Morals

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Everyone has made interesting observations, and I thank you all.

CCI made a post #44 no one has responded to. I haven't responded yet because the link deserves a thread of its own. An excellent article-- http://news.yahoo.co...-110700315.html The article presents some things which may be "basically factual", and also dutifully reports various people's opinions which may be smart or dumb, but instructive nontheless. The rest of this message is not direct response to CCI's article, though it is relevant to the current thread drift.

Assorted ideas--

* Hardly anybody appreciates being pushed around, told what to think, mocked, belittled or disrespected. Maybe there is a spectrum of possible responses, though two biggies would be either push back equally hard, or alternately keep quiet, nurse a grudge, and get even later on. Hardly anybody is "just gonna take it laying down". I try real hard not to get in anybody's face, but probably fail occasionally. I try not to go around telling others what to think. If I was asked an opinion then it isn't impolite or pushy to answer honestly, even if it makes somebody mad. Though I will shamelessly lie if asked "does this dress make me look fat?" Discretion can be the better part of valor.

* Dunno whether it is impolite or aggressive to mock IDEAS rather than INDIVIDUALS. Maybe sometimes it is OK and sometimes not? People can get very attached to ideas. Many people have died in defense of ideas. If you mock an idea then some folk may take it personal, even though you didn't insult the person. If you just lay into a person's favorite theory, it can be like telling a new mom, "Thats the ugliest baby I ever laid eyes on." Ya didn't say that mom was ugly, so why did she get so mad? Am guessing that it would be better to criticize an idea without mocking it, though some sensitive or intolerant souls may interpret passionless criticism as mockery. Alas, man is weak and occasionally an idea may so richly deserve mockery that it is difficult to resist.

* It is difficult to avoid judging a group based on the worst or best examples. In addition you might meet nice folk every day from a certain group but never add them to your "category tally" because they never told you their opinion. Ferinstance, not picking on vegetarians in this example, I think it applies to about any group-- If a new employee hires in and within 5 minutes of getting his shovel he has told every digger in the ditch that he is a vegatarian. Not only is that fella instantly added to the "vegetarian category tally", but IMO the odds are pretty good that there is "something not quite right" about the guy. The odds are pretty good that he will behave in ways that make vegetarians look bad. On the other hand, you might dig ditches 10 years with a good old boy never knowing he is a vegetarian, just assuming the guy is unusually fond of french fries and salads.

People who put religion or atheism or politics right up front will tend to be odd ducks and they also tend to give their entire cohort group a bad reputation. Now me, I didn't like going to church and dammed if I will join some atheist council and go to atheist affirmation meetings and agitate to promote atheist causes. There is a subset of atheists that were fanatic believers in religion for many years, and then all of a sudden changed their minds and morphed into fanatic atheist missionaries. Such a person was an annoying fanatic his whole life. He may have "changed sides" but didn't become any more pleasant of a person. You can see the same thing in annoying pushy liberals who occasionally change their stripes and become annoying pushy conservatives, or vice-versa.

* It is not my place to judge other folks rules of evidence. What they believe and how they made the decision is their own business. I believe there are at least two categories of rules of evidence, public and personal. If you see a black panther in the back yard then you saw it with your own eyes and you don't have to rigorously experimentally prove to a p < 0.05 in order to believe it. I'm not gonna rain on your parade and tell you what you saw. But if you expect OhShoot to believe in your back yard black panther then you better supply better evidence than, "I know its real, I done seen it with my own peepers!" Am not saying that people should shut up and never explain their experience. Just saying that you can have perfectly good reasons for believing something, but don't get mad if other people don't believe you without adequate evidence.

There are various "public" formal rules of evidence. Some evidence might pass muster in a court room but be unacceptable in a scientific paper, and vice-versa. The philosophical underpinnings of any rules of evidence are slightly arbitrary based on a few assumptions which can't be objectively proved. The assumptions may work perfectly for the task at hand and may or may not be 100 percent true assumptions. Just that you can't prove the assumptions beyond a shadow of a doubt if someone else doesn't agree.

Have seen this play out in atheist-vs-religious-vs-mystical flame wars. Sometimes the institutional religious and mystics will gang up on the atheists. Sometimes the religious and atheists will gang up on the mystics, etc. If a religious or mystical person explains, "I believe X because of Y personal experience"-- Rather than responding, "Hey, that's kewl. That never happened to me. You are lucky to have such experience."-- Atheist evangelists will often tear into a person applying "their possibly faulty understanding of scientific epistemology" to "prove" the person is stupid to believe in hallucination. Works the same way when the institutional religious tear into atheists based on "biblical doctrine which is beyond question because god wrote it." Or the occasional cases when a mystic insists everybody else buy into on his own personal revelations.

It goes back to being pushy. If you are trying to force beliefs on others, then you can probably expect some push-back, but it is nutty for people to attack others merely for expressing an honest opinion.

I think that personal experience is the highest-quality evidence you can get. If you mix two chemicals in the test tube and it turns blue, then you know that happened as good as you can know anything. If every time you talk to god then god talks back, then you know that as directly as humanly possible. Its not my place to tell you any different. But if you want me to believe that the chemical turned blue or you want me to obey what god told you, then it is gonna require better evidence than just your word on the matter.

* One more point and the sermon of the day shall end. Sing the last hymn then we can go smoke big ceegars, drink strong black coffee, and eat a mess of fried chicken, turnip greens and corn on the cob.

Some people seem to enter into recreational discussions expecting to win. It is a blood sport, take no prisoners. I just like to discuss stuff. I don't like talking to folks who consider an internet discussion to be a winner-takes-all blood sport. There are few if any people like that on TGO, but some forums are full of them. Sometimes they happen to be very educated unpleasant winner-take-all verbal combatants. Just sayin, I don't like it and don't think it is kewl, but thats just me.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Good points, Lester. Discussions are good until they become arguments where no one can or should win.

Pushing a view on another might not be good. Airing views should be open for anyone to try to understand,

especially someone's point of view.

I'm still sipping this morning's strong cold black coffee

[mikegideon]

Lester always has thoughtful posts. My ADD won't let me do that.

[Guest profgunner]

Arguments made in good faith are constructive. Everybody learns something, no matter which side, if any, "wins". Disrespect is the enemy of a good argument. It will kill it every time.

Edited April 15, 2012 by profgunner

[Guest 6.8 AR]

The disrespectful part is what can happen here, unfortunately. Some have been known to look down their

noses at others. It can screw up a good thread fast.

And we started out talking about morals.

[Mike.357]

This thread is great.

Very civil and moralistic.

I was hopeful it would break down to debauchery, but no joy.

As for "up there" as a location for heavev, where is up there?

As a child i always thought it was on cloud tops.

Edited April 15, 2012 by Mike.357

[Guest profgunner]

The origins of morality?

[Timestepper]

This thread is great.

Very civil and moralistic.

I was hopeful it would break down to debauchery, but no joy.

As for "up there" as a location for heavev, where is up there?

As a child i always thought it was on cloud tops.

I think Heaven, too, is subjective to most of us. In the slightly abstract, one man's Heaven may be another man's hell and vice versa.

I remember going on a date, years ago, with a young lady who presented herself as a conservationist and naturalist. With that in mind, I planned a lovely picnic far out in the country and completely surrounded by nature. She was, to say the least, absolutely disgusted. When I apologized and explained that, given her apparent passion for nature, I thought she'd enjoy a meal created from natural products in a natural setting, she exclaimed, "This isn't NATURE! This is the freaking WILDERNESS!!!"

As for me, I'm not sure where Heaven is or whether I'll ever get there. But as long as I continue to live my life honestly and in the way that feels most right to me, personally, I'm not terribly worried about it. Nor do I think I need be.

A friend of mine once said, "Religion is when you believe in hell. Spirituality is when you've been there." I still don't know if I completely agree with that statement, but I've noticed that, while I'm not at all what most would consider religious, there are times when I am indeed a very spiritual s.o.b.

[wjh2657]

Morality is in a constant state of flux. What is moral here is immoral there. What is moral at this time is immoral in another time. Simply put, morality is all of us coming to agreement as to how we, as a group, will behave. In cannibal country, it is moral to eat your neighbor! Don't digress into ethics either. Ethics are simply morals written down, same arguments prevail.

It is because morality fails to provide universal guidance that we are burdened with that greatest of all evils, the law. For group safety, we have to pursue legality instead of morality.

[strickj]

This thread is great.

Very civil and moralistic.

I was hopeful it would break down to debauchery, but no joy.

As for "up there" as a location for heavev, where is up there?

As a child i always thought it was on cloud tops.

Some believe that heaven is nothing more then a place where you recreate your best memories.

Guess the same could be said for hell where you forever stay in your regrets.

A place with no "psychical location" but more-less an everlasting last memory.

I have no idea what's true or not. I have no idea if there's a real heaven and hell. But I do like to think that my last and eternal thought is of my happiest time.

[Mike.357]

My oldest grandson once asked me what happens to us when we die.

I thought a long time on how to answer. I wanted to be honest but not scare him.

I explained that i believed when we die we are gone physically. But if we lived a good life we live on in our loved one's memories. That would be like heaven. But if we were bad people no one would want to remember us and that would be like going to hell. I explained how i still feel close to my grandmother and think of her just about every day. And because of that she lives on. Only when there is no one left to remember her will she really be gone. And at that point it won't much matter.

[mcurrier]

We have lost morals and ethics as a society from the top on down.

[Dolomite`s Breezy]

Morals are still here.. you dont need to go to church 3 times a week to be a good person if you dont want to or dont believe in a higher power..Morals are what you feel is right inside of you. You know its wrong to steal or cheat on your spouse.Just because some people do not go to church or read the bible. they still live a good, moral life.

But it is also good to go to church of you strongly believe that you will go to heaven and be a better person..Either way.. both sides need a lesson from each other sometimes.. and sadly, most of the time it starts fights and even wars..

My beliefs are my own personl thing.I dont tell anyone, I dont try to convince others in what I believe in ..

Morals , for me, are what my mom taught me.. is what I believe is right. Society also pays a part of it

I also instilled that into my son.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Even though you can go into an intellectual discussion about morals, you have summed it up well, dear.