There's a bit of convolution here; before a meaningful discussion can
happen in some areas I think some of it has to be untangled.
On Sep 6, 2006, at 4:58 AM, John W Redelfs wrote:
My atheist father used to tell me that "might makes right" is a bad
philosophy? Why?
Succinctly, if it were a valid philosophy, there would have been
nothing wrong, ethically or morally, had the Nazis won WWII. Whether
one is an atheist, agnostic or theist, I think we can agree that
"might makes right" is not de facto true.
Unless there is a God who is against it, why would that
philosophy be any better or worse than any other?
Why would any philosophy that creates suffering be worse than a
philosophy that reduces it, whether there is a god or not? Put another
way, do we (does anyone) need a deity to tell us that beating a child
is reprehensible?
Upon what do atheists base
their morality? I've never been able to understand this.
Probably you haven't asked the right person. I base my ethical
decisions on my ability to empathize. If I know a given action would
cause me misery, I know that it's an action I shouldn't perpetrate upon
another. (I believe there's a Christian analogue to this referring to
auriferous yardsticks or some such.)
Hopefully this clarifies things.
If selection of
the species is determined by survival of the fittest, isn't "might" the
ultimate good, biologically speaking?
This is where we're getting into convolutions. You seem to have the
impression that survival fitness is equal to battle/struggle/fighting,
but that's a very narrowly-applicable view. Fitness has more to do with
propagation than it does with a battle to survive; a celibate organism
will not pass on its genes regardless of how successful it is in a
field of combat. *Any* field of combat, including not drowning in a
pool of water or surviving a drought or being fortunate enough not to
live on the side of an active volcano.
There's a tremendous amount of contingency brought about by
environmental and population factors that profoundly affects
probability of yielding offspring. The "nature red in tooth and claw"
idea is a vast -- and largely inaccurate -- oversimplification.
The strong are just doing nature a
favor by rubbing out the weak, preferably before they have a chance to
reproduce.
You're again seeing things narrowly. Is the bird flu virus "stronger"
than the birds it's killing? On one level, you could argue the answer
is yes; however, birds that survive the virus are actually doing the
reverse of your conclusion (being weak, therefore rubbed out) and are
in fact having the tables turned -- it's the virus that gets
eliminated, not the bird. (I know this isn't wholly accurate, but I
couldn't think of a bacterial analogue off the top of my head.)
Following this line of reasoning, would not killing babies be
one of the "moral" things a person could do? That way only the babies
of
the strongest parents would be able to survive, and that would improve
the
bloodline, isn't that so?
In some species this appears to happen, at least to some extent. When a
lion takes over a pride, for instance, it kills the cubs that were
spawned by its predecessor. This forces the females into heat, which
allows the lion to mate with them and ensure his own genes' supremacy
in the pride.
(I see The Fool mentioned this as well!)
Of course, there are other species which show strong in-group altruism;
for instance, you won't find that behavior in chimpanzee society except
in cases of extreme aberration (turns out chimps can suffer from some
of the same mental sicknesses that we can). We're much more genetically
aligned with chimps than lions, so from even a strictly biological
viewpoint it shouldn't be too surprising that we don't put much effort
into killing off the weak within our own groups.
Of course, *outside* our groups, anything goes, and has for a long,
long time indeed:
8 O daughter Babylon, you devastator!
Happy shall they be who pay you back
what you have done to us!
9 Happy shall they be who take your little ones
and dash them against the rock!
(Psalms 137:8-9)
Thus we can find support for virtually every conceivable atrocity, even
in Holy Writ, provided that atrocity is committed against those who are
not part of our group.
Put another way, there's no rational way to argue that religion or
faith in a deity automatically places one in a position to "know" what
is moral or not relative to someone who does not believe in a deity.
Might does not make right; a holy book doesn't either; and neither does
eschewing scripture.
What makes right is understanding:
1. "Right" is a very plastic term that is subject to interpretation on
the individual, family, group and societal/national level; as well as
on the biologically-expedient level; thus a phrase such as "might makes
right" is effectively worthless as an argument to begin with; and
2. All actions have consequences; a sensible approach to determining
the "rightness" of any given action at any given time is to turn the
tables: If someone did this thing to me, how would I feel about it?
FWIW, I don't generally use the term "moral" to describe actions or
ideals, since the word suggests to me a law handed down by a god/dess.
I refute the possibility, so I prefer the term "ethical".
So to answer your subject: By knowing how I would feel were an infant
child of mine killed, I know that it would be grossly unethical (or
"wrong") of me to kill someone else's child.
--
Warren Ockrassa
Blog | http://indigestible.nightwares.com/
Books | http://books.nightwares.com/
Web | http://www.nightwares.com/
_______________________________________________
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
