topic: Sam Harris is right in that scientific knowledge is essential to appraise the consequences of our actions.

Cito di Pense wrote:You do realize that organised crime syndicates exist in a state of war with rival clans, and engage in vendettas with little risk of retribution from a larger population situated at some position of moral superiority. These rogue clans endure particularly high levels of suffering in order to pursue other goals. Who's to say what they consider "necessary"?

In other words, take this "enlightenment" thing and bend a spoon with it, or something, or explain how it is that people join crime syndicates. Otherwise, it's nonsense. In their own sweet way, crime lords are epicureans, too.

That's not what I'm saying.

I finished typing three and a half paragraphs before I realized it will take quite a while to furnish an unambiguous explanation over the internet.

About this talk: Questions of good and evil, right and wrong are commonly thought unanswerable by science. But Sam Harris argues that science can -- and should -- be an authority on moral issues, shaping human values and setting out what constitutes a good life.

I'm going to speak today about the relationship between science and human values. Now, it's generally understood that questions of morality -- questions of good and evil and right and wrong -- are questions about which science officially has no opinion. It's thought that science can help us get what we value, but it can never tell us what we ought to value. And, consequently, most people -- I think most people probably here -- think that science will never answer the most important questions in human life: questions like, "What is worth living for?" "What is worth dying for?" "What constitutes a good life?"

So, I'm going to argue that this is an illusion -- that the separation between science and human values is an illusion -- and actually quite a dangerous one at this point in human history.

[snip]

http://dotsub.com/view/bda8b283-118a-4c ... script/eng


bold my emphasis*

thedistillers wrote:
Atheist worldviews are based on empty air and subjective opinions. We have seen the consequences in the last century.

How are atheists' "subjective opinions" any more subjective than those of the various organized religions we find infesting this planet?

Subjective humans make this junk up. Subjective humans voted Jesus to be divine some 400 or so years after his death. Subjective humans created prophesies about 72 virgins. These are all subjectivisms.


Which consequences have we seen as a result of atheists' "subjective opinions?" It's all the infighting of the religiously afflicted masses that lead to war and hate.


On a side note: as an atheist I can accept the science that air is not empty, but made up of multifarious elements, without having to consult my minister/rabbi/imam to check and see if it is OK to believe that.

Actually, totalitarian communist dictatorships practiced a form of moral absolutism; if you questioned the leader or the official state dogma of Lysenkoism, you would be killed outright or sent to a prison labor camp in the gulags.

This is not moral relativism. You may not call that moral relativism.