The Philosophy Forums at OnlinePhilosophyClub.com aim to be an oasis of intelligent in-depth civil debate and discussion. Topics discussed extend far beyond philosophy and philosophers. What makes us a philosophy forum is more about our approach to the discussions than what subject is being debated. Common topics include but are absolutely not limited to neuroscience, psychology, sociology, cosmology, religion, political theory, ethics, and so much more.
This is a humans-only philosophy club. We strictly prohibit bots and AIs from joining.
Discuss philosophical questions regarding theism (and atheism), and discuss religion as it relates to philosophy. This includes any philosophical discussions that happen to be about god, gods, or a 'higher power' or the belief of them. This also generally includes philosophical topics about organized or ritualistic mysticism or about organized, common or ritualistic beliefs in the existence of supernatural phenomenon.
Evolution explains this stuff, it makes sense that we are the way we are, that pain feels bad.
Gregor Samsa awakens one morning to find he has changed into an insect. His mind turns towards getting work, family and the practical details, but never once does he take in the astonishment of his condition, the impossibility. Such are our lives. Humans being here,living through joys and tragedies in our endless dramatic performances, worrying about getting to work on time and whether we are popular and so on; and ever so willing to think our theories can encompass what we are. What IS pain? Not how do we account for it in some theory of its genesis. It is a question of ontology.
To deal with this, we need to look to Kierkegaard and Levinas and many others. Science is never about what givens are,only about how we pragmatically cope with them. This does not stop us from acknowledging Being as presence, though.
[quote]atheism explains nothing[\quote]
Well it depends how you look at things. On the one hand atheism is not a belief in God or gods. So of course it doesn't explain anything it's a refutation of an explanation.
There is no formal atheist leadership or book of atheist beliefs so i can't talk about atheist beliefs in a singular sense. I can talk about my beliefs. So in that sense you could accuse my atheism of explanation. I would just point at the scientific method and go from there personally. But that is obviously a very long conversation and probably not worth getting into.
Hereandnow wrote:
Gregor Samsa awakens one morning to find he has changed into an insect. His mind turns towards getting work, family and the practical details, but never once does he take in the astonishment of his condition, the impossibility. Such are our lives. Humans being here,living through joys and tragedies in our endless dramatic performances, worrying about getting to work on time and whether we are popular and so on; and ever so willing to think our theories can encompass what we are. What IS pain? Not how do we account for it in some theory of its genesis. It is a question of ontology.
To deal with this, we need to look to Kierkegaard and Levinas and many others. Science is never about what givens are,only about how we pragmatically cope with them. This does not stop us from acknowledging Being as presence, though.
Actually, in this post you hit the bull right in the nail.
What you described is EXACTLY what happened to my uncle Pavel Spenser. He woke up one morning, and found he had turned into an insect, "lavorem lavorium nille", to be exact of the species. He went to an entimologist, because he wanted to be sure of his species after the transformation, and that was the exact species mentioned in the medical transcript.
This search engine is powered by Hunger, Thirst, and a desperate need to Mate.
This may seem simplistic (or just be plain wrong), but I think that as human-beings are effectively biological machines, everything that we do can be reduced to our physical attributes. We feel hunger because our bodies need food, we feel pain because we're reacting to a stimuli that causes us pain. So to our morality can be linked to physical causes. Although it is not always clear what the physical triggers of morality are, we do know a few things about morality and how it operates through experience and our general understanding of human nature. We know for instance that morality is useful to social systems and that there are certain circumstances that bring about moral choices or actions. We also know that we have consciences that react to “moral-situations.” So there are some things related to morality that we are aware of that are empirical, therefore I think that science can investigate the different aspects of morality. I think that morality is linked to our development as a species – and as we have evolved so to has the nature and shape of our morality.
Morality is an issue that religions attempt to deal with, the general idea of religions is that being moral is somehow enriches the “soul” or “spirit” and leads to some kind of blissful afterlife. Whilst I think that morality can enrich the character and is essential to our progression as a species, I don't think that the terms “soul” or “spirit” are well defined enough to convey anything other than character, nature or personality, and the concept of an afterlife is problematic. Morality is seemingly an issue of Mind, but as we know Mind is intrinsically connected to Body, hence there are physical reactions to issues of morality – like the stomach churning when we observe something immoral or crying when we see something heart-breaking, such reactions I think demonstrate the link between Mind and Body.
Whereas we can colloquially speak of the “soul” or “spirit,” there's no formal recognition of either because they cannot be proven to exist. Hence morality is entangled with religious myths and supernatural cogitations. I think that religious forms of morality are generated by human ideals of moral perfection – specifically the ideal of a completely altruistic human race and the elimination of suffering. I think that such ideals have a place, because they give us something to aim towards, but the claim that they're provided by a deity of some kind is far reaching – especially when we know that they were written by people, people who may have been both educated and virtuous, but people. Religious ideals of moral perfection can be appealing and useful, but their connection to particular religious factions I think hinders their efficacy by causing division.
All that said, I'm currently agnostic and I think that if I had not experienced much of what I have I would now be an atheist. So I'm attempting to be intellectually honest. I don't think that my experiences imply that there's a God, but they may imply there's more to reality than is currently empirically observable, though I think the chance of this is very small. I think that atheism is a logical position given what we currently know about reality. Quite simply, the fact that there's no evidence for the existence of God means that there's nothing illogical about not believing that such a being exists. I find the existence of God to be problematic, one reason for example, is what created God? If we assume that God created itself, that would mean that at some point he/she/it did not exist (before it created itself), how or more aptly when did an eternal being create itself? What existed before it created itself and where did it come from? There are so many problems with positing the existence of God, if it existed, why is it's existence so problematic?
Theists believe, agnostics ponder and atheists analyse. A little bit of each should get us the right answer.
Evolution explains this stuff, it makes sense that we are the way we are, that pain feels bad.
Gregor Samsa awakens one morning to find he has changed into an insect. His mind turns towards getting work, family and the practical details, but never once does he take in the astonishment of his condition, the impossibility. Such are our lives. Humans being here,living through joys and tragedies in our endless dramatic performances, worrying about getting to work on time and whether we are popular and so on; and ever so willing to think our theories can encompass what we are. What IS pain? Not how do we account for it in some theory of its genesis. It is a question of ontology.
To deal with this, we need to look to Kierkegaard and Levinas and many others. Science is never about what givens are,only about how we pragmatically cope with them. This does not stop us from acknowledging Being as presence, though.
What IS the taste of a tomato sandwich? And why does it mean morality is objective?
Sorry but you're all over the place, you don't lay out an argument and you don't respond to mine. Quoting one line, then mentioning Kafka, Kierkegaard, Levinas 'and many others' isn't a serious response, so I'm going to assume you don't have one.
Trying to equate morality with biology is like trying to equate mathematics with biology. While it is true we started off our moral thinking based on our biology, biology most definitely does not account for all of our moral reasoning. This is like saying because we biologically have a number sense, that mathematics can be reduced to biology. Good luck with that. It makes no more sense to claim that biology accounts for moral reasoning than it does to state that all of physics, mathematics, or other subjects for which we have a slight biological sense can be subsumed under biology.
Could you make the argument that all moral behaviour increases survivability of genes?
Does this count as a biological argument?
I personally don't see a problem with equating biology with mathematics, but I'm sure it depends how you define biology. For example does mathematics increase survivability of genes, if so is that a biological argument?
Could mathematics exist without a physical reality? Is that a biological argument?
Please note that where I am putting a question mark I am asking an actual question, not a rhetorical question.
Biology cannot be equated to mathematics, or physics, the idea is insane. What does biology have to do with set theory? Nothing. What does biology have to do with non-Euclidean geometry? Nothing.
There is also much in modern morality that is inconsistent with the so-called selfish gene. Basically, the history of morality is that it is becoming more and more inclusive, which is inconsistent with biology, which causes people to develop out groups, and a social division into "us versus them." White people who, for example, are against discrimination against black people, are allowing blacks to compete with them, which would hurt their chances for survival on some level. Yet, racism is on the ropes in most moral conceptual frameworks today. If we had a situation where white people could use blacks as slaves, then that might may white people more successful in passing on their genes, but few would consider that to be morally right.
Fan of Science wrote:Trying to equate morality with biology is like trying to equate mathematics with biology. While it is true we started off our moral thinking based on our biology, biology most definitely does not account for all of our moral reasoning. This is like saying because we biologically have a number sense, that mathematics can be reduced to biology. Good luck with that. It makes no more sense to claim that biology accounts for moral reasoning than it does to state that all of physics, mathematics, or other subjects for which we have a slight biological sense can be subsumed under biology.
The point here is that once we have an explanation for the evolved origins of the way we are, we don't need to invoke God or something other than ourselves to understand how the human concept of morality came into being.
Trying to equate morality with biology is like trying to equate mathematics with biology. While it is true we started off our moral thinking based on our biology, biology most definitely does not account for all of our moral reasoning.
It's obviously true that Biology, and the Chemistry and Physics that underlie it, as we currently understand them, don't describe our moral behaviours. But, in your view, is that simply because the causes of our moral behaviours are too complex? In your view, are moral behaviours theoretically describable by laws of physics? Or is there a fundamental difference which no amount of understanding could reconcile?
If the latter, is there any sense in which you are a Dualist? Do you think there is something in human minds which does not in any way arise from their physical configuration?
There is also much in modern morality that is inconsistent with the so-called selfish gene...
How can you be so sure? If the human genome as a whole is successful at reproducing itself (as it certainly seems to have been so far) then surely that is evidence that our complex web of behaviours are benefiting our genes in ways whose details we don't necessarily understand? That doesn't necessarily mean individual genes. Societies exist by mutual cooperation.
The human genome does not reproduce itself so much as individual's have children. The idea that there is something about evolutionary biology that supports group selection is false. If this were true, then why does each individual zebra run like hell when a lion appears instead of the slower ones sacrificing themselves for the good of the group? From a biological standpoint, people are supposed to be selfish. This is inconsistent with a great deal of morality. Your claims about mutual cooperation do not explain why people in the USA donate to people in far off lands and give them food. How does that biologically enhance their ability to have offspring? It doesn't.
-- Updated July 31st, 2017, 2:27 pm to add the following --
You're not getting it. No sensible person would claim mathematics is reducible to biology, because the claim would be absurd. We may have had a very rudimentary number sense when it comes to being able to tell that a pile of three rocks is smaller than a pile of ten rocks, but that does not make mathematics reducible to biology. In the same sense that we are biologically hardwired to support our in group against an out-group, that hardly accounts for morality. If morality were reducible to biology, then how come there are such wide differences in moral opinions, when we all are the product of the same evolutionary process? How come morality has changed greatly even over the last 20 years, despite there being no evolutionary changes during that time? It's for the same reason mathematics has also advanced greatly without any changes in human evolution --- these are subjects independent of mere biology and are not reducible to biology.
