> 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:

>

>>>>http://atheismisdead.blogspot.com/2008/04/new-atheists-make-huge-mist...

>

>>>> 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.

>

>>> For it's true origin: See:http://www.xs4all.nl/~velzen5/Morality.html

>

>>> 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.- Hide quoted text -
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> - Show quoted text -