I'm pretty sure I never brought up the nature/nurture argument, onin, that was you, and that doesn't matter to the process, either. If you are a rampant psychopath or a normal person driven to become a psychopath by your religious beliefs the process will still weed out your abnormal take on good and bad just the same.


I still get a laugh out of you thinking people are born with morality, seriously, wtf?

 

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Yuki/Rosie/me are basically circling around the pre-sectarian / purist vs the various sects of Buddhism. Not surprising, on the Outpost, where semantic victories are more important than actual understanding.

Yes, like anything, there are sects and variants that believe similar beliefs, and which other sects of the same religion/movement consider invalid or wrong. Saying 'Buddhist' is inexact and innacurate and leaves one open to gotchas on a board like this...

...which is why in my 2nd post I specifically called out a sect to show what I was talking about. Rosie and I are talking about what resembles 'purist movement' or older more basic 'pre-sectarian' Buddhism, which is more closely aligned with purist elements in the modern Theravada sect than the other modern sects.

So all that 'stuff you do not want to discuss' Yuki is actually the very differentiation I had already made. You just want to ignore it.

Just because some Christians handle snakes, that doesn't mean it makes any sense to say handling snakes is a central tenet of most Christianity. That's pretty much what you are doing with this 'god' thing. In fact, you are amplifying it by using the Western connotation of Gods or Supernatural beings where it simply doesn't equate.

 

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You brought up how we know things and just now you finally admitted you didn't even care how people decide if something is good or bad. This is after pages of multiple people pointing this out to you. You brought up how we know things which is pretty straight forward except with regard to how we decide what is good and bad. This issue was brought up immediately and you failed to realize it until now.


It has been a nice ride watching you make a fool of yourself though.


As for what we are born with. MY contention is that our beliefs of good and bad come from our capacity to know what we consider good and bad for ourselves and our capacity to apply those feelings to others. (ie our capacity to be empathetic)


Any modern moral system is a result of highly developed attempts to appeal to these instincts and adapt these instincts to the environment. We also try and pass down knowledge from generation to generation and build rules to help understand it.


If you look at the Torah/Bible you can treat it like a record of people developing theories and testing them. The book of Job being an example of the failure of a theory and Jesus being an example of introducing/developing a new theory.

 

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But your process seems to be just a bunch of people debating their intuitions and trying to convince eachother and then going with whatever gets the most votes.


There's nothing objectively verifiable about that. All you can say is that "this is what most people think good is when they think and talk about it a lot."


But that doesn't tell you those people are right.


If you call that scientific practically anything is scientific. Including most religious doctrine.

Again, onin, that's not what I said although inside that crazy you work with I can see how you might be confused.


Epistemology describes the ways people can come to know things, not me. I'm pointing out how science reduces the need to consider if an older appeal of knowledge was being used at all, the process weeds out stupid and highlights the right answer.


The problem you seem to be having is accepting that those voices in your head or the conversation you're having with your dog are what you really should be worryied about.

 

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I was quoting you dumbass. It was exactly what you said.





We have been talking about how one arrives at what they consisder good or bad from the beginning

 

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The difference is you have to test and follow the data in an unbiased way, yuki. That's what makes anything objective. Religions don't do this, they just make a ruling and the facts be damned. When all the smart people involved in testing an issue agree on the findings, it's the best answer you're going to get until you can get more data and a better explanation for the already existing data. It also doesn't make people right, just the answer is as good as it can be. Science is flexible, though, and open to change, unlike the other appeals.

 

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So basically in this case "science" just means "talking with other people and listening to what they have to say then taking a vote"?


Great story I guess. Although I don't think it really proves what you think it proves because there's certainly nothing objectively verifiable about it. It's just an opinion survey of open-minded people. There is no "data" to speak of except for opinions.

Ohh look the prof discovered mob rule.

 

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Opinions don't exist in a vacuum, they come from things people have learned, and that's the point. How you learn things is directly related to thier validity. If you get information from untested or biased sources, so is your opinion. If you learn from tested and unbiased sources, your opinion has more validity.


So it comes down to you deciding how you want to live your life. Do you want to go with uncertain knowledge or the most certain knowledge you can find?


I tell my students to challenge everything they believe by examining the source that formed that belief. It's a good rule of thumb for everyone. Way too much of what people know was gained through very weak sources when much better ones were always there, but they just didn't know it.


I have to go feed the wifeâ„¢ now, so I won't be following up until tomorrow.

 

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