----- Original Message ----- From: "Warren Ockrassa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, April 04, 2005 3:05 PM Subject: Re: New Pope?
> On Apr 3, 2005, at 9:09 PM, Dan Minette wrote: > > > From: "Doug Pensinger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > >> Pffft. Developing implies some sort of progress. We're backsliding. > > > > Out of curiosity, how is that possible if you don't believe in truth? > > Um, what? > > I assume here you mean some kind of godly entity, rather than "truth", > because you used the term "believe in". No, "self-evident truths" definately qualify in my mind. Thus, I'd argue that secular humanists who believe in human rights act on faith, because > You don't have to believe in a god to know that if someone robs you, it > sucks. If someone molests your granddaughter, you want to feed him his > genitals. If someone kills your best friend, or you, it's awful. > > I don't see how you have to fall back on phantoms for any of the > foregoing to be obvious. OK, I'll agree that I don't need any faith to state that I don't like to be hurt. > By extension, then, we don't -- or should not -- do those things to > others, because they are ethically bankrupt actions. I agree we shouldn't; but I'm stating that there is no factual basis for human rights. I certainly have faith that they exist, but I realize that they are not objective, measureable quantities. They are not required parts of well verified theories. >All it takes is a > little empathy to understand how the victim must feel in those > situations. I wouldn't like anyone doing anything like that to anyone I > know, so it's clear to me that those are behaviors I should not do unto > others. ;) If that's all it takes, then why have so many people hurt others? Why was slavery in the US so wide spread. Why did some Native American tribes call themselves the only humans? Why did the Germans go along with the Holocaust. > Again, why does there have to be a "belief" in "truth" for the above to > be so? > On a somewhat more general level, social breakdowns do happen, and > again, they don't have to be judged against some kind of phantom > "truth" to be seen as bad things. Hitler was just plain evil, and what > he and the Nazis perpetrated was an atrocity. There's no reason to pull > a deity or "truth" into the courtroom to indict him and his cohort. Are you arguing that good and evil are observables, like mass or velocity? Can something that is socially acceptable be evil? What about large, long-lasting civilizations that did not have a concept of human rights? If you want to argue that one needs no phantoms, then it would help to be able to point to a scientific measurement of good and bad, not just labels. Show how experimental results would be different if good and bad were different. > Evolution taught in classrooms may be "just a theory" (which by the way > is incorrect; evolution is a fact) But evolution is a theory, not a fact. Evolution is no more a fact than universal gravitation is. :-) Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
