Bad sells better than good, because good is our usual selves. Difference is attention getting.
What moral right does an atheist have?
- Thread starter Mind Over Matter
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Bad sells better than good, because good is our usual selves. Difference is attention getting.
I guess there is some comfort in thinking that "all this shall pass" ...
What do you suggest as the alternative?
Art, architecture, music, dance, literature, cinema, drugs, scientific endeavors, car racing, travel, love and sex... I could go on...
If you apply the rule of parsimony unparsimoniously, you'll end up homeless, literally.
If these activities do nothing but involve us further in "our origins," then they are not helping us transcend them.
And these activities, as they are usually pursued, indeed do nothing but involve us further in "our origins."
Give some examples where these activities indeed transcend "our origins."
It is tautological because to suppose God wired morality into the fabric of the cosmos doesn't contribute anything to our understanding of what it actually is. Consider that if God had any choice in the matter than it really wouldn't be objective. Morality would simply be determined by God's subjective preferences. The alternative, that he has no choice in the matter, means that he is nothing more than a glorified middle man and we are still left with morality unexplained.
In practice it may be impossible to achieve perfect nutrition but that does not mean that we should dismiss the validity of healthy eating as an intelligible prescription for sustaining life.
Reincarnation doesn't exist. Nonetheless if it did, it would still be impossible for beings to murder each other simultaneously as one side would invariably be acting in self-defense while the other would be initiating violence. The moment the initiation of violence takes place a universal rule is being implied (it is okay to initiate violence) while the act itself prevents the person being attacked from initiating violence. Therefor what is taking place is an immoral action that negates the possibility of life honoring reciprocity between the two people in question.
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This is what I don't get. If we are of nature, and nature is of god, then we are of god... what is there to transcend? Our origin is god. :shrug:
We notice that acting in one way makes us happy, and acting in another way makes us unhappy. This has something to do with the way the Universe works. We can understand morality practically.
If God created the Universe and everything in it and how it works, there is no problem; for God, the subjective-objective dichotomy doesn't exist.
Why do we want to explain morality?
What "healthy eating" is may be subject to change.
Are you saying this for rhetorical purposes, or do you really believe or are convinced that there is no reincarnation?
The idea is that if A kills B in this lifetime, when they are both reborn next time around, B kills A.
E.g. If in this lifetime, you are a human who kills a pig, you may be reincarnated as a pig in the next lifetime and may be killed by a human who in its previous lifetime was the pig that you killed.
This is the principle. The way we live life can be quite complex, and so the exact workings of karma and reincarnation can be quite complex too, stretching across many lifetimes.
So on principle, if you kill a hundred pigs, you may be reincarnated a hundred times as a pig, and each time be killed by humans, each of whom was a pig in their previous lifetime when you killed them.
Reincarnation explains and dissolves this problem.
It all depends on how happy one is with the way one currently lives - how happy one is with the way one thinks, feels, speaks and acts.
If you're happy and see no problems - then this is just the way it is for you.
If you're posting at a forum wondering about these things, then perhaps you aren't so happy, and perhaps you do feel there is a problem or two.
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Enmos
Valued Senior Member
Explain the mechanism behind reincarnation.
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
That is not a mechanism.
Who or what decides what body you are going to reincarnate in and who or what puts you there? And by what mechanism does your spirit or whatever transfer into another body after you die?
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
"What goes around, comes around" or "If you do X to others, X will be done to you" is the general principle, or general mechanism.
But since we do many things in life, and many things are done to us, the exact workings of karma are very complex.
Generally, the idea is that if you kill a pig, you will be reincarnated as a pig who will be killed by a human.
However, if, after you have killed a pig, you regret it, and become a proponent of not killing pigs, you might not be reincarnated as a pig, as the karma of your regret and acting against killing pigs may counteract your karma of having killed a pig.
But since we do many things in life, and many things are done to us, the exact workings of karma are very complex.
Generally, the idea is that if you kill a pig, you will be reincarnated as a pig who will be killed by a human.
However, if, after you have killed a pig, you regret it, and become a proponent of not killing pigs, you might not be reincarnated as a pig, as the karma of your regret and acting against killing pigs may counteract your karma of having killed a pig.
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
Come on, wynn...
What mechanism accomplishes "What goes around, comes around"?
What makes it happen and how?
Under the supervision of god the living entity is afforded different opportunities for existence (which grants a particular set of senses grouped around a particular mind)
In animal life, the mind simply progresses one to slightly more evolved forms through repeated acts of birth and death
Having arrived at the human form of life however, on account of the refinement of the mind, an opportunity is afforded to approach the solution to repeated birth and death in the material world (which is why religion, or even in a broader sense, philosophy, is a unique property of human culture).
Hence the broadness of potential for the human mind can be a double edged sword sending one spiraling back down the cycle or elevating one to an ultimate solution to the problem of material existence.
IOW the mind acts as a reservoir for receiving impressions as a consequence of one's action, which in turn designate a new mind at the time of death (which comes pre-packaged with a group of senses). On top of this, the environment that one takes birth in is a further consequence of what one deserves
Sadists are at their happiest when inflicting pain on victims. It seems to me that subjective feelings about an action are only part of the consideration.
That's not true. For God to be a conscious responsible being he must have a subjective experience of himself. To define the problem out of existence is to misunderstand it. The power to make your ideas about morality divine law is still a subjective exercise of discretion. If God himself is not subject to our ordinary ideas about the subjective-objective dichotomy, than he is also not subject to anything we can conceive of when we talk about good and evil, as we ourselves believe we must conform to some objective standard outside ourselves. If such a standard does not apply to god, than to call god good, or to say that he is the source of morality, leaves us with a narrative about morality that is explicitly unknowable.
It is something that is very important to understand. Even Hitler believed that he was a moral man. In fact, humans habitually use moral justifications for almost everything they do. If one can understand and explain morality, even if you just conclude that it is nothing more than a tool that people use to assuage their consciences or to manipulate others, we have made an invaluable contribution to our understanding of human behavior, and can then better defend ourselves against tyrants.
That may be true but only in a limited sense. It doesn't matter how far nutritional science advances. It will never be healthy to drink lava.
The law of identity. A is A. If it were not the case than you would have no more cause to address this line of argument to me than to a potted plant, or to your neighbors cat. We simply cannot escape ourselves. For arguments sake, if consciousness did survive after death in any sense, it by definition would have to be wholly alien from what we currently understand it to be. There is no doubt that if I reincarnated as a frog, my experience of myself would be infinitely unrelated in any meaningful sense to what I currently understand as "me".
This sounds deterministic to me. If reality has some in built mechanism of distributive justice than the whole concept of there being an objective morality is a moot point. No matter what we do, karma will take care of the loose ends. Nonetheless, it wouldn't explain why one action is good while another is evil. It is simply a behaviorist method of manipulating human action through the appeal to consequence (if you kill, you shall be killed). Of course, I might go one step further by pointing out that if reincarnation were real than death in effect would be an illusion and it wouldn't be possible to "kill" anything.
It is not a problem. It is the simple fact that by depriving the liberty of another being in the moment, you are depriving them of the ability to deprive you of liberty simultaneously. Whereas curiosity, respect, empathy, and mutual exchange can happen between two parties at once. It is immoral to initiate force. It is moral to abstain from violence as a means of getting what you want.
Mind Over Matter
Registered Senior Member
It seems sort of an inverse of the Golden Rule.
Golden Rule (Do unto others...) states that we need to treat others as we WISH to be treated.
"What goes around..." Is simply saying you WILL be treated in the way that you treat others...
So - to kind of describe the "mechanism" - it is the simple fact that when you act, you set in motion a "react". Put out Love and Love returns. What goes out is most often what comes back.
