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This is an untrue statement. Children are not born with religious belief they must be taught. Do you believe that a child born in India knows the Christian god at birth but is converted to Hinduism? What of children with no contact with the modern world? Are they born with this kindred spirit? Whatever that is. Christians can be some of the most pompous self important people.
I didn't say they are born with "religious belief." They could not care less about dogma, baptizing or not, reading bible or quoting hymns.
I said and it remains true that they are born with an inner-knowing of RIGHT and WRONG.
It is so, and not because I say so.
It simply is.
Yes, a child born on a deserted island to only their mom, and if that child were to float down some river and be alone for months that child, too has this inner-knowing.
It knows right and wrong. This child has intuition. It knows things without knowing how it knows them.
Then you will have a tough time accounting for your mind.
We got lucky and evolved some sweet minds.
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You do not act like you do not know . . . quite the opposite in your opposition to God.
We oppose that which is patently outrageous and counter-productive to understanding how the world/universe works and that which is detrimental to the progress of mankind. As mikebnllnb says, we don't know if there is a source, but we can do just fine without knowing what it is, if it even exists. We have this amazing mind, you see, and are able to determine how to live our lives.
Uh, why can't it? Seems that evolution is perfectly capable of accounting for our consciousness. I am really curious to see evidence to the contrary.
IF you have to ask . . . you do not know enough to even begin to address the issues involved. As a primer Google and read Chalmer's "hard problem of consciousness" then get back to me and we can pursue it in more depth.
I didn't say they are born with "religious belief." They could not care less about dogma, baptizing or not, reading bible or quoting hymns.
I said and it remains true that they are born with an inner-knowing of RIGHT and WRONG.
I believe that everyone is born with an inherent concept of right and wrong. However, it is more-than-likely born out of survival instinct and basic human emotions than anything else. But it is hard to tell since so much of what is considered right and wrong is taught to us by our parents and community.
I don't think that a full-fledged code of ethics is innate, though. When you look at the children of various types of parents, you will get just as many differing ideas of what is right and wrong. Look at cases of legitimate ferrel children. It has been suggested that some of them were possibly abandoned because they had autism or another developmental impairment, but what ever the case may be, they were all described as "animal-like" and wild.
I believe that everyone is born with an inherent concept of right and wrong. However, it is more-than-likely born out of survival instinct and basic human emotions than anything else. But it is hard to tell since so much of what is considered right and wrong is taught to us by our parents and community.
I don't think that a full-fledged code of ethics is innate, though. When you look at the children of various types of parents, you will get just as many differing ideas of what is right and wrong. Look at cases of legitimate ferrel children. It has been suggested that some of them were possibly abandoned because they had autism or another developmental impairment, but what ever the case may be, they were all described as "animal-like" and wild.
Agreed that it isn't a code of ethics. That, too sounds too cerebral and dogmatic. It is an innate leading. It is simply conscience. It is a knowing, in each spontaneous moment, what is right or wrong to do.
It is one of the few things we truly are born with, and are traumatized out of to varying degrees.
Since yours is contrary to the concept that has been in existence for millennia
Correction, it is contrary to a concept that has been in existence. I am sure it would benefit you greatly to pretend your concept is the only one that has existed all that time but there is no reason to think so.
Even if there was, the longevity of a concept says nothing at all about it's truth or usefulness. You are essentially playing a card that is a fusion between Argument from Authority and Argument Ad Populum here.
The point remains unaffected which is that while YOUR concept of morality falls apart in the absence of a deity or a purpose for our existence OUR one does not.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Your typical unwarranted certainty that no God exists flies in the face of the major assumption you make that reality "Just is" for no reason at all and with no Source at all.
Ah it has been some time since you tried to play the reversing the onus of proof card. I was wondering when you would resurface that approach again.
The source of reality is an open question and the onus is on all of us to propose answers to it and evidence and substantiate those answers. If you want to propose an answer/source then the onus is on you to evidence your answer.
What you are trying to do here is pretend that one of the infinite possible answers has a default position of "true" while all the others "false" and other people have to evidence theirs but you do not. You are excepted from evidencing your answers and in fact everyone else has to negate yours because you pretend it defaults to "true".
It is a trick, a dishonest one and I am not about to fall for it. When we have an open question you do not get to pretend that one of the many answers for it defaults to true while all others require substantiation.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
You keep misrepresenting my position knowing full well that magic (and the non-existent supernatural) have nothing to do with it. Why?
I do not see it as a misrepresentation. You are presenting a position that has no basis in reality, no substantiation, and no other basis other than a feeling you got one day while dozing off during meditation. You are just inventing things (like a god) and then inventing other things to support the first thing you invented (like an objective morality, souls, and more) and I rather expect when asked to evidence those things you will further invent more stuff to support them. Ad nauseating infinitum. At least when you bother to invent things that is, as you usually default to substituting personal invective for argument in cases where people even dare to ask.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Evolution cannot account for our consciousness. Nothing material can do so.
While we have not yet fully explained consciousness this does not mean you get to declare we CAN not explain it. This is a common error, often made willfully, by theists. They happily change "does not yet explain" with "can not explain" as if they know the future.
There are evolutionary explanations in place for the vast majority of the human condition. I see no reason not to happily expect a Theory of Consciousness from the same source.
What neither of us get to do however is say with certainty that evolution will, or can not, produce one. The only thing we get to do is say it has not YET done so. More than that is not honest and as usual only one of us is playing in the bounds of honesty in this regard.
Especially if the best you can do in discussion on the topic when asked to back up the sentence is cut and run with shots like "If you have to ask then you just do not know enough".
Keeping your head in the sand of our ignorance as if you are not adopting a nihilistic position may be acceptable to you
Instead we should just uncritically accept whatever nonsense came to you in a dream, right?
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