Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : "I STILL own the ban button, buddy" -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg or e who wrote (79)	10/9/2005 12:48:23 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2133

"suicide could in fact be jumping out of the frying pan and into an eternal fire" LOL! What you are imagining is undoubtedly not anything you can communicate to us! But I would suggest that you will feel the same after your brain ceases to exist as you felt before your brain existed! Think about it (something that admittedly requires a brain--but perhaps not)! I mean....I don't know your entire philosophy! "Things like thoughts, mathematics and the Laws of logic are all immaterial things therefore your objection fails." Where do you get this stuff? Do you recall having mathematical ideas or logical thoughts when your brain lacked the necessary electro-chemical pathways? Let me recount for you the facts of development. When an egg is first fertilized it has NO ideas. Later, a child begins to perceive the environment through 5 senses termed: touch, smell, sight, hearing, and taste. Millions of years of evolutionary development have allowed homo sapient brains to learn how to organize their sensory data. The capacity for language is key to this, as opposable thumbs was key to tool making. We have learned to interpret our environment. We have learned that less is not equal to more. That two (as we choose to call an equal amount of more) is not one. These are interpretations of substance and they occur only in a working brain with live biochemical reactions correlating current sensory perceptions with accumulated storage of other perceptions. Scientists have mapped the evolutionary territories of the brain. "Why are you so morally outraged when your material system knows of no such thing as morality" LOL! Where DO you get this stuff?! Morality does not require any supernaturalism. Indeed, morality is only for real living beings with flesh and with blood! It does not apply to beings not yet in existence! All class of creatures has morality of a sort. Ours is simply based on more sophisticated self interest and self awareness. Individuals have the instinct to survive. Groups of individuals with distinct affinities will cooperate for mutual well being and benefit. What enhances survival? Naturally, people seek safety and security and an orderly existence. This allows us to predict our existence with more reliability than in a system of chaos. Most cultures have proscriptions against killing or harming their own, unless it is by special permit as it were, by those authorized to enact religious rituals for the supposed advantage of the group (such as in imploring a deity from another realm to send down rain to prevent starvation). There is nothing mysterious about codes of conduct within cultural groups (what we refer to has "morality"). These rules and regulations for treating one another are invented because of the advantage they give to the survival of the group. They are not enacted or prescribed for the benefit of imaginary beings in imaginary realms.