muon

There's an easy counterargument a theist could use ... namely, deny that psychopaths lack a conscience. They merely refuse to obey the dictates of God.

A much better argument is along the lines suggested by LVLLN----major disagreements about morality show that conscience is not a reliable guide to morality. If God wanted our conscience to inform us as to his moral views, he would make it a wee bit clearer.

Valdemar

God must love the Swedes and the Japanese more than Americans, then, since they have a remarkably lower crime rate than the U.S. Funny how they should have a better grasp of right and wrong, considering that the Japanese rejected the Christian God I believe in the 1800's and the Swedes have been rejecting "him" more and more for the last hundred years or so.

Of course, your teacher is merely making a claim. This statement is something that needs to be backed up. There is vast amounts of evidence that shows where morality really comes from: evolution. It is quite simple, actually, and I can probably spell it out for you in a manner your teacher might grasp, if you wish.

However, it's much easier for someone to just say that "God did it."

I listened to a Christian radio station one time where the preacher said that grass was green because God chose that color over all the others for its beauty!

I'm sorry, but I have no good answers that are as short and to the point as your teacher's without being equally ludicrous and anti-intellectual.

fried beef sandwich

You mean it's not a reliable guide to one universal standard of morality, since everyone's is different.

lpetrich

I'm not sure about that dolphin-promise bit, but non-hostility and altruism are common among social animals -- and these may be a necessary part of being social.

Wolves in a pack do not indiscriminately hunt each other.
Bees in a hive do not indiscriminately sting each other.

Altrusm is carried very far by the cells of multicellular organisms -- only a tiny fraction ever have descendants that survive the death of the organism. And many cells die long before:
Skin cells
Blood cells
Wood cells
Bark cells
...

Dave

can you go in it more and like either posts articles or facts or something. cause i wanta bring this stuff up in school.

hclincha

I don't know about Sweden, but Norway has a social structure which is very similar, and the number of murders and manslaughters in Norway between 1994 and 2002 was 70-85 per year, which is about 0,019 cases per thousand inhabitants. If you enter http://www.ssb.no/english/ you will have all available statistics on Norway, including religion. The number of members of the Church of Norway is rather fictious (86,2% of pop.), as everyone who has parents member of the church will automatically be member of the church. Most people just won't bother to get out. 67% of the adult pop. did not attend a single divine service during 1997, not including visits in connection with baptism, confirmation, wedding or funeral. Only 9% attended 10 or more times. I do not have the statistics for the US, but I suspect that both the number of murders per 1000 people is much higher, and the attendance to church.

So either, God does not give conscience - or conscience makes for a more criminal mind. I rather suspect the latter hypothesis to be false, and the first to be correct.

Queen of Swords

It would be very wrong for me to respect a mass murderer. Therefore, if God gave me a conscience, he deliberately picked out one that would not permit me to bow down before him in mindless adoration after I realized just what he did with the flood, the slaughter of the Egyptian firstborn, etc. So either God is a sadist who enjoys "programming" certain people for hell, or there is no God and my conscience is the result of my genes and upbringing.

ipa68

Dave,
I think theists usually counter the example of moral non-believers with the assertion that God created all and gave all a conscience, whether they believe in him or not. That was my christian sister's response once. Be prepared for that.

Zeda

I don't believe thier is one universal moralitly. Morals are not a matter of conscience, but a matter of society's imprint. For anything I can think of that would appear to be immoral in our culture, there is a culture that found nothing wrong with it.

For instance, Incest. Incest of varying degrees, has been practiced in many cultures. From cousin marriage, all the way to the marriage of brothers and sisters, there have been people who saw nothing wrong with it. Homsexualitly, which the Bible condemns, is another good example. Many, many cultures saw nothing at all wrong in it. Slavery, which we see as wrong today, was practiced almost world-wide at one time.

In fact, more of what we would call evil has been committed in the name of god/or gods, then proabably any other reason. All the way from Aztecs with thier thousands of captives, having thier still beating hearts torn out of them to sacrifice to the gods, to the atrocities committed by the Hebrews in the Old Testament, to the torture and burning of the heretics and the witches of the early church, to the present day terrorism occuring all over the world. The greatest cause of mankind's suffering has been religion.

Ego

On the subject of psycopaths and serial killers, I read an issue of new scientist a few months ago that was explaining how studies of brains of serial killers/psycopaths actually indicate that they have something wrong with a certain part of the brain. Now there are two kinds of problems with the brain for two kinds of psycopath. The one that I can remember off the top of my head is (I think it is serial killers) that a part of there brain that recognises peoples emotions (specifically fear, pain etc) isn't working, or not working properly. So in effect they are inclined to become a serial killer. (A point which raises many interesting moral issues regarding punishment.)

If you want I'll try and dig out the copy that had it and I'll post some relevant quotes (or failing that, I'll tell you the issue number so you can get down to a library and find it and read it for yourself)

Also I recommend you check these articles out:

Newscientist.com - Human Nature - Mind

and

Newscienist.com - Human Nature - The Brain