killing can only be supported by the religious framework (failing other, unspecified details). It can however be opposed by the secular humanist morality I outlined in other posts.
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As I’ve stated, the reasons you give for them to kill me are all dependant on their religion. Here’s the proof;
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1) “I would not bow to Allah.” That would suggest their perception of the teachings of their god do not allow for the worship (or lack thereof) of any god bar Allah. So, in other words, god tells them not to allow unbelievers.
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2) “You let some one see your pretty little nose.” Well, it isn’t that pretty, and being male (last time I checked) I don’t think this really applies to me. Stll, this point provides possibly the best reason for them to get rid of someone (not kill, I’ll get to this later). It is easy to see how the revealing of a woman’s nose could be seen as the breakdown of morals, which must be contained by removing the woman.
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HOWEVER, the problem is that the morals that judge that a woman must be covered come from the teachings of their prophet, and hence are taken as the word of god
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3)”You are a Jew.” Similar to point 2, I don’t think I’d qualify. A male requirement looks a little too painful, plus I really like bacon in my carbonaras.
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Any way, the reason that Jews are hated by muslims seems primarily because of their occupation of Israel. The reason the Jews live there, and the muslims want to? It’s the holy land. Why? Because that’s where god did his stuff.
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4)”It is the moral thing for these men, who are faithful Muslims, living in a society of faithful Muslims to do.” Here, you state that it is the moral thing for them to do. That’s nicce, but it doesn’t change my view on their morality.
In addition, here you take pains to stress their devotion to Islam (”faithful muslims” pops up not once, but twice!). If they are faithful, they follow the word of their god. Their morality is derived wholly from his teachings. So once more god pops up.
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In each case, their morality is the product of their religion. They hold it as a moral absolute, for no reason other than they are told it is god’s will.
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For them to be able to kill me morally, as judged by the society I outlined in my own arguments, I would have to be both a threat to their society and in addition, there would have to be NO BETTER ALTERNATIVE.
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Had I ever gone to pre-September 11 Afghanistan, I very much doubt I would have been preaching social reform (I was still in high school) and they would thus have little reason to kill me, but even if I had, what is to stop them from just forcing me to leave? It would achieve the same goal. They wish to make an example of me? Fine, but then that still leaves the problem that we are not judging by their morality, but a logically based one.
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Is it more moral to allow women to show their skin, or to kill a teenager (for that is what I was)? Is it more moral to allow freedom of speech, or to kill a teenager?
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The simple truth is, although by their morality, killing me may be fine, that killing can not be judged moral from a logical standpoint outside of a religious viewpoint.
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Concerning free will; You make a really good point. How the hell do we account for free will in a purely cause/effect universe? I have no idea. After all, if we just follow our instincts, and our instin
cts are really the result of the accumulation of genetic information in a particular pattern, itself just a particular arrangement of atoms produced by various physical processes, I guess we are no different from animals, from rocks, from a hydrogen molecule.
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Alright, I retract my earlier statement concrning free will, and replace it with this; Neither religion nor atheism allows any more than an illusion of free will.
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Atheism, because we are the product of an accumulation of physical processes governed by probabalistic chance.
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Religion, because if god is an omnipotent being, when he made us, he knew exactly what we would do, and as such we have a predetermined fate. If he does not know, then he is not an omnipotent being.
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Enjoy.
G’night folks. Only 0115 but I’m not feeling too good. Nikkiee, must be one of those elephantvirus things (grin).
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Take care. RAmen - Alchemist
Ohh… crap.
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I just got on the computer and discovered my brother has destroyed my entire collection… Its all vanished. That is a shitload of music I have to replace now.
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I was going to say though, “piper at the gates of dawn”, “meddle” and “wish you were here” (think thats it.. memory fried right now, but its the one with the shine on you crazy diamond in it) ahh the best.
Oh, and J, good to have you back
That’s “Wish You Were Here”
RAmen Jingles
Nic Dec 3rd, 2006 at 3:09 pm
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“How did the male and female types within each species evolve? How can you explain their existence naturalistically? We need both of them, true, but what in natural selection would have caused the differences to exist?”
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It is a very interesting question Nic. Females that can reproduce parthenogenetic offspring (offspring from unfertilised eggs) can theoretically achieve much higher population growth rates than sexually reproducing females. For example, if we assume a 50:50 offspring sex ratio a sexually reproducing mother must produce a male offspring for every female offspring while a partheogenetic female only produces female offspring. If each female produces 4 offspring in their life time the a parthenogenetic female produces 4 female offspring whi each produce 4 female offspring and so on. A sexually reproducing female produces 2 female offspring who each produce 2 female offspring and so on. Thus, every time the sexual population doubles the parthenogenetic population quadruples. So, if we assume all offspring have an equal chance of survival producing males reduces maternal fitness. Therein lies the rub, parthenogenetic offspring do not survive as well as sexually produced offspring.
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Parthenogenetic offspring are essentially clones of their mother. As a consequence, parthenogenetic populations have very low genetic variation. This allows disease to adapt to an immune system that is basically the same for the entire population. In sexually reproducing populations individuals may share certain genes but nobody would have an identical complement of genes unless they were twins. Computer viruses are damaging becuase a large number of people have the same weakness in their operating system that can be exploited. If everyone ran different operating systems then viruses would cause fewer problems because few people would have the same weakness. The same is true for diseases in natural populations and the immune systems of their hosts. Thus, one advantage of producing males is to increase the genetic variation in offspring and reduce the risk of mortality due to disease.
Oh yeah, determinism and free will, a nice debate too!
What about this:
When you believe in the free will to act with reason and sense, you have to be a determinist. Or do you think you would not have very good reasons to decide to do what you are doing?
Determinism is no logical problem for our perceived free will. But non-determinism is. A pity that many people favor the concept of a psychopathic free will in stead of a reasonable free will.
Bye, Mopert
@ Gill, Happy B-Day, may you grow as old as I! That’s pretty old. it is! And always enjoy!
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@ Everybody, I’m sorry if I chased away the fundie of the day, but I woke up half drunk, and only had enough coins for a twelve-pack. I was kind of in a shitty mood.
I’ve since turned in some reFUNDable bottles and bought myself another twelve.
So if nic wants ta come back, I’ll let him preach, for awhile anyway.
@Coleoptera
I’m glad you felt like going there. I just expect those that bring up these topics to do some background research first.
RAmen
Hey, Jingles,
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Nice post (the big one).
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I don’t know. This morality thing. It kinda feels (late at night, when I’m stupid) to me like back in a maths lesson (and I was never a mathematician). You want a rule to apply to everyone? You find a common denominator (or factor, or whatever).
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You believe X, she believes Y, he believes Z and I don’t believe any of the above. We sit down and talk like nice people and we find the things that we *all* want to happen or not to happen. If we’re willing to do so, our individual basisless suppositions cancel out and the stuff that’s left at the end of our discussion is morality based on pretty material stuff. None of us want to be raped, funnily enough. We don’t want our stuff to be stolen. We don’t want to be murdered or abused. And so on.
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So when Z-believer says ‘Z says it’s right for me to hang you from a tree and throw rocks at you because you eat Pringles on a Thursday’, I’m free to disregard his mad-headed suppositions because they’re based on something that just isn’t common to the human race, except in the minds of Z-believers. Same thing when X-believer tells me that Y-believers are worthless shitheads who should be burned. I don’t believe in Y, but I wouldn’t want to be burned and nor would anyone else. We worked that out over coffee and biscuits while we were having our nice chat around the table.
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None of this is brain surgery. Why it doesn’t dawn on the religious is a deeply mysterious question to me right now. Perhaps I should go to bed.
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‘Night.
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Oh, Jingles, more importantly: sorry about the music, mate.
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Oh, oh, oh:
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‘Alright, I retract my earlier statement concrning free will, and replace it with this; Neither religion nor atheism allows any more than an illusion of free will.’
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Really? I’ve not read the post that led to that comment and I certainly don’t have the philosophical background to get into it, but: really? *Really?* I don’t know - it just sounds like an argumentative cart pulling the horse of reality, a little. I suspect that atheism and religion allow plenty of free will. But maybe someone’s just making me think that.
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@ Coleoptera - you sound clever and knowledgable. Very glad you’re here.
(Lastly: Jingles -
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‘Oh, and J, good to have you back’
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I’m not, I never was and none of you saw me. Nice to see you again, though.)
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RAmen
@J
Thanks! I like being here.
@alchemist.
I went to a private school. and a fundamentalist catholic creationist one at that
@Wench Nikkiee
Some wise person (maybe Mark Twain) said “It is not what we don’t know that can hurt us, but what we know for sure and are wrong about”. We are all guilty of having opinions on issues about which we know very little. Lack of knowledge doesn’t stop people having or expressing an opinion. There are undoubtedly people who post on this site who support the theory of evolution but know very little about it. Perhaps people don’t even know where they can find information on some of the topics they post. The evolution of sex is a good example because it is a complex and understudied issue that rarely makes it into text books. Keep showing them the door Nikkiee, and hope they step through.
@wench nikkiee:
w00t i love all those albums except for bat out of hell