Morals not an option?

[Resigned]

Resigned + Juan



@ Resigned

Welcome to the forums

Thank you.

This is a circular argument. In order for you to declare someone
"corrupt", you first have to subscribe to morality, which is
based in an objective truths like "right" and "wrong". If there is
no God, then such objective concepts can not exist.
(Because without God, everything becomes relative)

My contention is that there can be no objective assessments of right and wrong, only subjective ones. As I exampled in post #12: “Egyptian royalty married brother to sister; i.e., engaged in incest by our standards, and functioned successfully for thousands of years. In today's culture, such liaisons are forbidden. Which is morally correct?”.
You state that ”If there is no God, then such objective concepts can not exist.”
My contention is that there can be no objective assessments of right and wrong, only subjective ones. As I exampled in post #12: “Egyptian royalty married brother to sister; i.e., engaged in incest by our standards, and functioned successfully for thousands of years. In today's culture, such liaisons are forbidden. Which is morally correct?”.
You state that ”If there is no God, then such objective concepts can not exist.”
My contention is that there is nothing “objective” about the god model.
When people say they believe in an entity that cannot be seen, cannot be felt, exists outside of the natural realm in an asserted supernatural realm, that has attributes we need to worship but cannot understand or even describe, who lives in eternity in both directions, who can create existence from nothing and is uncreated himself and uses methods and means we can never know or hope to understand, that stands outside proof which is exactly why it's for certain he exists-- I would say that qualifies as being completely, utterly, positively… subjective.

You also asked the question, 'why would God create man?'
In the Quran God says that He created mankind to have mercy
on us. If man's ultimate destiny is eternal life in heaven,
why would anyone complain (with this purpose)?

Firstly, I have no objective reason to believe that god said anything in the Koran. You’re claiming that god “said” something in the Koran is hearsay. So we are only left with a book, written by men, that we know has been edited and revised that claims a supernatural phenomenon for all of existence. Secondly I have to acknowledge that “Positive, negative, good, and bad can be creations of man”, no doubt about that. However, god being the creator of all ultimately makes him responsible for all. Things are the way they are because God wants them precisely this way. And this includes a nasty and capricious nature, or shall we call it “mercy”, which will kill people via floods and tornadoes and fires and earthquakes etc., none of which are essential to a world created by a God. He could have just as easily made it otherwise, he just didn't.

And so the next argument is, "Well, this is the way existence is!" Except that argument has no reply against: "Yes, but why does god create it "the way it is" when he just as easily could create it differently?"

There is really no such a things as a "natural consequence" because the root of all is the supernatural law-defining abilities of the god that cobbled it together. God doesn't cause an earthquake? Yes, he establishes the laws of plate tectonics which describe the physical characteristics of portions of the earth’s crust which shifts and adjusts, and those elements together create shifting of landmasses we call earthquakes.

God doesn't cause a tornado? Yes, he establishes the laws of convection and rotation of planets, and those two elements together create swirling whirlwinds we call twisters. As the Author of All, he could have created a completely different existence-- but didn't.

What we are left with is this: Evil is of God -- no way around that -- hence, God is all good and all evil at the same time and is completely self-contradictory.

Hey – thank god for the cancer cell - god’s mercy.

 

[Resigned]

Hi Resigned. You wrote:



Do you believe that nature living by the law of survival of the fittest is either moral, immoral, or amoral?

I wouldn’t ascribe any of the terms you identified, ie: moral, immoral, or amoral, to the natural world.

Those terms are human defined in the context of socio-political constructs and are thus subject to widely varying interpretation. For example, is it immoral for the lion to kill a gazelle in order for her to feed her cubs? We have no indication that the lion feels grief or remorse as she chokes the life out of her struggling gazelle. We have no indication that the lion struggles with a moral dilemma about killing prey as a food source. It’s a function of survival.

The natural world is a mechanism, not a participant in the process of survival.

If a bird throws a chick out of her nest because she deems it unfit, is it being immoral? If she one day outgrew this urge and just raised all her chicks as equal, would this be an evolutionary step in moral awareness and of the species?

I think it’s more complicated than that. At least as I understand it, a bird may favor the chick that is more demanding for food, for instance. That appears to be a function of an evolutionary imperative: “the strongest survive”, thing. I don’t believe anyone should suggest that a bird makes a considered choice to abandon or reject a sick or defective chick, however.

I will offer that emotions can be shown to exist in lower creatures; for instance, nurturing and parental caring can be seen in higher apes. It’s been suggested that elephants can experience “grief” over the loss of a calf. As you go lower down the chain, you can see a marked "lessening" of these sorts of nurturing behaviors, until, as you get to simple-brained creatures, they no longer exist.
The sense of self-sacrifice, nurturing, decision making and making “moral” choices is a higher brain function and, as noted, it's seen in comparably lesser degrees in lesser animals. This in and of itself is enough to suggest that "morality" is a natural phenomenon of higher brain functions. A measure of language, nurturing, survival, industry, and even environmental control, all can be attributed to animals lesser on the sentience strat than man. Whether or not a bird (with a very primitive evolutionary brain), could ever develop higher brain functions is all conjecture on my part.

 

[Bandit]

I don’t believe anyone should suggest that a bird makes a considered choice to abandon or reject a sick or defective chick, however.

Why not?
For the same reason a bird makes no choice to build more than one nest to raise the young in the first place?
For the same reason the mother bird attacks when you try to disturb or harm the chicks?
For the same reason birds migrate together and teach the young where and when to fly to for food and water?

 

[Bandit]

I
I will offer that emotions can be shown to exist in lower creatures; for instance, nurturing and parental caring can be seen in higher apes. It’s been suggested that elephants can experience “grief” over the loss of a calf. As you go lower down the chain, you can see a marked "lessening" of these sorts of nurturing behaviors, until, as you get to simple-brained creatures, they no longer exist.

I understand what you mean about it lessening, or so it appears that way.

I have seen quite a few simple brained humans where nurturing behaviors do not exist, where moms have no problem putting their healthy one year old into a garbage bag in a dumpster and husbands have no problem putting a bullet into their wife and children while showing no grief. Gangs, communists, and mafia...you know.

You don't have to go very far down the chain to see that nurturing behaviors do not exist. Kind of hard to call them lower when you see some humans doing the same exact things that some lower animals do. I can see them as different but not necessarily lower in these respects.

 

[Nick_A]

I wouldn’t ascribe any of the terms you identified, ie: moral, immoral, or amoral, to the natural world.

Those terms are human defined in the context of socio-political constructs and are thus subject to widely varying interpretation. For example, is it immoral for the lion to kill a gazelle in order for her to feed her cubs? We have no indication that the lion feels grief or remorse as she chokes the life out of her struggling gazelle. We have no indication that the lion struggles with a moral dilemma about killing prey as a food source. It’s a function of survival.

The natural world is a mechanism, not a participant in the process of survival.




I think it’s more complicated than that. At least as I understand it, a bird may favor the chick that is more demanding for food, for instance. That appears to be a function of an evolutionary imperative: “the strongest survive”, thing. I don’t believe anyone should suggest that a bird makes a considered choice to abandon or reject a sick or defective chick, however.

I will offer that emotions can be shown to exist in lower creatures; for instance, nurturing and parental caring can be seen in higher apes. It’s been suggested that elephants can experience “grief” over the loss of a calf. As you go lower down the chain, you can see a marked "lessening" of these sorts of nurturing behaviors, until, as you get to simple-brained creatures, they no longer exist.
The sense of self-sacrifice, nurturing, decision making and making “moral” choices is a higher brain function and, as noted, it's seen in comparably lesser degrees in lesser animals. This in and of itself is enough to suggest that "morality" is a natural phenomenon of higher brain functions. A measure of language, nurturing, survival, industry, and even environmental control, all can be attributed to animals lesser on the sentience strat than man. Whether or not a bird (with a very primitive evolutionary brain), could ever develop higher brain functions is all conjecture on my part.

But this raises the question of what morality actually is. Is mother love in animals moral? I would say no only because it is natural. Morality implies a choice. But is this choice a product of secular acquired standards or the result of a form of inner knowledge that the human condition denies?

Eating rocks isn't immoral because it isn't natural. Being natural as we are in society means that we are attracted and repulsed by the same thing. How we cope with this duality and assign the words good and bad, is called morality. External morality then is subjective depending on cultural definitions. But the question is open as to whether or not we are capable of becoming natural where our choice would be obvious because it reflects what we ARE.

 

[juantoo3]

Racism is hardwired, maybe in our social practices. Its a form of group thinking territorial attribute, and very natural.

Morality. For young fellas to step up to the plate to save infants in grave danger also seems to be hardwired as (evident in monkey`s), whether we want to look cool in front of the ladies is the motivation, I do not know. Mothers wanting to save their babies, Alpha males biting off young monkey pinky fingers to keep the peace, and look cool in front of the ladies again..

This is interesting, never really thought of it this way. I don`t know if Moral is hardwired. I could probably tell you for each action performed if it is hardwired or not. And I can tell you when exactly morality goes out the window.

Good question.

Maybe somethings are hardwired into our basic social responses as groups of people, and some others are hardwired into our DNA. And others are luxury.

I'm not sure I would say racism is hardwired. As with much in the nature versus nurture debate, there may be a bit of both, in that I do think there is a bit, just a smidge, of inclination towards prejudice within all of us. But how we are raised, by our parents and culture, goes a long way in determining how that inclination to prejudice is fed or pruned.

We all prefer to be around people who look, act and think generally the same as we do. Anybody who is obviously different runs the risk of being ostracized by the dominant group. That's the natural way of the world throughout human history as far as I can tell. Today though, we are more and more beginning to realize that we share more than we differ, and more and more we are beginning to see that we are all one race; the human race. Perhaps some of that is trite political correctness, but in my opinion it is about the only good thing to come out of political correctness, especially if we ever hope to find a way to live together in anything resembling peace. If we stay strictly biological and evolutionary, then the evidence *is* that we all can interbreed, therefore we are only one race. Either way, we are all *us* now, there is no more *them.* The world is too small to have any more *them."

I noticed a post in this thread about Japanese being a mirror image of English. Japanese is derived from Sanskrit. And the first five J alphabets are "a","i","u","e","o". If someone could prove that Latin is derived from Sanskrit, or some root language that originates somewhere between the middle-east and India, all our languages are a mirror of that root language. And right now I`m not convinced that the root language happened in Indo-Europe that is virtually around Iraq(why call it Indo?btw). Because the east does not seem to be influenced as much as the west by Babylon (thus making me have some doubts that Indo-European theory is Zionist material). As things pass from the new to old in some instances, everything doesn`t have to lead to the oldest cradle.

Sanskrit and Indo-European are the same. As for Japanese, like Chinese and Korean, they do not have an alphabet like most other languages. If the Oriental languages mirror anything, they more mirror the Egyptian glyph ideograms found in Dynastic sites...but that is really a bit of a stretch too.

I think a crucial clue resides in the oldest known human genetic lineages: The Kalahari Bushmen of Africa, the Lapplanders of Finland and the far north of Europe, and the Ainu of northern Japan. Language follows genes, and these are the three oldest gene pools.

The Aryan invasion concept of a people moving from the Steppes into northern India is established through certain archeological finds...finds that are generally refuted within India because of the cultural implications, but which are generally acknowledged elsewhere among scholars who have less political currency at stake. (This is not unique, there is comparable division in the far east as to whom came first: China, Japan or Korea; and considerable cultural implications at stake. I might also point to the pre-Clovis arguments that float in some circles regarding the earliest migrations to the Americas. So these kinds of arguments are not new.)

 

[juantoo3]

All the points you raised about linguistics are
answered in an authors@google talk available on youtube
with Noam Chomsky. He deals with your points right at
the beginning. Just type "google authors chomsky" it
should come up. If you can't find it let me know, i'll toss
you the link. It is an interesting talk, you will enjoy it.

I very much appreciate the effort. Unfortunately I cannot access youtube where I am at...limited bandwidth. I have similar problems with a lot of the images that people post here. Sorry, my bad, but that's the world I deal with.

 

[juantoo3]

I'm not sure Resigned has a circular argument going there Code because his premise and his conclusion are not the same. He seems to think that right and wrong are indeed a priori. (or did I miss something?)

The problem seems to stem from the belief that there is such a thing as an objective concept of right and wrong, or morals. Aren't they all subjective by their very nature?

This is pretty much how I see it. I do think that morality for the most part is pretty conclusively subjective. But there are a few points, murder being the most prominent, that do hint at a more objective root. But even then it must be qualified, because killing outside of the group is no longer murder. It is only murder when one kills one of one's own.

If we pre-suppose God as "other" then it could be argued that morality is objective or outside the human consciousness and within a Divine consciousness, but this puts us in conflict all over again no?

And that to me seems one of the underlying sticking points between religions for thousands of years...G-d (in some way, shape or form) is always on "our" side, but every side is "our" side to somebody. Even though we clustered into various groups of "us" so we could all point at all the other "them," every "them" was an "us" to somebody somewhere. We lost sight of that, or maybe never really had it to begin with.

 

[Resigned]

But this raises the question of what morality actually is. Is mother love in animals moral? I would say no only because it is natural. Morality implies a choice. But is this choice a product of secular acquired standards or the result of a form of inner knowledge that the human condition denies?

Eating rocks isn't immoral because it isn't natural. Being natural as we are in society means that we are attracted and repulsed by the same thing. How we cope with this duality and assign the words good and bad, is called morality. External morality then is subjective depending on cultural definitions. But the question is open as to whether or not we are capable of becoming natural where our choice would be obvious because it reflects what we ARE.

OK, I may have been rattling on not really understanding where you were going.

Ultimately, I would propose that morality involves decision making (or making a choice), as you noted, where decision making is accomplished with a cognizant awareness of consequences. As you noted, the mammalian sense of nurturing the young is not morality, it’s a function of evolution that seeks to preserve the species.

I suppose what defines morality is our expectations and choices as to how we extend such gestures as compassion, empathy, fairness, etc.

Going further, I don't think all moral impulses are learned. I think left to our own devices in a world devoid of civilization, we wouldn't blindly and blatantly kill, we likely wouldn't mate upwards with our parents. Fitness for survival would likely preclude this from happening as we would likely nurture our babies and try to protect them.

If we were to posit a world where humans are stripped of their morality, they’re still going to behave in ways that favor survival, not only of self but of the species, whether that boils down to a nuclear family or a tribe.

 

[juantoo3]

There is really no such a things as a "natural consequence" because the root of all is the supernatural law-defining abilities of the god that cobbled it together. God doesn't cause an earthquake? Yes, he establishes the laws of plate tectonics which describe the physical characteristics of portions of the earth’s crust which shifts and adjusts, and those elements together create shifting of landmasses we call earthquakes.

God doesn't cause a tornado? Yes, he establishes the laws of convection and rotation of planets, and those two elements together create swirling whirlwinds we call twisters. As the Author of All, he could have created a completely different existence-- but didn't.

What we are left with is this: Evil is of God -- no way around that -- hence, God is all good and all evil at the same time and is completely self-contradictory.
[/FONT][/COLOR]
Hey – thank god for the cancer cell - god’s mercy.

Interesting POV. I see it differently.

Natural laws are natural laws...be they plate tectonics, the magnus effect, eat or be eaten, or gravity. Creation required natural laws to be in place, in order to sustain an environment to function and support carbon based life. Cancer cells, horrible as they subjectively are to our eyes, are actually evidence of the objective reality of nature's ability to adapt and adjust to changing environments and circumstances. In their own little way, cancer cells are evidence of the adaptive evolutionary tendency of life. Without the objective reality of gravity, this earth could not function. This is not a subjective supposition, it is a fact of physics. Without the magnus effect, this earth would crash headlong into the sun. Instead, the objective reality is that the magnus effect allows the earth to perform a delicate dance with the sun, and an evil to our subjective eyes is the side effect of tornadoes. The furnace at the core of the earth fuelled by the solar wind and evidenced by the polar auroras feeds the volcanic activity that likely was the primordial nursery for cellular life on this planet, if the discoveries at the black smokers thousands of feet under the ocean are any evidence. Yet this same volcanic activity also fuels the constant juggling and recreation of continents, and the evil to our subjective eyes is the occasional earthquake. In these instances, evil really is a subjective value placed upon occasional happenings on an incredible and intricately beautiful habitat that sustains carbon based life. The subjective evil to our eyes is that life sustained by that habitat also dies because of that habitat. The reality is more of a cycle...philosophically, death is just a part of life. I wouldn't dare say that to a person grieving for a loved one they just lost...but that is indeed how I feel about it, and it is a beautiful thing. But that is *my* subjective view of natural reality.

Nature simply is. The reality is that nature is neither good nor bad. Philosophically, nature cannot be evil. If nature is evil, then humans are inextricably lost with no hope of redemption (Jesus notwithstanding, for the Christians). Humans are natural, not only *in* nature but composed *of* nature. As much as we fantasize in our little pea brains that we are somehow distinct from and removed from nature, that is simply not how it is; not philosophically, not scientifically, not logically and not in reality. So if nature is evil, then we are all evil. Therefore nature either must be good, or neutral; or I am the devil himself. muwahahaha

 

[Nick_A]

OK, I may have been rattling on not really understanding where you were going.

Ultimately, I would propose that morality involves decision making (or making a choice), as you noted, where decision making is accomplished with a cognizant awareness of consequences. As you noted, the mammalian sense of nurturing the young is not morality, it’s a function of evolution that seeks to preserve the species.

I suppose what defines morality is our expectations and choices as to how we extend such gestures as compassion, empathy, fairness, etc.

Going further, I don't think all moral impulses are learned. I think left to our own devices in a world devoid of civilization, we wouldn't blindly and blatantly kill, we likely wouldn't mate upwards with our parents. Fitness for survival would likely preclude this from happening as we would likely nurture our babies and try to protect them.

If we were to posit a world where humans are stripped of their morality, they’re still going to behave in ways that favor survival, not only of self but of the species, whether that boils down to a nuclear family or a tribe.

You'll probably apprciate this:

20th WCP: Plato's Concept Of Justice: An Analysis

At this juncture the new point of view is stated by Glaucon and he put Forward a form of what was later to be known as a social contract theory, arguing we are only moral because, it pays us or we have to be. Glaucon describes the historical evolution of the society where justice as a necessity had become the shield of the weaker. In the primitive stage of society without law and government, man was free to do whatever he likes. So the stronger few enjoyed the life at the sufferance of the weaker many. The weaker, however, realised that they suffered more injustice. Faced with this situation they came to an agreement and instituted law and government through a sort of social contract and preached the philosophy of just. Therefore, justice in this way something artificial and unnatural. It is the "product of convention". It is through this artificial rule of justice and law that the natural selfishness of man is chained. A dictate of the weaker many, for the interest of the weaker many, as against the natural and superior power of the stronger few.
Plato realises that all theories propounded by Cephalus, Thrasymachus and Glaucon, contained one common element. That one common element was that all the them treated justice as something external "an accomplishment, an importation, or a convention, they have, none of them carried it into the soul or considered it in the place of its habitation." Plato prove that justice does not depend upon a chance, convention or upon external force. It is the right condition of the human soul by the very nature of man when seen in the fullness of his environment. It is in this way that Plato condemned the position taken by Glaucon that justice is something which is external. According to Plato, it is internal as it resides in the human soul. "It is now regarded as an inward grace and its understanding is shown to involve a study of the inner man." It is, therefore, natural and no artificial. It is therefore, not born of fear of the weak but of the longing of the human soul to do a duty according to its nature.

Is justice or "inner morality" based on soul knowledge described by Plato possible for modern man since we are now so dependent on external morality as described by his asociates? I don't know. What do you think.

 

[Paladin]

This is pretty much how I see it. I do think that morality for the most part is pretty conclusively subjective. But there are a few points, murder being the most prominent, that do hint at a more objective root. But even then it must be qualified, because killing outside of the group is no longer murder. It is only murder when one kills one of one's own.

And that to me seems one of the underlying sticking points between religions for thousands of years...G-d (in some way, shape or form) is always on "our" side, but every side is "our" side to somebody. Even though we clustered into various groups of "us" so we could all point at all the other "them," every "them" was an "us" to somebody somewhere. We lost sight of that, or maybe never really had it to begin with.

Moving from ethno/theocentrism is part of the development of man, a leap that is only now taking shape. There is much evidence now of the role religion played in the movement toward a central point of accountablility from just plain survival of the individual and the penchant for magical thinking and superstition. While elements of this are still evident in most religions, their value in helping to forge a sense of accountability is undeniable. The question for non-believers is, did man create religion to express his/her dawning notion of ethics and morals within the group or did an outside force introduce it in some sort of ad baculum sort of way?

 

[juantoo3]

Moving from ethno/theocentrism is part of the development of man, a leap that is only now taking shape. There is much evidence now of the role religion played in the movement toward a central point of accountablility from just plain survival of the individual and the penchant for magical thinking and superstition. While elements of this are still evident in most religions, their value in helping to forge a sense of accountability is undeniable. The question for non-believers is, did man create religion to express his/her dawning notion of ethics and morals within the group or did an outside force introduce it in some sort of ad baculum sort of way?

I'm not sure what "ad baculum" is, but yeah. It's pretty hard to say that elemental morality in herd and pack animals is introduced from some outside force...for instance, Dr. Penny Patterson has commented in the past that Koko the gorilla (with whom she communicates through sign language) has never shown any inclination towards any humanly recognizable concept of "G-d." So the atheists do have the luxury of pointing to evolution as laying a foundation for moral development. But by the time we get into human development of 30-50 thousand years ago there are too many loose ends for which evolution alone simply cannot account as it stands. Sometime prior to that we humans crossed an evolutionary bridge that is unique to our genetic development, one that so far has not been crossed by any other species even among other simians. It is even questionable if Neandertal were able to fully cross that bridge, although it appears they may well have.

I am aware that crossing an evolutionary bridge does not mean expressly that G-d exists...and I am not saying that overtly. I am however leaving room for the benefit of doubt, based in no small part on the uniqueness of our genetic path. So much of evolution is relative cross-species, yet no other species has crossed the same bridge with us or since when it comes to the expansion of the mind into consciousness. Which when viewed in combination with certain other evolutionary anomalies concerning our physiology, if viewed in a neutral manner, should raise some serious intellectual eyebrows.

 

[Bandit]

Moving from ethno/theocentrism is part of the development of man, a leap that is only now taking shape. There is much evidence now of the role religion played in the movement toward a central point of accountablility from just plain survival of the individual and the penchant for magical thinking and superstition. While elements of this are still evident in most religions, their value in helping to forge a sense of accountability is undeniable. The question for non-believers is, did man create religion to express his/her dawning notion of ethics and morals within the group or did an outside force introduce it in some sort of ad baculum sort of way?

That is a good question because I do not view murder as the worse crime or a crime above other crimes while most people do.
I look at the way a victim suffered and how long they suffered and how big the scar is to the victim and to others that know them. It could be why there is not a distinction between the commandments as one being worse or less than the other, except for the way people view it.

You cant take murder back but you cant take back the way someone is tortured and abused for years or the years the victim lost. When you take away or abuse the good will of another, that is when the problems start. This goes back to the justice thingy as to why human laws are always changing and can never agree on what justice or morality really is.

There was much superstition involved as well as to why people did things. Fear is still a real thing with or without superstition.

It was not too long ago that feeding humans to lions was great entertainment and acceptable behavior. Perhaps it depends on what pain inflicted & greed people want to get away with? and peoples gods have nothing to do with it.

It could be the punishment that makes one immoral thing look worse than another. At the same time those who are always immoral do not seem to care about who they hurt along the way and are also not concerned about the consequence. Just an observation.

 

[juantoo3]

I wouldn’t ascribe any of the terms you identified, ie: moral, immoral, or amoral, to the natural world.

I had a nice in depth post almost finished and it just disappeared. Really p*ssed me off. Unfortunately I haven't got the time right now to rebuild it.

Sorry 'bout that.

 

[Bandit]

I'm not sure what "ad baculum" is, but yeah. It's pretty hard to say that elemental morality in herd and pack animals is introduced from some outside force...for instance, Dr. Penny Patterson has commented in the past that Koko the gorilla (with whom she communicates through sign language) has never shown any inclination towards any humanly recognizable concept of "G-d."

or maybe they recognise it different from the way humans do and is not something to question. There is a lot to be said about pack animals and pecking order. Animal Planet. What an awesome thing to study packs for years and to film them.

 

[Paladin]

Sorry about that Juan,

Argumentum ad baculum

 

[juantoo3]

those who are always immoral do not seem to care about who they hurt along the way and are also not concerned about the consequence. Just an observation.

That's just it though. I don't think people view themselves as immoral, not counting the occasional mentally ill person. I think people tend to rationalize and justify their behaviors to themselves. No doubt people think Hitler was immoral for what he intigated with the death camps, but I would be willing to bet Hitler was able to somehow rationalize and justify it as somehow being moral or fulfilling a moral imperitive, even so much as sharing that rationalization across the German population (what wasn't deliberately hidden from them). Even the most heinous serial killer, as mentally unstable as they might be, figure out a way to morally justify what they are doing. Look how many serial killers focus on prostitutes, or vagrants, or on individuals from some specific sub-culture, as if "doing G-d a favor."

 

[juantoo3]

Sorry about that Juan,

Argumentum ad baculum

Thanks. Still trying to figure out how it applies? Was this something I said?

 

[Paladin]

The question for non-believers is, did man create religion to express his/her dawning notion of ethics and morals within the group or did an outside force introduce it in some sort ofad baculum sort of way?

In other words was there a supernatural being that imposed a law to be obeyed under penalty of death or harm.