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Religion IS crazy!

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Biosemiosis org said:
I already linked to an entire website Biosemiosis.org, that is dedicated to explaining these issues at the laymen's level, and that website has a bibliography of more than two dozen peer-reviewed sources in the literature. Among them is perhaps the leading authority on symbol systems, Howard Pattee, Professor Emeritus Physics, SUNY (an atheist by the way)

“Symbol systems first controlled material construction at the origin of life.”
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Basically I see a lot of special pleading and logical fallacies, you want to insert a god concept into any area that is not currently understood by science.

I ask you this- "Do you think complex life on earth evolved from simpler organisms or do you believe in something more like the biblical genesis account?"
 
Biosemiosis org said:
Correct, but your personal apprehension of those facts is subjective.
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yes, but how is that different to mathematics?

you can get a wrong answer when attempting to solve a problem, that doesn't mean nothing can be known about mathematics.

As I said, human beings are physical creatures in a physical universe, the facts that decide our well being are not subjective, to say nothing objective about morality can be known is silly.
 
Value Collector said:
I haven't mentioned foreign aid, so I am not sure what you are referring to.
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I'm just giving an example of where we care for others even though it does not directly affect us, so I'm rejecting your "selfish gene" theory where you seem to imply that we only do good for our own prodigy so that our own genes survive.

Moral principles are not just about you and your club, but about how we treat all humans and even other thinking creatures.

So an action that causes another group to stave, would probably be considered immoral.
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I agree, but WHY do we think that way ? WHY should we care about others if what happens to them doesn't affect us and our material well-being ?

I'm saying that there is something more going on that can't be explained by your references to materialism.


No, same physical brains, same physical brain waves etc, but different inputs to the calculations they are making.
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All politicians have exposure to the same inputs, they hear the same arguments from the aid agencies and from the treasury, some choose to give more weight to some of those inputs than others, so the physical brain structures that you say are the same make different choices. Why ?
 
you want to insert a god concept into any area that is not currently understood by science.
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Two things:

1) nowhere on my site do I "insert a god concept"

2) we already understand how translation works in the cell. We've known (and handed out the Nobel prizes) about half a century ago.

The argument is about the material conditions required for what we already know to be true.
 
SirRumpole said:
I'm just giving an example of where we care for others even though it does not directly affect us, so I'm rejecting your "selfish gene" theory where you seem to imply that we only do good for our own prodigy so that our own genes survive...
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Foreign Aid are always under the control of the Foreign Minister, not some non-profit organisation. It's a carrot to get what we want, not done out of kindness.

So when we don't need the carrot anymore for that country, we reduce the aid budget and increase the military one - I've read news report of this happening too.

But more to your point about people wanting to help others for no apparent selfish motive... We do it because when we help others, we take away the potential of them being a terrorist or a burglar; Same reason for Welfare payment... it's paid so that at least people do not starve to death - a good thing; but also so they won't riot and start overthrowing systems and gov't and take all the stuff rich people have.

A lot of these safeguards are being shut down or drastically reduced - good for the short term greed, not good for the long term stability and well being of the country or the rich few though. They just don't know it.
 
But more to your point about people wanting to help others for no apparent selfish motive... We do it because when we help others, we take away the potential of them being a terrorist or a burglar;
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That may be true in some cases for governments, but do you give money to charity ?

Why ?
 
SirRumpole said:
I'm just giving an example of where we care for others even though it does not directly affect us, so I'm rejecting your "selfish gene" theory where you seem to imply that we only do good for our own prodigy so that our own genes survive.
?
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Do you understand that humans are the same species, carrying 99.99999% of the same genes?

Defending another human life is contributing to the success of the species.

I agree, but WHY do we think that way ? WHY should we care about others if what happens to them doesn't affect us and our material well-being ?

I'm saying that there is something more going on that can't be explained by your references to materialism.
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Because we are social creatures, who have evolved to care about others.

Also, there is other social contracts which we uphold with the end result being our lives are improved.

eg, Don't steal from me and I won't steal from you. respect my life and I will respect yours. It's in our interests to act morally, because if we all live morally its better for all of us. there are real world benefits and real world consequences.

but we are talking about two different things,

1, what can be demonstrated to be moral through logic reasoning and evidence.

2, why should we care

Even if we didn't care it wouldn't affect what was or wasn't moral, it would just affect whether we are moral or immoral

All politicians have exposure to the same inputs, they hear the same arguments from the aid agencies and from the treasury, some choose to give more weight to some of those inputs than others, so the physical brain structures that you say are the same make different choices. Why
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No, people raised differently have different inputs.

A person whos father died of cancer is much more likely to want to cure cancer than end starvation, because cancer has affected them personally, a person with a blind neighbor might campaign to get $200K spent to give him a seeing eye dog, when $200K could cure 2000 people in the third world of blindness through cataract surgery, we are not all 100% moral and we don't all weigh up all the facts with the spirit of doing the most good, we all have different priorities, but this doesn't change which options are most moral, it just changes which option we take.
 
Biosemiosis org said:
Luutzu, is blatantly misrepresenting what I say your only form of communication?
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I did ask if you seriously said, or quoted and agree with, the idea that rape and butchery has no objective basis for being wrong. You said you agree with it right? Or were there sarcasm and eye rolling?

You're turning reason and logic upside down dude.
A devout person could be convinced that killing non-believer, or harming or discriminating against certain group of people etc. to be moral; Why is it moral to them? Because some authority said so and so it is.

An atheist, or any normal people who can think objectively, know that rape and murder IS wrong. Why is it wrong? Not because it would dirty their clothes or mess up their hair or some judge will have them lock up... but it's wrong because you just don't do that kind of crazy stuff.

You might want to leave morality and legality to the warmongers and loonies.
 
Value Collector said:
Do you understand that humans are the same species, carrying 99.99999% of the same genes?

Defending another human life is contributing to the success of the species.
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That's a very long bow to draw. There is no way to determine whether saving a life would benefit or harm the human race. The guy you risk your life to pull out of the river might be a serial murderer.
 
Biosemiosis org said:
If you are going to attack my words, then post them so we can see if your objection is warranted.
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look mate, its pretty clear, the only reason you twist your arguments in knots trying to say there is no object moral principles humans can discover by themselves, and the way you are trying to say information can only come from a designer etc etc is all so you can insert an intelligent designer/ creator.

Why don't you just come clean and tell us what your religious beliefs are, because they are the real reason you twist yourself in knots trying to invoke an intelligent designer.
 
SirRumpole said:
That's a very long bow to draw. There is no way to determine whether saving a life would benefit or harm the human race. The guy you risk your life to pull out of the river might be a serial murderer.
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Evolution doesn't work by predicting the future, so it doesn't have to now what will benefit the human race, it works by survival of genes.

Now, I would think the longbow would be trying to say that through out the last million years of our history, humans beings working together and protecting each other hasn't increased the survival rate of our genes.

humans dominate the planet, in a large part this is only possible because we were and are a social species, caring for each other and protecting each other helps ensure the survival of our gene pool. examples of individuals sacrificing themselves for the group or looking after others doesn't go against the theory of evolution, its expected as part of it.

When thinking about evolution, its not all about the survival of the strongest individual, its about the survival of the entire genepool, especially in social species.

 
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Call it a coincidence if you will, but there's very little, if any outside coverage or discussion of biosemiotics, besides a Wikipedia page, a single Huffington Post interview and a few books with no reviews on Amazon.

I find that baffling for supposedly ground-breaking science.
 
Then In 2014, I retired that essay and began writing Biosemiosis.org in its place. Since that work is available to any reader, I won’t recapitulate it here, but there are a couple of concepts I’d like to highlight – particularly the discontinuity found in the translation of recorded information
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From link (known ID community)....

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/writing-biosemiosis-org/

As VC pointed out, there appears to be an Intelligent Design (ID) agenda behind this discussion.
 
Value Collector said:
When thinking about evolution, its not all about the survival of the strongest individual, its about the survival of the entire genepool, especially in social species.
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And how do we explain caring for animals that are not in our gene pool, even those that are not involved in our food chain and therefore not necessary for our survival ?

There appears to be a lot of concern now about other species going extinct, even though that has been happening for millions of years and our survival has not been affected.

Why do we (or some of us anyway) give a stuff about Ledbeater's possum ? If it disappeared what would be the detriment to us ?
 
SirRumpole said:
And how do we explain caring for animals that are not in our gene pool, even those that are not involved in our food chain and therefore not necessary for our survival ?

There appears to be a lot of concern now about other species going extinct, even though that has been happening for millions of years and our survival has not been affected.

Why do we (or some of us anyway) give a stuff about Ledbeater's possum ? If it disappeared what would be the detriment to us ?
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probably a few different reasons, some times such things are misfires of our inbuilt evolutionary "care for the group/others rule", eg evolution has built in a rule that in general we should care for others, as our society has developed we have started giving a form of "person hood" to some other species, we realise we wouldn't want to be treated badly so we don't want to treat others including animals badly, it all stems from the same basic line of thought.

secondly,

Some of it is logical, us humans are coming to the conclusion that we rely on the natural environment, and destroying it and the creatures that live in it is probably not good for us either.

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This is getting pretty far away from the original point, which was that I believe everything is physical in nature, are you still trying to link back to that some how? or have we switched to discussing the development and application of morality in humans?

if you are still trying to get at the materialist question, a better line to be inquiring would be can any of these thought processes either moral or immoral which you seemed to think were based in something non physical, exist outside of a physical brain / structure.
 
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