DNAunion

Duvenoy

Dunno, but he's hard to mis-read, ain't he.

Today, I faithfully followed the Heavenly Plan and fed little mousies and ratties to the snakies.

doov

scigirl

Um, Ken Ham?



scigirl

Bubba

Actually, in my mind predation is probably the best arguement for evolution and against a literal reading of Genesis.

Chris

RufusAtticus

10,000 Monkeys working at 10,000 Typewritters for 10,000 years?

DNAunion

DNAunion: It's from an ethics book by two Ph.Ds (David Bruce Ingram & Jennifer A. Parks) I bought last night.

And note that they refute the Divine Command Theory so they aren't a couple of Creationists or other religious nuts trying to convince people that we should base our morals on "God's Word" by trashing science (evolution).

And their statements do have some rooting in Darwin's own words.

DNAunion: I will repeat what I said at the other site: the point of my bringing this up...


[ September 15, 2002: Message edited by: DNAunion ]</p>

lpetrich

A couple centuries ago, it had been believed that there was no predation before Adam and Eve had committed that terrible sin -- that lions lay down with lambs and that spiders never tried to catch flies.

There is a serious problem: predatory animals have numerous adaptations that assist them in their quests for food. And according to the Argument from Design, they must have been designed that way. Were they rebuilt after Adam and Eve's unauthorized fruit consumption?

And the fossil record has abundant evidence of predatory behavior, like bite marks on bones and shells, stomach contents, bits of bone in coprolites (fossi excrement), and even cases of fish that have choked on other fish.

This is even clear evidence that there has been sin before humanity ever existed; those fish have clearly been guilty of the sin of gluttony, one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

The Lone Ranger

I mean no offense, but I don't understand the point of this. Nature is not nice. The forests aren't filled with happy creatures gamboling about and trying to fulfill God's will. As Hobbes put it, the vast majority of creatures live lives that are "nasty, brutish, and short."

So?

The functioning of the natural world has nothing to do with ethical principles. Anyone who concludes that because the natural world is indifferent to suffering, it's therefore "proper" for him/her to be just as indifferent to the suffering of other is committing the "naturalistic fallacy."

It's no more valid to conclude that a nasty world justifies cruelty or indifference than it is to conclude that because many people are cruel and nasty that their behavior is worthy of emulation.

I haven't read the book in question, but I'd guess that this is precisely the point that the authors were about to make.

Cheers,

Michael

[ September 15, 2002: Message edited by: The Lone Ranger ]</p>

DNAunion

DNAunion: But I don't think someone who is ignorant of philosophy/ethics and who loses his foundation for his ethics can be too harshly judged for having considered that it might be relevant. Obviously, the authors of the ethics book thought it relevant enough to include.

Okay, I'll shut up about this whole thing after this.

As I said before, it wasn't religion some 5 or 6 years ago that gave me my ethics: I had those ethics before going to church. What religion did was give my ethics the ultimate foundation (or so I thought until reading chapter 4 of my new book, which shows that even believers shouldn't accept Divine Command Theory). Before that time I had never bothered to see what was supporting my ethics so there was no problem: I blindly and without questioning followed the ethics I had been taught. Then while in church, I had that support. But after leaving church and slowly becoming more and more "materialistic" in my beliefs, I accepted evolution and lost religion (separate things!) and was without a foundation for my ethics. As my new book says:

DNAunion: I felt this need for a firm foundation but did not have the reasons at the time, so played Devil's advocate to get some answers.

I have been given several good leads over the last couple of days. I read some stuff on Kant, on secular humanism, and then last night bought a book devoted to ethics. After reading just the first 5 chapters I think I will easily be able to find a new foundation for my ethics that is not religiously based.

Dawkins' said that Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually satisfied atheist. And now I see clearly that it is possible to be an ethically satisfied "Darwinist" as well.

[ September 15, 2002: Message edited by: DNAunion ]</p>

The Lone Ranger

I like both the sentiment and the reasoning of this quite a lot.


Good fortune and good reading to you.

Cheers,

Michael