h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

YOu go away for a couple of hours and you get pages of backlog

Me and Noggin the Nog [or Noggin the Nog and myself ]were having a conversation similar to this on 'How do we know what we see is real?' I think I was told something about Hume in response to this... something about if we start doubting these things, we start to doubt our own existence etc. but I can't remember what it was called :-S
Bertrand Russell didn't exist for a reason, but was a 'brute fact: it just is', but I don't know if I agree.

Analogies are rarely perfect, but are used to illustrate a strength or weakness. I remember one about abortion used by Judith someone, who went on about being joined biologically to a famous violinist against their will...

With Atheism, what I was getting at was that with a religion of one or the other, you have immediate authority from the deity. However, if you get your moral code from elsewhere, then what authority does it have? HUmanity and it's rules have shown themselves to be random and arbitrary [is that the right word?]
That should be enough for a whiule: I won't go away from now on
FwT

Being joined to a violinist? How random.

Not being an atheist, I don't know. My theory was that you were doing it for the common good ie no authority but the knowledge that what you were doing was right.

Atheistic moral codes, like all others, are based on primal assumptions. In most cases the assumption is that you should love your neighbour as yourself. This in turn is based on the assumption that your neighbour is the same type of being as you and therefore of equal value, having conscious states and the capacity for happiness (which very few people argue with as a good thing -- those who do are usually actually arguing with the kinds of things that cause it rather than the happiness itself).

I have never been biologically joined, for however brief a period, to a famous violinist. Although it sounds like fun.

Authority for moral decisions is deferment. Many atheists would say that the reliance on a defining authority is based on an unwillingness to take moral responsibility for our actions, and hence deferring to something else which "makes our decisions for us".

That makes sense. It is always nice to be able to point at someone and say 'but it's their fault' (though don't generally do that!!). Shifts the blame. But then Christians have used that as an excuse throughout their time, twisting the Word out of proportion, to then turn round, point upwards and say 'But He *told* us to'.

The moral code then means that you have to learn to love everybody as an equal. There are many people who simply can't do that. But that is a different issue. That is, (in my *personal*, not necessarily correct) opinion, somthing that needs to be addressed, and then many things would follow. Equality (not necessarily being the same, having the same roles etc, but just having the same right to an opinion), and acceptance of equality would heal many scars in the world.

The mistake people usually make is in thinking this means you have to love the people you already love *less* ...

... in my opinion.

[slides away]

I'm not sure what you mean. It is true you have to love everyone, however difficult. But there will always be people that you love more, or get on with better. I always think as much 'respect' as 'love'. Everybody deserves basic respect. You then build on that.

That's true ... ever read the Power And The Glory? There's a wonderful description of the terrible love the whisky priest feels for his illegitimate child ... and how he ought to love everyone like that ... I think that's the (obviously impossible) aim, and incidentally, a convenient description of heaven, which is perhaps why forgiveness is a requirement.

I've not, but it sounds like I should! Yeah, perfect love is so hard to attain. It also requires forgiveness. I've been able to manage that, but then nobody has ever done anything that bad to me. Things like bullying are, for me, pityable rather than anything else. My ability to forgove has never been severely tested.

I think the whole point the woman was getting at [who I think was called Judith Jarvis Thompson?] was that you had no choice about being connected to him, and so if you want you could disconnect him [and thus kill him] without moral responsibility. She then says that you can do the same with a foetus... a bit different [I'd prefer to be connected to a cello player!]

I can see the point she's making. Don't know if I agree, but I see the point [I'd prefer to be attatched to anyone but a string player!(despite the fact I've just vought a violin)]

Well, not really.

Firstly, I have no choice about sharing my office space with women, but if I tried to wander around naked, you can bet I'd be terminated for harrassment. One guy on a college campus in the US actually tried to do this, and his despite his behaviour being nonthreatening and undirected, he was done for sexual harrassment. Our failure to have chosen our surroundings does not absolve us of our responsibility to act morally in them -- and there's a lot less even potentially wrong with nudity than with killing organisms. [takes off trousers ]

Secondly, most women have already made choices which led to the existence of the "string player" (violist? cue viola jokes). So it's scarcely germane to talk about an "unchosen" circumstance. Rape is, of course, a different thing, but I think using rape as a general moral argument is fairly shoddy ethics.

Hear hear. We have a need to act morally in any circumstance. It's like being rude to someone on a helpdesk because you've been on hold for 3/4 of an hour. It's not their fault! [guess who has sat on BT helplines for that long...]

Me!

Oh ... you too?

I was very sarcastic to a guy on a helpline once because BT Cellnet had failed utterly to provide a service I needed (international roaming) and then charged me £200 three weeks after I returned from the states and had said I would no longer be requiring it. I apologised at the end and he said not at all, I had been positively mild ...

... so I took anger management courses and learned how to be properly angry.

BT has become a swear word in our office. They have failed to provide something for us too (an ISDN line, I think) and also have failed to do much about it. Vivaldi's Four Seasons- well, Autumn on loop- one of the most hated pieces of all time...

But anyway, back to morality...

Did they charge you for the nothing?

Morality is a tremendous complex thing, and much of it seems to consist of people being persuaded *at great length* not to hurt themselves or others. Perhaps we should just drip-feed everyone endorphins or something.

Well, isn't that it? Try to be nice to people? That's all it is! It's just trying to definethose grey areas that's the problem.

Basically not a bad idea. But easily thwarted by stupidity and "human nature", which I still believe to be the worst excuse ever invented, ever.

Interesting point I was discussingwith my brother last night -- wisdom versus folly. I think a lot of confusion about God is caused by incorrect preconceptions which then create questions like "if the universe is deterministic, how can we have true free will? We are compelled by our atoms." We ARE those atoms. That's like saying "my brain compelled me to eat the fish; I had no choice in the matter" or "help! My adrenal gland is tyrranizing my heart!" Yet many people find it paradoxical, and many other apparent paradoxes visible within religion are actually the result of poorly-constructed premises for thought.

The use of axiomatic logic to describe the world relies on picking the right axioms ... I think abandoning the axioms is the "foolishness" to which we are called, and in their abandonment, we become free.

Sorry, can I be a fool and ask what an axiom is please?

A principle simple enough to be self-evident and unambiguous from which other principles in a logical system (therorems) are derived. In practice axioms can be as complex as you like as long as it doesn't get in the way of any theorems in your system (inconsistency: an interesting result is that if any two statements, A and Not A, are true, then every single statement that can be made in the system is also true -- which should give interesting pause to those who claim to have found a disproof of God's omnipotence through the argument "can God create a rock he cannot lift"?).

So axioms can be things like "if two things are equal to a third quantity they are equal to one another", simple, self-evident and a good place to start from.

But the one you gave above isn't necessarily true. I'm still not that close to comprehension!