Wallener

Hey, my personal belief is that any philosophy that cannot be fully described in three sentences or less is useless. Yours fit in two.

ComestibleVenom

My personal belief is that most philosophy that can be fully described in three sentences is sterile and indolent.

Wallener

Heck, for that you don't even need the qualifier: most philosophy is sterile and indolent.

Sultanist

Ah, but the key word is "most". Not all. Besides, mine is a religion not a philosophy.
So that don't count.

Wallener

I'm with Hawkings on this one: philosophy will remain moribund and sterile as long as it remains enraptured by the illusion of necessary truths and certainty in all possible worlds. It's like the entire field is still stuck in the 19th century.

Asha'man

If you understand fully, then why misrepresent Darwin?

Can't you make your point more honestly?

This doesn't seem to have anything whatsoever to do with my point. You misrepresented Darwin, who proposed a scientific explanation for the diversity of life. Scientific explanations operate under an entirely different rule than mythology, they get tested. If you think a scientific explanation isn't correct, you are perfectly justified in testing it out of existance, which is how the whole process works.

Anat

Wallener, I don't see how Darwinic evolution says 'might makes right'. The behavioral traits that are selected in any species are specific to the living conditions, life cycle and environment of that species. Friendly female baboons have more offspring than unfriendly ones. OTOH aggressive female hyenas have more offspring than non-aggressive ones. And of course, as conditions change so do selective processes.

Also, Darwinic as it is understood is about a non-conscious process, acting on beings that are unaware of it, or at least incapable of making choices that influence it. Now, enter conscious beings with understanding of evolutionary processes. Does the fact that a behavior was selected by an evolutionary process in its own justify the behavior? Let's say, for the sake of argument, that it is true that human males were selected to neglect/abuse/kill (whether slowly or fast) children born to their mates by other men. Do we now accept this behavior (when it happens) as 'just natural' or do we hold the men who exhibit the behavior responsible for it? Do we maybe consider step-fathers that treat their step-children well as losers?

Evolution is a fact, like gravity. It is pointless to say that evolution shouldn't be selecting for a certain behavior because I find that behavior outrageous, the way it is pointless to hope gravity would stop working. But that doesn't mean we cannot have a society where such a behavior is punishable, the way we can build airplanes to overcome some effects of gravity (and who knows, we might even have personal anti-gravity machines at some point).

Maybe I am influenced (as you suggest) by my opinion as to the level of selection. I am a Dawkinsist - selection at the level of the gene. I do not owe anything to evolution and it isn't my duty to keep it going, or to keep it selecting for the same traits that it is selecting for now. Evolution doesn't suffer. If anything, my duty is to people, and to a lesser degree to other animals - entities who really suffer as a result of people's choices. To quote Steven Pinker, "If my genes don't like it, they can jump in a lake"

So back to God. Suppose I were to be convinced that the God of the flood and Sodom was real. So what? He isn't doing anything to me now that I break so many of his rules (did you know Rav Ovadiah Yosef forbade walking on grass and leaning on a tree on Shabbat?) why would he start treating me any differently all of a sudden? I hold myself as the final authority wrt my choices, as I am the one who will have to live with them. If this God wants me to do things that I find reprehensible I won't do them because I do not want the experience of living knowing that I have commited reprehensible acts.

Agemegos

What if the flaming letters spelled out "1+1=7"? I wouldn't believe that. Obviously, then, I am under no logical imperative to believe whatever is written in flaming letters on the face of the Moon. The phenomenon cries for an explanation, not the abandonment of rationality and the acceptation of self-evident nonsense.

Suppose the Moon turned into a Coke logo? It might, if Madison Avenue gets hold of a powerful laser.

Mobiius

I for one, would not accept it as proof of gods existence. It is a written message. I would suspect it to be some elaborate hoax. For me to firmly, undoubtedly believe in god I would have to meet him(it) face to face(if it had a face), and maybe even have him(it) do some cool tricks , er, miracles.

John A. Broussard

You can't meet her/it/him face-to-face. Read your bible! Even Moses wasn't allowed to see the face of god, but god mooned him instead.

EXODUS 33:23 And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.