People Trying to Convert you

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Good! go to bed you're giving me a headache

Can't sleep.

oops forgot about number 3. Not sur that I understand the question fully. I think the imperitive comes from my perceprion of what is just and unjust. I find persecution based on religious beliefs wrong. I am not trying to persecute religious believers just trying to get them to see the damage they can do to others

Last edited by DentArthurDent on 16 Aug 2008, 4:14 am, edited 2 times in total.

Siht! take drugs please!! !! !!

I'd prefer to try to read. Might as well try to be somewhat productive.

Tried to PM you but I dont think it worked, asked what are you reading

It didn't. Trying to read Consciousness and Language by John Searle. Not the best thing to read so early in the morning, but hopefully I should at least get a basic imprint of the thoughts within, I don't expect to remember every argument clearly for years after I read it though. I am also trying to beat the return date on my library books anyway.

Morality comes from human aesthetics: As humans, for example, we generally have strong drives to protect children, so we find it immoral to cause harm to children. Mother grizzly bears feel the same towards grizzly bear cubs, and will gladly kill or maim a human child to protect their own cubs. The morality that 'human children should be protected' is a human construct, not a universal one established by the creator of the universe. Likewise, the morality that 'grizzly bear cubs should be protected' is a grizzly bear construct, not a universal one.

I can agree with that, if it were any other then why are cute animals more morally important than ugly ones?

Aesthetics

well, I could say the attraction towards something, in this case a cute animal, for being cute, as well as the thought of the animal being harmelss, and defenseless, both would play a role and be related as creating sympathy and/or empathy for the little creature. And think of them as morally more important, being that subjective, of course.

Also, someone might dislike the human race for whatever reason, and feel better, safer and have more sympathy towards a harmless cute and innocent animal than a human being, but that would be a psychological issue I suppose.

Last edited by greenblue on 16 Aug 2008, 4:30 pm, edited 3 times in total.

'Cute' animals - i.e. small, helpless, cuddly, big eyes - remind us of human babies. Our innate moral instincts tell most of us that babies should be cared for. That instinct gets sidetracked onto certain other species, or at least their young, but there's nothing moral about that. It's just a side-effect.

Actually, it's even more than "cute" vs. "ugly". If you look at the animal species that excite the most outrage when "abused", you will note that they are predominately species that were companion animals to the upper class of the ancien regime.

Lord Bunny Wigglesbottom-Smyth-Cornfed-Overblat-Dingbat-on-the-Hudson does love his horses and hounds, after all.

Incidentally, those same species are now companion animals to all classes of people.

I am enraged when I see a dog abused because I love my own dog, not because I see
dogs as a status symbol.

ps 'aesthetics' may have been the wrong word.
Maybe human 'feeling' or human 'instinct' would be better.

OK, fair enough. There are plenty of Christians who act like complete douchebags, and they tend to be the most vocal. Some even get on my case for not believing the right thing on any given topic (normally something of little theological importance, like evolution). I believe in God, but I understand that I can't force others to believe the same things. My only issue is that many people will associate "religion" with the actions of a few of its followers, which admittedly is largely because "liberal Christians" (I don't think that's a very accurate term, but I have no better one at the moment) like myself have not been as vocal as the fundie crowd, but really it's not that easy to get people very passionate and riled up about a more moderate and tolerant stance than fundies and extreme Dawkinsians have. For example, the prophet Mohammed once said "For you, your religion; for me, my religion." Now, that's a great message: we can each believe what we wish without having to kill each other over it. But it's difficult to get people excited about spreading a live-and-let-live mentality.

However, one small bit of nit-picking: countries are not getting less secular, quite the opposite in fact. As far as conservative Christians, I agree that Jesus probably would not have approved of fundamentalism (declamations against the Pharisees seem to apply well in those cases).

I suppose what I am talking about is countries like the USA and Australia where technically there is a complete separation of state and church but in practice the line is getting very blurred.

As an exampleI believe I am correct in stating that the Bush Admin only gives social welfare money to faith based charities, the last time I checked on this state of affairs ( some months ago) no non christian group had recieved any funds

The line certainly is far less blurred than in the past: Eisenhower spoke against the "godless Communists" when he added "under God" to the pledge of allegiance, back in the 1890s the Supreme Court ruled the US to be a Christian nation, and farther back (in the 1830s) the same court actually held it illegal to establish a school that did not include Biblical instruction. Freedom of religion originally meant freedom to practice different flavors of Protestant Christianity, and even our Catholic cousins have always been viewed with some distrust. America certainly does not seem to be heading towards a theocracy; as much as Republican politicians pay lip-service to the fundies, they never really seem to carry through on the wishes of that demographic.