Animals Doing What Animals Do...

[Doug Shaver]

I find it strange, that they find human behavior strange or in need of reform. They don't find it equally upsetting when a lion kills and eats a gazelle, or who one group of chimpanzees slaughters all the males in another group and take their females and territory. We say that is just nature working herself out.

It is all just nature. Nature has endowed us with an ability to make choices that other animals cannot make. Our moral awareness is just as natural and their lack of it.

[seer]

It is all just nature. Nature has endowed us with an ability to make choices that other animals cannot make. Our moral awareness is just as natural and their lack of it.

Yes, but why do we so often find our moral choices so objectionable? Why do atheist philosophers spend so much time trying to develop ethical systems that modify natural human behavior? BTW Doug - you don't believe in free will if I remember correctly. Which would make our choices just as determined as those of lower animals.

[The Pixie]

Again, why is murder intrinsically wrong? If something is intrinsic to ones nature then it can not be otherwise. Water can not be, not wet.

Right. So murder cannot be not morally wrong.

Or do you think it can?

[Kelp(p)]

That's why, "murder" is a loaded word. Is the death penalty murder? Is killing in war murder? Is fur murder?

Seer, Tassman, let's just ask whether and when killing is murder, first.

To reduce it to the apparently simplest example, let's talk about what are commonly called thrill killings- Leopold and Loeb, the Zodiac Killer, etc. A person just kills (and sometimes mutilates) a random stranger simply because they want to. What makes such an act wrong?

[seer]

Right. So murder cannot be not morally wrong.

Or do you think it can?

No, I'm saying that your argument about intrinsic moral behavior does not follow. That both murdering and not murdering can both be considered intrinsic or not. And that we must then search for a different standard to judge between these behaviors. Nature can not tell us.

[The Pixie]

quote]Right. So murder cannot be not morally wrong.

Or do you think it can?

No...[/quote]
Then we agree.

No, I'm saying that your argument about intrinsic moral behavior does not follow. That both murdering and not murdering can both be considered intrinsic or not. And that we must then search for a different standard to judge between these behaviors. Nature can not tell us.

I have not said murder is intrinsic. Perhaps you should check back and reply to what I actually said rather than what you think I said.

[Kelp(p)]

That's why, "murder" is a loaded word. Is the death penalty murder? Is killing in war murder? Is fur murder?

Seer, Tassman, let's just ask whether and when killing is murder, first.

To reduce it to the apparently simplest example, let's talk about what are commonly called thrill killings- Leopold and Loeb, the Zodiac Killer, etc. A person just kills (and sometimes mutilates) a random stranger simply because they want to. What makes such an act wrong?

To answer my own question, since it'll likely come up, I'll give my own current view of ethics.

I think the best way to avoid the Euthyphro Dilemma is to ask to what end God commands us to do something. Killing is wrong because cultivating disregard for human life like that can only harm the person's own self and cause estrangement between them and the rest of the human race (if only because everyone will be watching their back around them). God is interested in human flourishing both for our own good and to the end of us being together with Him for all eternity. It's hard to think of something that would drive a wedge into any fellowship faster than a senseless killing.

Btw, I'm an errantist. I think the easiest responses to the holy wars of the Bible is to say that they didn't happen (or rather, that God did not actually command them). But that's just me.

[Kelp(p)]

My only issue with that is a sort of "Problem of the Free-rider."

It seems like in a town full of many moral people and one thief, in would be in the best interests of the thief to publicly encourage morality so as to make a competitionless "gangsta's paradise," for himself in which he can fleece the sheep as much as he wants under cover of darkness.

This encapsulates my main problem with atheistic consequentialism. It only works in generalities.

A thrill killer will have no interest in what's best for the public. He just wants to get his jollies. A largely moral society might even make it easier to hide his crimes if he knows how to pretend to go along with the public stance.

[seer]

I have not said murder is intrinsic. Perhaps you should check back and reply to what I actually said rather than what you think I said.

You said: Murder is intrinsically wrong by its very nature - OK, make your case, why is it intrinsically wrong? Given the common definition of intrinsic.

[Kelp(p)]

You said: Murder is intrinsically wrong by its very nature - OK, make your case, why is it intrinsically wrong? Given the common definition of intrinsic.

Murder: 1. the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another

That's why I said we should focus on the simple act of killing and not get hung up on what is really a legal term.

[Paprika]

I think the best way to avoid the Euthyphro Dilemma is to ask to what end God commands us to do something. Killing is wrong because cultivating disregard for human life like that can only harm the person's own self and cause estrangement between them and the rest of the human race (if only because everyone will be watching their back around them). God is interested in human flourishing both for our own good and to the end of us being together with Him for all eternity. It's hard to think of something that would drive a wedge into any fellowship faster than a senseless killing.

Hey, that's rather close to my own teleological solution, though I have murder being wrong because people can't flourish will dead.

[Paprika]

Murder: 1. the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another

That's why I said we should focus on the simple act of killing and not get hung up on what is really a legal term.

Or we could talk about what is malum in se.

[The Pixie]

You said: Murder is intrinsically wrong by its very nature - OK, make your case, why is it intrinsically wrong? Given the common definition of intrinsic.

Maybe I have misjudged you here, but your argument with me seems predicated on whether murder is intrinsically wrong, and you seem to be taking the position that it is not.

And this is why theists scare me. They do not get that murder is intrinsically wrong. To you, murder is wrong if God say it is, but if you believed that God had told you to walk into a school and shoot a hundred kids, you would believe that shooting a hundred kids was the morally right thing to do. That is scary. That is flying planes into buildings scary.

Atheists are not like that. Atheists believe that murder is wrong (I imagine many Christiands and other theists would agree). We do not need a higher entity to tell us it is wrong, we know it is wrong anyway - and I would say that being able to tell right from wrong is what sets us apart from the animal (well, some of us anyway).

Not only do atheists know what is right and wrong, but for the most part they do what is right without the carrot of heaven, and they do not do what is wrong without the stick of heaven.

If only Christians were as moral as that, eh, seer?

To understand why murder is intrinsically wrong you need to have empathy and to understand reciprocity - something that Jesus did, but apparently some of his followers do not. You even said "I mean my goodness, if all men followed the simple, easily understood, golden rule, from their heart, we would have heaven on earth tomorrow" in your OP. Actions that are wrong are those that we anticipate will affect others adversely, and murder does that to a huge extent. You do not need a god to tell you that. Well, most people do not. Apparently atheists understand the golden rule, while you merely obey it.

[Darth Executor]

Maybe I have misjudged you here, but your argument with me seems predicated on whether murder is intrinsically wrong, and you seem to be taking the position that it is not.

And this is why theists scare me. They do not get that murder is intrinsically wrong. To you, murder is wrong if God say it is, but if you believed that God had told you to walk into a school and shoot a hundred kids, you would believe that shooting a hundred kids was the morally right thing to do. That is scary. That is flying planes into buildings scary.

I dunno, murdering people for the supremacy of the proletariat is just as scary.

Atheists are not like that. Atheists believe that murder is wrong (I imagine many Christiands and other theists would agree). We do not need a higher entity to tell us it is wrong, we know it is wrong anyway - and I would say that being able to tell right from wrong is what sets us apart from the animal (well, some of us anyway).

Stalin didn't seem to get the memo. Neither do most atheists, who happily murder unborn children.

Not only do atheists know what is right and wrong, but for the most part they do what is right without the carrot of heaven, and they do not do what is wrong without the stick of heaven.

So atheists are insane and possibly retarded? They just do things for no reason?

[whag]

Keep deluding yourself, Darthie:

More than seven in 10 U.S. women obtaining an abortion report a religious affiliation (37% protestant, 28% Catholic and 7% other), and 25% attend religious services at least once a month. The abortion rate for protestant women is 15 per 1,000 women, while Catholic women have a slightly higher rate, 22 per 1,000.

https://www.guttmacher.org/in-the-kn...teristics.html