<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:verdana, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12pt"><DIV>I definitely see a difference and most natural law types would too. Let me try to explicate this. It's one thing to say X has a nature and quite another to explain how particular aspects of X's nature came about. One could say a lot about X without ever figuring out how X came to be. (Were this not so, then one must believe nothing can be known about anything because one would always start with no knowledge -- since, presumably, one does not start with any starting knowledge of the nature of originating processes. In fact, it seems knowledge works exactly the other way: we start with what is here and now and discover the past, including causal processes like evolution, through looking at things as they are now, no?)</DIV>
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<DIV>Regards,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Dan</DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: times new roman, new york, times, serif"><FONT face=Tahoma size=2><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">From:</SPAN></B> samantha <sjatkins@mac.com><BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">To:</SPAN></B> ExI chat list <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org><BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Sent:</SPAN></B> Fri, August 20, 2010 6:57:43 AM<BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Subject:</SPAN></B> Re: [ExI] Natural law was Religions and violence.<BR></FONT><BR>Keith Henson wrote:
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><PRE>On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 11:29 PM, <samantha <A class=moz-txt-link-rfc2396E href="mailto:sjatkins@mac.com" target=_blank rel=nofollow ymailto="mailto:sjatkins@mac.com"><sjatkins@mac.com></A> wrote:
</PRE>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><PRE>To be more precise, naturals come from the actual nature of the beings
involved. In other words they are based in reality. I don't think
reality requires God. If in reality human beings have certain critical
characteristics dictating that they best interact with one another (the
only domain of rights) in certain ways and not others then these are
rights inherent to their nature. It will be difficult to claim that
human beings have no particular nature in reality that is relevant to
the proper way for them to act towards one another.
</PRE></BLOCKQUOTE><PRE>Humans certainly have species wide "human nature" and the only way I
know of that they could have obtained the collective characteristics
that make up human nature is natural selection. (If you think
otherwise, you probably should not be reading this list.)
So you can predict that the elements of human nature were (over
evolutionary time in the EEA) good for gene survival. The same
follows for derived matters such as "natural law."
</PRE></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Do you think you are addressing the same subject?<BR><BR>- s</DIV></DIV></div><br>
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