"Steve Makohin" <smakohin@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:smakohin-EF75DD.00452306112003@enews.newsguy.com...

In article <3fa68030$1_1@newspeer2.tds.net>, "sb" <sb@nospam.com>
wrote:

"Steve Makohin" <smakohin@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:smakohin-D95E5D.16563802112003@enews.newsguy.com...

In article <238b53a4.0311021221.4186576e@posting.google.com>,
lflank@ij.net (Lenny Flank) wrote:

<snip>

OK, I think I am understanding where you are coming from. To you religion

is

all about "exerting one's wholly subjective values on other people". It

is

all about control. "_Nobody_ can tell us how it OUGHT TO BE" - obviously
what you hear from religion is that it is telling us how things ought to

be.

[...]

Nope. Your thinking about "where I'm coming from" is completely
incorrect.

When someone makes a claim that something "should" be a certain way,
there are few meanings for this:

(1) An actual event or thing has deviated from a prescribed
plan or order. Example: I contract painters to paint my
garage white, and they painted it blue. They "should" have
painted it white, according to the terms of our contract.

(2) The speaker actually means "I _thought_ it would be different."
Example: I've tested the program a dozen times. It should not
have done that.
Translation: The program is behaving exactly as instructed,
but I have made an error in the instructions, and I was not
aware of it, therefore my expectations were not met, and the
program did not behave as I (incorrectly) *believed* it
should.

(3) The speaker is merely presenting a hypothesis.
Example: If we run this experiment and my theory is correct,
then we should get the following results.

(4) The speaker is talking purely in terms of how events or
things would be different to better suit their own desired
outcome.
Example: People should be less political in this office.
Translation: I would be a lot happier if people in this
office did not use covert persuasive tactics to achieve
their objectives.

The problem with people, those being religionists or philosophers,
telling us how things "should" or ought to be, is that they want us to
believe that they are speaking in the Category 1 arena. This is
especially true for believers of faith-based systems where the
believers often believe there is a natural order, or a "master plan"
(set fown by the deity of their choice), and some humans are deviating
from it. The problem is that there is not a single iota of proof to
support this notion. So these people who are so happy to tell us how
things "should" be, are actually speaking from the Category 4 arena,
doing nothing more than expressing how they would like things or
people to be different to comply more closely with their own values,
objectives, or desires.

OK. However you parse the word "should", you hear "religionists" saying
"should"...

...My point, which I guess I did not make clear, is that there is
definitely a large segment of the religious world that traffics in "should".
BUT, not ALL religion does this. I am not sure you can hear what I am saying
here. Some religion does not have to do with "should". Some religion is
simply a personal experience, and there is no element of "should", or of
putting it on anyone else. This is the whole point of what I have been
trying to say in this whole thread.

SO, when you say, "there is a conflict between religion and science", I
think it would be better to say "there is a conflict between religious
fundamentalism and science", or "between Christian fundamentalism and
science", or "between some religion and science". I think all of these
statements are true.

I wish you would acknowledge my point, which is that there is some religion,
perhaps only a small part, that does not necessarily have to do with the
supernatural, the metaphysical, "faith", or "belief", but rather it is a
personal experience, not universalized. Parts of religious language seem to
describe this experience better than other language available.

This kind of religion has NO CONFLICT WITH SCIENCE.

That is the point I am trying to make.

Organization: Race towards an early grave

Kevin

I'll check your site out at work when I have good access, but might
I make a comment here? Establishing that something will lead to the
extinction or flourishing of some species is not to establish the
right or wrong of things, merely the instrumental effect of it.

But that's probably enough for a rational, practicable, human
definition of right and wrong.

still need to know why that value is right, and the continued
existence of a species is not, in itself, either a good or bad
thing, except to members of that species.

Thats right.

Which was, I believe, the point of

Lenny's comment.

Which is my point also. Lets get real here. We are all humans, its a
simply matter to conclude that, for us, wrong is most certainly
anything that causes us all to succumb to non existence. We
generally *all* hold the view that the megalomaniac that wants blow
up the world is insane.

You say at the morals page that "It is held here, that morals are
nothing more than codes of conduct that attempt to maximize the
replication numbers of Replicators within the constraints of a
particular environment."

Now apart from the pathetic fallacy (in the
Hull-Dawkins Replicator definition, replicators are passive WRT
fitness and goals),

I have a philosophical problem.

There is a "genetic fallacy" in philosophy, usually expressed as the
claim that the origins of some moral precept in divine revelation do
not, of themselves, make that precept correct.

It has an inverse,
though
- the origins of some precept in less honoured biology doesn't make it
incorrect. Here you have taken the two and combined them - the origins
of moral codes in fitness enhancing strategies do not, if true, make
them morally correct.

We might sensibly ask whether the enhancement of fitness is
worthwhile. We might ask whether we want to live in a world where, in
order to survive, we must adopt strategies that, for example, lead to
genocide, if they were the only viable way to enhance our fitness. We
might ask sensibly whether the world might not be better off without
humans, as some extremist conservationists do.

Now you can say that human needs take priority or that we must act so
as to enhance our fitness though it lead to the destruction of the
biosphere,

but my point is that this is itself a valuation, and you
are answering the other values with your own (whatever you happen to
adopt).

You think that the evolutionary underpinnings of morality are
sufficient to shore them up,

but this is to commit the genetic
fallacy.

My own view is that however we come by our morality, we are duty bound
to follow it, and if we revise our moral codes we do so on the basis
of some value system we hold higher than the expressed code. In short,
justification of morality is self-contained.

Organization: Race towards an early grave

Kevin

I'll check your site out at work when I have good access, but might
I make a comment here? Establishing that something will lead to the
extinction or flourishing of some species is not to establish the
right or wrong of things, merely the instrumental effect of it.

But that's probably enough for a rational, practicable, human
definition of right and wrong.

still need to know why that value is right, and the continued
existence of a species is not, in itself, either a good or bad
thing, except to members of that species.

Thats right.

Which was, I believe, the point of

Lenny's comment.

Which is my point also. Lets get real here. We are all humans, its a
simply matter to conclude that, for us, wrong is most certainly
anything that causes us all to succumb to non existence. We
generally *all* hold the view that the megalomaniac that wants blow
up the world is insane.

You say at the morals page that "It is held here, that morals are
nothing more than codes of conduct that attempt to maximize the
replication numbers of Replicators within the constraints of a
particular environment."

Now apart from the pathetic fallacy (in the
Hull-Dawkins Replicator definition, replicators are passive WRT
fitness and goals),

I have a philosophical problem.

There is a "genetic fallacy" in philosophy, usually expressed as the
claim that the origins of some moral precept in divine revelation do
not, of themselves, make that precept correct.

It has an inverse,
though
- the origins of some precept in less honoured biology doesn't make it
incorrect. Here you have taken the two and combined them - the origins
of moral codes in fitness enhancing strategies do not, if true, make
them morally correct.

We might sensibly ask whether the enhancement of fitness is
worthwhile. We might ask whether we want to live in a world where, in
order to survive, we must adopt strategies that, for example, lead to
genocide, if they were the only viable way to enhance our fitness. We
might ask sensibly whether the world might not be better off without
humans, as some extremist conservationists do.

Now you can say that human needs take priority or that we must act so
as to enhance our fitness though it lead to the destruction of the
biosphere,

but my point is that this is itself a valuation, and you
are answering the other values with your own (whatever you happen to
adopt).

You think that the evolutionary underpinnings of morality are
sufficient to shore them up,

but this is to commit the genetic
fallacy.

My own view is that however we come by our morality, we are duty bound
to follow it, and if we revise our moral codes we do so on the basis
of some value system we hold higher than the expressed code. In short,
justification of morality is self-contained.

Organization: Race towards an early grave

Kevin

I'll check your site out at work when I have good access, but might
I make a comment here? Establishing that something will lead to the
extinction or flourishing of some species is not to establish the
right or wrong of things, merely the instrumental effect of it.

But that's probably enough for a rational, practicable, human
definition of right and wrong.

still need to know why that value is right, and the continued
existence of a species is not, in itself, either a good or bad
thing, except to members of that species.

Thats right.

Which was, I believe, the point of

Lenny's comment.

Which is my point also. Lets get real here. We are all humans, its a
simply matter to conclude that, for us, wrong is most certainly
anything that causes us all to succumb to non existence. We
generally *all* hold the view that the megalomaniac that wants blow
up the world is insane.

You say at the morals page that "It is held here, that morals are
nothing more than codes of conduct that attempt to maximize the
replication numbers of Replicators within the constraints of a
particular environment."

Now apart from the pathetic fallacy (in the
Hull-Dawkins Replicator definition, replicators are passive WRT
fitness and goals),

I have a philosophical problem.

There is a "genetic fallacy" in philosophy, usually expressed as the
claim that the origins of some moral precept in divine revelation do
not, of themselves, make that precept correct.

It has an inverse,
though
- the origins of some precept in less honoured biology doesn't make it
incorrect. Here you have taken the two and combined them - the origins
of moral codes in fitness enhancing strategies do not, if true, make
them morally correct.

We might sensibly ask whether the enhancement of fitness is
worthwhile. We might ask whether we want to live in a world where, in
order to survive, we must adopt strategies that, for example, lead to
genocide, if they were the only viable way to enhance our fitness. We
might ask sensibly whether the world might not be better off without
humans, as some extremist conservationists do.

Now you can say that human needs take priority or that we must act so
as to enhance our fitness though it lead to the destruction of the
biosphere,

but my point is that this is itself a valuation, and you
are answering the other values with your own (whatever you happen to
adopt).

You think that the evolutionary underpinnings of morality are
sufficient to shore them up,

but this is to commit the genetic
fallacy.

My own view is that however we come by our morality, we are duty bound
to follow it, and if we revise our moral codes we do so on the basis
of some value system we hold higher than the expressed code. In short,
justification of morality is self-contained.