So morality is based entirely on self-interest? Then morality is completely fluid. Thats an even less sensible idea than the "bigger means right" mentality.

You're lying. I deliberately bounce that thread whenever you're online to test that assertion.

Moral actions require motivations which require self-interests; removing those abolishes morality.

Hey asshole. I'm not fucking lying. That thread is in the response bag or whatever, for some reason all i see when i hit forums is all the sapient ones and root hawkins and a few others.

The pope?  I don't know I haven't been to church in a long time, but I was raised catholic, so: positive.

Favorite role model? Howard Roark, my brothers, Christ, Tyler Durden.

We are not 100% god. Everything else is gods thought, at least this universe is.

No, they shouldn't be taxed. Their businesses, and I don't like the taxation of business too much.

Who fucking cares who dominates the FCC, its fucking tv.

I don't know I never met the man.

Jack, me thinks you are dangerously going to fast. Concerned, me, old "gramps".

Jack be nimble,

Jack be quick,

Jack jump over the candlestick.

Jack jumped high,

Jack jumped low,

Jack jumped over and burned his toe.       OUCH

Quite possibly. However, as I said in the multiple threads slightly farther down about free will: We must question whether or not we have free will, as we must question everything. In the end, we may never be able to truly answer the question. We must, however, choose to act as though we have free will, for pragmatism's sake. If we have free will, then we are derelict in our responsibilities to ourselves and one another if we abdicate the exercise of it. If we do not, then we never had the choice anyway.

No, no universal truth. I said I believe in 'right' and 'wrong' as a nice idea. I've also said they can never be absolutes. They're not objective. They never have been, they never will be. They're a reflection of aggregate self-interest, my own included. There's no evidence for anything beyond that, and ample evidence that morality stems from the social behavior of animals. Including your own example below.

A number of studies have shown that monkeys, like most primates, have a sense of fairness and justice. Yes, they will beat one who hoards food that they need. No, there is no sense of 'property'. I will also point out to you that in many hunter-gatherer human societies, such as the North American plains cultures, there was very little sense of 'property'. Your immediate belongings; the travois you carried them on... and that was about it.

Property, by and large, is not about morality. It is about control. It is about being able to deny something to someone. And ultimately, in most societies... it's a lie.

Consider our current society: What property do you actually own? The things in your home? A car? The house itself? The land?

Not really.

If you are a homeowner, you continue to pay yearly property tax on your land. If you cannot pay, your property will be ceased and sold off to pay the government. In fact, this 'property tax' is nothing more than the rents paid by a freeman to his local knight or baron in the middle ages. Rent, nothing more. A temporary tenant of land the government ultimately claims belongs to it.

Your car? The same. You pay a fee every so often to keep it registered. If it's not registered, it can't be used. If you fall behind on your car payments, it'll be repossessed. If you're lucky enough to have finished paying off your car, then you're still paying for using it. Once you can't use it, you need someplace to store it. For which, you are paying rent. Ultimately, you continue to pay to possess your car. If you have to keep paying to possess it, you don't really own it, because you don't control it. The government can deny you the use of the car unless you pay them. They can deny you the use of it. That's control. That's the true measure of ownership.

In fact, in the US at least, the government claims to own you. The same's true of most civilized countries, and has been since the medieval nobles got tired of serfs killing themselves to get into Heaven. They prevailed upon the Pope, who made suicide a mortal sin, and a one-way ticket to hell. That, you see, is why attempting suicide's illegal in most western countries. Success isn't, but only for pragmatic reasons: Hard to put a corpse on trial.

Attempted suicide's illegal. Why? Because by attempting to kill yourself, you are attempting to deprive society of your productiveness, and more, the fruits of that productiveness. In other words, taxes.

And that's where 'all the stuff in your home' comes in. Income gets taxed. Gifts over a certain amount get taxed. Why over a certain amount? Not because the State doesn't think it's entitled... just because they don't want to have to deal with all the extra paperwork. When you die, everything you own gets totaled up, and if the amount is large enough to be worth the IRS' time... THAT gets taxed. All the stuff you own gets converted into 'this chunk belongs to the government now'. You don't actually control it. You can refuse to pay your taxes, but that'll get you fined and tossed in jail.

Because the State claims it is entitled to your taxes. Because Society believes it is entitled to your contributions to it in exchange for roads, for schools, for running water and electrical infrastructure, and the level of internal security and peace that allows all of that to continue to function. Because governments have divvied up the planet entire, and as much as you or I might like to think it, no man is truly born free anymore. We were once omnivorous pack predators... we are remaking ourselves into herd animals.

The Cake Is A Lie.

My first peek at this thread. It seems like everyone has gone way off the original topic? Ethics now?

I have to admit, ethics is probably the area where theists have the easiest time.

Q: Why should I behave a certain way? A: Because God says so. Q: Why should I do what God says? A: Because he is God. Q: Why should I obey God just because he is God? A: Because he'll mess you up for all eternity if you don't.

It is all very simple and cut and dried, and, provided the person believes, provides all the whats and whys for both justifying and mandating the behavioral norms that most people agree upon.

Of course it has its problems (e.g. Euthyphro dilemma), but, practically speaking, the theist can just run that gauntlet  unapologetically upholding the absolute sovereignty of God and accept the "what is good is good because God says so" horn of the dilemma.

That same thing happens in our society all the time. People are dying from various diseases all the time, and the drug companies sell the drugs at extravagant prices. Are they wrong?

Morality is much more fluid than you seem to believe. What is correct behavior in one situation may not be correct in another. In general, killing another human is not moral in our society -- but what if that person is threatening you or one who relies on you for protection? Killing in the name of self-defence is considered morally acceptable.

We have high standards of behavior in our society, but that is because we have comfortable society that provides a high standard of living for the majority of the population. If we were to lose that high standard of living, we might descend into a bit of chaos. If the majority of the population is willing and able to kill without legal retribution, do you imagine it is moral to kill in self-defence?

Yes, they lie. Please read up on Koko, for instance.

Humans are not nearly as special as you seem to believe. The difference in our cognative ability is quantitative, not qualitative. There is nothing to indicate that we are substantially different from other apes. The only evidence of our specialized skill (thinking) is that we have crossed the rubicon somewhere along the way, and figured out how to convey abstract ideas through language. After that, our complex communication provided selective pressure, and our branch of evolution specialized in communication and abstract thinking.

I'm not denying that. I mentioned beavers to refute your assertion that no other animal changes their environment to suit their needs. I could've used termites just as easily, but the word "beaver" is funnier than "termite."

You have made many assertions that are just plain wrong. That was on of them, and one of the most plainly wrong, and probably the least important of them all.

Incidentally, what makes humans a "more complex animal?" What is your rubric for determinic "complexity?"

You might as well ask why no other animal has developed a huge body like the blue whale, or no other animal has developed the ability to run at 100kph like a cheetah, or no other animal has such a humorously long neck like a girrafe.

Specialization is part of evolution. We specialized in communication as a survival mechanism. The fact that this also allowed us to build houses and roads and nachos and those little dunking birds that sit on the edge of a water glass is incidental. Ironically, our specialization has made us generalists. We are not particularly well suited to anything but thinking now.

Other animals think abstractly -- our brothers in the ape family are excellent examples. Our singular ability is communication, which allows us to exchange and preserve abstract thoughts. That is, we not only think abstractly, but we are able to teach others our thoughts. We are not only standing on the shoulders of giants; we are standing on the history of humanity, our entire heritage from the first grunted words, through oral history, up to the first scribbled pictograms, and so on.

We have moved away from the animal world, but we are yet animals ourselves. We have insulated ourselves from the rest of the world, but that doesn't mean we are different.

What you see as uniqueness, I see as self-exile.

It's possible that the function to keep trolls and theists in the proper area is finally working.  I've been working on it, but didn't think I had it working right,  Seems maybe theists are in the proper area, but trolls can still roam.

So what?  Do you think the language of humans as recently as 10,000 years ago was as complex as languages now?  Why or why not?

This is simply wrong.  Koko named her first cat Lipstick.  And before you get all "but that's just assigning the learned name for one thing to another", this is exactly what human children do when naming pets.  What's more, when asked why she chose Lipstick, she explained that it was because the cat was the same colour as, you guessed it, the lipstick worn by one of her favourite caregivers.  She noted an abstract similarity, and used it as a reason to make a decision.

And what would you do if someone told you to do something in a completely unknown colloquialism in a non-native language you understood only slightly?  Would you ask them to explain?  That's what your dog did.