Young Earth: The Evidence

[AndyDufresne]

I didn't know that jaywalking involved cars, perhaps you should stop making the assumption that it does.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaywalking

illegal or reckless pedestrian crossing of a roadway. Examples include a pedestrian crossing between intersections without yielding to drivers and starting to cross a crosswalk at a signalized intersection without waiting for a permissive indication to be displayed.

While nearly three fifths of American pedestrian deaths occur outside of crosswalks, fewer than one fifth occur in close proximity to a crosswalk.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM


--Andy

[_sabotage_]

Sorry, but the world is not UScentric. See, we have our own laws in Canada, and elsewhere. Wonder why the law isn't universal as is murder, stealing, rape?

Wonder what will happen if atheists have their "universal" morals enacted as laws?

We essentially would come to the laws of religion but with the understanding that some are more fit than others to ignore them.

[AndyDufresne]

Sorry, but the world is not UScentric. See, we have our own laws in Canada, and elsewhere. Wonder why the law isn't universal as is murder, stealing, rape?.

You are correct sabotage. Roadways outside of the USA do not contain cars. In fact, they aren't called roadways. Their strictly called walkways I think.




--Andy

[waauw]

_Sabotage_ is trolling right?

[AndyDufresne]

_Sabotage_ is trolling right?

Yes.




--Andy

[_sabotage_]

Sorry, but the world is not UScentric. See, we have our own laws in Canada, and elsewhere. Wonder why the law isn't universal as is murder, stealing, rape?.

You are correct sabotage. Roadways outside of the USA do not contain cars. In fact, they aren't called roadways. Their strictly called walkways I think.




--Andy

Their (SIC) strictly called walkways. No, the laws outside of the US in the Wiki article don't mention cars. You are jaywalking regardless of whether or not cars are present.

Please work on your reading comprehension skills.

There are three distinct possibilities:

1. An action if done by one person doesn't doesn't harm others, but if done by all harms others.
2. An action if done by one person harms others, and if done by all harms others.
3. An action if done by one person doesn't harm others and if done by all doesn't harms others.

All three of these may be illegal, but only the first two are immoral. In many cases the first two may be legal, such as paying tax. If the taxes are being used to harm others, then it is immoral to pay, and illegal not to.

Since laws are decided by morality in general, such as the difference between first degree murder, second degree, justifiable homicide, these are matters of morality, we can say that laws may be moral. It doesn't mean they have to be.

Marijuana is a good case. Research has been done since prohibition and never shown that Marijuana is harmful, outside of the policies used to enforce its prohibition. That is, the laws aren't moral and in fact decrease morality.

Morals are universal, laws are arbitrary. When Hitler is in power, it is illegal to harbor a Jewish person, and when he is out, it is illegal to harbor a Nazi wanted for war crimes. Since legality is subjective and dependent on the morality of those enabled to enact law, it is not moral.

When you choose to continually say: we don't need morals, we have laws; you are saying that those empowered may at their whim decide what is best.

Similar to what endgame said in another thread: I will decide at the time.

If the general public became immoral, not interested in the harm that may come of an action, then this would mean absolute corruption. We would have no yardstick to measure right or wrong except state power and the ability to put yourself beyond it's influence. This has been the path the US is on.

The reason it's on this path is because atheists say that they aren't constrained by religion. OK, fine. What are they constrained by? Law. Law is arbitrary, so they are merely constrained by what laws they don't have the power to change. Or constrained by laws that may already be immoral.

Religious law didn't come about by accident and shouldn't be discarded without justification.

If we look at the new found definition of rape in the US we can see why this is. Rape is supposed to be forced sex. Our new definition is, without direct and exceedingly clear-cut consent, sex may be deemed rape.

Moral:

If one person did this, would it hurt others?

I certainly don't ask my wife for formal consent to start having sex when we are engaged in heavy foreplay. I would expect if she didn't want to engage in sex, she would (and does) make it clear. So, she has never been hurt by my lack of direct, clear-cut consent.

What if everyone did it?

Still the same issue. If a person feels pressured to have sex and still complies, why wouldn't they feel pressured to say yes? There is no difference. In fact, this new definition of rape makes rape arbitrary. Rape is no longer a question of morality but of legalese. Forced sex remains immoral, but *most acts of sex become illegal.

Since humans have been subject to the same forms of harm since we've come to exist: injury, death, enslavement, forced behavior, we shouldn't expect morality to change over time. It can be more clearly defined, but the essential aspect, harm and how we may be harmed, doesn't change.

We would therefore need an extremely compelling argument:

1. To change the laws;
2. To place someone or group beyond the laws;
3. To change the penalty for breaking the laws.

Morals are a key component of social justice, fairness and stability. Laws are not.

Now that I have educated you, I expect fewer dumb ass remarks.

[tzor]

You stated nobody believes that nothing was created from nothing, ...

I really hate to thread jack (total lie) but the use of a triple negative there was fascinating.

Now isn't "Nobody" the person who the Nowhere man made all his plans for?

Click image to enlarge.

And clearly he must believe something, but that something is apparently about nothing?

And that that nothing was somehow created?

And that the guy to whom the Nowhere man made all his plans for believes that this creation came from nothing?

And since I have plenty of nothing.

And nothing's plenty for me.

[jonesthecurl]

Tzor: if one doesn't believe in your god (or any other god) then the religious base of "morality" becomes just another example of authority saying what's right and what's wrong. What's heretical or blasphemy in one place or time, deserving of death and/or eternal torment, is orthodoxy in another time and place. Or consider this: if someone's god tells 'em to sacrifice people, does that make it moral?

[demonfork]

NEPTR had a creator...



Does a creator have to be a god?

[DaGip]

NEPTR had a creator...



Does a creator have to be a god?

Yes. Cr8-T0R must be GOD! A maker does not.

[Phatscotty]

C'mon wuaw, you know you cam in blazing a bit arrogantly, which is gonna get you some challenges, don't be surprised if they are arrogant back. And the Easter Bunny thing..... if that's where you are at in your point of life as far as your own personal 'questioning' of religion, I would suggest you 'start' the questioning and take it to the next level.


What do you think is the reason you chose the Easter bunny rationalization?

Read back. I never used the easter bunny as a rationalization. I already stated I merely used absurdity(easter bunny) against absurdity(your misinterpretation of my words, not your belief). That wasn't meant to be rational and if that was interpreted as insulting than I appologize for that part.
Concerning my arrogance, I believe you. You're not exactly the first person to tell me I'm arrogant. I can't really help it, that's just my personality. However Sabotage went a lot further than mere arrogance. He resorted to what I can only describe as childish behaviour, which pissed me off and escalated the conversation to a more personal level.

absurdity, sure, fair point. But really, it's just a symbol. Symbols are not supposed to be taken literally as having some kind of magic power or being a real thing. What about what it symbolizes rebirth in all kinds of ways is 'absurd'? Is that symbol really comparable to what some humans think about the life and earth's creation granted not a single one of us was there to know nor is there any written history to rely on?

[jonesthecurl]

Yup.

[tzor]

Tzor: if one doesn't believe in your god (or any other god) then the religious base of "morality" becomes just another example of authority saying what's right and what's wrong.

While it is true that the Secular based movement from the Age of Enlightenment spiraled down a slippery slope of death and destruction to the hellhole we have today, I would just say that the ideal moral framework is intuitively obvious to anyone who thinks that the supersymmetric standard particle model is easy. Mind you, it's really easy when someone else tells you this in advance.

[crispybits]

Yes the "hellhole" we have today - where you can expect to live fitter, healthier lives for up to twice the time roughly (on average) as you could expect to live in 1650 when the enlightenment began, where we have heated homes and easy transportation, advanced medicine, where women are no longer "sold" into marriage and the average man can eat the quality equivalent of a king's buffet every day should he so wish. Where we have all but abolished slavery bar a few pockets in underdeveloped countries and diseases like smallpox, polio and tetanus are no longer daily risks of painful death. The "hellhole" where in the majority of countries you are free to pursue and even preach your religion without fear of being burned at the stake, tortured or beheaded for heresy if your religion doesn't happen to be the one the government endorses. The "hellhole" where you have clean drinkable water instantly available in at least 2 rooms in nearly every house. The "hellhole" where infant mortality no longer sits well above 10% (well, apart from in certain countries that all share the trait of very high religiosity, but then we're not really talking about secularism there are we?) That "hellhole" tzor?

If you don't like all that secularism, science and the advance of reason over superstition has done to improve your life, you are more than free to throw away your computer and go and build a drafty and cold 17th century house and shiver around a small fire (that you had to go out collecting all the wood for on foot), drink potentially life-threatening water from streams and stagnant ponds, not read anything (because it's likely you wouldn't ever have learned how), shall I go on?

I know which one sounds like a "hellhole" to me

[crispybits]

Sorry, but the world is not UScentric. See, we have our own laws in Canada, and elsewhere. Wonder why the law isn't universal as is murder, stealing, rape?

Wonder what will happen if atheists have their "universal" morals enacted as laws?

We essentially would come to the laws of religion but with the understanding that some are more fit than others to ignore them.

About the only "universal" atheistic moral principles (and even these aren't totally unanimous, just close) are "Do the least amount of harm possible" and "Create the greatest amount of well being possible" and even those are vague enough that we can argue about them for centuries without coming to definitive conclusions about any sort of "universal" morals, partly because of definitional problems as much as anything else.

I could write a better moral guide than any religious book you care to name (bar maybe the Pastafarian one, and mainly then because it doesn't claim moral authority or make moral commandments afaik) right now, simply by copying them out word for word excluding the things that we now consider to be immoral. Every "sacred" text has some examples of things we would just find totally repugnant today. The bible, for example, prescribes the death penalty for working on the sabbath. Copy the entire bible, without that verse, and you have a better moral guide than that repulsive book. Even leave the "crime" in there and make the punishment more proportional (spend a day in jail) and you've improved it, though I would be curious how you would rationally justify arbitrarily making every seventh day special in this way.

Moralty is an ongoing conversation that everyone is allowed to participate in. I'm sorry if you've decided to attach your moral sense to a stagnated bronze age understanding of right and wrong. Can I ask if you do that for any other area of your life? Do you only accept bronze age medical care? Do you only allow yourself to be educated with scientific information known in the bronze age? How about bronze age music, I bet you can't bring yourself to listen to that modern rubbish can you? In fact I bet you're typing on this forum through a bronze age computer attached to a bronze age internet server....

[jonesthecurl]

Tzor: if one doesn't believe in your god (or any other god) then the religious base of "morality" becomes just another example of authority saying what's right and what's wrong.

While it is true that the Secular based movement from the Age of Enlightenment spiraled down a slippery slope of death and destruction to the hellhole we have today, I would just say that the ideal moral framework is intuitively obvious to anyone who thinks that the supersymmetric standard particle model is easy. Mind you, it's really easy when someone else tells you this in advance.

OK: what is the ideal moral framework that is intuitively obvious?

[_sabotage_]

You make excellent points.

On the other hand, many things you bring up stem from somewhere. For example, using a computer to type freely on the internet, passing forward knowledge, creating art. These are not possible without an open society. What has brought us to an open society?

I rail against the church as much as anyone. If you look through their history, it would be impossible to say they are moral. But the reason it's so is because we have something to judge them on. We can say their authority comes from Jesus and they are immoral because their actions and teachings go against his. Once the public was able to understand the words of Jesus, we could begin to hold them to account.

You say the atheist have the moral of "Do the least amount of harm possible" but this isn't specific. Hitler could be said to have been trying this. Once all the dissenters have been quelled, people were universally educated by Nazis, the Nazis ruled the world, then there would be peace and harmony.

I don't think he is right. But he did. That could easily be his interpretation and fit under your umbrella of morality. And his thinking is not unique. All the time I see climate changists saying that deniers should be gotten rid of. Ted Turner thinks the population should be reduced to 1 billion people. And in his mind, this is for the greatest well-being of all. Racists think we'd be better off without other races, the Chinese believe they are the Middle Kingdom, the Brahmins think the greatest good comes from other castes serving them.

If your morality is such, it becomes a free for all of ... what do atheists believe in again? Something about the fittest...

Now you combine the two things. Do the least amount of harm possible. When US soldiers were in Iraq, what was the greatest harm? A US soldier being wounded. How can you prevent that great harm? By a lesser one...killing those towelheads (sorry for any offense, just trying to show how they think). You injure my son to me is a massive harm. I'm a pacifist, but I can imagine what some people may consider equitable harm, Stalin may wipe out a village.

And therein lies the rub. If you have a society that believes in survival of the fittest and a widely interpretable set of morals, the "moral" acts which could stem from such beliefs are unimaginable. And unlike the church, there is no check. There is nothing you can say. Let's try though.

Sir, you have been harming women and children!

No I haven't.

But there are mass graves, sir!

Yes, I was helping them.

How dare you say you were, how can this be justified by our moral code?

If I could kill them, it is only because they were weak. Weak people will bring harm to everyone. Therefore, to keep humans strong, we are morally obliged to protect them from the weak.

I've heard people justify things almost exactly along those lines. And there isn't shit you can say to them.

So we need something more defined than that. The problem is we will never agree. There is not leader that can unite us all for the few minutes necessary for us to agree on some basic, unchanging, universal principles that account for the fact that everyone thinks they are right, and leaving morality up to the individual judgement is a road to chaos.

But we have that someone already. We have several some bodies. And we have some basic principles which allow for those some bodies to be adhered to without damaging others.

But to cast them aside is to open ourselves up to new leaders who will compete to be "right".

With our modern day, "scientific" understanding, that will be a fight to the end.

I'm not saying by choosing an old moral code and limiting it so that freedom is available to others in your group to leave, join, not be harmed by being outside of it because of it, then we are about as good as we will get.

Satanists: do what thou wilt. Scientists: do what you can. Prophets: bring no harm to others.

[jonesthecurl]

How about " "Kill them all! God will recognize His own!" "?

[_sabotage_]

Sure, but we don't start until we find a person who has never harmed anyone willing to say go.

[jonesthecurl]

Sorry, that may have gooten a little confusing - I went and looked up the actual quote.

[_sabotage_]

And over time we recognized better prophets.

Right now money dictates legislation. Legislation dictates we maximize our profits. Profits are gotten off many people for the main benefit of a very few people.

Now I can't hold George W to a worldly account, I can't even hold him to an otherworldly account but in my world view I can still have accounts, and he will have one. And that one will give a true balance from a true judge and I wish everyone the best, because if everyone balances well when the time comes, then we'll have a nice place to live now until that time.

I just have control over a single account. And I will operate that one within my worldview, with the knowledge that I need it to balance, and that harming others brings it steeply down. I know what harms me, and I should such actions to harm others as well...equally. And if everyone believes that everyone believes this,then we may be confident it will be so.

[crispybits]

I just have control over a single account. And I will operate that one within my worldview, with the knowledge that I need it to balance, and that harming others brings it steeply down. I know what harms me, and I should such actions to harm others as well...equally. And if everyone believes that everyone believes this,then we may be confident it will be so.

You've just answered the question you spent an absurdly long post asking me. What you are describing here is empathy (at least assuming you're not literally talking about "accounts" as something actually watching us all and keeping score in a notebook). Generally we are able to tell what things cause us harm. We are able to tell what things promote our well being. We know for example that it harms us when someone hits us, therefore hitting people is generally wrong. Then the conversation moves on and we can say "well what about self-defence?" or other exceptions and the complex system of morality starts to emerge from very basic assumptions and continuing honest dialogue.

I wasn't suggesting that morality is simple, I was saying that at least one of those two principles were foundational for most non-religious views of morality. The existence of moral dilemmas proves that we can dream up situations where it's impossible to not do "wrong" of some kind. But it's impossible to write anything down and say "this is a complete moral guide that is perfect and will remain so forever", because such a guide would need to be infinitely long to deal with the infinite possibilities of situations that have a moral element to them. We should distrust anyone who says they have such a guide, because they have effectively declared to have absolute knowledge about moral situations, and this is not possible.

Even if we imagine some perfect being with absolute knowledge of what is moral and what is not, we still have the problem that we are not perfect ourselves and our understanding of anything the perfect being says will be necessarily imperfect as a result unless we can demonstrate some mechanism by which the perfect being would be able to give us perfect understanding of an infinite number of moral nuances. That certainly wouldn't include writing a book in an imperfect language that will die out and be replaced with a bunch of human interpretations and translations that then need to be voted upon for us to imperfectly decide which bits are the perfect bits and which should be removed, etc etc.

The only such mechanism proposed by the religious is that God writes his moral laws on our hearts, that effectively our intuitive moral sense is the mechanism by which the perfect being gives us a perfect understanding. This is easily shown to be false by the way we can disagree on so many moral topics (moral dilemmas again a good example). If there was a perfect being doing this perfectly then there would be no disagreement on what is moral and what is not.

(As a side note, it is not possible for a truly perfect being to do anything that is not perfect. Imagine you are asked to build a random number generator between 0 and infinity. Every single random number you could generate over any finite amount of time would be infinity. The chances of generating any number less than infinity would be 1/infinity, which is basically 0 in any real world application. Therefore perfection can only generate more perfection, to do otherwise would be effectively impossible)

[_sabotage_]

I disagree. Once boiled down to its essence, global governing statements can be made:

I have chosen the golden rule;
You have chosen the least overall harm.

Just as the internet allows for new opportunities to steal, it's still stealing. No new harm has been invented. The same governing rule applies. Changing the goal posts to say previously people should have not caused harm to people may minimize harm according to their ideology and ability is not necessary.

We often talk about moral dilemmas. One course I took was on climate change. Moral dilemmas was one of the first things we did. If we could stop 100,000,000 people from dying by restricting their freedoms based on our understanding, should we? This presupposes a position. It presupposes we couldn't have stopped that harm without restricting people's freedom.

Now this is a theory, a theory wholeheartedly supported by its proponents. But they forgot something. They forgot that we are innovative. During the course, we examined the short comings of various technologies. Rare earths for photovoltaics are rare, require destructive mining practices, create negative externalities. What they didn't say is one of those negative externalities is thorium. What they didn't say is thorium is a source for nuclear energy. What they didn't say is that thorium is safer than uranium based nuclear energy. What they didn't say was that we have stockpiles of it from mining for rare earths that could provide 10,000 years worth of clean energy and other known reserves that can provide 10,000 more. They didn't say India will have a plant up and running within this decade. And if anyone else said it, they wouldn't even reply.

They didn't say we have used thorium in the past. It is not a unknown theory. We used it for planes. We used it for power plants. But instead they discuss the moral dilemma as if it didn't exist.

And there's the problem. Their moral dilemma is based on imperfect info, based on assuming a theory is right. And there are those on the opposite end who assume it's wrong and make imperfect decisions based on that. Their intent is to keep the existing structure in place.

We could solve both these issues simultaneously. Not for any ideological or cronyism, but for mere efficiency, we should be using thorium.

On the one hand, the Koch brothers, and loads of others can justify themselves by your standard. The climate guys can justify themselves by your standard, and the moral dilemma comes about. Manufactured.

During that course, we only examined problems. We didn't examine solutions. If we solved the problems, both parties, the climate guys and the oil guys would be out of jobs. Or the need for them would be greatly reduced.

And that is the problem we face. Those in the position to solve our solutions have the least incentive to. Society says we should maximize profit, morality is subjective by your stance and the stance taken already shows bias. Your moral dilemma is based on the bias with those most to gain from it.

It is therefore not surprising when you hear the people who were taught about the moral dilemma and not thorium say that those without their ideology are dangerous and cause harm.

My entire career plan is to provide solutions, and yet I am considered someone who wants to cause harm by both sides.

The same can be said for many things.

[crispybits]

OK, so let me get this straight. Your entire response to that last post was you saying "well I got told a moral dilemma once and it was a false dilemma therefore you're wrong because you used moral dilemmas to back up your argument". You even say "your moral dilemma" - I never proposed a moral dilemma, I pointed out a logical impossibility. That's possibly the longest, most rambling non-sequitur I have ever read...

I'm curious though, how can anyone (Koch brothers or not) morally defend the position of providing dirty energy when apparently cheaper and cleaner energy is available under either "do minimal harm" or "maximise well being"? They are increasing harm by polluting when cleaner sources are available. They are reducing well being by reducing the amount of warmth and light and transportation (etc) people can afford. By either principle, if your thorium example is an accurate reflection of reality, they are not acting morally.

[_sabotage_]

Crispy: "they are not acting morally."

Your reply and this in particular is your standard. Not theirs. It's not a standard you can hold them to because your governing standard doesn't allow it.

They are providing jobs. That we don't need those jobs is another story, but in the story they choose to believe, the economy is central. As an American, the country that benefits from the petrodollar, not only are they helping their country domestically, but providing it with an international economic advantage.

Thorium is widely abundant in comparison to other known energy reserves. Once you let the cat out of the bag, everyone will try to get in on it. If everyone gets access, the US loses a strategic, financial and social advantage.

India itself has been intentionally slowing their thorium program for fear of competing with traditional energy suppliers. Their design is ready, been tested, found safe and yet they have delayed even trying to secure a site for it.

The US had a plant operating for ten years and shut it down.

The law states that businesses must operate in a way to maximize profits. Our measure for society is GDP. Solving a problem reduces GDP.

There is roughly 40 years known reserves of uranium at current usage. It makes it easy to control. With the known dangers of uranium, it makes it easy to scare people. Other countries can't get in on it. If people had access to 20,000 years of safe energy that would supply for the entire energy requirements of the world, we wouldn't be able to maximize profit. The entire climate change industry would vanish. The energy suppliers would largely vanish. The regulators, retailers, enforcers, lawyers, professors, etc would be out of a career.

They want the story to be that they are needed. And they have the power and influence to ensure that's how the story goes.