EB!  i find myself almost glad to see you again.   

i am always willing to reevaluate my theological views (if given good reason to do so), but Darfur hasn

EB,

I must say you've seem to have adopted work that contradicts what your theology mandates. One's behavior should better reflect one's views. If not you need to change something.

   Perhaps you might take this (and the generally observable failure of most atheists to become violent sociopaths the moment they abandon religion) as a sign that you need to reevaluate your beliefs about the implications of atheism.  Just a thought.

MSF is a secular organisation, not a religious one, and i find my work in Darfur to be entirely in tune with my personal beliefs.

"How are you finding life under a socialist, marxist, paling-around-with-terrorists government?"

Actually, I moved out from my parent's house since the last time we chatted, so...

Independence is good.

   You get points for persistance my friend.

i have seen both the best and the worst qualities of human beings during this experience.  Why would that make me more inclined to think that as a species we

you know, you can win on points.  It doesn't have to be a knock out!

That depends on who the judges are.

If our idea is any good, and we make predictions that are confirmed, then this simultaneously verifies the idea and adds weight to it.

i don

My belief in the explanatory power of Newton

"Vintage, even.  Smile"

:)

"i don

You and EB make the same mistake of assuming that the mechanism of evolution can only yield cruel and "immoral" behaviour.  Yet we see forms of morality (in the sense of a commonly understood ethical code) in other animals.

And you make the mistake of question begging evolution to be true as the rest of your arguement shows. As I believe that's been pointed out in other threads of discusion with you, seeing signs of 'altruism' in the animal kingdom is actually a clue against evolution. It's about yielding behavior geared towards "survival". Sadly for your arguement cruel and "immoral" behavior greatly increases survival (rape is perfectly acceptable as a means to procreate, which is supposedly the goal). And thus the "commonly understood", which I have no doubt SJ will ream you for, ethical behavior shouldn't be seen. If everyone threw themselves in front of buses (or put them in poisitions to be shot at) then the species would go extinct. As such under evolution one should let others die, family or not, and chalk it up to bad luck and hope the next kid lives (many species have many infants where few reach adulthood and procreate).

I agree that human history is mostly unpleasant.  But we can both identify good qualities in our fellow humans also, and can think of actions which we would consider "good".  You feel that this is evidence in favour of your "we are good creatures who have fallen" hypothesis, but i can equally take it as support for my "we are savage creatures who are improving" theorum.

Hehe. It's the fact that under your view that violence and bloodshed and 'unpleasantness' can be considered "good", or begs questioning on what need is there for "improving" from being "savage" which makes me hear the horn honking on that bus SJ refered to.

You can complain how "unhelpful" it is to sight the use of objectivist language from a reletavist all you like (I'm sure deep down you missed it on your hiatus ), but the only one it doesn't help is the reletavist (like using design-esque language doesn't help evolutionists). Frankly it just seems you are making a willful choice to ignore evidence that disproves you (from your own words no less). So I guess the answer to my previous question of you reexamining your theology is "No." *sigh* How can one convince a man who doesn't even listen to himself?

"You and EB make the same mistake of assuming that the mechanism of evolution can only yield cruel and "immoral" behaviour."

Nonsense.  Come on, Dannyboy.  You're better than that.   You are contending that morality is relative and a fiction, ie, amorality, not immorality.  And absolutely, not only can the mechanism of evolution only yield amoral behavior, but you agree.

Not in your real life, of course.  In that you trudge merrily on as though there were good and evil and right and wrong.  Only when the chips are down and you have to come to terms with that and the implications clearly point to God do you abandon your position.

You labor under the illusion that Christians are saying that without religion people would be immoral, cruel, and wicked.  Leaving the 'original sin' out of it for a moment, what we are actually saying is that people actually try to be moral and civil, no matter what their words, and this is inexplicable on evolutionary terms.  It is inexplicable on atheistic terms.  So I salute you for attempting to be moral!  The alternative is not that I think you would be immoral, but rather amoral.

Is it alright if I split this thread off and put it into a more appropriate section?

"i contend that morality is relative and that absolute morality is a fiction."

Yea, I got that... but 'absolute morality' is essentially redundant.   I don't see how it can be otherwise.  'Morality' intrinsically refers to some sort of value judgment about behavior, some assessment about whether certain behavior is good or whether it is bad, and this can only exist if there is some kind of standard.  Your use of the terms seems like mere tautology, equating it with simple behavior.  Everything behaves therefore all actions concern morality?  That seems to be what it amounts to.

So, let's extract 'morality' out of it as having too much baggage to ensure that we are talking about what I want to talk about :)  .  Let me coin a new word for the purposes of this debate between you and I:  sugummafox

Sugummafox: noun, adj. pronounced: "May-Pooh" or, maypoo.  Good and proper conduct and behavior.
Imsugummafox:  Bad, evil, stinky, conduct and behavior.

And you, my friend, assert that sugummafox is a fiction. 

"Nevertheless i invite you to try and demonstrate in some coherent form that this is in fact what i do in this new thread that you mentioned starting.  Go ahead."

Sure, here you go:

"This demonstrates, for me, that people often improve their behaviour because of social pressure."

Despite the fact that you think that sugummafox is a fiction, in real life you believe that people can 'improve' their behavior.  'Improve' is another one of those words that assumes some standard, some point of reference.  A 90% on a test is an improvement over 80%.  Inasmuch as 90% is relatively an improvement over 80% both measures depend on the objective standard:  100%.  In other words, in real life you have some notion in your head as to what 100% perfect behavior is in order to detect and measure an improvement.  Indeed, you act (and most certainly believe_ that raping only is an improvement over raping and pillaging.  Better yet would be not doing either.  Best would be not merely abstaining from imsugammafox behavior; the real sugammafox thing to do would be to try to help them, too.

You agree with this.  You have said basically as much before.  Only then you framed it in the terms more like this, "raping only is better than raping and pillaging and better is not raping and pillaging at all and best is going to help- but by 'better' and 'best' I only mean what happens to make me happy." 

And the question of course is why it just so happens to make you happy. 

"Again, i invite you to demonstrate this rather than just stating it."

You're just getting back from going beyond abstaining from raping and pillaging.  You believed it was a positive good to take the extra step and help people.  If you didn't think that some things were inherently sugammafox you'd have just stayed home and tried to mind your own business, safe and contented in the 'social contract' of your fairly protected British society.

"What are the preconditions for this "alternative" to be realised."

It isn't that difficult.  If you reject the notion that there is any thing objectively good, then, by definition, you cannot believe that there is sugummafox behavior.  Hence, you would not be imsugummafox (for that still assumes a standard) but rather, by definition, asugummafox.

Dannyboy:  Do you believe that 2+2=5 is objectively, absolutely incorrect in all conceivable universes?  (Where 2, +,=,5, are all defined exactly as they are in our convention   )