If Human Beings Are Only Animals, Why Do We Care About Morality? (hell, worship)
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Seriously, what’s stopping the animals to start thinking on a higher level?
Some are here even before us.
its not "chance" as you use the word here. "Life" is actually very specific. It uses the least amount of energy possible to achieve, well, living, "homeostasis" is the best answer we have, not "chance".
an omni-dude going "poof there it is" is not the most reasonable claim.
I just noticed that Jeff claims that it atheists who claim that humans are animals. Ironic that he makes this false claim on a thread speaking about morality and yet his own religion commands one not to bare false witness against others. Christians have viewed humans as part of the animal kingdom for at least a couple of hundred years and Jeff must also think that all religious folks reject both evolution and basic biology.
I sure do not believe that a person who refuses to understand basic biology, and labels all those who do not think just like he does as atheists has much t9 offer in regards to morality.
I'm staying out of this one, not because i have nothing to say but because it is an old argument and the answers have been given many times, and you folks are doing such a fine job of responding to these people who either don't read posts or don't remember them, that you don't need me.
I might just mention that Argument from Absolute Morality was one of the Big apologetics for God in the old days, but, after a 15 -20 years of debate, Argument from Morality is dead.
That said, there is a tweak of Morality here and now I look again it is really argument for human consciousness/reasoning, which is a different argument altogether.
It isn't that Humans have no valid morality unless it is Law handed down by a God (that is no valid morality at all - it is merely Following Orders), it is really an argument that advanced human reasoning cannot be explained by science and thus God Mustha dunnit. And that still is one of the Three Biggies (Origins of Life, the Universe and Everythink).
It is an argument from reasoning, rather than an argument from Morality. Back to you Bods.
p.p.s you were probably way ahead of me on that, anyway
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 11-20-2018 at 06:09 PM..
Seems kinda odd to me that out of the thousands and thousands of species, we are the only one who developed advanced complex brains. How sad that you rather adopt a depraved viewpoint of humanity as being nothing more than sacks of meat.
Dolphins, whales and elephants have advanced complex brains. But they are short on opposable thumbs. Octopi have advanced complex brains, along with great manual dexterity, but they are aquatic, and don't have the physiology for heavy manual labor. Humans have the "just right" traits, including verbal and written language, that allow for developing high technology. Having all the right traits necessary to produce high technology seems to be a relatively rare commodity.
A moral person is a person that understands that the universe does not revolve around their ego.
A civilized society is a society whose laws do not revolve around any one person or group of people.
The more a society treats everyone as equals the more civilized it is.
Dolphins, whales and elephants have advanced complex brains. But they are short on opposable thumbs. Octopi have advanced complex brains, along with great manual dexterity, but they are aquatic, and don't have the physiology for heavy manual labor. Humans have the "just right" traits, including verbal and written language, that allow for developing high technology. Having all the right traits necessary to produce high technology seems to be a relatively rare commodity.
Ravens may even be more intelligent than dolphins and crows and the larger corvids follow closely. Tests have shown that only humans and dogs understand and do follow a human pointing at something. Some researchers wonder if we learnt that from them or them from us. Another thoughts about humans and dogs is some researchers this k that the reason that Homo sapiens survived and Homo neanderthal did not.
From an animal kingdom perspective, the scorpion is only doing what it does according to its own kind. Some animals are agressive, some are passive. Some animals even attack their own children, some are nurturing. Some animals will fight and kill each other. Some animals work together in groups.
Yet there is one thing I see in common here. No one looks at those actions and says, wow those creatures sure are immoral. Atheists want me to believe that we are nothing more than another creation, born out of time and chance. We are just another link in evolution, another branch on the giant tree of evolution. And yet if we did any of those things, we would be see as evil, grossly immoral and cruel. So the atheist tries to convince me that I am an animal because we share so many similarities with other species and they point to things like how dogs express real human emotions. We are animals because animals are like us.
I recently watched a documentary about illegal gambling in the US. It took a look into the dark world of dog fighting. In one scene, the trainers take what appears to be a gentle dog wagging his tail and place him in front of his mother. So messed up. They use some tactics to agitate the dog and suddenly they turn on each other. Killing machines going after their own family. So much for being human like. Man's best friend can be manipulated and programmed into something entirely different. Because animals don't view actions in terms of morality like we do. They don't weigh consequences even though we do have some fairly intelligent species out there.
You can't have it both ways. If we are animals then we should be acting like animals. Behaving according to our preprogrammed nature and instinct, not conflicted in areas of morality.
Quote:
Originally Posted by granpa
A moral person is a person that understands that the universe does not revolve around their ego.
A civilized society is a society whose laws do not revolve around any one person or group of people.
The more a society treats everyone as equals the more civilized it is.
Most animals aren't even domesticated.
Adam = domesticated
Perhaps we should first define what is meant by morality. I suspect that the term comes from the biblical ban on sex before marriage and sex outside of marriage and so on.
Other 'animals' do what they have evolved to do without any 'morality'. However, looking into animal behaviour we see a lot of similarity to human behaviour. Dolphins discipline misbehaving youngsters (by holding them underwater), dogs do their thing with cheeky pups, elephants are amazing to observe, monkeys and baboons are great fun and so human like, not to forget chimps (one should observe how tolerant a sleeping adult is with a playful youngster).
Humans do what humans have evolved to do and we can be pretty nasty but most of us would bend over backwards to assist a kid in trouble - anybody's kid. Many of us would risk our lives to save another human being. Most of us would never dream of forcing a woman into the unspeakable. But some do and some do it to defenseless kids. Even the parents!
I have observed wild animals going to the defense of other animals - have any of you seen videos of hippo rescuing antelope from the jaws of crocodiles? We've all heard of dolphins rescuing humans from sharks.
I was actually looking for a video of a hippo that after rescuing antelope from a croc, took it tenderly in it's huge jaws onto land and tried to get it to stand up but the antelope was too badly injured and collapsed and died.
I grew up in that land by the way - not that close and personal though.
Last edited by 303Guy; 11-20-2018 at 09:30 PM..
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That cracked me up. 
