Question 1 [asked by redditor Prom_STar]: What are your thoughts on Sam Harris' idea that we can eventually use neuroscience to quantify human well-being and use that information to empirically evaluate ethics?

Response. Sam Harris has written a new book, a very interesting book, called The Moral Landscape. And he takes on the almost cliché philosophy that science has nothing to say about morality; science can tell us the how of things, science cannot tell us what's good and what's bad. Well, I think maybe Sam's got a point – Sam thinks that you can. And he thinks that neuroscience can actually be used to tell when people are really, really suffering. You do have to make the assumption that what matters is suffering. You do have to make the assumption that the goal of morality is something like to reduce the total amount of suffering; to reduce the amount of suffering in either humans or sentient beings. But once you've done that, once you've accepted that that's your goal in your morality, then science, especially neuroscience, really can tell you when people suffer, when creatures suffer. And so I think he's good a very good point and I strongly recommend the book, The Moral Landscape.

tl;dr. Dawkins believes Sam Harris has a very good point, working under certain assumptions.

Direct Video Link [0:00]

Read the book "While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within" by Bruce Bawer.

It is written by a gay man who moved to Europe to get away from Christians in the US, only to discover that the Muslims in Europe were MUCH worse than the most conservative Christians in the US.

http://www.amazon.com/While-Europe-Slept-Radical-Destroying/dp/0767920058

Even though your understanding of how choice works is correct, the conclusion that follows (life is "worthless") is false. You seem to be keen on explaining your depression with the fact that you have considered how choice works... but I feel like there's an underlying cause you didn't mention. You even hinted at this in your closing line (major factor means there are other factors at play).

I know this is /r/philosophy and not /r/psychology, but heck, I'm going to say it anyway: you might want to reconsider what the real reason is for your depression instead of (arrogantly) assuming that the "no-choice" life isn't good enough for you.

We do make choices, by the way. Every choice may be a culmination of past experiences and events but that doesn't mean there's not a lot to choose from. Introspection, reflection, meditation and creation can change us within the constraints of a formulaic universe.

Edit: Taking a risk here in /r/philosophy by suggesting this, but here goes: you might be interested in Sam Harris' "Free Will": Amazon link (I'd recommend getting it at The Book Depository alas, it's out of stock there).

Sam Harris's argument is two-fold, and neither fold requires that his articulation of moral language follow from a body of empirical study.

He construes moral language as only possibly referring to the well-being of conscious creatures. This is not an empirical adventure, it is a matter of conceptual analysis. To be brief, imagine a universe without minds, without any intelligent or intentional agents whatsoever: just rocks, say. What moral facts might there be about such a universe? What morally salient transactions might therein occur? Harris infers from the obvious "none" answers to these questions that morality must only be about conscious creatures. That it is about the "well-being" of such creatures is nothing more than ordinary language philosophy applied to conceptual analysis, which is the dominant paradigm of analytic philosophy on such questions.

(I disagree with him on the first fold- I think the real invalid inference is from the absence of moral facts about dead universes to moral facts only being about live critters. Moral rules could be like the laws of physics- just as the laws of gravity still hold in totally empty space insofar as if that space were occupied, whatever occupies that space would obey those laws, so could moral rules be true even where they have no instances. But I digress.)

The second fold is I think an almost banal statement about science, which is that, given that moral language is only about the well-being of conscience creatures, science is very, very good at both figuring out what affects our well-being, as well as finding ways to improve it- and therefore science has some salience on moral questions. I think that no rational mind could disagree with his second fold given his first premise.

Does that help?

There was a study like this 40 years ago too.

You know what turned out to actually be the difference? Birth rates. The anti-birth-control-brigade make more Christians by doing the horizontal tango than liberal sorts do. All those jokes about Quiverfulls trying to win the culture war by reproducing? Yup.

Here's an example: The Amish have 7 kids per family on average. 85% (that is, 6 of 7) stay Amish. That means their numbers triple every generation. Surprise, surprise, they're also the fastest growing denomination in the US!

Because your question is hard to discern from a troll of the same wording ;) you are getting some very flippant answers here. Let me try to offer a sensible one!

> Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.
— Kurt Vonnegut

First of all, the majority of my morals are "built in" to me by evolution. Studies show that chimpanzees, bonobos and human children respond very similarly to a large variety of moral situations. If there were once, in our family tree, social animals with tendencies to wantonly murder, to steal or to cheat, those species have died out, because strategies based on what you'd call "morals" work better for the survival of social animals.

For example, I'd find it very difficult to kill another human, even in self defense. 40 years ago, I unthinkingly poured some acid on a snail's back (I was religious at the time, but that obviously didn't provide me with foolproof moral sense) and was very unhappy to see it obviously suffering; I still regret doing that today. I shoplifted a time or two, again as a child, but I stopped when I realized I was not just harming some big nameless "the store" but the clerks and shopkeepers who might be made accountable for the losses I caused.

A couple of years ago I met with some customers from the Balkan, and remarked that they would cheerfully break any law that wasn't enforced. I explained to them that I don't park in handicapped spaces, not for fear of getting a relatively cheap ticket, but because I didn't want to put some poor handicapped bastard through additional hassle; and so as not to encourage other people to do the same.

On the other hand, I will withhold details about my sexual behavior, for fear of giving you a coronary. There are religious proscriptions against all kinds of normal, healthy and very fun activities between consenting adults which I consider completely bogus. Voluntary abstinence is not the kind of behavior which would have evolved in humans. From an evolutionary standpoint, that would be pretty stupid.

Just to annoy you, I once financed an abortion for an ex-girlfriend. I consider that a moral deed because her life would have been badly negatively impacted if she had been forced to have the baby. Do I worry about the embryo? No, it was barely at the "fish" stage (with gills and a tail) and far from being conscious as a human being.

Do I lust? Every chance I get. Do I covet? You bet. It's un-American not to covet, that's what keeps Capitalism going! Do I keep the Sabbath? No, and I bitch when I find stores and facilities closed on Sundays. Speaking of: Do I blaspheme? Hell yeah, I curse like a goddamn motherfucker. Do I honor my parents? Yes and no: My father was an asshole who made life much harder than necessary for my mother and self, mostly with religious motives, thank you.

I believe in fair exchanges. I will not try to cheat others, and I will not tolerate being cheated. I believe in altruism and generosity. Doing good makes me feel good too. I believe in helping the needy and defending the weak, though I'm not much of a hero.

How, though, do I deal with temptation? Easy opportunities that would hurt my integrity. Do I pray to nobody about them? No. I passed by an open Ferrari with keys in the ignition because... well, I happen to live in a country with laws and police and stuff. People make mistakes, some people are desperate, and some people (psychopaths) really have no morals. What keeps most of those people on the straight and narrow is a reasonably efficient but fair legal system.

A few weeks ago I got my copy of The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris. He argues that a very well working system of morals can and indeed should be established on a very simple basis: "The well-being of sentient beings." There's a remarkable variety of cases where moral decisions become no-brainers. "Are people going to suffer if I drop bricks off the bridge? Well, then don't do that!" "Will people's lives improve if I donate to DWB? OK, here's my contribution." I don't want some poor cows to spend their lives in prison-like farms, so I cut down a lot on eating meat.

Harris says a society that forces women to wear garbage bags and stones them for getting raped is morally worse than one where this doesn't happen. And a society where gays are persecuted and bullied is worse than one where they're given all civil rights. Hey, this stuff is pretty easy!

There are more difficult moral decisions that TML doesn't offer handy advice for. But it offers a very useful basis for discussion about them.

Anyway, as you may have gathered, I approve of Harris' approach to morality. And I believe the Christian approach of absolute morals handed down in a book written by slave-keeping, children-stoning Bronze age barbarians... sucks donkey balls.

EDIT: Highlights. And a typo.

God Is Not Great, How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens

If NAMBLA set up on a island and established a culture of raping 3 year olds in the ass and then eating them alive while they were awake would you step back and say "Hey, hey, hey. It's their culture who are you to say raping children in the ass is bad and dismembering them for the purpose of a good goulash is immoral?"

I'm just trying to figure out what your line of reasoning is.

edit
If you're just trying to pose the question of which metric is most valid, without asserting that all moral behavior is relativistic and cannibalism of conscious persons, child rape, torture, etc. are, in fact, moral within a given context then this method is probably a good start.

Neither do I, it's nonsensical any way you slice it. If you'd like to know more about the arguments against "free will" I'd recommend Sam Harris' new book.

http://www.amazon.com/Free-Will-Sam-Harris/dp/1451683405

This article is not a great jumping off point if you want to understand Harris's position. If you don't want to read his book, Free Will (which is short, compact, and easy to read), this talk summarizes his position. It is about 55 minutes long after which there is a Q&A session.

There are good explanations for why thousands of people would testify to miracles in group settings..dealing with basic human psychology, group dynamics, memory contamination, etc. People can whip themselves up into a euphoric frenzy, interpreting mundane events as supernatural ones, especially when "primed" to do so by those surrounding them or a charismatic leader..and the simple act of sharing memories with others can literally alter the memory of your audience. People literally borrow memories from one another without realizing it. For more on this and other strange phenomena about human psychology, check out The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us

As for the question of believing in miracles on the basis of stories, I highly recommend this book which I think makes a very powerful case against believing in things like the resurrection on the basis of testimony. And if Christians do want to believe it after reading this book, they will be forced to accept that they have an inconsistent standard of evidence, since they dismiss claims from competing/incompatible religions that are much better attested and have a much more reliable chain of evidence.

Have you read The Moral Landscape? Sam Harris is a neuroscientist and a philosopher, and the book is an argument for Utilitarianism, a philosophical position which states that the morality of an act is determined by the amounts of suffering and/or well-being it causes.

That's not to say that Harris doesn't adopt a scientific approach to this question (or to the questions he examines in his other works of philosophy). His thesis is essentially that well-being can be measured objectively by using scientific tools like MRI scans etc.

But if what you're trying to suggest is that Harris is a scientist who somehow does away with that pesky philosophy nonsense, then you're deeply mistaken, both about what sorts of things science and philosophy are, and about Harris as an individual.

Because morality is not determined by the existence or nonexistence of a god. http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine-Values/dp/1439171211

Free will being an illusion doesn't mean you can't change - you can do something today (read a book, go out and meet someone, meditate) that will change your life. But, because free will is an illusion, you don't know why you may choose to do that "something"...it's all a result of causes and conditions that stretch back to before you were born. But what you do today becomes part of causes and conditions that shape tomorrow.

I suggest reading Sam Harris' "Free Will" - or, watching this YouTube video. Free will being an illusion does not mean your future is set in stone regardless of what you do/don't do...Sam Harris explains it well: it simply means what you do/don't do is a result of previous causes and conditions.

edit - fixed link.

Yup, that's exactly right. The American alt-right is very secular, and it's attachment to Christianity is less about Christ and more about seeing Christianity as a cultural corner-store of Western society, regardless of whether or not we should "believe" in Jesus. A lot of the far-right activity in Europe seems similar in their quest to preserve "Christian values" (and this seems to be also the case for Quebec, with it's negative treatment of Muslim and Jewish religious rights, as Quebec, while being very secular, wants to preserve Catholicism anyway as a part of it's "cultural heritage"). A fascinating development has been seeing the American alt-right split over religion, with people like Richard Spencer following a more secular notion of religion (Spencer favors establishing some sort of quasi-pagan religion in his white utopia, but not because he actually believes in paganism), while others really (like Nick Fuentes) want to establish some sort of theocracy.

And we can see this tie of the growing rise of a secular right in the States by analyzing the demographics of who voted for Trump. There was an article published in Aero just the other day about this which I'll quote at length because it's important and has some data points:

>It is true that in a choice between Trump and the progressive Left, most of the religious Right held their nose and chose Trump. But the voter base that propelled Trump’s meteoric rise to power – the faction of the Republican electorate that forced Trump to be the only viable alternative to Hillary Clinton, as it were – is overwhelmingly the secularized portion of the Republican coalition. This is an important nuance that is often missed by the mainstream coverage of Trump’s relationship with conservative voters across the country: Trump’s core constituency is disproportionately comprised of Republican voters who tell pollsters that they seldom or never go to church.
>
>The narrative about the religious Right’s disproportionate support for Trump isn’t wrong, per se, but it’s incomplete: Republican voters who regularly report church attendance were significantly more likely to support mainstream candidates like Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Ben Carson in the primary, and were uninterested in supporting Trump until the general election. But Trump’s base is largely comprised of the Republican voters who no longer regularly attend religious services.
>
>Tim Carney, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who recently published a book documenting this phenomenon, writes:
>
>We broke down Republican primary voters by church attendance. Among the most frequent attenders—those going more than once a week—Trump got about 32 percent of the vote. Trump also got a minority of those who simply go once a week. Among those who reported going “a few times a year,” Trump got about half. He got an easy majority (55 percent) of those Republicans who “seldom” attend, and a full 62 percent of those who never attend. That is, every step down in church attendance brought a step up in Trump support, and vice versa. The most frequent attenders were half as likely to support Trump as were the least frequent attenders…the GOP electorate has secularized, and [that secularization] helped Trump win the GOP nomination.

This goes to show that the secularization thesis some tout (the more secular a society becomes, the more it embraces metropolitanism, the more tolerant it gets, etc.) isn't right. The Rationalist community also goes to show that pure "rationality" can bring you to some very odd places.

Sam Harris talks about this a lot; he wrote a book called The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values , and also did a TED Talk about the subject.

1. Morality must be based on something. The real life effects that moral decisions have on beings that are conscious enough to understand those effects is as close to an objective standard as we can get. For more, read The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris.
   
   Kudos to Sam Harris, but as it turns out, my interest level in debating the merits of utilitarianism is much lower than I suspected it might be. All I can say is that Harris fully recognizes that it is a problem that the only people who are absolutely certain of their morals are those who are the most zealous about their religious convictions. And, of course, due to the mutually exclusive nature of religion, not all religious convictions can be right so most moral absolutists must be wrong. A good counter-question might be, "what makes you think that your version of absolute morality might be right?" I suspect that would be labeled as "dancing around the question" so I'll simply make that a rhetorical and move on.
   
   
2. Laura Mersini suggests that there is in fact good reason to think that other universes do exist. Her hypothesis makes novel predictions that have since been observed and, unlike any other hypothesis (if memory serves), her theory explains the blue shift we see in our universe as the interaction of an external universe. Do some research into Mersini's idea of the universe as a wave function on the landscape multiverse.
   
   I think I've answered your questions directly, though not in a great deal of depth. Sadly, I'm a long way away from being a philosopher and I'm even farther from being a theoretical physicist so the best I can do is to point you towards those who have answers (even if just preliminary or as yet unproven answers) to your questions.
   
   I'm interested to see your thoughts particularly about Dr. Mersini's hypothesis.

The God Debates: A 21st Century Guide for Atheists and Believers

http://www.amazon.com/God-Debates-Atheists-Believers-Everyone/dp/1444336428

Actually, this is a great book for both of you.

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If he's hard into philosophy:

The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and Against the Existence of God by J. L. Mackie
http://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Theism-Arguments-Against-Existence/dp/019824682X/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1302906893&sr=1-4Mackie

The Impossibility of God / The Improbablity of God by Micheal Martin (and others)
http://www.amazon.com/Impossibility-God-Michael-Martin/dp/1591021200/ref=pd_sim_b_25
http://www.amazon.com/Improbability-God-Michael-Martin/dp/1591023815/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

The Six Ways of Atheism: New Logical Disproofs of the Existence of God
http://www.amazon.com/Six-Ways-Atheism-Disproofs-Existence/dp/0954395662/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1302907259&sr=1-1

---------------------------------------------

I wish I could tell you that all you need to do is to stop believing in God and suddenly things will become much clearer. Unfortunately, this is not really the case.

Think of the God idea as a piece of malware, which is running on the computer of your brain. It's malware because it takes up your resources to do something that isn't beneficial to you. Once upon a time you installed the Loving Parents And Social Circle software, and it asked you to install the God program as part of it. You clicked OK at the time, but now you've figured out it's malware, and you need to find a way to get rid of the malware, but you don't want to uninstall the Loving Parents And Social Circle software too.

This is a very touchy process and I can't guarantee you'll be successful. Some people give up and simply decide to go without the Loving Parents And Social Circle software, because the licensing requirements are just too restrictive. I don't recommend this path. Even if the requirements are pretty rough, it's good software.

But here's the kick that no one tells you: by getting rid of the malware, you don't just suddenly have an awesome computer you can use for anything. You have to find and download lots of other software now. Getting rid of the malware was just the beginning, and now the real work begins. You're already way behind people who got rid of their malware ages ago, or maybe never had it to begin with. You need to play catch-up.

Here's the good news: most people, once they've finally gotten rid of the malware, wake up the next day and get really excited about all the new things their computer can potentially do, and they find themselves staying up all night downloading and running new stuff. There's a burst of energy that comes with suddenly finding all these free resources.

Maybe there's some old software sitting there that you never really used, and now you can run it much better than you did before. That was the case with me, and this was the software I ran. Then I started downloading more and more and more. Now I feel like my speeds are better than most and about as fast as the people I find interesting to talk to.

While Europe Slept, written 10 years ago, gives one a good understanding of the current crisis in Europe and why being tolerant to the intolerant is a recipe for failure.

I normally avoid discussion religion and atheism outside of /r/atheism, but I wanted to respond to your comment because I think it's missing the point of why atheists tend to make these statements.

The point the atheists are trying to make when they bring up certain passages is not to deny that there is good content mixed in with the bad, or to argue about whether the bible on the whole has more good vs bad content. The real argument is that if you read the bible you find plenty of both, and that when people try to claim it is an infallibly good book, it simply isn't true. Atheists do not believe the bible is the divine word of God, and pointing out the many contradictions in the bible (various facts, historical inconsistencies and contradicting moral directives) is just one way of providing evidence of this. When we hear people claiming that other people should "read and follow the bible", we ask "which part?" as a way of reminding them of the problems inherent to their suggestion.

We recognize there is plenty of good in the bible, but that there is obviously bad stuff too. We do not believe it is the inspired divine word of God, rather we generally think it is just a very interesting collection of ideas and stories put together by ancient authors. If the original 'good book' was really just written by ancient men as an attempt to provide a moral guide for their people, why shouldn't we as modern men come up with new versions of morality to live by today; ones that aren't internally and externally inconsistent, and which reflect the vast amount of knowledge we've gained in the interim? Ones that remove ideas about sexism, racism, and homophobia?

To sum up, when it comes to morality, many atheists are in the secular humanist camp - basically the idea is that as modern, self-reflecting, philosophical, intelligent humans we should define what is moral in a modern context, rather than relying on cultural traditions forged in ancient history, from a book that clearly has a large number of moral and factual contradictions throughout it. If you're at all interested to see one view of what this modern reanalysis of morals might look like, I'd highly recommend The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris.

Read Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape. And for a primer on the topic you can also watch his TED talk.

EDIT: This TED talk on oxytocin in regard to morality is also interesting.

Read a book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine/dp/1439171211

or watch a video:

http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right.html

Others have done it way better than I possibly can.

> Calling him a "demon child" and "fucked up" just reeks of insensitivity to me. The kid has problems and should probably be institutionalized, but let's not bash him.

The bottom line is that all bad behavior is the result of deterministic processes in the brain over which we have no control. Despite the profound subjective impression we have that we're in control of our own actions, from a logical and scientific perspective, the notion of free will is untenable. If you were to swap places with Jeffrey Dahmer, atom for atom, you would do everything he did. You'd have every thought he did, ever impulse, his exact ability/inability to resist various impulses, etc.

Doesn't stop me from wanted to slap the shit out of this kid when I see stuff like this, but that's an emotional reaction. And it doesn't mean he shouldn't be institutionalized, if we have no way of fixing someone like him. But it does mean that the notion of "punishment" for punishment's sake is nonsensical.

there appears to be some progress in this field

It’s (conveniently) titled “Free Will”. ;)

https://samharris.org/books/free-will/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1451683405/

I'll preface this by saying that it is not entirely clear what, precisely, your question is. So let me restate your question as I see it.

Science is an enormously successful endeavor. Using the scientific method we can, with high degrees of precision, mathematically describe certain aspects of reality using deterministic equations - e.g. the motion of a cannonball shot across a battlefield. To say that the motion of the cannonball is deterministic is to say that if we know the location and velocity of the cannonball at any given time, then using the equations and assuming no interfering factors, we can infer its location and velocity at any other time. This clearly works for some aspects of reality; might it work for all aspects of reality? In particular, might it work in describing the behavior of a human being? And, if so, would that not then suggest that we do not have freedom of the will?

This is more or less what Sam Harris argues in his book, Free Will, that if determinism is true, i.e. if all aspects of reality are governed by these deterministic equations, then we do not have free will.

There are at least two things I would want to say in reply to this. First, it is far from obvious that all aspects of reality are governed by deterministic equations. Actually, I would want to say that no aspects of reality are governed by equations. Rather, these equations describe what we observe - they do not cause what we observe nor do they govern the thing being observed. When Newton tells us, for example, that the force acting on an object is equal to its mass times its acceleration, i.e. F = ma, this is a mathematical description of a phenomena we observe. It does not tell us what is causing that force, or if it will always hold, or why such a relationship exists in the first place.

Second, I think that higher scientific education, in my experience anyways, is all backwards. If you are thrown into a physics or chemistry class in college, you will immediately come face to face with many equations - equations of motion, rates of chemical reaction, electromagnetic equations, thermodynamic equations, quantum mechanical equations etc. The impression is that these equations are true, and that reality abides by them. But, as I say, this is backwards. Instead, we should begin by studying the motion of cannonballs, how magnets generate fields, specific chemical reactions, converting steam into work using a turbine, electrons going through a slit, etc. and then attempt to develop a mathematical theory which accurately describes the phenomena we observe. When things are done in this order, we are immediately faced with the reality that those equations only work in very limited and often idealized conditions. This, for me anyway, immediately removes any serious thoughts that all of reality might be deterministic.

Sure.

Sam Harris has a great book on it in which he references some great studies.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Free-Will-Sam-Harris/1451683405

Here are links to a few studies.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/310/5745/116

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797616641943

http://selfpace.uconn.edu/class/ccs/Libet1985UcsCerebralInitiative.pdf

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810008001311?via%3Dihub

https://academic.oup.com/brain/article-abstract/106/3/623/271932/TIME-OF-CONSCIOUS-INTENTION-TO-ACT-IN-RELATION-TO?redirectedFrom=fulltext

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4747633/

There are others, but these are a good start!

https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Victimhood-Culture-Microaggressions-Spaces/dp/3319703285/ref=nodl_

This book looks at just that question

You should check out Sam Harris' short, but insightful, book on Free Will. It might change the way you define and think about it.

Rave as a religion. Here's a book and here's another book written on the subject. Pretty interesting stuff!

>For instance, nobody desires to be a true sociopath (ie: physically and chemically cannot feel good or evil), and those who are true sociopaths... well... many do not function well in society. Like it or not, what God defines as good... really is good

That is not a sociopath. Sociopaths lack empathy, but they may be acutely aware of societal norms. Jon Ronson just wrote a book about socio/psychopaths. I would suggest you read up on the Euthyphro dilemma. We can debate all day about the meaning of "good", but the god in the bible is not it. Condoning rape, commanding genocide, condemning though crime, those are the acts of the god of the bible. Those are not in any way good. If you want to know a little more about modern views of morality you should read up on the evolutionary causes of morality. Sam Harris wrote a very good book about it recently

>How much evil should God get rid of divinely?

Well, none of it according to the bible. Isiah 45:6-7 (Young's literal translation but you can look it up in whichever version you like)

>So that they know from the rising of the sun, And from the west, that there is none besides Me, I [am] Jehovah, and there is none else, Forming light, and preparing darkness, Making peace, and preparing evil, I [am] Jehovah, doing all these things.'

Atheism asserts no absolutes. Fail.

Morality is an interesting topic, upon which theists are uniquely unqualified (ref: crusades, adolph hitler, the current pedophilia scandals, telling Africans not to use condoms, opposing civil rights, opposing feminism, opposing gay rights, opposing emancipation). A well known atheist named Sam Harris has written a whole book about this called The Moral Landscape which addresses the question better than any theist ever has. (Though I don't claim its a complete answer.) These are actually not matters of logic at all, but are currently in the philosophical or early cognitive science phase.

I assure you I don't need to learn anything about philosophy. Though you might need a little remedial on logic.

Sam Harris can help you with this

In case anyone else committed the blasphemous sin of forgetting one of the Four Horsemen's first names like I did (it's Sam, btw) or are just too lazy to Google the book:

http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine-Values/dp/1439171211

quickly googles for Sam Harris new book - here it is: The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values

But it says it will be available in October 2010 :(

I like some of his writings, and in particular find his short Free Will to be useful in refuting materialistic naturalism. When someone accuses Christians or religious more broadly as being a belief in "magic" I often refer them to Free Will to show them that even naturalists believe in "magic" when they believe in the existence of free will.

I haven't read his more seminal works like The End of Faith or The Moral Landscape, but I'm deeply skeptical of his background in philosophy and in particular his apparently unfamiliarity with the is-ought problem.

Sam Harris - Free Will

Also, his presentation of the same content.

Both are excellent! He talks a little bit about a proof for determinism (however, I find it caters to people who already accept determinism). He also debunks the idea that determinism is incompatible with ethics/law.

This

> The idea that the mind is in some way non-physical.

The mind is a product and an element of the physical brain. It may not be concretely tangible (i.e., you can't hold a mind), but that does not mean it is not a part of the physical universe. Physics explains the mind quite well, actually. The neurons in our brain are developed in compliance to the laws of physics and biology, the neurochemicals in our brain are physical substances, and the electric currents in our brains that communicate signals between neurons operate in compliance to the laws of physics.

Evolution also provides insight into the development of consciousness. While, sure, humans are the only terrestrial species with advanced enough consciousness to develop religious and philosophical ideas, we know now that many animals have forms of consciousness and proto-consciousness like what we would expect if humans evolved consciousness from simple origins. The mind is perfectly explainable through naturalistic sciences, and our naturalistic model of human consciousness makes predictions that are falsifiable.

I'd suggest reading Steven Pinker's How The Mind Works. Here's a talk he gave on the book. I'd also suggest his The Stuff of Thought, The Language Instinct, and The Blank Slate.

I'd also suggest Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape. While it's main thrust is to show how science can inform morality, it offers some pretty decent layperson explanation of consciousness, and it is written by an accomplished neuroscientist (whatever your opinion on his religious works may be). His pamphlet-esque Free Will also covers some good ground here.

> All able-bodied humans are born with the ability to learn language.

Not at all true. You can be able-bodied and learning disabled. There was a nonverbal autistic student at my middle school years ago who ran track. Trivial point, but still incorrect.

> I would argue humans also have a Spiritual Acquisition Device.

I would argue that this argument is SAD. (pun; sorry.)

You're positing a massively complex hypothetical neurological infrastructure to link human brains to a divine alternate universe or dimension that has never been shown to exist. Not only has this neural uplink never been observed, but it is entirely unnecessary, as neuroscientists and psychologists have a perfectly functional, testable model of consciousness without it. You're adding a new element to that model that is functionally redundant and untestable. Occam's Razor would trim away your entire posited element out of extraneousness and convolution.

I'll think you'll find the Hindus to be quite the minority amongst the Chinese :)

But yes, the fact that you can strongly correlate religious belief with geographic locations is an indication that they are not true. I think the point is made in Matt McCormic's book (or maybe one of John Loftus's, or both) that belief in the theory of, say, gravitation is pretty evenly distributed across the world, but religious belief is not. Things that are 'true' and discoverable should not be locationally or culturally specific.

I recommend Harris' short book on the subject - an easy, insightful read.

Congratulations! I know what a big step that is, as I've been in the same boat. Books are the best way to become informed. Check out books by:

• Christopher Hitchens - God Is Not Great & The Portable Atheist
  
  
• Stephen Hawking - The Grand Design & A Briefer History of Time
  
  
• Richard Dawkins - The Greatest Show on Earth
  
  
• Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World
  
  
• Sam Harris - The Moral Landscape & The End of Faith
  
  
• Richard Panek - The 4 Percent Universe
  
  
• Robert Ingersoll - Some Mistakes of Moses
  
  
• Viktor Frankl - Man's Search for Meaning
  
  
• Sean Caroll - The Making of the Fittest
  
  
• Spencer Wells - Deep Ancestry
  
  
• Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Infidel
  
  
• Alan Watts - The Way of Zen
  
  Also check out the video series Why I am no longer a creationist.
  
  The more you know, the more confident you will be.

If you're at all curious about secular morality and what that could look like, Phil Zuckerman—a professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College—wrote an accessible book in 2014 called Living the Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions. He's also written several academically-focused works, such as Faith No More: Why People Reject Religion (Oxford University Press, 2011), which I haven't read yet but intend to soon.

I think it's a paper that's a reference to "While Europe Slept."

I don't know a lot about it, but I read a book around the same time that discussed middle eastern cultures and genital mutilation.

I also don't know how prevalent it is, but I read that sometimes they will show a girls vagina closed at a very young age, and it will stay like that until they are married. This results in all sorts of infections, clitoral damage, etc. These women essentially never enjoy sex, and because of hygiene issues I wouldn't be surprised if they are equally dirty to, or dirtier than their asshole.

Edit: According to wikipedia, it's more prevalent in NE Africa. Still looking for the book I was reading (it was 5+ years ago.)
Wiki link

Book: While Europe Slept I don't actually remember anything in the book except the genital mutilation which scarred me for life.

I remember reading the first article quite clearly and the second ought to be common sense. I wonder when these people throw the Christians off, how on earth can they hope for a better life? If their ways afforded a superior lifestyle than ours did then those boats would be heading in the opposite direction.

I recommend While Europe Slept. I read this back in 06 and it's really...coming from a more "open-minded, liberal" background, this book really made me take a step back and look at the big picture.

A used copy can be purchased for $1.00 on Amazon.

Its worth the read.

Yeah, I'm all too aware of the unfortunate situation. I just hate fatalistic talk, as I strongly believe we can and must turn it around. 9/11 got my attention, but I really didn't start understanding the insidious nature of things until I read While Europe Slept back in 2006.

There are reasons for optimism. Pots have to simmer awhile before they boil. I recommend following Dr. Steve Turley who follows these trends on youtube.

He definitely believes in objective morality. See here.

If the threat of hell is the only thing that keeps you from shooting and raping people, then you probably aren't a very good person to begin with.

By the way, you should read this:
http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine-Values/dp/1439171211

While we're on Sam Harris, his book The Moral Landscape is an in-depth extension of the ideas he brings up in this talk. It's a fascinating read, in that it is likely to change your mind on a lot of beliefs you have probably held without consideration for much of your life.

Sam Harris talks about it in length in his book The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values

How about this.

Don't forget Sam Harris' ideas on morality, which actually helped shape Dawkins' beliefs (see his review of Harris' book on Amazon).

A bit longer, but all are solid suggestions, and although I could add two dozen more, I'm sure others will take up the cause.

• What the dog saw, by Malcolm Gladwell
  
  
• Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre
  
  
• 
  God is Not Great, by Christopher Hitchens
  
  
• The Moral Landscape, by Sam Harris
  
  
• The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein
  
  
• Super Freakonomics, by Levitt & Dubner
  
  
• The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
  
  
• The Case for Mars, by Robert Zubrin
  
  
• The Value of Nothing, by Raj Patel
  
  
  

No ... Read The Moral Landscape by Harris. It might not convince you to side with Harris, but it will certainly make you think.

>Since there is no objective morality without god

That's what Christians say. Mind you, many things they say turn out to be bullshit.

Your sense of morality arrives from what your parents taught, from your own experiences in school, with your friends, etc.


Sam Harris wrote a good book about that.

For more on this, I suggest reading his book: The Moral Landscape

NukeThePope often suggests this book:

https://nukeexcathedra.jottit.com/2011-03-09%3A_book_review%3A_sense_%26_goodness_without_god

Not exactly 'how to be successful' but it is about morality

some other suggestions:

http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine-Values/dp/1439171211?tag=dudugo-20

http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Ethics-Peter-Singer/dp/0521707684/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1315260344&sr=8-2


http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

(not about morality, but it will help you to avoid being gullible, which would help with the success thing)

Another FYI:

This is the book he was referring to:

The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values

Because the book mentioned relates to the topic being discussed by technothrasher and ojfrown. It is not uncommon for one person on Reddit to recommend a book he himself, or herself, has found relevant to a topic being discussed and feels the other person might find interesting as well.

Since you appear to think Sam Harris is just "some random guy", I'll add a little biographical material:

>Sam Harris is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, and The Moral Landscape. The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction.
>
>Mr. Harris' writing has been published in over fifteen languages. He and his work have been discussed in Newsweek, TIME, The New York Times, Scientific American, Nature, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. His writing has appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Economist, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The Annals of Neurology, and elsewhere.
>
>Mr. Harris is a Co-Founder and CEO of Project Reason, a nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. He received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA.

Should you wish to learn more about the book, see The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values.

Some people are willing to read the works of authors who might have opinions that differ from their own.

Overview of the Week's Blog Posts

>Skepticism about free will has become ever more prominent. If one browses the popular science section of any large bookshop or flicks through recent popular science magazines, one is likely to come across some books or articles arguing that free will is an illusion: a left-over from an outmoded, pre-scientific way of thinking that has no place in modern science. The authors typically cite some influential neuroscientific studies that appear to undermine the idea of free will by showing that human actions are caused not by our intentional mental states, but by physical processes in the brain and body. More broadly, if everything in the universe is governed by the laws of physics, and our actions are part of that universe, then how could those actions be free? This line of reasoning, in turn, puts pressure on our traditional notions of responsibility. How could it make sense to hold anyone responsible for their actions if those actions weren’t done out of this person’s own free will?
>
>Such skepticism about free will is not yet the mainstream view among the general public. Nor is it the mainstream view among academic philosophers, the majority of whom are “free-will compatibilists”: proponents of the thesis that free will – perhaps after some definitional tweaking – is compatible with a law-governed, even deterministic universe. But free-will skepticism is on the rise, as illustrated by Sam Harris’s best-selling book, Free Will (2012). Many free-will skeptics have a noble moral motive, alongside their scientific motivation: they find the present criminal justice systems in many countries unjust and wish to argue for criminal justice reform. But one can certainly agree on the need for an overhaul of our criminal justice systems and advocate a more rehabilitative and less retributivist approach, while still thinking that it is a philosophical mistake to throw the notion of free will out of the window. Moreover, the idea of free will is central to our human self-understanding as agents, independently of its relevance to criminal justice. How, for instance, could we genuinely deliberate about which course of action to take – say, when we choose a job, a partner, or a political cause we wish to endorse – if we didn’t take ourselves to be free in making this choice?
>
>In my book, Why Free Will is Real (Harvard University Press, 2019), I offer a new defence of free will against the growing skepticism. Crucially, I do not proceed by denying science or watering down the definition of free will. Rather, my aim is to show that if we understand the lessons of a scientific worldview correctly, the idea of free will – in a fairly robust sense – is not just consistent with such a worldview but supported by it. In short, I argue that there is a naturalistic case for free will.
>
>In this series of blog posts, I will first describe what I take to be the main challenges for free will from a scientifically informed perspective and then explain what my strategy is for answering those challenges. And I will illustrate this strategy by zooming in on the most widely discussed challenge, namely the challenge from determinism. Of course, I will only be able to sketch some key ideas relatively informally; more detailed and precise arguments can be found in the book itself, as well as in some of my earlier articles (available on my webpage).

The Rest of the Blog Post(s)

Use the link from the OP to find the rest of the blog post summarized above as well as the remaining blog posts from Christian List throughout the week.

The Podcast Version

You can listen to Christian List discuss their book Why Free Will Is Real on the New Books in Philosophy podcast here: https://newbooksnetwork.com/christian-list-why-free-will-is-real-harvard-up-2019/

If you enjoy those kind of conversations, this might be the best $5.25 you'll ever spend.

There is a great argument for the scientifically based idea that we do not have free will. Mark Balaguer and Sam Harris both have books that discuss this from a neurological stand point. Very good reading.

Sam Harris: Free Will

Mark Balaguer: Free Will

As promised here's a short list of sources. If you need/would like more, let me know!

First off is Sam Harris - he's a well-respect author on the subject, possessing a degree in Philosophy and a Ph.D in Neuroscience:

Book link

Youtube video of him speaking on the subject

Next is an article from Scientific American.

Jerry Coyne

That last article links to a few more articles with similar conclusions!

Enjoy!!

>free will by definition requires the possibility of choosing the wrong thing or making a bad choice. and those people who always choose good of their own free will, they exist, but they all live in heaven.

There are many things that human beings cannot do. We cannot fly unassisted or travel faster than the speed of light. However, we are never tempted to say that this restrictions on our ability somehow infringe upon our free will. Even though our possible actions are restricted by a set of parameters, we are still free within those parameters - free will does not require infinite choice.

Given this, it is logically possible that God could have created beings that such that they would always freely choose the good. That is, that these beings would have only innocent inclinations - what Kant called holy will.

>if he interfered then he has compromised our freedom to choose the wrong thing and thus we would not have free will.

Why does having free will necessarily require the ability to harm others? Couldn't God, being omnipotent, have created a world in which people who chose evil harmed only themselves through their actions, and not been able to cause innocents to suffer. I fail to see how this would in any way impinge on those agents' free will.

Clearly, this is not the world we live in. We live in a world in which those who choose evil can inflict harm on others, which seems to suggest that either God does not have the capacity to do this (in which case he is not omnipotent) or does not have the inclination to (in which case he is not omnibenevolent).

>if we choose to live in the material world, suffering and death are unavoidable. it is our choice to live in this world that is the bad choice we have made.

In what way do we choose to live in this world? I'm sorry, but this seems utterly nonsensical to me. We are simply born into the material world; there is no choice involved.

>if you choose to jump off a building, is gravity responsible for your injuries?

Of course not. In that case it is your choice that caused the suffering. However, there are plenty of cases where the free choice of moral agents is in no way responsible for the suffering caused. This is the definition of natural evil.

For example, in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, rescue efforts were hampered by rain. If not for that rain, it is surely possible that a few more people might have been pulled from the wreckage. Even assuming that the WTC attacks happened because of the perpetrators exercising their free will, there's no reason for God to have made the situation worse by hampering rescue efforts. Surely God could have simply not sent this rain, or made it not rain, without infringing on anyone's free will.

>wasn't sure of your exact argument for libertarian free will so haven't replied to that.

I certainly don't have an argument for libertarian free will. I do have an argument against it, but it's not really something I can sum up in a short reddit post. If you're interested, I'd encourage you to read Sam Harris' excellent book Free Will. As I said in my first post, the free will defense does require libertarian free will and that's not something I think exists, so for me the argument really does stop there.

Yes, I agree and advances in Neuroscience point to that conclusion as well. I admit though, determinism was/is a hard pill for me to swallow. The philosphical debate over the concept (or illusion) of free will is an interesting topic to me, and one that I am still not sure about.

If you are more interested in the topic I would recommend the Sam Harris' short new book called Free Will, or you can check out this video lecture where he basically paraphrases it (I originally found it on /r/Documentaries) . He spends a lot of time discussing how the deterministic conclusion is inevitable, and then goes on to argue why this doesn't strip all meaning from our lives (determinism vs fatalism).

Consciousness is...tricky. From what I've studied, all we are really confident in saying about it now is that it's entirely dependent on the brain. If you change the brain, it directly effects consciousness. How consciousness, a non-physical entity, can arise from exclusively physical attributes is still under discussion. What Dennett is offering in the video is a re-characterization of the entire discussion. People seem to be looking for a "real" magic trick to explain consciousness. Dennett is making the case that just as there really is no "real" magic, there's only illusions to make you believe there's magic, that there's no "real" magic to consciousness. It's an illusion, in a non-deceptive sense. Consciousness is what happens when the extremely complex systems in your brain interact in the way they do.

If you want some books to read about the mind and brain, check out Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (NY Times Bestseller List 2011) and Connectome by Sebastian Seung. Kaheman will change the way you think about the way you think. He outlines the to "systems" that operated the way you think, and then outlines the biases he's discovered that causes the way you think to be wrong. Connectome outlines the processes of the brain and how the brain is wired to give a somewhat speculative look into Connectome science (mapping all the neurons in the brain and their connections to eachother) and makes claims that once we do this we will better understand the brain and consciousness because the physical structure of the brain is hypothesized to matter a great deal.

As a moderately related point to consciousness, you may want to ask that if consciousness is dependent on the brain, what does that mean for free-will. You should check out Free Will by Sam Harris. It's extremly short--more of an essay. Then look at what Dennett says about free-will. They very strongly disagree, and Sam has said that he hopes to sit down with Dennett and discuss it. When that happens it will be really interesting, and worth having at least a small background on the issue.

i would recommend free will by sam harris, which is brief and unusually lucid for a work of philosophy - you could read this in an afternoon. his take is that free will as it is commonly conceived is an illusion, and that we need to come to terms with how free our will is not in order to become effective decision-makers.

freedom evolves by dan dennett is more technical and dense, but tries to make a compatibilist case that, though our actions are physically determined, we still have freedom in a meaningful way; i.e. the kind you are talking about.

reading about free will will surely blow your mind, even if it doesn't change your mind :)

Sam Harris (neuroscientist) wrote a book titled "free will" on it.

I'd recommend giving this video of his a watch.

I think people have the hardest time coming to terms with the idea that we may just be on this human ride without any real control.

i'm not asserting anything as fact. just looking for another view.

I am a psychonaut AND a hard determinist.

In my experience, most of the emotional upset we seem to encounter when thinking about determinism is that we feel powerless, as if all power resided in choice. Yet, merely being alive as a human, with human capacities and human capabilities is awesome power already!! It is true that you may never become an Einstein, owing to your environmental and biological history, but you will also likely never become a Hitler.

More to the point, the illusion of choice is persistent-- indeed we probably evolved that apprehension as some sort of psychological stress-release mechanism simultaneously with our abilities of higher thinking and reflection. If you like, you can pretend that you have choice, knowing that what you actually "choose" will quite likely not bring you into a terribly atrocious place, relative to other humans, provided that you are already fairly mentally sound and sufficiently ethical.

I recommend Sam Harris's very short book on Free Will as a basic introduction to determinism, including why a lack of free will does not remove our ability to hold persons responsible for their actions, from a harm-reduction perspective, even though it is entirely senseless to judge their soul or spirit in any moralistic sense thereby.

He is most famous for his work on the philosophy of free will. I don't think he is that great of a philosopher but he defiantly is one.

> We make decisions based on option, experience, upbringing, that sort of thing

This implies that two people who had the exact life experiences would react the exact same way in any given circumstance.

> Indeed, we can only be held responsible if we actually have a decision making process

Given your previous statement, how can one be held responsible for the an outcome that was pre-determined by their past experience?


Lets say the culmination of the experiences and influences of a man's life determined that he would wake up the morning of October 1st 2013 and decide to kill his neighbor. Your first statement implies that if you had lived his exact life up to that point, you would make the exact same decision he did.


This rules out the idea that he was, in fact, responsible for his decision to kill. The decision was simply the product of all his previous "experience, upbringing, that sort of thing". Do you assign the moral responsibility to him or to the culmination of his experience?


I know I'm not putting this forward very eloquently. It's a concept covered in the book Free Will by Sam Harris; a book that this thread has prompted me to start re-reading today.

Free will may not be as "free" as we once thought it was. For example, there is a major correlation with rates of violence dropping with the reduction of lead usage. Lead makes people more violent regardless of their "free will". There is also an essay written by neuroscientist Sam Harris called Free Will where he talks about this same subject stating that something as simple as what you are for breakfast can have an impact on your "free will" that day. So like I said, free will isn't as free as we think it is maybe.

I would recommend reading "Free Will" by Sam Harris. Really fascinating stuff, completely changed how I think about a lot of things. It's a pretty quick read, and he keeps it relatively easy to understand.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1451683405

1. The True Believer
   
2. The Denial of Death
   
3. God Is Not Great

Sam Harris thinks so. I tend to agree with him keeping in mind that any objective measure is going to be quite fuzzy.

The fact that people get their moral feelings from the culture in which they're raise does not imply that all cultures have the best possible moral code. Just the opposite, human moral codes have often been based on ignorance, superstition, a natural inclination to distrust those who are different, and indoctrination at the hands of the rich and powerful.

Despite this, humans do have natural evolutionary feelings of empathy and compassion which were and are necessary for our species to cooperate and persist. We are a communal species and we survive by working together and by caring both for our young and for one another. You can see the same thing in any herd animal species. We've learned to see a wide range of emotions and empathetic reactions in animals which 50 years ago most people would have considered preposterous because they were "just animals".

The great thing about humans is that with the advance of scientific knowledge we can learn that under our skin we are all the same. We can build on our collective knowledge and improve our philosophy of ethics and morality because we are learning creatures and not simply base, instinctual creatures with no capacity for higher thought.

Here are some other people's ideas on the matter.
Sam Harris
This is a lecture about his new book, which you can get on Amazon for about $3.50. If you're really interested, I think $3-$6 is a pretty cheap price for a book on the subject by a renowned and respected mind.
Here's the link to his lecture about the book.
Science Can Answer Moral Questions

Here's a discussion between Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins titled, Who Says Science has Nothing to Say About Morality?

Here's a wiki page about secular ethics.



It's very, very interesting stuff and there's always more to learn.

This is a HUGE , HUGE, concept to talk about and neither of us are going to get to far on it in this thread.

Sam Harris' excellent book "The moral landscape" does a wonderful job of laying out the foundations of human morality without a supernatural bent: (http://www.amazon.com/The-Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine/dp/B006W3YQTK/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335301465&sr=1-1)

>That doesn't seem right. Why do we then cause suffering for conscious creatures and call it moral? For example, the imprisonment of criminals. That causes suffering to them. Actually we would say it is immoral not to imprison them

It is true that sometime the most moral actions require suffering of others. (Self defense is but one example.) Actually in Harris' book, he also takes on seemingly problematic topics like sado-maschosism. (People deriving personal pleasure from hurting others.) At first glance, it seems as if someone who doesn't believe in god could NOT say "It is objectively wrong to do this."

However, harris lays out a wonderful case of why that isn't true, and he does a MUCH better job than I ever can here. Actually, for a great example of a debate on this matter, there is a 10 part youtube debate with Christian apologist William lane Craig and Yale philosophy professor Shelly Kagan:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqZ5azg8mlg)

I HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend watching this debate as both men are very skilled in their respective positions and both sides are laid out beautifully.

It is called "Is god necessary for morality?"

I expected someone to have put this up already The Moral Landscape

It's a really interesting read that, IMO successfully, debunks Hume's is/ought distinction and Gould's non overlapping magisterium idea. It also makes a good case for an objective morality and argues against moral relativism.

> In an increasingly secular world

Except that it isn't really.

True, but a lot of his rise was correlated with falling churchgoing. https://www.amazon.com/Alienated-America-Places-Thrive-Collapse/dp/0062797107

​

There are also some polls that show that churchgoing Trump voters hold more tolerant views on immigration and race than nonchurch going ones

You are saying that there are circumstances where these things aren't wrong, and I disagree. No matter what "yardstick" you use, some things should always be wrong.

You are, however, echoing the sentiment that has been popular for most people, including the scientific community, for quite some time. I mentioned Sam Harris, as he makes some very good arguments against this:

Check out his book.

Definitely worth a read. At the risk of failing miserably to properly convey his point, he is suggesting that our "yardstick" should be, and can only be, the well-being of conscious beings. If we agree on this, then it can be surmised that there are answers to questions of morality that are definitely right and answers that are definitely wrong.

Basically, he is taking the notion that has been common for so long, "it is impossible to have a universal standpoint on morality," and rejecting it. And he makes some damn good arguments. Moral relativism is a way for us to excuse the inexcusable.

I haven't read any of these, but there is a Listmania! list on Amazon of experimental philosophy books.

I'm going to try and read Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape sometime over the break, and that might also be up your brother's alley.

You''re trying to equate someones personal respect (in my case) for other people to me being forced to do something for a religion... that's not the case. There is no Muslim morality when you get down to it, Sam Harris might be able to explain it better to you than I can.

Frankly I think nudity laws are stupid, and repressive. I think it's silly a man can be topless and a woman cannot, if some African ladies told me it was repressive I couldn't walk around topless I would agree with them. However if I wanted to walk around topless, there are cities and places I can go to where the law is actually ok with me walking around topless/nude. You better bet that if these Muslim women tried to walk around not in full body cover anywhere there would be a shit storm coming right at them.

I think that like most things there is a time and a place for everything, and if they chose to wear these full body and face covering clothes that would even be ok, if it wasn't in conjunction with all the other things that oppress these women. If it was "These women are treated as equal but out of respect for their religion wear these garments" fine, but any religion that is based around keeping women down and glorifying men is clearly not acting in the women best interest, and anything stemming from it is going to be put in a negative light regardless.

> Q: Are there right and wrong answers to moral questions?

> Harris: Morality must relate, at some level, to the well-being of conscious creatures. If there are more and less effective ways for us to seek happiness and to avoid misery in this world—and there clearly are—then there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality.

> Q: Are you saying that science can answer such questions?

> Harris: Yes, in principle. Human well-being is not a random phenomenon. It depends on many factors—ranging from genetics and neurobiology to sociology and economics. But, clearly, there are scientific truths to be known about how we can flourish in this world. Wherever we can act so as to have an impact on the well-being of others, questions of morality apply.

> Q: But can’t moral claims be in conflict? Aren’t there many situations in which one person’s happiness means another’s suffering?

> Harris: There as some circumstances like this, and we call these contests "zero-sum." Generally speaking, however, the most important moral occasions are not like this. If we could eliminate war, nuclear proliferation, malaria, chronic hunger, child abuse, etc.—these changes would be good, on balance, for everyone. There are surely neurobiological, psychological, and sociological reasons why this is so—which is to say that science could potentially tell us exactly why a phenomenon like child abuse diminishes human well-being.

> But we don’t have to wait for science to do this. We already have very good reasons to believe that mistreating children is bad for everyone. I think it is important for us to admit that this is not a claim about our personal preferences, or merely something our culture has conditioned us to believe. It is a claim about the architecture of our minds and the social architecture of our world. Moral truths of this kind must find their place in any scientific understanding of human experience.
-- Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape

I wonder what Penn does/would think of The Moral Landscape.

Also this:

> you get no moral credit for forcing other people to do what you think is right

I love Penn and I don't know how rigorous he was intending to be when writing this, but this point is obviously false in at least some circumstances as long as we can read "moral credit" as "being moral". Clearly, using coercive or violent force to stop a murderer from killing your toddler-aged child IS an unambiguous, unassailable example of "moral credit" to you.

http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine-Values/dp/1439171211

They do. At least broad and general claims about morality can be measured and made. We can make observations about human fufilment and human suffering that are undeniable.

When I say "because" I'm not talking about the constitutional basis for the law, I'm talking about something much more basic that led us to the conclusion that humans should have rights at all. "Rights" are a human-created concept. This isn't to say they're wrong – we've had a few good ideas in our time and this was one of them. But even so, they didn't exist until we invented them.

So why did we invent the particular rights that we did, like the right to be free from slavery, to be treated equally under the law, and to not be murdered? Obviously I wasn't around during the Enlightenment so I can't say for sure, but I'm guessing it was because on some level, the people who came up with these concepts thought that a world when everyone had these rights would make the world a better place for everyone. They were also implicitly making the judgement that to disregard these rights would make the world worse and would be immoral.

It bothers me when we say that we shouldn't legislate morality, because we're basically saying that morals are a domain that belongs only to religion. I think that this is a bad thing, because most religions make a terrible basis for morals. I've been reading The Moral Landscape these past few days, and while it's not exactly light reading I'd highly recommend it if you're interesting in non-religon-based morality. There's also his TED talk on the same subject which is shorter and more accessible than the book.

Thanks for the reply. If you liked that essay, you may find Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape interesting. Also, the author of the essay has a number of other writings(on diverse topics) available on his homepage: http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/

Yes, I don't believe however that moral-good is any sort of divine or supernatural concept, but merely a set of constructs by which we can minimize human suffering and maximize happiness.

What do you think?

Edit: The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris describes pretty much what I am describing but in much greater detail and clarity.

http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine-Values/dp/1439171211

Your next mission fellow baby eater is to read these 2 books.

The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Read The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris. His basic thesis is that there are scientific methods that can determine what is positive or negative for society, and that reason should determine how to view actions that are traditionally vague or "relative" because of religion, tolerance for other cultures, etc. instead of saying, "oh, well those people are different than I am, and no matter their opinion they have a right to live their life as they choose". A moral relativist might say that stoning a woman for adultery in a different culture, although they might disagree, shouldn't be condemned because it's a part of their society and not ours.

*edited, we are actually discussing "moral relativism", rather than "cultural relativism" - cultural relativism is a more positive anthropological methodology that says basically "my art/food/music isn't better than yours"

I am not really qualified to represent a scientific explanation of altruism. However, I have read books and some research done. We take care of disabled people because humans have evolved empathy and sympathy. This fits into our evolution as a social species. Our species was stronger with these traits and it benefited our over all survival, or it probably would have evolved away. Sure a blind man may not be useful for physical jobs and required care and attention, however they tend to have usefulness anyways in some cases. Blind people can still teach for example. Evolution doesn't have anything that contradicts taking care of cripples or people who would seem to put a disadvantage to our resources.

The moral landscape goes into good lengths to apply science to moral values.

>I have to imagine you're angry that I have equated your moral realism to christian fundamentalism, but as I keep pointing out, there is a reason for that.

I'm not angry about that. I'm angry I wasted so much time on you. You espouse nothing but poor reasoning. You're an apologist. You've chosen that position and it's an ugly one.

>The only reason you think it is universally wrong is because you believe in your morals blindly—with FAITH.

My morals are quite measured and I do not follow them blindly, with faith. I quoted this because this is all you do. You make stupid and baseless attacks because you have no defense.

>Of course, but that doesn't make those commonalities universally necessary, and certainly not universally moral.

You don't get it. I'm done. I'll leave you with this, because I don't think I've talked to someone who needs to read it more than you:

http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine-Values/dp/1439171211

Currently reading The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris.

Very good read so far, although it's mostly focused on morality and not so much God. Definitely a thumbs up and recommended though.

You might want to have a look at Sam Harris' new book : http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Landscape-Science-Determine-Values/dp/1439171211

I have not read it nor had I read anything by Sam Harris, but I have heard good things about the book and will likely read it in the future. It seems to in line with the topic at hand.

Edit : On the prisoner's dilemma. You might want to read up on evolutionary stable strategies : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy

An ESS is more or less the prisoner's dilemma expanded to explain behaviours within a population.

Can I offer some other choice reads that will make you question your rational decision based on "how it feels" we make decisions rather than how they "actually are made"? We can now do brain studies that show our unconscious brain makes our decisions before our conscious brain is even aware of the choices. We rationalize our decisions based on our emotions, not logic. The beautiful thing is we feel like we are the ones in charge, the 'I", me, you, they, she, he, whomever, but every single person is as predictable as our Earth's rotation around the sun.

Let's see, some interesting books with hundreds if not thousands of sources in them each: Subliminal, Free Will, Incognito to get you started.

Feelings are only feelings, they are an old response before our prefontal cortex made its appearance. Don't let those get in the way of learning about how we work. Sure it feels like the earth is flat, it feels bad when we get rejected, it feels like your conscious mind made that choice to get a burger over the salad, but don't let feelings get in the way of what's actually happening. It's all an illusion, man..

> assume you might be thinking bout some of the experiments that show we can observe what decision a person will make before they are conscious of the decision

Not at all, although I'm familiar with those as well. Rather, there's demonstrable evidence that you have no free agency in exercising your mind to bring about specific conscious thought on demand. Further, that your biology and your environment are the driving forces that shape your nuerodevelopment, neither of which you have any command of. Thus, by extension, 'you' are the product of concurrent and prior processes that you do not control.

To return to your example,

>Did the neurons that make up my mind not weigh the options and produce an answer on their own?

Yes, and chose an answer based on the sum of your experiences that you had no true free agency in experiencing, and neither did your ancestor's whose biology you share that informed that conclusion.


See: Sam Harris on Free Will, for a deep dive into this topic. Essay Book Lecture

Sam Harris has written a shot but excellent book on the topic of "free will" and how it relates to our current understanding of neuroscience. It is called, oddly enough, Free Will

Sorry you ended up incapable of understanding rational logic. Maybe try school again, there are still minor repairs you can make to the gaping holes in your intellect if you're under 30.

Start here.

People do not have free will. Science is accumulating evidence to back up the theory every day. Famous neuroscientists even write books about it.

http://www.amazon.com/Free-Will-Sam-Harris/dp/1451683405

We are all slaves to genetics, saying he voluntarily did anything is... impossible. I read somewhere that if humans have free will, our brains would be the ONLY thing in the entire universe that breaks the known laws of physics. Or... our brains do follow the laws of physics, and we do not have free will.

But sure, lets go with the idea that our brains rose above physics, sure the kid made the choice on his own.

Free Will

-Sam Harris

Here is a free lecture about the book's ideas.

> You can freely choose to either pick the fork up or not. It is not predetermined and you can freely chose.

I (and neuroscience in general) am saying no, that's not true. Whether or not you pick up the fork is nothing you have any control over. You think you "make a choice" - but you are following your programming. You and I are simply machines. We are doing exactly what we are programmed to do by our biology and our set of experiences, and nothing more. It's causal. Every choice you make is not just influenced by determined things that ultimately happened outside your body, but 100% decided by them.

Edit: Here, an actual neuroscientist can describe this better than I can. Or, read the book.

Free will (in the sense that you and I know it) doesn't exist.

If you're into philosophy, I'd highly recommend Sam Harris's book on the matter. He has a knack for conveying complex ideas simply.

It isn't retarded. Do some background research.

http://youtu.be/KCInjQ4omlA
http://youtu.be/bX8D0yU0pMc
http://youtu.be/C_L-k7KCPPM
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1451683405
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1862078947

I'll say no. A big influence on this way of thinking comes from Free Will by Sam Harris. These intoxicated individuals did not chose their genes, their upbringing, and they have no control over what thoughts occur to them (just like any other person). Thoughts and decisions simply arise unauthored from their minds. Those who make the "right" decisions are just lucky, ultimately. I think we should show more compassion to those who make the "wrong" decisions and try to help them in what ways we can.

http://www.amazon.com/Free-Will-Sam-Harris/dp/1451683405 You could probably read the entire thing in a couple hours.

Thank you very much. I haven't studied this subject very deeply, but I know that there are writers who cover it far more eloquently and convincingly than I. Much of my current thinking on this comes from Sam Harris, especially his books on free will and morality. Both are fascinating and extremely well argued, in my opinion.

Thanks for the response. I hoped for a little repartee.

>But there's also a difference between, say, the example you gave of a dragon and these Christian accounts.

No, alas, they are exactly the same. They rely on eye witness (personal anecdote) testimony and have no evidence. Again, if there WAS evidence you (they) would be the first in history to show it. Additionally, you might want to theologically think about your stance on evidence and whether or not there is any. If a god provided evidence of its existence, wouldn't that remove our free will that christians so desperately defend by compelling us to believe? (By the way, you might want to hear what Sam has to say about Free Will)

>you can look at those who have been willing to die for their faith

This doesn't make a thing true. Those who follow Allah say this exact same thing before they blow themselves up on the crowed Israeli bus. The stronger you say your faith is, the faster I walk the other way in fear for my safety. There's no telling where ardent faith leads. Oh yeah, the Crusades for one. 9/11 for another. I'm pretty sure the female genital mutilation crowd is willing to die for their faith too. How about those parents who let their children die of easily cured maladies because they'd rather pray for help to come? I'll bet they're pretty strong in their faith.

Which leads me to...

> insincere or just deluded?

I think the majority of those who profess a belief in supernatural woo-woo actually believe it. True charlatans are rare but exist nonetheless. The easy way to spot a charlatan is the request for money. "God made the universe but you need to give 'til it hurts 'cause he's out of money." Therefore, to answer your either/or question, woo-woo believers are deluded. You know there's a famous book with a title you might recognize, The God Delusion. The clue is in the title.

Since you finished with a question, allow me the same privilege.

Do you care if your beliefs are true?

*Edit: Hyperlinked to The God Delusion by Sir Richard Dawkins. Thought for sure you'd want more details.

Yes, I did. There is no such thing as free will. You merely experience the illusion of free will, when in reality your brain is making decisions that are inevitable given the electro-chemical pathway contained within it and the outside stimuli you experience. You do not have free will.

edit: http://www.amazon.com/Free-Will-Sam-Harris/dp/1451683405

Sam Harris wrote a book just about that. It's called "Free will".

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1451683405

I think you would enjoy Sam Harris's book, Free Will. It confirms and explores many of the insights you have had, and provides a good deal of interesting evidence from cognitive neuroscience to support your suspicion that our brains operate deterministically.

Why God does not exist:

http://www.amazon.com/Non-Existence-God-Nicholas-Everitt/dp/0415301076

http://www.amazon.com/God-Failed-Hypothesis-Science-Shows/dp/1591026520/

http://www.amazon.com/Impossibility-God-Michael-Martin/dp/1591021200/

http://www.amazon.com/Improbability-God-Michael-Martin/dp/1591023815/

http://www.thesixwaysofatheism.com/

I would also recommend Michael Martin as well.

Impossibility of God

Atheism: A Philosophical Justification

Found this on circlebroke2, and I thought I'd help.

Here That pretty much murders the O^3 version many people believe in.

Removed comment posted by /u/bdw9000 at 07/14/14 04:55:11:

> For a more substantive challenge, I'd recommend these:
>
> A specific case against believing in the resurrection (and miracles in general): http://www.amazon.com/Atheism-And-Case-Against-Christ/dp/1616145811/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405313666&sr=8-1&keywords=atheism+mccormick
>
> A general case against theism/religion: http://www.amazon.com/Atheism-Case-Against-Skeptics-Bookshelf/dp/087975124X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405313634&sr=8-1&keywords=atheism+smith

... in response to submission What's a good book promoting atheism? I've tried a few common suggestions, and they haven't impressed me. posted by /u/UnlikelySoccerStar at 06/29/14 05:47:55:

> So, I realized that all my experience with atheist apologetics so far has been in the context of Christian apologetic works. Author brings up argument A, refutes it. I'm looking to give the other sides arguments a chance on it's own terms.
>
>
> The thing is, I've tried a few already. I read a good chunk of 'God is not Great' by Christopher Hitchens and a decent chunk of "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. In both instances I gave up, because I found the arguments being presented to be easily defeated, and after a hundred pages I hadn't encountered anything new or interesting.
>
>
> So I'm asking for something a little different. I'm pretty burnt out on the whole 'New Atheism' movement, so I'd prefer a book that approaches the problem from a historical or philosophical angle.
>
>
> Thanks and hope you are all doing well.

If you're a Christian or want to be able to argue against Christianity:

http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/1616145811

Atheism and the Case Against Christ by Matthew McCormick. By far the best book I've ever read concerning Christianity.

I found Grace Davie 's book very useful. It's a great starting point https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sociology-Religion-Critical-Agenda/dp/1849205876

I highly recommend the rise of victimhood culture. The larger concern here is that certain parts of our society incentivize and reward victims. Removing bullets from shooting victims doesn’t make one a true victim but that’s how this lady presented herself. Even if she were a real victim, it‘s not a qualification for public office.

I'm no expert in this, but I don't think you can understand modern Islamism without understanding the thought of Sayyid Qutb, one of the intellectual founders of the movement (or movements, more like).

Not every Islamist group traces its roots to Qutb, but I would argue that he's certainly the most influential recent Islamist theorist. He died in the 1960's IIRC.

His main works are Social Justice in Islam and Milestones Along the Way. Social Justice was written earlier and before he fully developed his radicalism, and Milestones is full blown Islamism.

A good secondary source on Qutb is Adnan Musallam's From Secularism to Jihad: Sayyid Qutb and the Foundations of Modern Islamism.

A general book on the causes, frustrations, etc. that have led to the rise of Islamic extremism, see Michael Mazarr's Unmodern Men in the Modern World: Radical Islam, Terrorism, and the War on Modernity.

I would recommend beginning with Mazarr's book and then moving on to Musallam. After that, you can decide if it's worth your time to read some Qutb.

Here you can buy it or get it free with a trial of Audible. ;)

The word "spiritual" has superstitious and supernatural baggage. Same with the word "religious"


And yet when I look at the stars the only word I can think of to describe this is a "spiritual" or "religious" experience...


The phrase "peak experience" while maybe adequate has not become popularly used enough to convey the meaning and depth felt during these experiences...

Have you watched this?
Have you read this? Or this?
tl;dr I am a non-believer who has had spiritual experiences after deconverting.

Please, oh please, let me get this new job

http://www.amazon.com/Free-Will-ebook/dp/B006IDG2T6/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=3CCTG6CY40C3E&coliid=I1M4XP94S178S4

Sam Harris comes to mind, as well as plenty of other prominent writers on the topic of Determinism. https://www.amazon.com/Free-Will-Sam-Harris-ebook/dp/B006IDG2T6/

The Moral Landscape

I'm not familiar with that author, but this book by Bellah is a good one:
http://www.amazon.com/Religion-Human-Evolution-Paleolithic-Axial/dp/0674061438/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_3

Also The Robert Bellah Reader. As a 'romantic' scholar of religion who is also an atheist I really like his work.

Happy reading!

Edit, paragraphs. :)

He's actually a serious and very talented Youtuber. He's also a deconstructionist and contrarian. He recommends Terry Eagleton and Phil Zuckerman in this vid; it's a fair debate, Hitch would have welcomed it, obviously.

> Most religions are intricately tied to the belief in a higher power.

Depending on how you define religion, that might be true. However, sociologists who study religion note that rave culture, such as Burning Man, include all the elements of religion and it's adherents talk about the religious nature of the rave experience. The same is true of followers of jam bands. The more sociologist study the behavioral elements of religious expression, the more they see religion in what would not normally be considered religious events if one holds to the preconception that religion must be about beliefs in higher powers.

A sociological and anthropological standard is that a sociological construct is what it's participants claim it is. When guys who spend their lives building cars say that the race track is their cathedral, then sociologists need to take it seriously and examine the race track in terms of it's religious importance.

This is why many sociologists are starting to discount the idea that religion is really a stand alone category. Human beings have an uncanny ability to make just about anything sacred.

http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Religion-Routledge-Advances-Sociology/dp/0415552508

Europe is waking up...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/While-Europe-Slept-Bruce-Bawer/dp/0767920058?tag=duckduckgo-ffsb-uk-21

[1/2]

This a longer thing I wrote elsewhere once. I've done some reading on the subject, and still am, but here's what I've gathered:

To begin to address this, we first need to start with when Christian churches began facing membership problems, from a purely American perspective.

American Mainline Protestants first started to decline in the 1970s. Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans and similar “old guard” Protestant sects started losing members. In 1975, about 13% of the US population claimed affiliated with these denominations, whereas that number would shrink to about 8.7% in the year 2000. In contrast, conservative Evangelical sects either held steady if not outright grew over the same time period. This trend lasted so long that religious sociologist Dean Kelly would pen his popular work exploring this phenomenon, Why Conservative Churches Are Growing (1972).

It was largely accepted for a multitude of years that, from what the data was telling us, if churches wanted to “fend off” secularization they would need to adopt a conservative theological or cultural posture - something the Mainline Protestant sects lacked.
Here’s what Kelly wrote in 1978:

>Though many people-and even some social scientists and scholars of religion- are not aware of the curious contrasts in membership trends that occurred during the past decade, no one has come up with a satisfactory explanation of (1) why it happened to these particular religious bodies and (2) why it happened at this particular time in history.

What has Kelly’s answer to the mystery of some denominations falling while others grew? In a word: “Seriousness.” As he wrote in the same year:

>One of the most cogent criticisms of Why Conservative Churches Are Growingis that which contends that a particular class-linked mode of religious behavior has been taken as the norm and all others subordinated to it (i.e., the religious style of lower-class sect-members). The implication of the critic is that this is an unfair comparison; that Episcopalians are just as religious as Adventists, albeit they show it in a different and less demonstrative way. In the eyes of God, that may be true, since only He knows the inner devotion of the heart. But to any outward observer, there is no comparison. In the double tithe, the time spent, the efforts made, the witnessing overtures to non-members, the constant preoccupation with the faith, the average Adventist so far out-shines the average Episcopalian that they are not even in the same category of magnitude. If this is indeed the case, it suggests that religious behavior is actually more intensive (and extensive) among lower-class people (or at least among religious groups attracting such people), and that is a significant datum in itself.
…
>If ecumenical churches feel that they are as serious about what they believe as fundamentalists are, then it behoves them to find appropriate ways to exercise and communicate that seriousness. Why should the devil have all the good tunes?

Kelly’s argument that “strictness” kept a church going seemed true until only somewhat recently, as now conservative Evangelical sects have started to face the same kind of membership issues as their Mainline counterparts. Yet, for many decades, that theologically conservative posture was thought to be the cure to getting people back to church on Sunday morning.

Mainline Protestants were not the only group to lose members starting in the 70s, however. Beginning in the same decade, a wide variety of other membership-based groups or organizations also reported a loss of members, such as the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Kiwanis, Freemasons, Lion’s Clubs, and so on. American sociologist Robert Putnam, in his landmark 2000 work Bowling Alone: The collapse and revival of American community, found such trends in a variety of other areas as well, such as participation in bowling leagues (hence the title of his book) participation in political activities, or other social activities. Putnam’s research focused on “social capital,” and its decline in the American post-war period. As one review of his book summarizes:

>The data strongly indicate that declines in trust, interest in public affairs, newspaper reading, and religious attendance are due almost entirely to generational replacement, as what Tom Brokaw called the "Greatest Generation" is gradually replaced by more self-interested and materialistic Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers. Putnam argues that the unifying effects of World War II are an important explanation of why the "civic generation" was different from either its predecessors or successors, and he blames television in large part for declining levels of civic engagement in successor generations. The share of households with TVs rose from 10% to 90% in the 1950s. Viewing time has risen, along with viewing choices and the number of homes with multiple sets, so people watch TV alone instead of as a family.

>Some of the most convincing evidence Putnam presents on why civic engagement has declined comes from time diaries, in which randomly selected persons report in detail how they spend their time. The sheer amount of time Americans spend watching TV (3 to 4 hours per day on average) must crowd out time for informal socializing with friends and family, and for group activities and volunteering. Time diaries rule out one explanation popular among journalists and other casual observers, an alleged drop in "free time." Working hours have risen very little, and time on housework and child care has fallen, leading to an average gain of 6 hours of "free time" between 1965 and 1995, the period when most measures of social capital experienced steady declines. People are simply spending their time in more individualized and self-interested ways than before.

>It is scientifically impossible to prove moral values.

I don't agree. References:

The Moral Landscape

Evolution of Morality

>The argument of "if you dont like X, than do it" clearly is fallacious.

It was more of a soundbite than an argument. My apologies. The fact is that you have to present very good reasons when you take away someone else's right. We've decided to do this in the case of Drunk Driving because the behavior presents a clear danger to others within our society.

It is not illegal to join a gang. It is illegal to commit crimes often associated with gang membership.

Not everyone pays federal income taxes but everyone is required to pay their fair share as defined by the federal and state legislatures.

The real concern regarding gay marriage is that it is victimless. The LGBT community is simply asking for equal rights, not greater rights or rights to impinge on the rights of others in the society.

The best analogy is the historical laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Interracial marriage is now almost universally accepted. There is no longer a question of it being morally wrong.

History will also judge your prejudiced viewpoint unfavorably. It is an assault on human dignity.

This one

Dude... people don't make free choices. I mean, take a minute and look into psychology, genetics, studies on how people's environment shapes what they do and think, mental health issues, etc. If you dig into the science of it, anyone who look at it openly realizes, people do not have free will. Neuroscientists even write books about it.

https://www.amazon.com/Free-Will-Sam-Harris/dp/1451683405

So to say anything is 100% free choice... I mean, how naive can you get?

Do you think healthy women can get into bad relationships with an abusive man and get driven to suicide? Or even better... do you think Stockholm Syndrome isn't real? The examples are so endless it boggles the mind.

I doubt the guy who committed suicide was totally healthy to start, but it doesn't mean the woman didn't push him either. Its also possible she was sane, and he had all the issues. But usually, crazy attracts crazy.

No, it wasn't in self defence... And yes you are completely ignorant to psychology. Your reply is further proof of that.

I had actually written several paragraphs trying to explain it to you, but it's probably worthless. So instead I suggest you try and read some material on behavioural psychology. And read this book. Free Will only takes about an hour to read (it's short) and it illustrates a very real problem that exists in the mentality of most people.

Not sure if this is the type of answer you're looking for, but I've come to believe (with this book as the jump off point) that there is no such thing as free will. This literally means that no one can act in any other way than they do. Knowing this really helps me reflect on kneejerk judgments.

Sam Harris wrote a book to say fuck you to free will. Pretty interesting read actually.

> Science can actually supply the moral content by measuring what people do or like or whatever

Doesn't sound like you read the book. Go read it. It's pretty interesting even if you wouldn't agree, he's a good writer.