On May 9, 6:49�pm, veritas
yahoo.com> wrote:> On May 9, 2:40�pm, "pba...@worldonline.nl"
> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>>> On 5 mei, 13:36, Sound of Trumpet
mailhaven.com>
>> wrote:>
>
>>> Wednesday, April 23, 2008
>
>>> New atheists make a huge ethical mistake
>
>>> It seems quite popular now for new atheists to insist that one cannot
>>> jump from 'is' to 'ought'. For example, if a professional historian
>>> claims that what Hitler did was influenced by underlying Darwinian
>>> principles, the atheist will be quick to point out that those
>>> "Darwinian principles" are merely descriptive, i.e. they only tell us
>>> what is the case. But, we are assured by the atheist, the same
>>> principles do not imply anything prescriptive, i.e. they don't tell us
>>> what ought to be the case. So Richard Dawkins:
>
>>> I have often said before, as a scientist I am a passionate Darwinian.
>>> But as a citizen and a human being, I want to construct a society
>>> which is about as un-Darwinian as we can make it. I approve of looking
>>> after the poor (very un-Darwinian). I approve of universal medical
>>> care (very un-Darwinian). It is one of the classic philosophical
>>> fallacies to derive an 'ought' from an 'is'.
>
>>> On this point, theists should wholeheartedly agree with atheists. You
>>> cannot infer an 'ought' from an 'is'. And this is precisely one of the
>>> troubling metaethical problems for atheistic morality.
>
>>> Assume (per impossibile) that atheistic naturalism is true. Assume,
>>> furthermore, that one can't infer an 'ought' from an 'is'. (Richard
>>> Dawkins and many other atheists should grant both of these
>>> assumptions.) Given our second assumption, there is no description of
>>> anything in the natural world from which we can infer an 'ought'. And
>>> given our first assumption, there is nothing that exists over and
>>> above the natural world; the natural world is all that there is. It
>>> follows logically that, for any action you care to pick, there's no
>>> description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer
>>> that one ought to refrain from performing that action. Add a further
>>> uncontroversial assumption: an action is permissible if and only if
>>> it's not the case that one ought to refrain from performing that
>>> action. (This is just the standard inferential scheme for formal
>>> deontic logic.) We've conformed to standard principles and inference
>>> rules of logic and we've started out with assumptions that atheists
>>> have conceded in print. And yet we reach the absurd conclusion:
>>> therefore, for any action you care to pick, it's permissible to
>>> perform that action. If you'd like, you can take this as the meat
>>> behind the slogan 'if atheism is true, all things are permitted'. For
>>> example if atheism is true, every action Hitler performed was
>>> permissible. Many atheists don't like this consequence of their
>>> worldview. But they cannot escape it and insist that they are being
>>> logical at the same time.
>
>>> Now, we all know that at least some actions are really not permissible
>>> (for example, racist actions). Since the conclusion of the argument
>>> denies this, there must be a problem somewhere in the argument. Could
>>> the argument be invalid? No. The argument has not violated a single
>>> rule of logic and all inferences were made explicit. Thus we are
>>> forced to deny the truth of one of the assumptions we started out
>>> with. That means we either deny atheistic naturalism or (the more
>>> intuitively appealing) principle that one can't infer 'ought' from
>>> 'is'. I know which one I'd deny.
>
>> I really cannot follow the authors logic,
>> but moral values are a very human property.
>> It so closely linked with consciousness, that we call the complex
>> inside the brain that deals with moral values our "conscience".
>
>> Moral values are memes, which just as genes develop thru evolution.
>> There is nothing in the laws of nature that decides what we "ought" to
>> do.
>> But nevertheless we have a general idea.
>
>> Surely the idea that racism is wrong, does not come from the wizard
>> that apperantly punishes the offspring of Cham and favors the
>> offspring of Sem.
>> Surely the idea that genocide is wrong, does not come from the wizard
>> that seeks to kill all of the Midianites and all of the Amelikites.
>> Women and children included.
>
>
>> Peter van Velzen
>> April 2008
>> Amstelveen
>> The Netherlands
>
>> PS Normally I ignore postings by "Sound of Trumpet" as that posters
>> will not debate but only post new threads using borrowed material.
>> But as I think I know the answer of the question that forms the
>> subject line.
>> I guess I should reply this time.- Hide quoted text -
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>> - Show quoted text -
>
> Here seems to be the problem. �As DNA studies are done, such as the
> Cambridge study published in April of last year, it is apparent we are
> all decended from a very small group of modern humans about 60,000
> years ago. �Fully modern and we don't know why. �Evolution works, as
> we have all changed with climate and survival changes in outward
> appearance, but any two people in the world will match 99%% of the same
> DNA. �I believe the estimate was about 10,000 adult modern humans are
> our only ancestors. �Darwin was right, but we have missed something
> with modern humans. �We skipped the normal Darwinian trip and went
> straight to us. �We are just now realizing what our brains are capable
> of, and why they work how they work. �They can do much more than we
> realized if trained right.
> � �Morals, religion, dreams, intelligence, or lack of, is just now
> getting some answers. �We somehow skipped into a sentient being, the
> only one ever known, and the only species that showed up and dominated
> a world in 60,000 years. �We have so far to go before we have real
> answers to the questions you were refering to, I bet it will be a
> surprise. �I am not religious, but it will be an answer we never
> expected.
>
> --
> Ken Hogan
> "Truth does not give a damn what we conceive. �We survive or perish
> according to our ability to discern the truth correctly and act upon
> it." - Ken Hogan �
www.veritasnovel.com- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Your scenario suffers from severe "condensation." The summaries you
apparently are using have simply omitted lots of steps that are there
in the fossil record. There are lots and lots of intermediate steps
-- most of them very minor -- that are fairly well known in the
paleoanthropology community, though they don't necessarily get into
the newspapers.
The hominid line did nothing like "go straight to us." In most
serious paleoanthropology timelines, you will find a period ranging
from 250,000 years before the present to about 100,000 years before
the present labeled something like "Homo spp." meaning there were Homo
sapiens-like species around, several of them (that is to say,
skeletons that look almost but not quite like modern man and
contemporary with Homo neanderthalis) until modern man remains -- Homo
sapiens sapiens -- dominate the fossil record somewhere between
100,000 ybp. and 50,000 ybp, depending on whose timescale you read.
And before that time there are a number of Homo ancestors going back
about 2 million years, although the exact heritage relationships are
not clear even yet; there is what seems to be an irresistible
compulsion to attribute ancestry to older fossils, without any actual
evidence of such.
Dean Falk suggests that the crucial physical evolutionary event was a
reversal of the blood supply route for the brain that opened up a
physical limitation on brain size, that allowed hominid brains to
continue growing the way they had for about 5,000,000 years before
that (and primate brains had been growing in size, species by species,
for about the entire 20,000,000 years for which there is any kind of
fossil record. (Falk's ideas for the cause and implications of this
evolutionary innovation are based on the now-exploded "Savannah
hypothesis" but anything that improves efficiency of brain blood flow
will do the same trick -- doesn't necessarily have anything to do with
cooling) At any rate, that's when Homo erectus appeared, distinct from
Australopithecus species -- and there is indication of an even earlier
Homo species, though I haven't looked into the literature recently
enough to know whether that's been confirmed. At any rate, taking one
route rather than another is a very minor variation that doesn't
require the kind of saltation you were wondering over -- it's the kind
of variation you might find from one family to another, the kind of
variation that produces, for example, villages in Spain where
polydactyls are 80%% of the population. I had occasion to note a
couple of those in my own family lineage when I saw x-rays of my spine
some time ago: there are places where most people have a groove in
the bone where a blood vessel passes; in my x-rays (and in a sister's
I saw later) we have a little loop of bone
-- a bone donut. My
family, it turns out, has genes for making bone that results in a form
of osteoarthritis that can be very confusing in reading x-rays.
