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

To: Rick Julian who wrote (25255)	10/5/1998 7:05:00 PM
From: E	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Christianity and all theistically based moral systems nullify the quest for a rational morality because they base their various prescriptions on the intuited instructions or desires of a posited supernatural entity, often of a fatherly sort. Would you accept (make a thought experiment) that if there is no Entity whose ethical injunctions are being intuited, (ie it's an illusion) then you haven't a system of morality at all, but a charade? --- a charade that fatally hampers the arrival of a reality-based system of social ethics, a humane morality? Do you think for a system of ethics to exist for the human family, a posited external entity, or consciousness, a "God," is a required precondition? (If you do believe that, do you think that conviction can remotely be considered any sort of evidence of the actual existence of this conscious entity that causes things to happen?) Do you think that the reason people usually love their families and friends and try to treat them, as a rule, kindly and ethically, is "spiritual" or "religious?" (Do you think this is a change of subject? because it's not!)(This post is sounding like I should have posted it on the Questions thread.) I wish I could offer to send a free copy of Robert Wright's The Moral Animal, a most readable book that might serve as an introduction to the field of evolutionary psychology, to all who read this thread! Maybe instead I'll just mention it from time to time. It tends to come to mind, and is a wonderful book. John Carpenter mentioned that he was traveling to Italy soon, asking for book suggestions. Sam got there first, so I refrained from making my proposal; but since it's come up.....I'll bet my book is a better air flight read!! Not as long, out in paper, and, I think, actually absorbing at a level that makes it suitable for a long and tiring plane ride. Credulists who justify their belief in a God entity because they "just know" he exists through personal, subjective mental/emotional experiences, might be interested in recent experimental work by C.M Cook & M.A. Persinger, "Experimental Induction of the Sensed Presence in Normal Subjects and Exceptional Subject" in Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1997' 85:683. I'll excerpt a few lines from a precis of this work in my next post.