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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (80006)	12/31/2003 9:19:24 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

It is unlikely that ethics are a subset of religion. It is much more likely that ethics is simply something that can be, but does not need to be, related to religion. I, for example, derive my ethics from what I perceive to be utilitarian. It has nothing whatsoever to do with God, and everything to do with what I consider to be an amiable existence. What I consider pleasant and good is not influenced by religion, it is influenced by my experience in the world. While there is a certain amount of confluence between my ethics, and religious ethics, that is merely an instance of parallel evolution (like the squid eye and the human eye). The ignorant observer might believe they arise in the same way, but that is merely a product of ignorance.

To: Lane3 who wrote (80006)	12/31/2003 2:24:01 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

But your fallacy is that you did not create a genuine non-intersection. You would have had to assert, for example, that there was a class of "clothing only women wear," which, as we know, isn't true, just as the converse isn't true. The term women is used, of course, in two contexts, one exclusive (a woman is not a man, and vice versa) and the other descriptive of categories of items (which is not exclusive.) You have, I notice, failed to address my argument directly, by challenging my categorization in a substantive way. I would be happy to discuss that, but not to discuss whether men wear womens clothing or women wear mens clothing. BTW, my struggle with this is not, as you contend, great. I am just trying to help you understand that there are, in the end, no ethics without religion. We are so steeped in societies based on religion from the very earliest days (as far as we know, no non-religious societies have ever existed--if there really were no Gods, you would have to posit that every single human culture just somehow happened to invent them, which if you think about it is astonishingly unlikely), so it's much, in philosophical terms, like the air we breathe -- something we just take for granted. Just as man can go into space and claim to be free of earth's atmosphere but must be protected in a suit that continues to provide air, so you can go into the realm of athiesm, but are protected with the environment of religion.