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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (40676)	6/17/1999 1:11:00 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Morality is not an absolute, but is cultural. Which could be taken as an argument against my thesis that morality comes from outside, except that all cultures have very different views of God or the Gods (but there has NEVER been a culture that was aethist -- that should tell you something!) and the edicts of the Gods. So the proposed thesis is still intact. You seem to be saying - correct me if I'm wrong - that God or Gods are constant, but human interpretations vary, and that the widely varying interpretations of the nature of God and the standards of conduct that God demands in different cultures are matters of human inconsistency. In short, one God, one moral code, many wildly different perceptions. If this is the case, either humanity is extraordinarily obtuse or God is rather ineffective at getting the message across. Perhaps He/She/It/They should hire a new speechwriter. You observe that "morality is not an absolute, but is cultural". Why try to wrestle this into your desire to believe that a Supreme Entity is involved, when a culturally-rooted source for morality fits the observation so much more effectively? Try waving Occam's Razor at this one.

To: The Philosopher who wrote (40676)	6/17/1999 1:36:00 AM
From: E	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

<<<(but there has NEVER been a culture that was aethist -- that should tell you something!) >>> Weeeel, there have been cultures that worshipped rocks and ones that worshipped old bones and ones that worshipped an airplane and ones that worshipped certain roots and ones that worshipped specific dead folks and ones that worshipped meteorological phenomena and ones that worshipped big statues and ones that worshipped meaty animals and ones that worshipped big hills and ones that worshipped hallucinogenic drugs and ones that worshipped fire and ones that worshipped goddesses with mammoth mammaries.... and what it tells me is not that these entities are 'real Gods,' or in any way 'worthy' of worship, (though at least many of them are demonstrably real things) but that this touching human spectacle of foolish worshipping is a manifestation of a strong impulse originating in the human brain, mind, nervous system, and if there's a rock there at the right moment, okay, a rock it'll be. Big milky breasts? Not a bad choice, really. Thunder? You can get behind that misunderstanding. Much could be conjectured about where this impulse comes from and why it's there. A Freudian would say one thing, a brain chemist another, an evolutionary psychologist another. To me the most obvious thing it tells me is that it doesn't mean I should worship a rock. Or any collective of all these objects of worship. When you are a small child, you 'worship' your parents. It behooves you to, in fact. And rewards you. My suspicion is that this fact is related to the phenomenon of adults getting on their knees and behaving adoringly, like supplicant children, toward something they invest with a power that they know existed once, the power of life and death, the power to feed or starve, the power to love or punish. My intuition tells me it's all in there, in all of us, and it needs to be there. When we are children. The 'we' I meant was we who were reading the Feelings thread. I partly agree that 'morality' is cultural, and partly don't. Or I do, but... it's too late right now for me to think about. Later, dude.