If you happen to stop by here, we could continue the discussion here. I still have my last reply, but don’t know if you replied to my 2 answers.

~Sparky

Well, no, I quite agree with you there. (Apart from the word “arbitrary”. I don’t think there’s much arbitrary about the order of human societies. There’s only so many ways to make them work.) However, what I suppose I have made insufficiently clear, is the distinction between ultimate causes and proximate causes. The ultimate cause is, in my opinion, that morality benefits the group (nowadays, I think many people conceive of the entire human species as “the group”).

I doubt many people get outraged at injustice out of concern for the stability of the group. They get upset because they can imagine themselves in the other’s position, because the other is considered to be part of “us”. (It’s amazing what we will do to other people if they are considered “them”.) Sometimes they get upset because they believe it is against God’s (or Allah’s, or whoever’s) will. There are probably other reasons to get upset. These are the proximate causes.

By my reasoning, the ultimate cause provided the impetus for the evolution of the proximate causes. Thus, we feel outrage because we empathise, and we feel empathy because it is beneficial for our survival to do so.

.

Anyway, this is kind of dragging on and on. I’m starting to feel as if I’m repeating myself. Unfortunately, with such fundamentally different perceptions of the world, it’s hard to reach consensus on, well, anything. Unless someone has anything substantial left to say, I’d like to call it quits.

You said that personality was materialistic. How, within that framework, do you explain the desire for truth that all human beings have?

What do you mean by truth? Is it essentially the same as knowledge?

Humans tend to see patterns where there aren’t any, or meaning where there is none. Ignorance may be bliss, but those who have a lot of knowledge and desire to gain more stand a much better chance of surviving than do those who do not. A desire to learn more about the world thus seems a pretty easy thing to explain without bringing gods into the discussion.

So you believe in criminalizing murder, but not that murder is morally wrong.

From my point of view, morality is pragmatic and is in essence a set of rules that contribute to the well-being of a group of people and thus, ultimately, to the individual.

Are you familiar with Tit for Tat, a strategy in game theory? (See Wikipedia, if you’re not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_Tat) Although it is of course a bit more simple than real life would be, it does provide evidence that, in the long run, cooperation can be more advantageous to the individual than attempting to maximize one’s own gains. Thus why we are taught not to steal, even though it would help us in the short term.

You said that personality was materialistic. How, within that framework, do you explain the desire for truth that all human beings have?

Do you have a single good reason for criminalising murder that does not involve personal beliefs or a Judeo-Christian worldview? Don’t say public safety. Rather, tell me why public safety is important!

In short: it is advantageous for humans to live in groups, but groups would quickly fall apart if the members could not put their trust in their fellow group members.

So you believe in criminalizing murder, but not that murder is morally wrong.

First off, I should note that I see no real difference in discussion tactics between myself and “your side” (for lack of a better word). If anything, I have given you (and Walker, Gabriel, etc.) the advantage by permitting you to “tie knots”, to borrow your saying. I have not come up with any new arguments of my own but have restricted myself to refuting the arguments “your side” thought up. Poking holes, so to say. I am not inventing rabbit trails and planting red herrings. Point out where you think I am wrong, certainly, but do me a favour and give me the benefit of the doubt: I am not attempting to “slow down the process” (what process?) in any.

On to the more important stuff, then:

When a policeman arrests a teen for drunk driving, he is imposing his beliefs on the teen. He believes that law, order, and justice should be upheld, and that the public should be protected. That is as much an imposition of personal belief as would be a law illegalizing homosexual acts.

The crucial difference between the two is that the teen is putting a lot of people’s lives at stake, whereas the homosexual is not. (I’ll get into why the distinction is important a bit later on, at the “public safety” bit.)

As reported at Wikipedia.org, there are an average of 12,000 murders per year in the United States. CIA.gov, however, reports that there are 14,000 deaths due to AIDS in the United States every year. Medical science (I didn’t include a link because I didn’t really want to search for “homosexual intercourse and AIDS” with Google) has shown a direct link between homosexual intercourse and the formation of the AIDS virus.

That is just one reason. Here is another. I do not have the statistics linked, but in the average population the number of child molesters per capita is tens of times less than the per capita figure in the homosexual population. Deviant sexual behavior only breeds further deviancy, progressing to child molestation and rape.

Your chances of getting AIDS through sex are practically nil if you practice safe sex. Likewise for a committed monogamous relationship. With the proper precautions, homosexual intercourse poses no danger at all. Campaigns to get homosexuals to practice safe sex have had some success; the rate of infection among homosexuals is going down, whereas the rate of infection among heterosexuals is still going up, probably because many heterosexuals are still inclined to view AIDS as an exclusively gay disease. (http://www.fpnotebook.com/HIV11.htm, although I originally got the info from a different source. Can’t find it again now, though.)

As for the child molestation, I will not disagree with you that homosexuals do seem to make up a disproportionately large portion of child molesters. The vast majority of homosexuals, however, does not molest children, just as the vast majority of heterosexuals does not. Clearly, “deviancy” (I disagree) does not necessarily lead to true deviancy. Furthermore, I doubt that making homosexual intercourse illegal will do anything, other than cause a lot of trouble for adults engaging in consensual acts. Correlation does not equal causation.

We do not make it illegal to drink alcohol just because some people abuse it and start attacking other people or driving drunk. We make the attacks and the drunk driving illegal, recognising that these behaviours are harmful, whereas drinking alcohol in itself is not.

Do you have a single good reason for criminalising murder that does not involve personal beliefs or a Judeo-Christian worldview? Don’t say public safety. Rather, tell me why public safety is important!

Public safety is necessary for the continued existence of civilization. If everyone played judge, jury and executioner all in one, society would quickly degenerate into anarchy. In such circumstances, quality of living would drop dramatically for everyone, as groups can accomplish far more than any one person can accomplish on his own. For groups to function properly, however, there must be some basic level of trust; unless dealt with, saboteurs can quickly destroy this trust.

In short: it is advantageous for humans to live in groups, but groups would quickly fall apart if the members could not put their trust in their fellow group members.

You tell me. How and why is a creature with a separate heartbeat, separate DNA, separate bloodstream, separate immune system, and separate hormonal structure somehow part of the mother’s body until birth? When in utero surgeries are performed, the child is taken out and put back in to the womb. Is the child alive when it is out during surgery and non-live when it returns?

The child is clearly alive. This does not necessarily mean it must continue to live. Non-viable fetuses are routinely aborted (spontaneously). Implantation (of the blastula in the uterine lining) fails on a regular basis. Ectopic pregnancies happen (would you permit abortion in such a case?). There is no end to the things that can go wrong.

Mother and child are interconnected during pregnancy. The fetus forcibly gains access to the mother’s bloodstream during implantation. It is provided with passive immunity through maternal immunoglobins. It is wholly dependent upon the mother for nutrition and gas exchange. It may have a separate bloodstream and all that jazz, but the mother is going to have to carry it around for nine months anyway.

In any case, this has little to do with my pro-choice stance. To me, there isn’t much difference between an embryo and all the other possible embryos that could’ve formed if the two parents had had sex on a different day. It doesn’t know it exists. At the beginning of its development, it can’t feel pain. If the parents would like it to go on living, it’d be nice if it did. If they don’t, and it doesn’t, well, I can’t feel very sad about that.

It would be ideal if both the father and the mother would agree, but if they don’t, the mother’s opinion is more important, since the embryo is in her body and chances are it’s going to change her life a lot more than it will the father’s.

I respect you right to choose to ignore God. But that is freedom of thought, not freedom of action. Just because someone’s religious beliefs (like yours) would allow or mandate illegal things like rape, polygamy, or child sacrifice does not mean that it is somehow OK because it is your religious belief.

And:

Why criminalise it if its is “generally harmful”? Who decides what is “generally harmful”?

“I respect you [sic] right to choose to ignore God.” Seriously, what a brilliant line. No offense.

See the “public safety” bit just above for the answer to the first question.

As for the second question, I discussed this up above in a previous post, a bit: “As a very general rule, I would say that anything that consenting adults (ALL parties) engage in is permissible.” I think you’ll find that for the vast majority of issues, pretty much everyone already agrees. There are only some fringe issues on which debate is possible. In that case, both the persons in favour of criminalisation and those not in favour should present their evidence, and afterward we’ll vote (or our representatives will, in any case). That is, after all, how laws are made.

The process won’t always lead to the outcome I’d like best, but I accept that because it’s the only halfway acceptable way of going about it, in my opinion.

My idea here is to establish “ground rules” to protect people from other people. I have no interest in a Nanny State. Government has no business infantilizing citizens and poking its nose into private matters.

Well, just because you can’t doesn’t mean someone else can’t. Who are you to be so intolerant of those who want to practice their lifestyle apart from you?

You are confusing matters. Walker asked what the point was of being a good person. We were not talking about what should be permissible.

In any case, I have no problem with someone taking pleasure in inflicting pain, provided that the “victim” is a consenting, mentally healthy adult. If these conditions are not met, however, we once again find ourselves breaking my very general rule I mentioned up above.

If a book is published in 1611 and predicts something very specific will happen in 1948, and that something happens in 1948, isn’t it reasonable to assume that the book is of supernatural origin? (What am I talking about? The formation of Israel was predicted to the date in Deuteronomy. Click here.)

I read that post some time ago. What I wondered then, and still do, is if there is actually any specific date mentioned in the Bible passage that contains that prophecy, because the author so glibly declares that it comes out to exactly May 14, 1948. I tried to find the passage, but there doesn’t seem to be any mention of Cyrus in Deuteronomy. Maybe I missed it. In any case, absent a date and taking into account the extra day in February every four years, it comes out to somewhere between 11 October 1947 and 10 October 1948. Which is pretty close, although it does seem to require some interesting math work and interpretation of the facts. Jews do not seem to agree that the Jewish prophetic year is 360 days and in fact claim that it is a nineteenth-century Christian invention to make dates coincide. (See also: http://www.jewsforjudaism.org/web/faq/faq121.html, http://experts.about.com/q/Orthodox-Judaism-952/Daniel-9.htm)

Funny. Evolution lacks one shred of fossil evidence and had never been observed in nature or in a lab, and yet somehow everyone is sure it is true.

Face it. Evolution has been disproven. Get over it!

I’ve read both your articles before and was not convinced. Your excessive use of sarcasm does not encourage anyone who does not already agree with you to continue reading. I realise you think you have access to divine truth and thus are utterly certain, but if you’re trying to convince “evolutionists”, you might want to make your tone a bit less off-putting.

I have no idea what the reference to George Mendel is about, as Mendel didn’t influence science particularly until the early 20th century, half a century after Darwin published the Origin of Species.

I am curious why on earth you think sharing 98% of our genome with chimpanzees isn’t evidence that we’re related to them. What is your explanation for the huge similarity between the genomes of different organisms?

You say: We haven’t ever seen a mutation that not only made its owner more likely to survive but also added to the genome and would eventually lead to a more advanced species.

How about retrotransposons? Or gene duplication? That’s two mechanisms of adding to our genome right there. Another way is to incorporate viruses into our genome, which seems to have happened extremely often. Estimates are that 30% of our genome comes from viruses.

It is hardly necessary for a mutation to both add to the genome and provide a selective advantage. The addition needs only to be neutral, and this provides raw material that can undergo mutation in the future.

Any imperfect combination would either kill the mutating organism or would be automatically filtered out by the individual cell’s copying mechanism.

This is dead wrong. About three codons code for every amino acid. Therefore, there are a lot of possibilities that would all end up with exactly the same polypeptide.
The whole thing here is rather confused. You sound like you’re building a gene from scratch. How often do you think that happens?

But we have yet to find a case of mutations acting in concert with natural selection to turn T Rex into a toucan or a monkey into me. And we also have yet to find a record of anything half-way to becoming something else set in the stone of the fossil record.

Exactly what do you mean when you say we haven’t found a case yet of a monkey turning into you? What are you looking for? Evolution happening so fast that we can line up your grandfather, your father and you and say, “Look, it’s a primitive primate, something halfway between, and a human being!”?

Frankly, having read your post about Tiktaalik, I’m inclined to think that it really doesn’t matter what the palaeontologists dig up. Nothing’s ever quite intermediate enough.
.
.
Walker,
I do not hate Christians, and I do not know where you got that impression. I may find individual Christians a bit annoying, but it’s a big step from there to hate. Mostly I just find Christians, and very religious people in general, peculiar.

I read the text you posted. Several times. I understand what it says, unless by “understanding” you mean “agreeing with and considering it sufficient”. I am not going to follow your advice to pray, because it’s kind of silly to pray to a being you don’t even think exists. I tried it when I was younger. Never really did anything.

Anyway, after this excessively long response, I’m going to head to bed. Pardon any stupid mistakes I’ve made; I’d proofread, but I’m falling asleep at the keyboard.

Talk to ya later!

In Him,

David S. MacMillan III

I’m hoping to get back to both of you tomorrow, but Tuesdays are usually busy days for me, so it might have to wait until Wednesday instead. (And I could’ve sworn that when I replied to Gabriel, your comment wasn’t anywhere in sight, David.) Anyway, hope you’ll have some patience if I take a little while to answer; I’ll formulate a response as soon as I have a reasonable amount of time to devote to it.

Yes like david, I am very happy you have come to ‘debate’. I would like you not to feel at odds with us christians, we are not the ones really ‘attacking’ you. If you feel any emnity with us, it is not really us you hate, It is He whom we represent that you have the problems with, as we are just relaying on the message. I tell you these thing out of love, that you would come to know this wonderful Father and lord that I know, who I love.

I Really, Really reccomend that you read the book of Ecclesiasties, in the old testament if you have a bible. If you dont here is a website that hoasts an online bible(and many other things). http://www.biblegateway.com

to your question:”So, um, what exactly is the point of this life?”

Im not going to say “according to the bible”, because this is ultimatly True and sure, this is NOT just a view point, this is the purpose of life, as writted by Solomon in the end of the book of Ecclesiasties.

Ecclesiasties 12:
10 The Teacher searched to find just the right words, and what he wrote was upright and true.

11 The words of the wise are like goads, their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails—given by one Shepherd. 12 Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them.
Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.

13 Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man.

14 For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil.

Please, read it over, and over again, mabey a hundred times if you must, untill you understand this short text. And if you dont understand it, I would advise you to pray for understand, of these words, and to pray for all the other things that are on your heart.

God bless-

Then I will agree to disagree, as I have pretty much the exact same reason for my position (no other explanation makes good sense). I can’t prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.