luke warm, on Jan 4 2008, 06:31 AM, said:
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Obviously we must use our inherent sense of morality -- but if we have that, then why do we need the bible or religion to define morality?
you might not need the bible, but you do need something... if you have an 'inherent sense of morality', what is it a product of? is it totally subjective or are there things you believe all "moral" people hold in common?
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Someone else asked about belief in alien life. I don't KNOW that there's life elsewhere, and I don't expect us to prove it any time soon. What I believe is that it's LIKELY that there's life elsewhere in the universe. My reasoning is that if something can happen once, it can happen more than once, given enough chances. We know that life arose once (we're here), the universe is incredibly old and huge, and there doesn't seem to be anything particularly unusual about the Earth, so rules of probability suggest that it has probably happened in other places.
ok, is your belief in the likelihood of sentient life elsewhere irrational or illogical? i'd say no, even though your reasoning might not be perfect in the matter (the fact that something happened once doesn't mean it can happen more than once, given enough time - necessarily)
Two points to which I wish to reply:
1. Moral code.
Unless you argue that atheists, buddhists and others are amoral people, it seesm hard to defend the proposition that we need divinely mandated moral codes.
The biblical moral code is inherently contradictory and anyone living by it today would almost certainly end up in jail. Abraham's threatening to kill his son, for example, would see him in serious trouble, and I don't think many judges or juries would be persuaded by a protestation that god told him to do it. And the bible is replete with people exposing their family to rape (I think Lot did this), and it, in other areas, mandates the murder of others.
It is demonstrable, not only from the bible which reflects the moral beliefs of its times, but from other historical material, that moral values change. The crusading knights, and indeed the knights of Christendom, thought nothing of mass murder, rape and pillage of conquered towns... even towns inhabited by fellow Christians.
I forget the name of the Catholic lord charged with putting down a heresy, who told his troops to kill everyone, knowing that in doing so they would slaughter many true believers, uninfected by the heresy... he said, and I don't have the exact quote.. that the Lord would sort out his own... the true believers would go to heaven while the heretics went to hell.
I can't imagine a modern western leader giving such an order, or having it obeyed.
So morality is a social artefact, not a divine directive, and only the most pigheadedly blind would argue that this is not so.
2. Belief or thought
The proposition that, based on available evidence, someone believes that there is a probability of sentient life elsewhere contains within it a recognition that there is a (lesser) probability that no such life exists. In other words, this 'belief' is actually a thought or a hypothesis recognized by its holder as contingent upon the evidence and subject to re-evaluation... and, most importantly, it is not an article of faith.
Thus it is not equivalent to the absolute certainty that religion requires of its victims: the surety WITHOUT EVIDENCE that one's particular god exists.
If you really can't see the difference, well, I feel sorry, not for you since you need no sympathy, cloaked as you are in your invincible ignorance, but for the rest of us. Not because any one true believer is a risk, but because this mindset plays an enormous role in American politics. Indeed, it is arguable that this mindset is responsible for the Iraq debacle, since Bush is proud of the fact that he makes his decisions after praying for guidance... and getting it! When god speaks to you and tells you to do what you always wanted to do, it is a very liberating thing for you, but not for the people you intend to kill with god's blessing. When god told Bush to go ahead with the invasion, we got hundreds of thousands of deaths, countless billions of dollars wasted, and a clean conscience on the man who caused it all... after all, he has NO doubt about the existence of the god who gave him the green light.
Had Bush entertained any doubt about his faith... were he a rational being, then bin laden would probably have been brought to justice by now (imagine the armed forces in Iraq being in Afghanistan all this time, imagine spending the hundreds of billions of dollars spent in Iraq in pursuit of bin Laden). And then imagine spending a fraction of the cost of the war on terror on helping moderate Palestinians build a prosperous democracy without guns.... reversing the image of the US in the islamic world.... but he couldn't do that, and the US can't do that, largely for religious reasons.
'one of the great markers of the advance of human kindness is the howls you will hear from the Men of God' Johann Hari