[ExI] Morality (was: atheists declare religions as scams)

Fri Jan 7 18:29:44 UTC 2011

I don't see the problem with this moral example, and of course is #2 the
worse one. In the first one, you are not inflicting death upon the single
individual. In the second example, you are initiating physical force towards
another human being, which is incredible bad and immoral. The moral thing to
do would allow the 5 people to die, while myself and the fatty survives.
Last alternative would be to sacrifice myself, which I would do for some
special people.

I have a lot more problem with the first example, not the second one as it
seems most other people have. Saving other humans is a good thing to do, and
clearly a thing we can empirically prove is good. Having one person die is
better than having two people die.

Yet, some people seem to draw a conclusion from this good deed, that it's
good to save other humans, somehow is above the existing moral values which
we have identified to be true and correct, such as the
non-aggression-principle. Moral values have to hold true to all contexts and
not contradict each other, or else they are not true nor correct, as all
humans are of equal biological bodies, so much our moral values apply in the
same way.

Example: Is it morally right to use physical force towards other human
beings if that will save some other human beings? The moral truth of "you
shall not initiate physical force" tells us that NO, we should not morally
accept the killing of another human being. Not for two people, not for 5
people, not for thousand people and not even for a million people. Most
people doesn't have a moral in this question that are true and correct, they
have a moral value based upon their "feeling". Their "feeling" might be 5
people, 10 people or a million people. That's why USA could invade Iraq and
Afghanistan, people think they are morally right when they can save someone,
by killing others. They (the US government) tried to apply reasons for going
to war, which most people emphasized with, such as: "Saddam Hussein is an
evil dictator and the Iraqis should be set free" and "It's self-defense and
retribution for the 9/11 killings". Most people have not yet woken up from
the primordial soup of which most of our current moral values stem from...

Changing ones moral values is very expensive for any individual, which is
why most people won't change them once they have decided.

Please excuse me if I didn't make myself understandable... :-)

- Sondre

2011/1/7 John Clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net>

> On Jan 7, 2011, at 7:39 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
> While the epistemic basis for religions is clearly bad, I doubt there is
> much science itself can say about the correctness of morality.
>
>
> Yes, but there isn't much religion can say about morality either, except
> that it's bad because God says it's bad; and if that is the basis of
> morality then it makes the statement "God is good" circular and vacuous.
>
> it is pretty easy to show how many moral systems are self-contradictory
>
>
> I'd say that no moral system is entirely free from self contradiction. You
> probably already know about the moral thought experiments devised by Judith
> Jarvis Thomson:
>
> 1) A  trolley is running out of control down a track. In its path are five
> people who have been tied to the track by a mad philosopher. Fortunately you
> could flip a switch, which will lead the trolley down a different track
> saving the lives of the five. Unfortunately there is a single person tied to
> that track. Should you flip the switch and kill one man or do nothing and
> just watch five people die ?
>
> 2) As before, a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You
> are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by dropping a
> heavy weight in front of it. As it happens, there is a very fat man next to
> you - your only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and
> onto the track killing him to save five people. Should you push the fat man
> over the edge or do nothing?
>
> Almost everybody feels in their gut that the second scenario is much more
> questionable morally than the first, I do too, and yet really it's the same
> thing and the outcome is identical. The feeling that the second scenario is
> more evil than the first seems to hold true across all cultures; they even
> made slight variations of it involving canoes and crocodiles for south
> american indians in Amazonia and they felt that #2 was more evil too. So
> there most be some code of behavior built into our DNA and it really
> shouldn't be a surprise that it's not 100% consistent; Evolution would have
> gained little survival value perfecting it to that extent, it works good
> enough at producing group cohesion as it is.
>
> On Jan 6, 2011, at 6:33 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
>
> There is no contradiction in accepting a religion but rejecting its
> ancient beliefs as literal truth. Some theologians take the Bible
> about as seriously as classical scholars take the Iliad and the
> Odyssey; that is, they take it very seriously but they don't actually
> believe that any of the supernatural stuff happened.
>
>
> True, but it seems to me that the minimum requirement for calling oneself
> religious is a belief in God, and if there is anybody who calls himself
> religious who doesn't think that God is benevolent I have yet to meet him.
> And that I maintain is inconsistent with Evolution, which can produce grand
> and beautiful things but only after eons of monstrous cruelty.
>
>   John K Clark
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>

-- 
 Sondre Bjellås | Senior Solutions Architect | Steria
http://www.sondreb.com/
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