Hi Siberian_Khatru, I'm not sure what your point is... if you'd like to expand, I'm interested.
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We the people decide. We as individuals decide. Even you decided. When you ignore the call to stone offenders of God's law or to cut off hands as the Old Testament calls for, upon whose authority do you call? The answer: your own authority. Quite possibly you might ignore scripture all together and rely upon modern secular laws which are much more humane.
Harris has said himself that even in 18 minutes he can give only a truncated explanation of this topic. Below is a 1.45 hour talk given by him. Once you have his full argument then we might be better placed to discuss the matter, if you are interested.Dan said:
https://video.search.yahoo.com/vide...:s,v:v,m:sa&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=mozilla&tt=b
Are everyone's decisions equally valid?
God's.
A shortened explanation might be a good place to start.
Well, my gut reaction was that Harris probably didn't have a scientific basis for morality... that was strengthened when I found this review from the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/books/review/Appiah-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
Here's an excerpt that I think sums it up:
"But wait: how do we know that the morally right act is, as Harris posits, the one that does the most to increase well-being, defined in terms of our conscious states of mind? Has science really revealed that? If it hasn’t, then the premise of Harris’s all-we-need-is-science argument must have nonscientific origins.
In fact, what he ends up endorsing is something very like utilitarianism, a philosophical position that is now more than two centuries old, and that faces a battery of familiar problems."
So, no, I'm not going to spend a lot of time looking into something that appears flawed at the outset... but please, if you want to talk about Harris' scientific basis for his claim that "the morally right act is the one that does the most to increase well-being, defined in terms of our conscious states of mind", or post a short reference... I'm all ears...
S
Siberian_Khatru
Guest
Hello Dan.
Point: you asked a bold question. I expected either backlash or a slur of inquiries to ensue.
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Agreed. Chemistry and genes and environment do not control us (although many have tried to blame these factors for behaviors). Chemistry and genes and environment may easily have influenced us. Our capabilities are limited. We can't leap easily to the moon or Mars. But, we are free and responsible moral agents.
The Mosaic law was given to a theocratic nation. Verdicts were rendered and sentences carried out only after due process had been followed. Secular laws are also set within the context of a due process to be followed. There is a separation of powers within legislative, executive and judicial branches of government. The Bible describes the administration of justice under God-ordained civil authorities which ultimately will give way to administration of justice under God Himself via Final Judgment and eternal destinies. Those without Biblical faith may be tempted to be come vigilantes and to take administration of justice into their own hands.
Executives do have prerogatives to grant pardons. The gospel of Jesus Christ includes an announcement of the availability of pardons and mercy (by grace through faith in Jesus Christ).
Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) provided a summary of his moral and ethical teaching. Sections include:
- The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12) - Ultimate blessing comes through the principles of God's kingdom which operate differently than worldly principles.
- Salt and Light (Matthew 5:13-16) - Jesus wants his disciples to impact the moral and spiritual climate of the world.
- Morality of the Kingdom (Matthew 5:17-48) - The Jews had the law, prophets and traditions. Jesus brought out the spirit of the law which set a higher standard than the literal letter of the law. "Love your enemies" is not a natural tendency and sets a high standard.
- Spiritual disciples (Matthew 6:1-18) - Almsgiving, prayer, forgiveness, fasting are to be done with an eye toward God-pleasing rather than man-pleasing.
- Treasures on Earth (6:19–34) - Jesus does not denounce treasures on earth but wants us to value treasures in heaven.
- Judging Right and Wrong (7:1–6). Most of us are quick to point out the moral flaws of others. Jesus warns us to pay more attention to our own.
- Asking and Receiving (7:7–12). When we approach God with a request, we can expect Him to deal with us as a loving father deals with his child. And just as God deals with us in love, He expects us to deal with others in love.
- A Challenge to Obedience (7:13–29). Jesus wraps up His message with a challenge to enter through the narrow gate and to walk the narrow way that leads to eternal life with our houses built upon solid rock rather than shifting sands.
The Sermon on the Mount can be read in less than 18 minutes or 1.45 hours but a disciple's application of its message can provide purpose for a lifetime.
Q. Does anyone compare to Jesus on matters of morality?
A. No. Jesus is the best.
The ethic of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount actually sets a higher and better standard than that of the Mosaic law.
Hello Dan.
Point: you asked a bold question. I expected either backlash or a slur of inquiries to ensue.
Very cool.
I am not so sure that we are totally free of our genes, or the social environment. The latter, in particular, has a huge impact upon us, don't you think? It is the old nature vs nurture chestnut, which is why twin studies are so fascinating. If twins, separated at birth, turn out to have certain behavioural traits in common then it is likely we may be forced to recognize a more significant role played by the genes. I think it probable that the genes dictate far more of our behaviour than we at first glance recognize.
Some years ago I was on my hands and knees in my backyard digging weeds. I glanced up and saw a rabbit bolt across the road, slip under the fence of my yard and come right at me. I had stopped moving so as not to scare it and I think I went unnoticed until the creature was right beside me. In fact it stopped on top of my hand. I could feel its heart racing. The question is, did the rabbit make a conscious decision to stop (on top of my hand) or was its action involuntary? My head was still facing straight forward in the position I was in when first I’d spotted the movement across the street. I wanted to get a better look at the furry interloper and so slowly began to turn my head toward the rabbit, when it suddenly bolted.
In retrospect I am reminded of a similar event in my own life. I was in the basement of my parents home, having gone downstairs to retrieve something from the freezer, when suddenly I was startled by the most peculiar and unnatural sound seeming to emanate all around me. Instead of looking for the source, or running off (which is what I wanted to do), I found myself rooted to the spot unable to move a muscle. Moments passed, the sound ceased, and then I was suddenly released from the paralytic cocoon that held me. I turned on my heel and bolted away – much like the rabbit.
Both myself and the rabbit seem to be functioning under some similar programming – probably genetic. I might suggest other examples, but I think one serves to demonstrate we are not so without animal instinct as we might suppose.
So who makes our moral choices: we do, but within the confines of our mammalian and primate programming.
I am not so sure that we are totally free of our genes, or the social environment. The latter, in particular, has a huge impact upon us, don't you think? It is the old nature vs nurture chestnut, which is why twin studies are so fascinating. If twins, separated at birth, turn out to have certain behavioural traits in common then it is likely we may be forced to recognize a more significant role played by the genes. I think it probable that the genes dictate far more of our behaviour than we at first glance recognize.
Some years ago I was on my hands and knees in my backyard digging weeds. I glanced up and saw a rabbit bolt across the road, slip under the fence of my yard and come right at me. I had stopped moving so as not to scare it and I think I went unnoticed until the creature was right beside me. In fact it stopped on top of my hand. I could feel its heart racing. The question is, did the rabbit make a conscious decision to stop (on top of my hand) or was its action involuntary? My head was still facing straight forward in the position I was in when first I’d spotted the movement across the street. I wanted to get a better look at the furry interloper and so slowly began to turn my head toward the rabbit, when it suddenly bolted.
In retrospect I am reminded of a similar event in my own life. I was in the basement of my parents home, having gone downstairs to retrieve something from the freezer, when suddenly I was startled by the most peculiar and unnatural sound seeming to emanate all around me. Instead of looking for the source, or running off (which is what I wanted to do), I found myself rooted to the spot unable to move a muscle. Moments passed, the sound ceased, and then I was suddenly released from the paralytic cocoon that held me. I turned on my heel and bolted away – much like the rabbit.
Both myself and the rabbit seem to be functioning under some similar programming – probably genetic. I might suggest other examples, but I think one serves to demonstrate we are not so without animal instinct as we might suppose.
So who makes our moral choices: we do, but within the confines of our mammalian and primate programming.
Nice writing.
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I am not so sure that we are totally free of our genes, or the social environment...
So who makes our moral choices: we do, but within the confines of our mammalian and primate programming.
I may have been "trying to throw a stick into Dan_473's fire" on the matter of free will. I believe that humans have a bounded free will that is free within limits. Within our boundaries, we are moral free agents.
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Some may get a little rude or crude but I haven't noticed any dogs, cats, or horses posting on these threads.
Humans are lower creatures than the angels but higher creatures than mammals or primates.
See the analysis from Josh McDowell above. We humans are different from all other animals in a number of ways, both immaterially and physically.
Yes, and I could make some points about Occam's Razor but I will let you go first.
Oh, and brain size doesn't always correlate with brain ability.
Agreed.
We are higher than the mammals and primates on the evolutionary ladder? We are mammals. We are primates. We have the greatest intellect of all life forms on the planet. Agreed.nl said:
On the matter of angels I am not sure we have very much to go upon. They may simply be humans with wings. Are you sure they have higher intellects?
In song and story angels fly down from Heaven. Are they dropped off by flying saucer? My suggestion may seem a little outrageous, but I am not sure it is anymore outlandish than the proposition that they are flying from somewhere up there? This notion may have seemed reasonable 2000 years ago when Heaven was thought to be located immediately above the sky, but today it creates something of a problem. Have you ever thought to try and rationalize the difficulty?
Have you seen strange lights in the sky ? A long time friend of mine has and was able to record... They place them as UFO's and " aliens ", they are real, what do you guys think about that ? I don't believe they're aliens... Rather spiritual beings..
Huxley was born in 1887 and had finished his illustrious career long before Jane Goodall started her groundbreaking work on chimpanzees in 1960. Huxley can be forgiven for not getting it all right, but Josh McDowell needs to be questioned on why he choose to use such an outdated source. Perhaps contemporary primatologists were not promulgating the message he wanted to convey?
I have seen strange lights in the sky, once. It happened forty years ago and I still remember the event vividly.
It was night. I was driving my car and was stopped at a traffic light in downtown Spartanburg, SC. I felt a desire to look at two lighted flags on top of a ten story building just to my right and across the street. One flag, the South Carolina state flag, was on the farthest corner of the building. To see it, I leaned forward and looked up through the front windshield. Then, hugging the steering wheel, I strained further forward and saw the American flag. I noticed, off to the right of the flag (from my perspective), a tiny circle of rotating white lights. (I couldn't guess at the diameter of this circle of lights because I couldn't tell how far away from me they actually were. )I looked at them/it for a second or two. Then, opened my car door, got out of the car---all the while continuing to look up---and stood in the street looking at these lights. They remained a couple more seconds, then began moving toward my 2 o'clock, slowly at first, then picked up speed quickly, the diameter of the ring getting smaller as it did. (I couldn't distinguish if it was moving and vanishing as it moved or if it was getting smaller because it was moving away so quickly.) At the last moment I saw it it reminded me of the tail stream of debris entering our atmosphere, a white streak that moving as fast or faster. Then it was gone. The whole incident lasted only a few seconds.
And yes, from all I have read in God's Word over the years, I do believe it was a spiritual being.
As an amateur astronomer I have logged countless hours watching the night sky. I have never seen anything I couldn't explain. A buddy of mine, also an amateur astronomer, was a member of the local Royal Astronomical Society for years. What he told me is that none of the member had ever reported anything they didn't understand. Their observation was that it is members of the general public, who have little to no knowledge of astronomy, who are the ones reporting the bulk of UFO sightings. Do you see the connection?
What do I think of spiritual beings visiting earth and being identified as UFOs? I think that sounds even crazier than visiting aliens. Remember what a UFO is: an Unidentified Flying Object. I stress the "unidentified" part. If you don't know what something is, then you just don't know what it is. Don't jump to conclusions and don't call it anything except a UFO!
So, to play the 'atheist advocate' here, the answer to the question 'Who says Hitler was wrong' is 'everybody'... Or that he was right? again, everybody...
so, maybe we can use some kind of standard, like Sam Harris does (from what I hear). We could use something like 'the most happiness for the most people'. But then, Hitler's policies led a lot of people to 'happiness' in that they had fulfilling jobs, exciting quests. Also, of course, that's just one possible moral standard... someone else might want to use a different one... I'm not aware of any objective evidence for any one standard...
so, maybe we can use some kind of standard, like Sam Harris does (from what I hear). We could use something like 'the most happiness for the most people'. But then, Hitler's policies led a lot of people to 'happiness' in that they had fulfilling jobs, exciting quests. Also, of course, that's just one possible moral standard... someone else might want to use a different one... I'm not aware of any objective evidence for any one standard...
Anyone who can't see Hitler was a madman has something wrong with them. My son has been reading Hitler's Table Talk. What's interesting is that Hitler often showed lucid, deep insight one moment, then in the next instance came across as a total lunatic.
Something you might find interesting is that in private Hitler showed only contempt for Christianity. His public demonstrations were quite different. On the other hand he had no liking of atheists and believed them all fools. Hitler had his own version of God, he was no atheist.
Anyone who wants to argue that Hitler provided a valid moralistic society (at least for part of the population) is probably spoiling for a fight. If you listened to Harris' talk, or read his book, you'd recognize that in no way could Nazi Germany quality as anything desirable in Harris' envisioned moral landscape.Dan_473 said:
Harris spends a great deal of time talking about this and I suspect you’d probably agree with much of what he says. He explains in the talk that the irony of it all is that the Christian right is well aware of the dilemma we face in the world today, while the liberal left, with its moral relativism, appears oblivious to the danger. This is not to say Harris is sympathetic to the Christian right, he is not, but he recognizes that the real threat to Western society is Islam, and he spends a good deal of time hammering the sons of Mohammad. I suspect his real hope, in writing The Moral Landscape, is that he might wake up the moral relativists to the danger we are all facing.Dan_473 said:
Does Harris think science can answer moral issues? Yes. Does he think we possess that ability now? No.
If you listen to Harris he says we are not even close. He believes “There are answers (but) whether we can get those answers or not,” he doesn’t know. He doesn't think the Bible is the answer, and explains why in his talk. He is well placed to make these kinds of investigations as he is a neuroscientist, and he outlines some of the research being done, but admits that new techniques need to be developed and a lot more work needs to follow. He says the surface of this field has barely been scratched. His other intent then is to open the eyes of researchers and help them see that this line of inquiry is worth pursuing.
https://video.search.yahoo.com/vide...:s,v:v,m:sa&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=mozilla&tt=b
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Though I have spent countless hours watching the night sky I am not going to suggest I know what you saw. I don't. But I would not be surprised that there is actually a profoundly mundane explanation -- if only we knew what it was.
This is where I must object. You saw, you know not what (a UFO). Then you jump to the conclusion it must have been a "spiritual being." If you are an intelligent man, and I believe you are, you must admit there is no real justification for this claim. A UFO is simply an unidentified object.1joseph said: