forufes

thanks bob. and mr skeptic, while you have a point, i'm not sure that entropy is decreasing on earth, but i think it's fairly reasonable if not obvious that with the development of all lifeforms on earth, bacteria alone, would make up for any heat generation and energy consumption earth is undergoing.

entropy is the availability of unusable energy, with the simple realization that life forms start as unusable or limitedly usable forms of energy (mass), and turn into highly efficient energy forms that can produce lots of work and can supply other forms of energy other than heat(the least usable), is a big decrease in entropy.

think of all the animals, insects and fish, account for the decrease in entropy per each one, and i think it would be clear.

but here i have another fundamental question about entropy, it's as wiki says

More precisely, in any process where the system gives up energy ΔE, and its entropy falls by ΔS, a quantity at least TR ΔS of that energy must be given up to the system's surroundings as unusable heat (TR is the temperature of the system's external surroundings).

they keep stating that unusable energy is synonymous with heat, but can't that be turned into electricity for example?

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/silicon-nanowires-turn-heat-to-electricity

http://www.rvmobile.com/TECH/TROUBLE/Tcouple.htm

I'm sorry, but do you have evidence for these cases? I am not sure I know which examples of such blatant cover-ups you're talking about?

well-doing people in the street inside out using white phosphorous.

ISRAEL-OPT: Israel denies using white phosphorus in Gaza

BBC-Israel denies banned weapons use

Human Rights Watch says pictures like this point to white phosphorus use, but Israel denies this

more and more picture

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2009/jan/21/gaza-israelandthepalestinians

then, well, they admitted that they may have used them, but then also may not.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/21/gaza-phosphorus-shells

and then..finally;

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=83315&sectionid=351020202

the evidence is overwhelming for this, the attitude of israel mind boggling; the bombs are pictured exploding in the sky, pictured falling on people, buildings, homes,schools. the burns were reported,the clouds examined and pictured, the unique fires extinguished, and to all this israel denies:doh:

that's why till now i'm not 100% sure of what happened, not even the video.

Is this the thing that forufes was talking about over in this thread?

http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=52353

actually i was wondering why they'd not let them in to begin with, but that wasn't interesting since no people have died yet..

A question for our American friends. If the National Guard has sealed an area and you try to drive in with a truck, what would happen?

if the blockade was for three years on people starving and missing basic life supports, then to hell with what happens, some people just can't shush their consciousness and have the balls to do something about it.

I just want to remind everyone that not everything is as it seems.

true:-(

but that makes you wonder if you'll EVER know what happened.

an exposed lie isn't necessarily followed by a truth, it just could be a better concealed lie. the first lie may even be the truth:confused:

not quite, from what i'm hearing on the news here(bbc) is that the protestors had already announced their intentions to run the blockade. which would mean the IDF were merely preventing it being a problem by the time the ship got to the blockade.

so we should ticket cars approaching the speed limit?

also, sticks and metal pipes are not purely defensive weapons.

what constitutes a defensive weapon then?

you even can beat a person to death with a shield.

also, from the videos you see the idf being beaten as they decend on to the ship(note that the IDF are not firing on the protestors as they decend).

THAT, was what made me think the video was faked (the first time i saw it), they totally didn't behave like special ops. absolutly not, wasn't anywhere near what you expect of a prepared soldier.

The flotilla seems to have had more than just peace keepers. They were ready for the military, and they were armed. The ignored requests to stop, the refused to allow inspection, and they moved on fiercely ahead - seemingly to 'show off' that they mean business.

they were determined.

many flotillas have been sent back home, many trucks with food and medicine waited for days if not weeks on the borders then returned home, they didn't cross all those miles to be handcuffed and sent back home, you heard IA, you can reason that clubs and bars are weapons sent for the Palestinians, the video you posted even shows kitchen knives! and in my other thread i linked to how even chocolate and other stupid stuff wasn't let through. humanitarians and activists can come in peace, but they get fed up and frustrated too.

The navy boarded those ships with paintball guns meant to disprese small crowds - and met heavy resistence with LIVE fire.

not that my account is supposed to be more accurate, but i read somewhere that the guns they used were two rifles captured from the soldiers.

The soldiers were defending themselves with the paintball guns, and when those didn't help, they tried, still, not to shoot.

i'm sorry, i really can't digest the wording here. they were DEFENDING themselves?

they rappel down from helicopters to DEFEND themselves?

you can storm a castle. or you can claim it yours and "defend" it.

btw moo, i really admire your clear and reasonable attitude here, let's not clash unless it's really necessary. lol, ok?

We're talking about "Shayetet 13", which is the most elite unit in the Israeli navy. These aren't soldiers that panic and just decide to shoot.

Once again the UN shows its weak, pacifist, cowardly, appeasing, irresponsible, unrealistic, and unscientific nature. I wonder which pack of cheese-eating surrender monkeys wrote up the language this time.

 

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=80268&sectionid=3510303

have i EVER, been as confused as after watching this?

i don't think so:-(

what the F*** can anybody believe these days?

forufes; Out of curiosity, do you think Israel is stopping AID, or just maybe military weapons??? I feel sure if Israel received the aid, they would somehow forward on to Gaza even though it would be supporting a sworn enemy, for the most part. My two cents.....

weapons????

......

ohh i know what you mean(had to research it)

Why is chocolate a security risk?

 

Gisha compelled Israel’s ministry of defense to reveal information about how it formally manages the blockade for the first time. After nearly three years of secrecy, government attorneys conceded the existence of an official defense ministry list of items approved for transfer into the enclave, as well as a “Red Lines” document that establishes minimum nutritional requirements for Gaza’s 1.5 million people.

 

Gisha had requested the government reveal on what basis it approves or rejects goods destined for the Gaza Strip, after items like chocolate, notebooks and jam were consistently barred without explanation.

 

Aid groups and local businessmen say there appears to be a whole-scale ban on construction materials, which Israel says armed Palestinian groups could use to build weapons, but the import of shoes and hairbrushes were approved only earlier this year. Coriander, ginger, and livestock remain off-limits, Gisha says.

source

sorry, ak-47s and rocket launchers and explosive belts came to mind..

What is it that you'd like to discuss? I'm not clear from the article.

why would israel stop relief convoys from getting in?

first George Galloway, and now this?

i mean wtf?

and btw, it's been quite some time since i was planning to post this, it's not something that just turned up;)

Good recollection captain.

and mooey, the inability of inability is complete ability, the vulnerability to vulnerability is invulnerability. You can only argue that with a play of words, as the initial argument was. for what i say makes perfect philosophical sense too. Which doesn't work by isolating a chosen part and nit picking on it.

.

This is a philosophical contradiction, though. Omnipotence means one can do *anything*. When you show that there's something you can't do, you're no longer omnipotent. Very simple.

 

I do agree with you that this is a relatively weak argument against the existence of God - that is, it's a philosophical inconvinience that doesn't necessarily means God's existence as an omnipotent being is impossible, but the philosophical argument remains contradictory.

i'm not sure it IS a philosophical contradiction.

because then the word "omnipotent" has no meaning.. if you can't be unable to do something, then you're not omnipotent, and if you can be unable to do something, then you're also not omnipotent..

i think such redundant conflicts are ignored.

because otherwise, almost every sound philosophical statement can be bent to be wrong, especially when when you apply it to itself..

for example, the good o'l "you can't prove a negative" statement would turn out to be wrong too, because i DID prove a negative once, but it twisted the argument from the inside out, the negative i proved was:

there isn't a negative to be proven

that past sentence, states that there is NOT...etc, so it's a negative statement.. and it's also right in what it claims, that there is no proved negative...lol, except for itself!

so mooy, is there a proven negative or not?

you either answer "no" and then you're answer itself is a negative.

or you answer yes, and the example you'll give is "there is no proven negative" which contradicts the statement it's supplied for.

however, as for the omnipotence issue, i see it a matter of phrasing, if you define a mathematical space where only positive operations and numbers can be used, and i subtract a negative, am i violating the mathematical space's rules or not?

i say no.

you say yes.

You know, forufes, people will undersrtand you much better - and debate you much more efficiently - if you treat the debate properly and use sentences rather than shorthand abbreviations in nonexisting sentences. It's a bit messy and confusing, specially when we deal with arguments like these that are philosophical and sometimes deal with some subtleties that are really unclear from the way you conveyed them.

yeah.. sometimes i don't know what i mean when i read older posts of mine..

but if i try making a perfect post i'll never post it(and i've tried), i find myself the most productive when i'm the most casual and carefree.

And finally, I'd appreciate it if you don't mock those who disagree with you. The rules of the forum will appreciate it too, if you care to read them.

you know? i had a looong reply there, but i'll just keep it at

"no comment":rolleyes:

god's omnipotence is not contradictory.

you make it contradictory because you want it to be contradictory.

can god heat a burrito that'll burn him?

if he can, then he's burned, not omnipotent.

if he can't then he's not omnipotent.

what a word play.. the question is phrased to have only one answer.. actually, to appear to have only one answer.

but lets analyze that question a bit shall we?

can god do something (heat a burrito) that will contradict/take away his omnipotence? (getting damaged-burned)

no he can't.

thus, he's omnipotent.

but you just said he CAN'T do something!!?

well actually to be truly omnipotent, you should be unable to be otherwise.

lol it's like; is one who is "ultimately able" able to be unable?

well nope, sorry, he's unable to be unable-----> meaning he's ultimately able.. he's Omnipotent.

lol you and your silly games:D

ok, this unfinished post has sat around in my browser long enough, i'm just posting it.

If there is an E. coli cell around, in about 12 minutes you can form a living thing (another E. coli cell).

oh come ON..and how much would it take for the first E.coli to come about? and the time for the circumstances the first E.coli needed to turn up? all of that in 12 mins?

i still say that it is possible that if the world we're living in is a slot machine that scored a jackpot, there is a possibility that the time we've been around isn't enough for the different successive slots to even line up.

I'm sorry, but I don't think science books have an infinite list of variables.

well i don't see the publishing of science books containing new variables going to stop any where on time's infinite line.

we keep discovering new variables life had to beat to come out, at one point they'd just be too much. so i took the shortcut and said they were infinity.

I think I know what you're getting at though. Any of the variables have to be in a certain very small range with uncountably infinite numbers in it, out of a much larger infinite range with just as many numbers in it.

nope, the interval between -1 to 1 contains infinite numbers, but R-[-1,1] contains more numbers, even though both contain infinity numbers.

Now, if you assume that the numbers could be anywhere in an infinite range, then it is rather surprising that they happen to be in a particular, small range. But that requires the aforementioned assumption. Instead, it could turn out that the variables in fact have to be what they are, much like the speed of light has to be what it is given Maxwell's equations. Or, it could be that there are in fact an infinite number of universes with different variables.

you referring to this:

every new thing we learn, sets a new infinite plane of possibilities to happen, and a sub area interval on which things "SHOULD" happen, and yet another sub interval within of how things ARE happening.

?

So, basically, the idea that a universe like ours is unlikely is nothing more than an assumption. The converse, that a universe like ours is expected, is also an assumption. Since at the moment either is an assumption, people pick the one that they prefer.

glad to see you've got the qualities to reach that.

however, if one proves that(and this is the best wording i could come up with):

-the infinity that continuously spews or/and discovers conditions needed to be met for life's existence(ex:physical, chemical, astronomical etc..), actually, swallows the infinity which provides opportunity for life to come as a product of chance(ex: time and space)...

he can give a fraction depicting the possibility of life emerging by chance, which could also be infinity or zero;

example A

Shakespeare's play consists of a 1000 letters, each letter is an element of the alphabetic set, consisting of 26 letters, there's the possibility of getting one letter correctly individually,then that of getting them all correct separately(the whole play), then of getting them all correct and ordered (which would amount to a big number i forgot how to compute, the nPr and nCr thingies) and let's call it X.

the possibility of the monkey producing the play is 1/X...

if the monkey tries again, the possibility would be 2/X, if he tried X/2 times, the possibility of him getting it right would be 0.5, if he tried X times or more, the possibility of him getting it right would be 100%. this is all assuming he doesn't use the same combination of letters more than once, otherwise he could be pressing the space bar all the time.

wait a sec... WHAT!!?..(i never thought of that last bit before:eek:)

so it is necessary for the world to have a serious meaningful chance at introducing life is for it to continuously change, otherwise all it's parts could just reach different states of equilibrium and the universe would keep still for eternity.(of course nothing can disturb its equilibrium cuz everything is INSIDE it). as a matter of fact, isn't that the inevitable end of the universe? everything will collide and react until they all dissolve into their basic lowest energy forms, IOW, rubble, with the highest entropy levels possible. and just sit like that for eternity.

but hypothetically, there could also be some portions of the universe with potential action, but would slumber undisturbed because the rest of the universe is in equilibrium (or dead) to ignite that potential?

imagine, for the sake of simplicity, that the big bang resulted in two big identical masses, which were launched in lines of motion which would cause them to circle each other uniformly for eternity.

anyway, so not to deviate from the main point, something similar can happen, (equilibrium throughout the whole system) in infinitely numerous ways. and that equilibrium means that all parts of the system are doing nothing, or doing the same thing repeatedly. and if life didn't emerge in the time of one cycle, then time being infinite in general terms means nothing to the possibility of life emerging.

so back to the type writer, we'll assume the monkey types in a pattern that keeps changing without repeating for eternity.

yeah, then what?

From the looks of that link, it seems that most of the flat earthers don't believe that the earth is flat, but are being devil's advocate for fun. It is a good logical exercise, to see whether the evidence can be explained while maintaining that the earth is flat.

hmm.. scientific lawyers..

but hey, at least no criminal is turned loose:D

Belief in God as Three-in-One is as old as Christianity itself.1 The word Trinity doesn’t appear as a theological term till near the end of the second century. It was first used as ‘Trias’ by Theophilus, the Bishop of Antioch in AD. 180 and later by Tertullian as Trinitas2 to signify that God exists in three persons.

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2454

but then which one was god before the trinity was "invented"?

The burden of proof is certainly on you.

but why?

you can drive your opponent crazy by treating every sentence of his as a statement then demanding proof for it..

Try any of these.

• [ P or not(P) ] is always true.
  
• [ P and not(P) ] is always false.
  
• If all A's are X's and there is exists at least one A, then there exists at least one X.
  
• [ if P then Q ] = [if not(Q) then not(P) ]
  
• [if P then Q ] = [ Q or not(P) ]
  
• if A=B and B=C and C=D and D=E, and equality is transitive, then A=E
  

sorry they all went over my head, couldn't understand how any of them work:embarass:

Unquestionably.

yeah well proof itself is comprised of simple statements which don't require proof.

but i think my statement wasn't simple enough, does that mean i should've put it in terms of A's and B's for it to be simple enough not to require proof?

I think, for everyone's sake, you might not want to ask that.

i thought proof is built UPON logic, you can't explain logic by proof that is understood and evaluated by (once again) by logic.

well, unless some logic was explainable and some logic isn't, as in logic is built upon itself, and that should be explained by some sort of proof, but in the end, you've got no proof that if a=b and b=c then a=c, but the blockhead in front of you shouldn't even ask for it.

i say

"our logic is based on our experience"

my friend tells me to stop talking from my ass and prove it.

i ask him to disprove it, he says the burden of proof is on me, cuz i'm making a claim.

i pointed out that hes also making a claim by opposing me(that logic isn't based on experience), and that in reality proof is on the one making the extraordinary claim, and mine was simple common sense.

he said that it's common sense for me, but i can't objectively state that.

so, he kept demanding "proof".

and while he's a total ass, and i should've ripped his bones apart, i just shut up since it's a fight of words.

i even asked him to giv me an exampe of a logical statement, so that i show him that it's based on his experience, and that under different experiences, it won't be logical anymore, and he refused.

the implication he was running away is that what is logical isn't necessary right, since our experience is not only different, it's also growing.

so is there any proof? should there be proof for such simple statements? is proof the only was of proving the consistency of logic?

That being said, non of the original Christianities had the trinity; it was a later addition.

any proof of some sort?

 

 

"Be excellent to each other"

why?

No, they wouldn't look at us, because we wouldn't exist. They would look at themselves, just like we do, and see that the universe is suited to their existence.

and rightly so.

the way i see it, may it be us or some other species or entities, if the world they're in is too fragile to hold their existence yet is doing so, it makes sense to wonder about it.

on the other hand:

Exactly! However, the puddle imagining the different shaped hole would think itself lucky, because it couldn't exist in any other shape hole.

what is it here? it is a puddle, and if a puddle in our life had the ability to observe, it would observe that many "puddles" COexist no matter what their holes were like, as a matter of fact, if the puddle were to settle in a hole with different parameters, it would still maintain it's distinguishable self; a puddle. hence, the puddle would not marvel at it's hole's unique characteristics, as they're easily changable.

i've got the feeling you think the puddle's consiousness would change when its parameters change.

but, we humans, nope, say life forms. if we looked at our "hole" and looked into the possibilities of existing in another hole, na'a, we're doomed, we wouldn't be just puddles with different parameters, according to our knowledge, we wouldn't be puddles (life forms) at all(unless someone here thinks a bit bigger or smaller neutrons and protons flying around would pass as life forms)

------------------------------------

but then comes another idea(which is what i thik you had in mind); what if those slightly bigger or smaller neutrons and protons, even though they can no longer form atoms as we know them, form something totally different, and that totally different thing becomes the basic building block which builds some other intelligent beings, in a world with it's own equilibriums, those of which are actually violating our own equilibriums, and would spell doom for us, and they would wonder "what if neutrons and protons were a little bit bigger or smaller? wouldn't that end life as we know it?"

-------

while that is an entertaining idea, and a basically theoretically possible one, we have no proof to even SUGGEST it, alas, such idea unroots science by the spine through the neck, it is not a leap of faith, but rather a fancy ride on faith's broomstick. cuz in such world, it is possible for light to be the slowest thing around, for energy to be created and destroyed, for 1+1 to equal 0. that my friends, is soo unscientific, it's possible, but not scientific, according to OUR science, the world is a sleeping elephant bouncing upside down on a ball pearched on the top of a ten deck house of cards while(the elephant) sews a sock with it's feet.

but let's take some more serious analogies, ones we can work on, "the possibility of the world coming to existence due to randomness is the same possibility of the existence of a whole dictionary with arranged words and meanings due to a press machine exploding, and that is impossible"

now i disagree with the author for two reasons;

1- it is technically possible, but extremely highly improbable.

2- as i said before, such happening goes from highly improbable to 100% must happen when you have an infinite number of presses, or one press that keeps blowing up time after time for infinity. in our world, as Mr.Skeptic pointed out, we may have both.

another good analogy is the monkey on the typewriter producing one of Shakespeare's plays, same points apply.

and a third one i think i read around here somewhere(think it was by the cap'n), finding a suit that fits you a 100% from a set of predesigned suits.

now, i'll cut short to the point, the infinite press machines keep exploding for infinity, can they produce a finite book? yes.

can they produce an infinite book, with infinite meanings, infinite words, infinite correlations between the contents?

a book that is changing, expanding, even as the presses are exploding?

same goes for the monkeys and the suit.

if while you're searching for your suit, you're constantly growing, you find out about what you like and don't like every second spent searching, you get fatter and thinner, richer and poorer...

would ever you find your perfect suit?

how many are the secrets of life?

how many are the odds life beat to come out? how many is it still beating to continue?

how much do we learn of ourselves and surroundings every day?

for how long will we keep learning new things about ourselves and the things around us?

every new thing we learn, sets a new infinite plane of possibilities to happen, and a sub area interval on which things "SHOULD" happen, and yet another sub interval within of how things ARE happening.

which infinity would swallow the other, how things are happening, or the extent to which things were allowed to happen?

that's up for grabs:D

and a canyon some take the faith express to cross.

It's neither "atheistic" nor a "leap of faith." It's an educated guess, based on the sheer size of the universe compared to the likelihood of necessary conditions. It is necessarily speculative, but hardly unreasonable.

the comparision is a guess.

the estimation on both sides(necessary conditions vs their likelihood), is imo, so far, a leap of faith, otherwise it would be demonstrated, or even scientifically properly estimated.

Nobody. They said the universe is big. Even if there is only a 1/10000000000000000 chance of life emerging around any given star, that means there are still about 100000000 stars around which life emerged. Big!

what if you replace the first number with 1/google??

What do you mean by "failed life forms?" What evidence of them would you expect to find?

it's still cooking...

What?

or you could replace 1/google with 1/infinity. then you'd get zero possibility of life emerging in the constant big universe..

Some think that time in our universe is infinite (cyclic universe models). Others think that space is infinite (either multiple universes, or that our own universe is infinite). Either of these would work.

well, while i disagree, and i find time being infinite very unreasonable and flawed, i'll just pass on this one, we'll assume for the sake of argument that time IS infinite.

And 12 minutes is all the time needed for life to form, under the right conditions. So no need to wonder whether 15 billion years was long enough.

lol, 12 mins? please demonstrate.

and please make it scientific, i can say it takes a split second for the universe to exist. given the right conditions, them being; god exists:D

Personally, I call them rocks. Really, how would you tell whether something "tried" to live?

good point...i'll think it through..

Yeah? Well what are all these variables?

any number in a science book that when changed from a certain wide or narrow range would mean the end of life as we know it.

Merged post follows:

Not at all. Take a statistics class.

you're right..i'm uneducated..

so go on, show us what you learned in your statistics class..what's the statistics behind life being likely to exist?

omg i should have read this before replying in the other thread, my apologies:embarass:

if it is seen better for my post to be transferred than so be it.

If the universe was such that there was life unlike us, would they not marvel at how the universe was finely tuned for them?

no, they would look at us and realize that life would emerge under not so strict possibilities.

the puddle example also didn't portray the matter at hand well, cuz if the puddle changed the variables of its hole, it would find out that it would remain a puddle.

but we explored the other possibilities, we, unlike puddles, study science, we know of the unlimited possibilities of how life can be destroyed(or just not exist), and it isn't undisputed that time isn't unlimited enough to equal them out.

The universe has billions of galaxies with billions of stars in each galaxy. No matter how unlikely life is, it is likely given that many opportunities.

you don't know that:-)

it's what you call "a leap of faith"... an atheistic one.

you just believe that it is possible that we came out of sheer coincidence, without quite doing the math...

but let's give it a try;

us coming into existence by coincidence, means the conditions required for life would be met in the given time interval.

aha, the argument is, no matter what humongous number of delicate balances are required to settle together in between a HUGE set of possibilities, as long as the time is infinite then they not only could meet, they actually MUST meet.

couple points here:

1-who said time was infinite? how long has it been since the big bang? what if such time wasn't enough even for all the possibilities(equilibriums) to strike correctly from the first try? not enough time for our existence process to line up and happen?

2-there must be different and/or failed life forms due to the tryout process, none were found.

3- and most importantly...

the variables required for our existence are not a big number... they're infinity themselves!

so for [possibility of life emerging] =! [infinity time available]/[large but constant variables of life] = [infinity i.e life has to exist].. but rather (imo) = [infinity time available]/[infinity variables to be met for life to exist]..

following so far?

 

This has nothing to do with religious beliefs.

ouch man... i know.

now what exactly are you saying?

entropy is decreasing on earth, that can't happen UNLESS it was an open system(which it is).

now albeit it being an open system that is reducing entropy and absorbing energy(heat), there has to be a balancing entropy increase in the rest of the cosmos, i'm asking about the forms such increase may take, if any were observed, theorized or anything.

i can't quite understand an answer if it's given or properly ask it till i grasp the concept or definition of entropy more, i'm gaining progress, and i'll be back with better phrasing for this whole thing (i hope:embarass:)

wow, you summed it up brilliantly, nothing less expected i might add..

There's really just three reasons. Empathy, "self-worth," and external personal benefit.

well put.

Empathy - Unless you're a sociopath, you have an aversion to hurting other people. This will make "doing the right thing" automatic in most instances, the default position. You hurt yourself by hurting others. You want things to be the best for everyone.

the aversion normal people have to hurting others is only for direct unreasonable pain, like sadism, to kill someone because you enjoy it, or fire an employee or make a student fail just for the heck of it, there i agree...

but take the term "it's strictly business", when and where is it used? when a bank lends a needy man some money just to take it away from him doubled in some time, isn't that hurting him? but then again the bank doesn't want to hurt itself either, and it was the guy's choice to take the loan, so the bank can say they're clear, but where's their empathy?

is it bigger for themselves, or for others?

would "the right thing" be more right for you or others? and what's either's share of it?

selflessness and selfishness, where in between does "best for everybody" stand?

empathy IS a wavy and blurry line, pretty subjective, and one's bordering of "good" in it may be within the "bad" of somebody else.

"Self-worth" - Even if you don't care what happens to other people, you still want to be a "good guy" yourself, and be intellectually consistent. You would think less of someone else if they did it, so you don't do it yourself. You want to be a better person, and that includes acting ethically and morally.

you have two issues here, the first is the same one with empathy, one's standards of worth could be sheer force, survival of the fittest, if you can't survive, you're not worth surviving, and would hold himself to that same standard. again, it's a blurry line, if not a very wide strip.

second, some people don't care for self worth, they just don't have it, either they're not given it, and external ethical laws bound those from going savage, or those who decided they don't need it, because it's rubbish, personally i might be one of those. when you reach the conclusion of the meaningless of life, when you face your mortality, idk, you just decide, in a determined way, that it's just not going to matter, like a breakdown, this world becomes like....... lol it becomes like scienceforums IRC, you go in, you know it's gonna end whether you want it to or not, it's all about if you'll enjoy hanging around for that unknown period of time or not, if it's going to be a total waste of time or not.(don't know if that was a good example)

External personal benefit - Basically, avoiding external consequences that negatively affect you. This includes punishment, the bad opinions of others, and the "religious answer" that you will always be "caught."

imo that's the only one that'll work, it's the only logically consistent reason, the only one that makes sense. according to some variables;

can i cheat-endure-escape its penalty?

if not, do i care for its penalty? is the penalty bad enough to nullify my gain?

by taking the answers of these two questions to an extreme, you seal your ethical code.

None of these things need be a conscious choice. Most of us aren't consciously choosing not to shoplift every time we go into a store, but we don't shoplift anyway, because these things are automatic.

there are many conscious moral choices.

AND those that are done automatically are base on those which are done cosciously(well thought).

you can say that your ethical code shapes or gets embedded into your general behavior, and you then decide in trivial moral situations without consciously employing your ethical code and choosing, but it's there, and it's all built upon each other.

Also, I guess some people follow "the rules" just because they like rules. May as well acknowledge that side of it, as well.

-cuz i simply don't want to. i do what i want and don't do what i don't want, you gotta a beef with that?

I'll also add that the question itself seems biased. You need a specific reason to do the "right" thing, but you don't to do the "wrong" thing? Why?

God is not needed for morality. This is an objective fact. I'll just leave it at that, as I'm not sure I'm willing to hold your hand long enough to get you to a level of understanding which is required to have this conversation intelligently.

trolling.

As I usually do in discussions on this topic, I recommend the book The Science of Good and Evil to anyone who wonders how people can be moral without religion. It even answers forufes' question from an evolutionary perspective.

couldn't find a free online copy, not even on scribd, but not so bad reviews here and here.

i'll get one if i find it, it's either an enlightenment to a flaw in a past conception, or a validation and strengthening of it.

if i can benefit myself by harming others and can get way with it, why should i not?

so let's take a look at possible answers;

-the religious one was given.

religion successfully answers

"cuz god'll screw you up"

-cuz i simply don't want to. i do what i want and don't do what i don't want, you gotta a beef with that?

nope, but you shouldn't have a beef with those who have a different taste regarding what "they want".

if getting away with it doesn't include people not being aware of it

-because most benefits i get from harming people are weighted out by me being rejected by people, and people's acceptance is one of the most valued benefits i have in my life.

this is very strong, one may even argue that it's the ONLY driving force of any actions we carry out that aren't necessary for us to stay alive(IOW everything we do other than eating and shitting, is done to be recognized by others)

what of those who aren't recognized by others to from the first place? those social dropouts? those already rejected by their society?

if getting away with it includes people not being aware of it

-because harming others decreases my sense of self worth.

i measure others' worth with a scale of how beneficial they can be to others, if i harm others, i'm making myself worthless by my own standards.

BUT, i can be self centered, this is a one time life ride.

BUT, if it's a one time life ride, i want to achieve the highest self worth in it(illusion that leads to/explains sacrificial behavior)

-evolution ended up shaping us into a social species, which survives as a society, and such selfish behavior would damage and maybe destroy our society and hence our whole race, what would happen to our accumulated knowledge and technology, our heritage and civilization, our children and the memories they will hold of us?

trashed, why will you give a damn anyway? it'll all be gone once you die, so why bother with a doom that as far as you'll be concerned isn't-won't-didn't happen?

-because due to the technological and scientific advancements humans have achieved, it is impossible to get away with it. our science-driven ethical system came up with ways/methods/discoveries/inventions to make people self surrender when they do something wrong or able to detect guilt or can mind read or has cameras everywhere or has fool proof forensic capabilities or has altered our genes to be unable to do evil etc etc...

sigh, while i can point out MAJOR flaws specific for each one of the previous, not to mention general ones like privacy violation and all being part of the future...; me just says:

if a man was smart enough to create it, another man is smart enough to find a way(s) around it.

what is YOUR answer to that question?