Tuesday, June 01, 2010

"Human Ape" confirms in a submission that all we who dare challenge the idol of Darwin are akin to holocaust denies. He is thus denied access to this blog, given the abusive and unproductive rhetoric. May he rethink his bombast and consult the evidence--of nature and his own soul.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Moderating irrational atheists is a guilty pleasure. They can't complain - or at least they shouldn't - because in a nothingness to molecules to life to Angelina Jolie world there could be no universal "evil" of moderating atheists.

And of course, if they whine about it they should be forced to see Expelled! ten times. After all, if getting moderated on a blog is bad then what about people whose careers and reputations are at stake for speaking what they see as truth?

Dr. Polhemus said...

The natural world provides everything necessary to define morality. You are welcome to argue that the resulting morality is deficient in some way, but it does exist.

Paul said...

Dr. Polhemus,

I am interested in your statement, as I have debated some who have expressed something similar. What is the standard for morality that you propose, which the natural world commends to you? Are you suggesting that nature offers certain cues or constraints that imply moral incumbency?

BallBounces said...

Does anyone know what ape meat tastes like? Since humanape revels in his ape identity, he presumably believes that killing him and eating him would be no different than killing and eating an ape or a cow. It's enough to drive an apeman to vegetarianism!

Dr. Polhemus said...

Paul,

I've read some of your blog, and I hope I understand what you are looking for here. At a minimum, we'd like an objective criteria for distinguishing good actions from bad actions. As I understand it, you would like to use God's assessment as the criteria:

Good = God approves
Bad = God disapproves

This is perfectly reasonable, if God exists. I don't think He does, so I'd like to use features of the natural world to distinguish good actions from bad. I'll use happiness and suffering in the world, which are clearly real. (This refers not just to my own happiness and suffering, but all happiness and suffering.)

Good = increases amount of happiness / decreases suffering
Bad = decreases happiness / increases suffering

It is often difficult to determine all of the consequences of our actions and the resulting change in happiness and suffering, but morality is often hard. There are a lot of arguments about what God's approval and disapproval as well.