purely for posterity's sake i will repost the answer i gave to this on rs7's 'dangerous trading' thread, in case some trader comes a walkin' thru many moons from now and unearths this thread but not the other. --------- monkeys fight off leopards at their own cost, yes. animals who warn the herd do so for the benefit of the herd at cost to their own life and limb, yes, because in being first to raise the alarm they invariably have to pause in doing so and catch the eye of the marauding predator. certain animal groups have altruistic tendencies built into their genes because it is understood to be a tradeoff that is valuable for the survival of the group over the long term. this can be interpreted as a moral code. great. so what? Does such 'altruistic programming' work for man? No it does not. Because man can turn it off, and in his selfishness and pride he does turn it off, and in following his base instincts he does evil things and stupidly selfish things and just plain dumb things and thus fouls his paradise. The practical difference between man and animal is that animals are basically 100% instinctive. They act in a way that makes sense to them without pondering their actions and without considering the possibility of overriding their natural instincts. If a monkey feels a desire to protect the herd and fight the leopard, he will do so. There is no questioning his course of action. He does not think, he reacts in the way his programming has told him to. Now put a man in the monkey's place. Man has the ability to weigh the consequences of his actions. He can "choose" in a way that the monkey cannot. The man does not have to stay and fight the leopards. He can put 2+2 together, decide his own skin is worth more than anyone else's, and let the women and children get mauled instead of himself, thus overriding his 'herd preservation instincts'. Being made in the image of God is presented as a binary thing- 1 or 0. Man is made in the image of God, animals are not. One, zero. I think this is misleading- it's more like a sliding scale. The more "Godlike" qualities you cultivate- and by that I mean creativity, intelligence, logic, strength, mercy etc., not super powers- the more you reflect that image. The less you evince those qualities, the less your image shines. It is possible for men to intentionally put themselves on a path of gibbering, self interested doom. All they have to do is stop thinking with their heads and start thinking with their stomachs, lose interest in everything but themselves, and sink deeper into a morass of stupid pathetic self interested defilement until the point at which they end up raping or murdering someone or even losing their faculties of coherent thought. Because the image of God is on a sliding scale, there are instances where men act like animals and where animals act like men. And again, anyone who thinks 'Christians are dumb' or 'the bible is dumb'- if you have not realized by now that you have no idea what you are talking about, you need to wake up and smell the coffee. There are dumb people in every belief system and every walk of life. Pointing to that contingent and extrapolating that all are thusly dumb is a very, very stupid thing to do. Consider the very real possibility that you have set up a straw man, that the 'holes' you see are flaws in your perception, and that what you think you see or what you think I think is wrong. When I talk with people about my faith, often they will say 'but don't you think this?' or 'but don't you people all think that?' and eighty percent of the time it seems I will say "no, you've got that all wrong, I don't believe that at all." "No, that's a crazy assumption, that is not how I see it at all." "No, you're logic is all wrong there, you have barely scratched the surface of how it really is." See a pattern there? -----------------------
Darkhorse, it is true that many people are stupid enough to judge the view of a religion (or politicial gropu, social group, ethnic group, etc) by the least logical members of said group. And with religion and spirituality, there are many different rational perspectives. However, I would just like to make assert that people still do have some primal instincts, including instincts that have led many men and women (espeically, but not limited to, parents) to instinctively sacrifice their lives for others. Yes, many individuals are selfish enough that they have overrode the communal instincts to save the "clan," but then some animals have proven to be relatively selfish as well. Once again, this is not an argument against the existence of God. Rather, I question why God MUST EXIST for people to have morals, and I still haven't seen what I believe is close to a definitive answer. I look forward to seeing one though.
It's really very simple. Unless one is dead (the only way to truly know what is going on) then you have faith. But faith is not proof. Only death is. Any dead people care to relate their experiences? Kev
it's only one aspect of a multi-faceted argument- a tangential one at that. nothing is ever 'definitive' from a debating standpoint because intellectual assent is ultimately an act of will. if you are waiting for someone to simply lay it all out before you in a way that rings a bell, you will be waiting a long, long time. if you want to believe morality is a wholly false construct, feel free- no one's stopping you. i offer a strongly held point of view and nothing more.
let me ask you this: true or false, have you previously not been born yet? i will assume your answer will be yes. now i ask, please explain what that was like for you? in my case, i don't remember a fuck!n thing and i would describe it as pretty much nothingness. when i think of what happens at death (body stops working), i can compare it closest to the one other time my body did not work (before i was born). thus, the only thing i can base what death is like, is what before birth was like. since before birth was nothingness, i can only bet that death will be the same way. i certainly have no evidence of a heaven or hell.