In article <MPG.20c4b593511e88c9989681@news.readfreenews.net>,
quibbler <quibbler247@yahoo.com> wrote:

Science has dealt yet another blow to bible-thumping, garden of Eden
based creationist ChristInsanity as exemplified by idiots like KennyBoy
HamBrain and his Absurdities in Genesis crowd.

Yes indeedy, contrary to the "Mankind is inherently evil and needs to be
saved" mantra of Judeo-Xian theology, new brain scan research suggests
that humans are inherently altruistic without the need for Jebus or the
Brible.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-
20070528-11470000-bc-us-altruism.xml

Money lines include, "unselfishness is not a matter of morality" and
"altruism is something that makes people feel good, lighting up a
primitive part of the human brain that usually responds to food or sex".
Science has yet again demolished the ridiculous "you need God to be
Good" arguments, which was about all that theists had left in their
ever-diminishing arsenal of shabby excuses for their idiotic religous
views.

So much for the lie that people who don't believe in a sky pixie will be
mean, nasty, and selfish, and probably cut each others' throats.

On Mon, 28 May 2007 10:47:39 -0600, quibbler <quibbler247@yahoo.com>
wrote:

Science has dealt yet another blow to bible-thumping, garden of Eden
based creationist ChristInsanity as exemplified by idiots like KennyBoy
HamBrain and his Absurdities in Genesis crowd.

Yes indeedy, contrary to the "Mankind is inherently evil and needs to be
saved" mantra of Judeo-Xian theology, new brain scan research suggests
that humans are inherently altruistic without the need for Jebus or the
Brible.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-
20070528-11470000-bc-us-altruism.xml

Money lines include, "unselfishness is not a matter of morality" and
"altruism is something that makes people feel good, lighting up a
primitive part of the human brain that usually responds to food or sex".

Libertardians who recoil at the thought of "altruism" should check
this out as well...

quibbler wrote :

Science has dealt yet another blow to bible-thumping, garden of Eden
based creationist ChristInsanity as exemplified by idiots like KennyBoy
HamBrain and his Absurdities in Genesis crowd.

Yes indeedy, contrary to the "Mankind is inherently evil and needs to be
saved" mantra of Judeo-Xian theology, new brain scan research suggests
that humans are inherently altruistic without the need for Jebus or the
Brible.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-
20070528-11470000-bc-us-altruism.xml

Money lines include, "unselfishness is not a matter of morality" and
"altruism is something that makes people feel good, lighting up a
primitive part of the human brain that usually responds to food or sex".
Science has yet again demolished the ridiculous "you need God to be
Good" arguments, which was about all that theists had left in their
ever-diminishing arsenal of shabby excuses for their idiotic religous
views.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/27/AR2007052701056.html

The more researchers learn, the more it appears that the foundation of
morality is empathy. Being able to recognize -- even experience
vicariously -- what another creature is going through was an important
leap in the evolution of social behavior. And it is only a short step
from this awareness to many human notions of right and wrong, says Jean
Decety, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago.

The research enterprise has been viewed with interest by philosophers
and theologians, but already some worry that it raises troubling
questions. Reducing morality and immorality to brain chemistry --
rather than free will -- might diminish the importance of personal
responsibility.

Even more important, some wonder whether the very idea
of morality is somehow degraded if it turns out to be just another
evolutionary tool that nature uses to help species survive and
propagate.

Moral decisions can often feel like abstract intellectual challenges,
but a number of experiments such as the one by Grafman have shown that
emotions are central to moral thinking. In another experiment published
in March, University of Southern California neuroscientist Antonio R.
Damasio and his colleagues showed that patients with damage to an area
of the brain known as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex lack the
ability to feel their way to moral answers.

When confronted with moral dilemmas, the brain-damaged patients coldly
came up with "end-justifies-the-means" answers. Damasio said the point
was not that they reached immoral conclusions, but that when confronted
by a difficult issue -- such as whether to shoot down a passenger plane
hijacked by terrorists before it hits a major city -- these patients
appear to reach decisions without the anguish that afflicts those with
normally functioning brains.

Such experiments have two important implications. One is that morality
is not merely about the decisions people reach but also about the
process by which they get there. Another implication, said Adrian
Raine, a clinical neuroscientist at the University of Southern
California, is that society may have to rethink how it judges immoral
people.

Psychopaths often feel no empathy or remorse. Without that awareness,
people relying exclusively on reasoning seem to find it harder to sort
their way through moral thickets. Does that mean they should be held to
different standards of accountability?

"Eventually, you are bound to get into areas that for thousands of
years we have preferred to keep mystical," said Grafman, the chief
cognitive neuroscientist at the National Institute of Neurological
Disorders and Stroke. "Some of the questions that are important are not
just of intellectual interest, but challenging and frightening to the
ways we ground our lives. We need to step very carefully."

Joshua D. Greene, a Harvard neuroscientist and philosopher, said
multiple experiments suggest that morality arises from basic brain
activities. Morality, he said, is not a brain function elevated above
our baser impulses. Greene said it is not "handed down" by philosophers
and clergy, but "handed up," an outgrowth of the brain's basic
propensities.

Moral decision-making often involves competing brain networks vying for
supremacy, he said. Simple moral decisions -- is killing a child right
or wrong? -- are simple because they activate a straightforward brain
response. Difficult moral decisions, by contrast, activate multiple
brain regions that conflict with one another, he said.

In one 2004 brain-imaging experiment, Greene asked volunteers to
imagine that they were hiding in a cellar of a village as enemy
soldiers came looking to kill all the inhabitants. If a baby was crying
in the cellar, Greene asked, was it right to smother the child to keep
the soldiers from discovering the cellar and killing everyone?

The reason people are slow to answer such an awful question, the study
indicated, is that emotion-linked circuits automatically signaling that
killing a baby is wrong clash with areas of the brain that involve
cooler aspects of cognition. One brain region activated when people
process such difficult choices is the inferior parietal lobe, which has
been shown to be active in more impersonal decision-making. This part
of the brain, in essence, was "arguing" with brain networks that
reacted with visceral horror.

Such studies point to a pattern, Greene said, showing "competing forces
that may have come online at different points in our evolutionary
history. A basic emotional response is probably much older than the
ability to evaluate costs and benefits."

While one implication of such findings is that people with certain
kinds of brain damage may do bad things they cannot be held responsible
for, the new research could also expand the boundaries of moral
responsibility. Neuroscience research, Greene said, is finally
explaining a problem that has long troubled philosophers and moral
teachers: Why is it that people who are willing to help someone in
front of them will ignore abstract pleas for help from those who are
distant, such as a request for a charitable contribution that could
save the life of a child overseas?

"We evolved in a world where people in trouble right in front of you
existed, so our emotions were tuned to them, whereas we didn't face the
other kind of situation," Greene said. "It is comforting to think your
moral intuitions are reliable and you can trust them. But if my
analysis is right, your intuitions are not trustworthy. Once you
realize why you have the intuitions you have, it puts a burden on you"
to think about morality differently.

Marc Hauser, another Harvard researcher, has used cleverly designed
psychological experiments to study morality. He said his research has
found that people all over the world process moral questions in the
same way, suggesting that moral thinking is intrinsic to the human
brain, rather than a product of culture. It may be useful to think
about morality much like language, in that its basic features are
hard-wired, Hauser said. Different cultures and religions build on that
framework in much the way children in different cultures learn
different languages using the same neural machinery.

Hauser said that if his theory is right, there should be aspects of
morality that are automatic and unconscious -- just like language.
People would reach moral conclusions in the same way they construct a
sentence without having been trained in linguistics. Hauser said the
idea could shed light on contradictions in common moral stances.

U.S. law, for example, distinguishes between a physician who removes a
feeding tube from a terminally ill patient and a physician who
administers a drug to kill the patient.

Hauser said the only difference is that the second scenario is more
emotionally charged -- and therefore feels like a different moral
problem, when it really is not: "In the end, the doctor's intent is to
reduce suffering, and that is as true in active as in passive
euthanasia, and either way the patient is dead."

Pang - wondering if there will be a cure for damaged ventromedial
prefrontal cortex