Villain

I might be missing something but this thread seems to be talking about everything except the origins of logic.

I said, "negative effects on people". Death is a negative effect on a person. Droughts, flooding, not making enough resources, etc. are negative effects on people. What is subjective about that?

Death is only a negative if you're pro life.

What's subjective about it? It's a collection of things that happen, reality isn't subjective.

The fact that it happens is irrelevant to your subjective view of it being a negative thing.

That works fine until children die because their parent's religion doesn't allow them to treat certain illnesses. Or a science teacher's belief causes a child to wrongly learn basic science. Or when a religious belief causes people to think they have the right to destroy nature, or that human's can't strongly effect the global ecosystems. Or various other ways that beliefs can have negative effects on people.

Let's be honest, the above are merely your subjective values and there's no reason why others should hold the same.

You're overlooking the fact that SOME people are hard-wired to be capable of changing preference. I'm saying that all sexual preferences are hard-wired, including no preference. And I'm not Begging the Question, I'm saying that the evidence is heavily supportive of this stance; 20 years of studies back this up.

 

I'm not suggesting that some people are hard-wired to be capable of changing preference. I'm saying if sexual preference was hard-wired people wouldn't be able to change.

I'm not sure what evidence you're talking about but this suggest that you're wrong:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation

 

I capitalized SOME because I didn't agree with your generalized statement, "Sexual preference can't be purely innate since people prefer homosexuality at some stage of their lives but later prefer heterosexuality and vice versa." SOME people do this.

 

You're Begging the Question with, "... how is my original choice invalidated...". I'm saying you didn't make a choice, you were simply attracted to one gender and not the other. It was hard-wired and not really a decision for you. If you're truly saying that you could choose to be attracted to the other gender any time you want, just like you could choose apples over oranges, then I'll retract the statement. I know I never could.

Yes, I agree only some people do that, but none the less it shows my point that people don't have sexual preference as a purely innate characteristic.

If anyone is begging the question it's your position of sexual preference being hard-wired, the above example of SOME people changing preference blows that out of the water.

I could choose in either case, the fact that I don't change my choice doesn't mean I have no choice. The choice of preference exists regards of the option that I choose. I also don't need to like any of them in order to choose a preference among them.

 

 

So I'm asking. Is this my choice? I've already admitted that I could probably eat canned spinach if there was some great incentive. But I don't think I could ever choose to prefer it to other foods. I could choose to partake, but not choose to prefer? Does that make sense?

This is not an example of preference though, you are singling out spinach and saying that you don't like or have some sort of intolerance to it. This is a reason why you would not prefer it to something more desirable but not a reason why you could not make a choice.

With sexual preference, it may seem like a choice because SOME people seem to switch their preference, but I think those are isolated incidents where other factors are involved. Ask yourself if you could consciously decide to "choose" to suddenly become attracted to the gender you're not attracted to now.

 

What are you trying to infer by capitalising SOME? For the sake of your question let's assume that I can't change the gender that I'm attracted to, how is my original choice invalidated because I still have the same preference? Does choosing oranges every time you're asked to select from apples, oranges and pears mean that you never make a choice?

 

 

It wasn't an analogy about sexual preferences at all. It was an example of a decision and I'd like to know if you think it is a "choice".

What is causing you to have the 'retching' reaction in the first place?

Sexual preference is more like a handicap, a homosexual may want to be heterosexual but he can't. No choice was in the matter. The same logic applies for a heterosexual person who wants to be homosexual, but this is unlikely since heterosexuals have no social worries about their sexuality. A person qualifies for having made a choice when there is no restraint on the choices, when they are free to make either and are not handicapped.

The idea that a 'homosexual' may want to be heterosexual but is somehow forced to be homosexual makes absolutely no sense. A person either has a preference for homosexuality or heterosexuality or both. It makes no sense to say that a person prefers homosexuality but at the same time prefers heterosexuality but not both.

Choice is to making a selection based on a set of options. I would say, in ideal circumstances, that a person has made a choice when one of the available options can chosen without any coercion that is neither innately or externally sourced. Sexual preference is an innate bias.

There are multiple options with regards sexual preference as listed in OP.

Sexual preference can't be purely innate since people prefer homosexuality at some stage of their lives but later prefer heterosexuality and vice versa. Regardless of this, would you agree that humans are a combination of innate characteristics and externally influences and if so how would anything be considered a choice then?

Some things only seem like choices to others because they feel a loss of control if they admit they had no choice. I think sexual preference is like that.

 

What about things you can't bring yourself to eat? Is it my choice that the very thought of canned spinach makes me retch? If someone offered me a million dollars, I would choose to eat it but I can't choose to like it, or to prefer it to other foods. Is that choice or has circumstances chosen for me?

Your canned spinach is a false analogy. A proper analogy would be: which one of these do you prefer - canned spinach, carrots, none, both (spinach and carrots), beef.

The recent topic of 'Is sexual preference a choice?' has spurned some interesting posts. Most people, if not all, who posted were in support that it wasn't a choice, which brings us to this topic. There are different categories available with regards to sexual preference: heterosexual, homosexual, asexual, bisexual, perhaps even bestiality ,but according to that thread, for different reasons, none of them are a choice. If sexual preference isn't a choice what makes something a choice? At what level does an individual qualify for having made a choice?

Craig is pulling magic out of his a$$, but he wants to be taken seriously. He is using our everday experienced cause as justification, so it should either remain within those confines or he should admit he has no foundation. As you stated, we have no experience with a God or spirit, so why try to justify the idea with anything in the natural world that we can experience?

A religious person is most likely going to have a deity as a first cause, I don't see anything controversial about something like that, if you're not religious then obviously you're not going to give such an idea any value.

No, my beef is that what he is saying cannot in any logically intelligible way be the case, anymore than hitting a home run without a ball could be the case.

The concept of cause is induced, what we know about cause is from our experience of cause. I doubt you have any experience of what God or a spirit or whatever Craig is alluding to, so how can you say what such a thing can or can't cause and what does any of it have to do with logic?

If a proposition is logically self-contradictory, then it is by definition logically impossible. And saying that God causally produced an effect X, despite not carrying out any causal interactions on anything whatsoever (an affectless effect) IS self-contradictory, since effects are by definition the result of something being affected.

So basically your beef is that he used the word cause in a way that you feel doesn't work.

I'm not sure what logic has to do with the idea of cause, maybe you should elaborate.

Secondly, while one might question if there is meaning in the concept you mention, it doesn't follow that since one one can't think of how something might happen, it can't happen.

 

"I refute it thus"

Which of my multiple personalities are you again ?

No I didn't mean that. A thing must be able to exist outside an observer and can be measured agreeably by two or more observers to be defined as real ...there's two conditions. A single observer cannot. suffice. It is difficult and that was my stab at it. I think something exists if two people can share it in real time or measure it independently.

Who could possibly say things exist outside them and how would that make them any more or less real?

The problem is that you both have different starting assumptions and are then arguing from the facts of each which don't have any relevance to the other's position. Arguing makes little sense in such a case, you're not even talking about the same thing.

Regardless of whether or not morals are learned or innate (it's very clearly both in various ways, and silly to argue otherwise IMO), the point here is that morals preceded religion, so by chronological logic alone religion clearly cannot be their source.

 

 

I'm not sure what is meant by innate, if it's the opposite of learned as you seem to have used it, how is it clearly shown? Even a new born baby is going to have had interaction with it's environment, so to what degree of unlearned are we talking about here?

Obviously, not

If I was just assuming it was to do with our survival I wouldn't have mentioned the other reasons.

Are you somehow unable to count to three or something?

 

 

What exactly are innate and evolutionary ancestors' morals?

Do you believe that God dictates morals to people; in other words, we do not have a free will, and our moral compass is unerringly set by God?

 

Or, do you believe we have a free will, and that we choose our moral compass, because God does not interfere with our free will; God only asks us to follow a set of morals?

 

If you believe in the free will idea, then God can never interfere with anything we do, ever, including never answer a prayer; otherwise, we don't have free will. Since everything we learn can affect our decisions, any message from God would screw with our free will. For example, God says do not kill. That moral affects what we do; thus, if God gives us a free will, God cannot establish our moral code.

 

If we have free will and God tells us something, then we are just as likely to ignore the message as act on it--the same as if God didn't tell us anything. Otherwise, God hasn't given us a free will.

 

It doesn't appear that God establishes our morals and we cannot disobey, and it seems illogical that God gives us free will and gives us a set of morals, because that action contradicts free will. I am confused, unless I believe man has a free will and establishes his own morals.

I agree that there remains an existential decision with the individual to chose what is or isn't right regardless of religious position, but their religious position then dictates what those choices ought to be. Morals are about what someone ought to do.

I don't see much point in debating free will, if I was pushed for an answer I would say we ultimately don't have free will mostly because I can't imagine how such a thing would occur, but that argument is based on beginnings, while this is concerned with where we are regardless of such beginnings.

You don't ask for much:) I'll provide a link to Morals in Wikipedia, which has more to say than I is reasonable for a response in this forum, plus Wikipedia lists 69 references to books and articles. In addition, here is one dictionary.reference.com definition: "of, pertaining to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong; ethical: moral attitudes."

Ok, well I can see the religious argument for morals:

Deity created man

Man is therefore subject to deity

Deity dictates morals

How is that structure implemented without religion or are you saying something, more along the lines of:

Each man must chose their own morals

No one man's morals are above another's

Everybody should just do as they please

Three things, if we didn't cooperate we would die out. we didn't die so we must have cooperated

Our innate morals

Our evolutionary ancestors' morals.

So you're just assuming that religion wasn't a part of society at some stage and then positing that people still had morals because they didn't die?

 

John Cuthber, on 11 Feb 2014 - 06:42 AM, said:

All you have done is said that my comments refer to an older religion than, for example, Christianity or Judaism.

So what?

 

 

 

I was questioning what your source was for the statement:

 

 

It seems morality was doing OK until religion came along.

Since religion is a part of the earliest recorded history, how do you know how morality was doing before that earliest recorded history?

There is no requirement to link to articles, when one states an opinion.

 

This is a discussion forum, which has rules, and one of the rules is to stay on topic. The topic of this thread is "You don't need religion to have morals." My post suggested that another thread be opened with another topic to discuss the issue of whether morals are subjective or objective. The moderators do sometimes split threads whenever discussions diverge from the original topic. I am not a moderator and cannot force a split, but I am allowed to steer the conversation back to the original topic, including this one, which is clearly off topic and should be discussed in another thread...except I will not continue this discussion, because I think the moderators set and enforce the rules, not me. If you want to continue this discussion, it will be with the moderators.

How exactly is discussing the nature of morals in a thread entitled 'You don't need religion to have morals' off topic? You haven't defined what you mean by morals, please do so.

 

I agree that "right or wrong" are difficult or problematic to define, which is why I added "constructive, or destructive" as an alternate simplification.

 

When we get to complex human situations, which involve more than simple individual self-interests - for example when we move into the realm of family, friends, community, national interrelationships etc. - things do get more complex, and, in agreement with your sentiment, right and wrong get more difficult to define or discern.

 

That being said, the usual religious morals are the ones relating to trivial issues - dare I use the word, infantile - and they also usually expressed in the most assertive language that imply that this particular judgement can be applied in every situation.

 

* Murder

* Adultery

* Theft

* etc.

 

We all know that life is a lot more complex than don't steal your neighbour's cellphone. When it comes to stealing a loaf of bread to feed a child ... moral clarity becomes a lot less well defined.

 

The basic gist of what I am saying is that religion adds nothing to our own internal moral compass.

 

Some of the "great books" ( sic again and again ) even give instruction on how one is obligated to wash and cleanse when one is on one's way to prayer following sexual relations with an animal ( usually a goat ). The instructions/obligations specify differentiated purification routines, dependent on whether only the tip of the male member has penetrated the animal, or whether the shaft of the member has also entered the beast.

 

I kid you not ( no pun intended ) - do some research and you'll find what I am referring to.

 

Now before I get lambasted for "picking on any one in particular of the fairy tale sects", I'll assure you that in in my opinion, they're all pretty much the same thing - a way of organising a tribe of people into a hierarchy that benefits a particular sector of the tribe, usually oriented around the male elders.

 

And if you doubt or dispute that, have you ever wondered why Mary, the "highest ranking female" in the Christian fairy story, is a sexual neuter ? A virgin ? A passive, whose only attributed power is one of role as intercessory to the higher ranking males ? ( Basically a secretary/receptionist when you come to think about it. )

 

So in summary, again in my religion has little of any use to say or offer in terms of anything - including in the area of morals.

 

The "best" decisions ( most moral, most good ) are made when brave people are prepared to listen to the voice of their inner conscience, and taking personal responsibility for their actions, make "the least bad decision they can" under the many and varied circumstances in which we find ourselves in this complex journey we label as human life.

 

Contrast that to a whole bunch of people, who when lined up against a whole bunch of other people against whom they are about to engage in violent battle, lower their heads, and say: "Let us pray."

I think first and foremost if you're going to comment on religion, don't generalise, secondly provide quotes to support your argument. I'm sure you can realise that a religion saying x doesn't mean that religion as a whole says x.

With regards to 'listening to your inner conscience', what makes you think that people who do 'evil' don't listen to their 'inner voice'? You still haven't defined what good or bad mean.

IMO morals are a mental artifact; thus, subjective. However, the article quoted was concerned with whether religion defined morals or whether they are a natural part of humanity regardless of religion, which means your question should be discussed in another thread.

You haven't linked any article.

This is a discussion forum and your post doesn't define what is to be discussed, so I think the question is completely valid. It is against the forum rules to post opinions without inviting discussion, as I'm sue you're aware of.

And somehow, you seem to end up with a "Good book" that says "You must hate and kill the following groups of people..." and

" You may take these people as slaves..." and so on.

 

It seems morality was doing OK until religion came along.

It's hard to take this seriously since both the Egyptians and Sumerians (earliest recorded history) had deities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recorded_history

 

In my opinion, we inherently know the difference "right or wrong behaviour" or "constructive or destructive behaviour" - we are born with it.

 

I certainly don't need someone suffering from schizophrenic delusions, (accompanied by visual and auditory hallucinations), to wander back down off a hill, clutching stone tablets, swearing he's had a personal conversation with the "one and only true G-d (sic)" to enlighten me to the fact that killing another human being is "not a good thing".

 

It is, however, entirely possible to take "a normal person" who is in touch with their internal moral compass, and through a process of religious training (sic again), and indoctrination, convince them to rush off and murder / maim / rape or burn down much of the collective history and knowledge of all mankind, all in the name of some invented deity.

Right or wrong for who?

By what standard are you deciding what is and isn't "a good thing" and why should that standard be better than the complete opposite?

I agree.

What do you think they are trying to say and how are these morals being defined? Do you believe there are such things as objective morals or are you just talking about subjective morals?

 

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

~ Steven Weinberg

 

This doesn't make any sense to me, could you describe what the difference between a 'good' person and a 'evil' person is please?