Posted: Jan 12, 2017 9:36 am
zoon wrote:archibald wrote:This may be off-topic, but I think he's saying its all pointless because we're all going to die.
Which is arguably the most annoying thing possible, for lots of reasons.
And it makes everything else trivial.
'Honestly, what is the fucking point?' Is the implied title of every post.
It’s incredibly important that none of us crawling between earth and heaven should waste any half-hours of our pointless lives discussing the roots of morality. Enjoying ourselves by talking about a scientifically well-evidenced aspect of human sociality is out of order! It’s there in the Bible! Adam and Eve were allowed to enjoy themselves any way they liked, except being inquisitive about good and evil. So what did they do?
Yes, of course, zoon. If only the ignorant savages who invented religious morality had had science on their side. Then they could have given GOOD reasons for the laws they made up, which varied rather widely from place to place and from time to time. That's easily explained (if you can call it that) by saying things vary from place to place and time to time. Science for the win! Or, instead of constructing elaborate rationalizations for the notion that the stupid religious ideas you finally had to give up actually had some basis in fact, you can fill in the blank with the homespun wisdom: "Don't shit where you eat." That's so full of science, it isn't funny, because it's metaphorical, and not referring to E. coli. Yes, zoon. Science will save us, because we still need saving. Instead of inventing god as the ultimate source of moral authority, you now have 'science'. If you can call it that. Give it up, girlfriend, because you sound like you're still looking for a way to tell everyone else how to behave, although it can and does vary from place to place and from time to time. Thank fuck there's still a socially-constructed naughty-step, although it takes a lot more these days to put you on it, and neither being genuinely inquisitive nor trying to flim-flam the audience with pseudoscience are on the list. What you write is a prime example of something that doesn't distinguish the difference. Being dull-normal intelligence isn't on the list either, and that's a big reason why people like Donald Trump get themselves elected, because the Don (or, if you like, the Capo) is smarter than they are. Not everyone who votes for a Donald Trump is a religious nut, but they do think they know what right and wrong are all about, pretty much the way Cosa Nostra does it. The Donald informs you that right and wrong are constructed from muscle. Maybe they're just not being scientific about it. That's right, zoon: exploring the 'basis' of morality is not nearly as important as trying to convince yourself that you have a scientific outlook. Don't use a word like 'basis' unless you want to study vector spaces. Ooh. It's a pome!