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You know what I love about Nietzsche? He was consistent. No God, no rules, no morality, no good, no evil. Only POWER. The weak die, the strong triumph, and all is right with the world. I do not believe in that idealogy, but at least I can respect it's consistency.
Sam Harris on the other hand, with this video, is a great big FAIL. Science teaches that evolution if a Darwinian struggle for survival in which the strong must rule and rule without pitty and annihilate the weak. That is how we survived while the Cromags, the Neanderthals, and all other hominids died out. If we showed them any moral compassion, we would have been wiped out. There is no room in evolution for pitty or compassion, PERIOD.
No, consciousness has nothing to do with it at all. The Neanderthals were conscious, and yet we wiped them out, and as a result, we survived...ohh, and not all morality is based on carrying for the conscious, even religious morality. We have reverence for the Dead, and they certaintly are not conscious, by definition. So, would it be morally okay, from Harris's prospective, to defecate on a grave?
Also, Jains do not eat root vegetables because that involves killing the plant, unlike fruits and nuts and such which is just about plucking from the tree or vine, so there is a religion that has a concern for things that aren't conscious, destroying Harris's poor excuse for an argument.
Not to mention that many religions, like Jainism, Taoism, Judaism, etc have no clear definition or believe in an after life, and hence, what he said about religion being about morality from eternal damnation is 100% false.
Once again, a professional Anti-theist who knows absolutely nothing about religion.
Once upon a time, men of science were ruthless and truly scientific, back in the days of the Eugenics movement and the Tuskegee experiment. Horrable, indeed they were, but, they were 100% rational and scientific.
People of faith understand that faith exist without evidence, and I give them props for being honest, but when people of science like Harris try to some how say that science has morality to it somehow, I just get sick to my stomach. At least be honest about things and not make strawman arguments for "scieniticaly based morality", and admit that morality comes not from science, but from societal norms, customs, religion, community values etc.
Edit:
For a REAL argument for the origins of morality, without a bunch of religious dogma while still awknowledging the role religion plays in morality, I would highly recommend Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue buy Paul Woodruff.
Victorian, our "reverence for the dead" isn't about the rotting corpses six feet under, but the ones that survive that body.
Okay, than why, logically and scientifically, should I feel the least bit of guilt about urinating on a tombstone of someone I don't know? I mean, if I know no one will see me do it and I know it will leave no evidence, what conscious being am I harming? None...but I still would not do it and nor would almost anyone else, including most Atheist. Reason being: the heart. Simple as that, with no lame-brain "logic" necessary. As Blaise Pascal once said:
"The heart has it's reason which REASON will never understand."
Okay, than why, logically and scientifically, should I feel the least bit of guilt about urinating on a tombstone of someone I don't know? I mean, if I know no one will see me do it and I know it will leave no evidence, what conscious being am I harming? None...but I still would not do it and nor would almost anyone else, including most Atheist. Reason being: the heart. Simple as that, with no lame-brain "logic" necessary. As Blaise Pascal once said:
"The heart has it's reason which REASON will never understand."
Cognitive dissonance, the cause of which is that you don't want people urinating on your bod when you're dead, and that you don't want people urinating on the body of your loved ones.
Cognitive dissonance, the cause of which is that you don't want people urinating on your bod when you're dead, and that you don't want people urinating on the body of your loved ones.
FAIL. I plan on being cremated, and hence, there will be nothing to urinate on. Yet, I would not urinate on someone's grave...why?
Quote:
The heart is a blood pump: nothing more.
"The heart" is a metaphor! That is the problem with scientific minded people and religion: they are way too literall in their thinking and cannot see a metaphor, analogy and a allegory for what they are.
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