<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Aug 7, 2010, at 3:58 AM, Jebadiah Moore wrote:</div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div class="gmail_quote"><div>After all, they [natural ethics] are clearly an intellectual product of religion</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div>That is not true, not if natural ethics means things most people feel are right. The Bible is full of horror, if you obeyed all its repulsive dictates you would very soon find yourself on death row or at a warcrimes tribunal at the Hague. Instead when a believer reads his bible he picks and chooses, when it says don't kill they embrace it, but when it orders you to murder your disobedient children as it does in Deuteronomy 21:18-21 they just pretend its not there. So something other than religion is telling them that one thing is a pretty good idea and the other one not so much.</div><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div class="gmail_quote"><div>People will tend to favour moral systems which benefit the majority</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div>I don't. The majority doesn't need moral inhibitions to protect them but the minority does.</div><div><br></div><div> John K Clark</div><div><br></div><br></body></html>