He is risen!

[Kidlicious]

No you're mistaking truth with belief.
What reasons or facts do you have that supports that we have a spiritual self and cats do not.

You're confusing truth with believing something is truth.

[Elok]

Sorry but that sounds more than a little precious of you. Human nature is undeniable, its just a description regarding the behaviour and thought patterns we lean towards as a species. You can see direct correlation there with behaviour we've inherited earlier in the evolutionary journey, which would otherwise make absolutely no sense in any rational context.

Lori's a transhumanist. He's talking about modifying the form or function of the human mind via technology.

[kentonio]

See 147, if you haven't already. I don't believe anyone (or almost anyone) is really moral. To the extent that our behavior appears moral, it does so because the self-interest we really serve happens to align with morality in a superficial way. That is, you don't want to do those things because you don't have any real need to do them and you'd go to jail if you did. And the same is true for me. Any nonsense we tell each other about being Good Decent People is a pack of self-serving lies. Superficial bourgeois morality will not stand up to any real temptation.

Look, its not about humans being naturally prone to being wonderful people, we've evolved in the same way that every other species has. What we do have however is the ability to control our own behaviour and draw upon the social nature of our evolutionary background to create an advanced society where looking out for each other is beneficial to the group. If you reduce a human to terrible conditions then damn right they'll resort to survivalist and sometimes barbaric behaviour, but that has nothing to do with religion in any way shape or form. Back when religion genuinely meant something and people lived in a time when even the idea of not being religious was heresy, deeply religious people commited acts just as foul as anything we see today when put in certain conditions.

The point is that given the societies we've built, a normal healthy person feels no compulsion to kill or maim just for the kick of it. That's not just a direct threat of jail, sane people just don't act on those impulses unless in cases of dire need. Hell, even with the threat of jail, there's still a million opportunities in your life where you could kill someone and be almost 100% sure you could get away with it. Have you ever actually felt a strong compulsion to do that, or is that just a rather distateful jab to throw at people who don't believe in god?

Religion certainly acted as a means of controlling the behaviour of people once upon a time (and not usually in a particularly beneficial sense for 95% of those people) but it's hard to find an argument to suggest there's any need today for it to perform that role. Western Europe is becoming hugely secular, yet we don't see any resultant spike in violence and crime.

[kentonio]

I understand why you won't defend what you said.

Please stop trying to be Ben.

[kentonio]

Lori's a transhumanist. He's talking about modifying the form or function of the human mind via technology.

Ah, my apologies Lori, I misunderstood your point.

[C0ckney]

Sorry but that sounds more than a little precious of you. Human nature is undeniable, its just a description regarding the behaviour and thought patterns we lean towards as a species. You can see direct correlation there with behaviour we've inherited earlier in the evolutionary journey, which would otherwise make absolutely no sense in any rational context.

but 'human nature', leaving lori's form of science fiction nonsense to one side, has changed and changes according the social, economic, political and cultural circumstances that the humans involved find themselves in.

[Elok]

The people who sign up for IS are by and large not in terrible circumstances, Ken. A significant number of them are well-off enough to afford long-distance travel. The home-grown type are generally not third-world peasants, either. Most of these men represent what Hannah Arendt called The Banality of Evil: boring middle-class schmucks gone berserk. That's you or me, if we got restless enough. As I told Rah, most religious people aren't terribly good at their religion. I like to think I'm getting a little better, but probably that's just more bull****.

EDIT: cf. The Milgram Experiment, though it's unclear if the data was somewhat skewed.

[Kidlicious]

Please stop trying to be Ben.

Please stop making statements that you aren't willing to defend.

[rah]

I follow a blog written by an Orthodox priest. He argues that what we usually call "morality" is merely external obedience to rules, and does not touch the inner being. Therefore, it is a load of crap. But most contemporary Western morals, religious or secular, follow precisely that pattern. They're about bourgeois respectability, not actual goodness.

Sorry, I must have misread it originally. I thought you were claiming that religious morality was better than secular morality. Upon further review, I mostly agree with what you said.
However, Bourgeois respectability can often include some actual goodness.

[Lorizael]

Who said anything about consensus? Cosmology is largely formed of theoretical thought, and on the scale of things like the big bang we cannot know and quite possibly will never know the real answers.

Your assertion might have been true 20 or more years ago, but cosmology today is a robust field practically drowning in observations. Hubble, the various CMB maps, and other instruments have provided a wealth of data about large structure and previous epochs. There are certainly a number of unanswered questions cosmology-wise, but there is a great deal cosmologists can say today with a fair degree of certainty. It is not a purely theoretical field, but the headlines often are about theoretical or speculative aspects of cosmology.

This was the article I was referring to by the way.. http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/...efore-big-bang

Yeah. Penrose has a big name, but there is currently very little support for his idea.

Other theorists are also working on theories regarding some black holes possibly being 'primordial black holes' that pre-date the big bang. None of it can be proven, as I said it just appeals to me because a cyclic nature to the universe would give some sense to the concept of infinity. The universe having a start point doesn't sit comfortable with infinity to me, although given how utterly beyond our capabilities it all is to understand, it's unlikely to ever be anything more than a wild guess whatever you go for. You can't just talk about 'tremendous amounts of evidence' of the small part we do know though, when looking for answers for the larger question.

You should dispense with your notions of how the universe must be. When science goes down a wrong path (vitalism, aether, etc.), it's because people are very sure that the universe must be a certain way. The universe doesn't have to be 14 billion years old, but it's telling us (from multiple, strong lines of evidence) that it is.

If the universe is indeed only 14 billion years old then how the hell did it suddenly start, if there was nothing there preceding it? Matter out of nothing goes against the 'tremendous amounts of evidence' we have about how physics works.

Physics has very little (nothing) to say about what can come from "true" nothing. But from less complete forms of nothing, matter pops up all the time. QED (the best tested physical theory ever) tells us this.

Sorry but that sounds more than a little precious of you. Human nature is undeniable, its just a description regarding the behaviour and thought patterns we lean towards as a species. You can see direct correlation there with behaviour we've inherited earlier in the evolutionary journey, which would otherwise make absolutely no sense in any rational context.

What Elok said.

but 'human nature', leaving lori's form of science fiction nonsense to one side...

Yes, somehow humans are capable of modifying every part of the body except the brain. That makes sense. (I have never claimed that we are currently good at modifying the brain.)

[Jon Miller]

BS, the view that either is possible is more open minded than holding one exclusive.

Let's keep a simple system. Y is the knowledge that A is true. X is the knowledge that A is not true.

Person 1 holds that
notY and notX
Person 2 holds that
Y and notX
Person 3 holds that
X and Y
Person 4 holds that
X and notY

It is arguable that Person 3 isn't logically consistent, but it is obvious that Persons 1, 2, and 4 all are all mutually exclusive and so are excluding the same amount of the logically consistent positions to hold and so have similar amounts of open mindedness.

JM

[C0ckney]

Yes, somehow humans are capable of modifying every part of the body except the brain. That makes sense. (I have never claimed that we are currently good at modifying the brain.)

that's not my point at all.

[Lorizael]

There's a reason I didn't quote the rest of your post.

[rah]

JM,
I was referring to
Both A and B are possible but neither can be proven.

[Jon Miller]

Yes, and that is the third logically consistent position to hold thus taking up 1/3 of logically consistent position space and thus just as open minded as the other two positions.

You are, after all, sure about the question of knowledge.

JM