Is the Foundation of Morality Natural or Supernatural?

[Hoosiernorm]

[lzzrdgrrl]

There is no basis for morality in either thought or in example. It just is, that's why it's so miraculous........

[Endovelico]

[Mr. Perfect]

Ghak. St or Aferim could run circles around this guy.

You may be on to something lzz.

[Mr. Perfect]

[Endovelico]

[Tinker]

There is no such thing as the Supernatural.

If something exists that is greater than the 'natural' world, it doesn't exist outside of nature, it exists outside of your ability to conceive of nature.

Thus, morality occurs naturally. Morality is fundamentally based upon an empathy for one's species. Morality is the core hive-logic for human organic social structures.

[Caskhades]

[Tinker]

[Caskhades]

[Mr. Perfect]

[Mr. Perfect]

[Mr. Perfect]

Tinker is putting together a masterful condemnation of socialism.

[Endovelico]

[Mr. Perfect]

[noddy]

morality is a luxury for when we arent in survival of the fittest mode from desperation

their are a quite a few versions of it kicking about, so either its

(a) natural learning curve of shit that works better (tm) for the experiences that community has had
(b) god is obnoxious
(c) god is open to misinterpretation..


i kinda like the thought of "b", but substituting "god" for "reality" does make "c" or "a" somewhat simmilar for outcomes, depending on tastes, with me thinking "a" is most likely.

[Tinker]

[Tinker]

[Tinker]

[noddy]

[Tinker]

See, I think moral behavior is something that can be developed. It's a sense, not a set of rules. Rules and law are the things you are passed down by tradition. But there are some things that are just understood viscerally about treatment of other people and other creatures in general. A child doesn't have to be told to be sad when they see a bird die. They can empathize with the creature, and thus it is sad. A lot of people like to reduce this process to projection, we are all living in this bubble of images, and we interpret other people in terms of how much their behavior resembles ours. This is of course something that does happen, but then there is also real empathy, which is more sensory than cognitive, but it supplies information that formulates our thoughts. You could call that empathy 'Love' maybe. But there is this world filled with other creatures, with their own hopes and dreams. Different things and different people fall into different areas of our circle of empathy, so we empathize with crickets less than we empathize with puppets. But the cricket still wants to live. It still makes choices. At the end of the day, all of us are arrangements of chemicals follow a particular concentration gradient. We follow the nutrients we need, so we go where they are in higher concentration, and leave where they are in the lower concentrations. That's why there are 20m people near Manhattan, and not too many people live in the Sahara desert. We follow concentrations, the particular distribution of elements that facilitates our survival. Reduce it far enough and it's easy to completely eliminate any sort of identity. But higher order creatures have a sense of themselves. Ants have a sense of the 'we' if not a 'me'. Wolves have a sense of family, and individual in relation to family.

So moral consciousness is the ability to empathize with other creatures. An sin for lack of a better word is one's relationship to vampiric behavior. We live off of the life essences of other creatures, we consume them with our mouths, break them up and use the parts to build our own bodies.

We see ourselves with all sorts of subsets and parameters. We have individual in relation to the universe, in relation to the species, in relation to all life on earth, in relation to individual species. We categorize and cross-reference these things, but empathy is at the heart of it. You either have a true moral empathy or you do not. It is something that can be developed, but I also think that there are people who do not have this sense, or who have a very limited sense of it.

Morality is a set of rules, but there is an objective good and an objective evil underlying it all, and one can sense which one he is performing, without necessarily consulting the rules. It can be most keenly felt when the transgression is completely allowed within all the rulesets that one follows.

[Rhapsody]

Am half way the video.... what a headache, this Craig. He gives no plausible reason whatsoever why we need a supernatural authority for objective morality to be possible, other than stating that this is so. Also funny how he toys with "good" and "evil" as if obviously these are objective absolutes. Where Harris is faithful (!) to reality and what can be said about a morality that is also faithful to same reality... Dottore Craig must stamp his feet and hammer his fists until his supernatural fundament is as objectively real and as rock solid as the stainless steel ass of Aunt Marty.

Craig is a god-builder pur sang, jumping the elasticity of words

[Rhapsody]

[Tinker]

[Caskhades]