expelled

Originally posted by Nemesio
That love feels like it has a magical sense about it is biological itself. It serves a social purpose.
This magical sense compels people to act upon it love, leading to sex and thus perpetuating the
species.

Nemesio

I totally agree. In the same way, however, a magician may fool a child into believing that he is able to pull an endless supply of quarters out of the child's ear, so too can we believe that because something appears or feels magical it must be so.

Originally posted by scottishinnz
As psychopawn points out, and has been noted in many, many evolution books, morality can evolve, based on the simple idiom that if I am a bad monkey, other monkies will remember and not help me.

In fact, you got it whole flipside the wrong way round. Religion got its morals from evolution!!

Sorry mate, I did not mean to imply that because you are not religious you have no morals. I was merely saying that religion has a role to play in this area.

For my perspective it appears that we derive our morality from what we percieve as being authority figures. We derive them from such things as people we look up to and laws that reign over us etc. In addition, we seem to have an internal sense of morality that we all share called a conscience.

Having said that, our morality has the potential to run askew. For example, the authority in Nazi Germany was to erradicate Jews. Many people then bowed to the powers that be and their laws that reigned over them so that all that was left then was to overcome the internal screams of ones conscience that they are doing "bad" things. Some were not able to do it but a suprising number were able to do so. In order to do so they first had to rationalize the evil they were doing. This was done by buying into the teaching that Jews were "bad" so that erradicating them would make the world a better place to live. However, to do so one first had to remove their humanity by making them inferior becaue our conscience will not allow us to treat our equal in a way that we would not want to be treated. This was done by saying their genetics makes them bad and they were then compared with vermon. We see this same type of dehumanizing today as jihadists refer to their victims as "infidels". You see once we dehumanize them and percieve them as inferior we are then able to treat them like cattle but not until. That is unless you lack the screaming voice from within that some seem to, but that is for another discussion.

As for myself, the altimate authority figure is Christ no matter if other men are in authority over me. I simply follow his teachings to the best of my ability and try not to deviate from them no matter how others may try to coerce me or entice me. Also, I try to keep my own desires in check when they conflict with my Christian morality.


So what do you see as guiding your morality?

Originally posted by Nemesio
That love feels like it has a magical sense about it is biological itself. It serves a social purpose.
This magical sense compels people to act upon it love, leading to sex and thus perpetuating the
species.

Nemesio

I think you are trying to describe a only a certain kind of love. I think what you are describing is the "eros" kind of love which is between a man and a woman. Conversly, "agape" love has nothing to do with a "feeling", rather, it is a predetermaned choice to love others back even if they may be your "enemy". For me, it is a supernatural kind of love in that loving one's enemies is not a "natural" thing to do.

Originally posted by Mexico
Ok having gone and watched the film, it is actually a complete load of BS, for the most part anyway. Watch his sources, and the experts, go beyond the film and actually find the specific stories yourselves. With only 2 or 3 hour of research after the film It is quite possible to find information from various sources that tell those stories form both sides. Th ...[text shortened]... of the word. I'll be back with the specific examples in an hour or two. I gotta go to the bank.

A film with a point of view typically will always be like that, you thought
it was going to be something else?
Kelly

Originally posted by Mexico
And Stein's horrible acting doesn't help.


Seriously his "shock and dismay" face is laughably false all the way trough the film. Didn't he used to write presidential speeches?

Okay, acting, sure why not.
Kelly

Originally posted by Mexico
we'll firstly I went to the film and tried to remain as impartial as possible given the subject matter. I was truly interested to hear stiens take on it because he has said some interesting things in the past.

However, firstly he clips quotes, those which I recognised from college are out of context, from biologists with old movie reels from the holocaust ...[text shortened]... hitler dedicated Mein Kampf to Darwin was both patently false and offensive.

"Any evolutionist being interview has their character assaulted by clips and such micheal moore style. "

I saw that too. I'm not sure you can do a documentary and depending
on what side of the fence it is pushing that some one will not feel that
way.
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
"Any evolutionist being interview has their character assaulted by clips and such micheal moore style. "

I saw that too. I'm not sure you can do a documentary and depending
on what side of the fence it is pushing that some one will not feel that
way.
Kelly

One can try to be impartial.

Creationists and IDers don't seem particularly able to do that.

Were the IDers in the Dover case ever convicted on that charges of perjury that the judge threatened to hit them with for lying under oath??

Originally posted by KellyJay
You see similarities, yet why shouldn’t they be compared to one another?
Why doesn’t it strike you as something worth doing? Wow, to me that
screams as analogous, keeping levels at workable levels, stopping and
starting processes as needed, none of those things to you seem to suggest
this isn’t just an accident as an apple falling from a tree? Motors an ...[text shortened]... ow them how, I no longer wonder why they fail to see design at all,
they do not want to.
Kelly

If you want to make a proper analogy, it is your job to prove that A is analogous to B, not mine to refute it.

My main disagreement with the analogy is that in designed machines - cars, ect. - cannot evolve.

Biological machines can, and do ; thus, while designed machines features must come from design, biological machines features can come both from design (like in the case of genetically modified organisms) and evolution.

I thought that we agreed on the evolution part, yes?

Originally posted by whodey
For me, this is one of the reasons religion is important. It petitions us to act in a moral fashion while engaged in all our endevours including science. In other words, just because something can be done in science does not mean it should be done. However, there will always be those in science who will try it simply because it can be done. Eugenics come ...[text shortened]... we should try it or is it one of thoe things that should not be tried because it is "immoral".

That's nice.

However, it does not have a place at a science class.

Why not leave evolution in the science class and God in the theology class (and of course also in church/synagogue/mosque ect.)?

Originally posted by whodey
Sorry mate, I did not mean to imply that because you are not religious you have no morals. I was merely saying that religion has a role to play in this area.

For my perspective it appears that we derive our morality from what we percieve as being authority figures. We derive them from such things as people we look up to and laws that reign over us etc. ...[text shortened]... hey conflict with my Christian morality.


So what do you see as guiding your morality?

I agree that you can twist science and use it as propaganda.
Of course, the vary notion that you should eliminate one race to not dilute the blood of the "superior race" is anti-scientific : species with more genetic diversity have better chances of survival.
But I digress.

My point was that even though a certain corrupted and mutilated pseudoscience that used the evolutionary theory as a basis was used by Hitler, if eugenics weren't available at the time he would most certainly have used something else.

Trains were also used by the nazis in the holocaust, but I neither blame Richard Trevithick nor James Watt.

Originally posted by whodey
Sorry mate, I did not mean to imply that because you are not religious you have no morals. I was merely saying that religion has a role to play in this area.

For my perspective it appears that we derive our morality from what we percieve as being authority figures. We derive them from such things as people we look up to and laws that reign over us etc. ...[text shortened]... hey conflict with my Christian morality.


So what do you see as guiding your morality?

For sure, religion has been a major force in religion, and our morals have co-evolved with that. However, if we do a cross-cultural comparison, we see the same morals pretty much irrespective of the religion, which suggests that either we all have morals anyway, or at the very least that the morals we do have do not derive solely from Christianity.

Where do i derive my morals from? Well, from my parents, my society, the people I meet, the things I think about. Many places. Even from evolution.

As you point out, in Nazi Germany language was used to de-humanize Jews (ironically, I just watched Schindler's list last night, a fine movie). Children were brought up to hate the Jews, and they truely did - morality was something they learned, not an inherent thing we all have.

You see Jesus as guiding your morality? Great. He seemed like a nuce enough guy, if half the things they say about him are true. For me, I'll decide for myself what's right and wrong on a case by case basis.

Originally posted by KellyJay
"Any evolutionist being interview has their character assaulted by clips and such micheal moore style. "

I saw that too. I'm not sure you can do a documentary and depending
on what side of the fence it is pushing that some one will not feel that
way.
Kelly

Why are you still ignoring my points regarding the factual basis of the movie? Why not respond to the post I made to Whodey showing the film to basically constitute a string of lies?

Originally posted by scottishinnz

Where do i derive my morals from? Well, from my parents, my society, the people I meet, the things I think about. Many places. Even from evolution.

You derive your morals from evolution? Can you explain how?

Originally posted by Retrovirus
That's nice.

However, it does not have a place at a science class.

Why not leave evolution in the science class and God in the theology class (and of course also in church/synagogue/mosque ect.)?

That is one approach, however, I took a course once in college that intermingled science and the morality therin covering such topics as euginics. It was facinating to say the least.

As far as ID goes, however, I take issues with people saying iit has no scientific basis. People are using scientific data to back up their views on ID and very smart ones to boot. Granted, ID cannot be tested, or cannot be tested empiracally to date but neither can abiogenesis. The only arguement then would be as Scotty pointed out is that one if from a material source and the other a supernatural source thus one is viewed as superior to the other because of this. Of course, that is only one man's opinion. 😛

Originally posted by scottishinnz
As psychopawn points out, and has been noted in many, many evolution books, morality can evolve, based on the simple idiom that if I am a bad monkey, other monkies will remember and not help me.

In fact, you got it whole flipside the wrong way round. Religion got its morals from evolution!!

So where did Jesus get his theology from in regards to loving his enemies? How did this evolve?

Also, could eugenics be used in a "moral" fashion?