I have not yet heard a compelling argument why making another existence is better than refraining from making a new existence. — schopenhauer1

Because we are compelled to either make a new being or assist in the raising of one relatively related to us, by the very chemicals which run our brains and bodies.

Given the complexities of the environment and the multitude of effects it may have on us, what some people deduce is the best way to assist in the raising of young can be quite varied to say the least, but I'm convinced that remains the driving force.

The problem is you're starting out presuming it's a choice we make, to have these desires which is really ironic considering your moniker.

“Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills”

If 5 pages of Michael's careful and patient explanation of the materialist position hasn't disabused you of your preconceptions, I'm not about to start another 5 pages of exposition.

Out of courtesy, I will happily answer your question. I think that the body is directed by the body.

Your post title is unnecessarily self-denigrating. What people (like you?) have trouble coping with is the world that human beings have created. I'm sure you have lots to offer, so it is just as much the rest of society's fault for not creating an environment in which all different types of people can thrive. If society can't create environments where people with Aspergers can thrive, then that is society's loss.

My god you have a lot of patience. I would have smashed my laptop in frustration by now. I can't add anything you haven't already said, just wanted to voice my admiration for your calm tenacity.

How do random rocks show evidence of design, even if placed there by a person? — Sam26

If the person intended that they should look random then they have "designed" a rock pile to look random. It's quite a normal use of the word.

I don't need to know the history of the manufacturing of watches to infer design, this is just silly. You mean if you traveled to another planet and found something that looked like a vehicle, having wheels, what appeared to be an engine, what appeared to be fuel, etc, that we couldn't conclude intelligent design because we know nothing about it's manufacturing history? — Sam26

You've literally just said that "humans are beginning to design things which can't be distinguished from objects of nature". So it is obvious by your own admission that one could come across an alien artefact and have no idea whether it had been designed or not simply by its features. You would have to know its history. Your argument keeps just coming back to nothing more than just fanatically stating "it's obvious". If I were to come across an alien artefact that, like many of the human-made artefacts, looked very 'natural' how exactly am I supposed to just know that it has been designed without begging the question (by presuming that all complex things must have been designed)?

All this shows is that a higher intelligence was involved in the design, — Sam26

No, it only shows this if you're already committed to the idea that such thing must be designed. Objectively, all it shows is that natural objects currently seem to be of a different class to human-made ones, which weakens the analogy.

As far as the last sentence in this paragraph is concerned, I don't see how this takes away from the argument either. So what if there are many artifacts that nature has discarded, especially since nature decides that the artifact doesn't work, or it has no use for it. The same things happen in design, we often do this when creating things. — Sam26

No, we do not. No human designer I've ever heard of makes a series of completely random mistakes in the hope that one of them turns out to be useful. But this is exactly how natural things become functional. Again, a meaningful difference which weakens the analogy.

So because there are more artifacts in nature, as opposed to human artifacts, this demonstrates that there isn't a large enough sampling of human artifacts, — Sam26

Yes, that's exactly the point! Have you no idea how sampling works? Bayesian inference is practically based on sample size, the whole of probability is based on sample size, the very concept of saying something is likely is about picking a specific group/event out of the population of all possible things.

All you have is that a tiny proportion of all things that are in set A have been designed. That's it. There is no logic at all by which you can strongly infer from that that all things in that set must have been designed.

What positivists, and those following on from some of their approach, are saying is that metaphysical discussions, where they take place, are for determining that which can be established by empirical verifiable testing, and that which cannot. That which cannot then is meaningless in epistemological terms. It might be meaningful aesthetically, or psychologically, but it has no meaning as far as knowledge is concerned. It is absolutely not saying that we can dispense with all the things that fall into this category, nor is it saying that everything that does not can be proved to be unquestionably right. Just that it is not meaningful to talk about those things that do not in epistemological terms.

As far as this topic is concerned, if we restrict ourselves to empirically verifiable evidence, then we can verify the existence of the paper by the means Marchesk has already outlined. We can then discuss the extent to which those means cover all that is possible. Beyond that, there is only an aesthetic purpose to any further speculation because nothing can ever be known with any public utility beyond that.

The whole problem of ‘scientism’ is that it says that science knows everything that can be known, in principle. — Wayfarer

Who says this? Every scientist I've ever spoken to in my career has been of the opinion that science produces those ideas which represent testable theories which require the least new phenomena and clash least with existing theories. I've never heard anyone claiming it 'knows' all there is to except, wishy-washy theists who want to make a straw man out of it.

Analogous arguments are not automatically valid, they are measured by the strength of their inference. as I outlined;

1. The relevance of the similarity is weak because things which do not belong in set A can also be shown to have been designed (a person could by design place a pile of rocks specifically to look as if they had occurred naturally). the property 'having been designed' is not unique to set A objects, so its relevance is weak.

2. The degree of similarity is weak. Human manufactured objects are similar to natural objects only in that they are made of parts that together perform a higher order function. They are dissimilar in many other important aspects.
Human manufactured objects have a clear history of manufacture and can all be traced back to a human to whom we can ask "did you design that?". It is from this data that we get our knowledge that all human-made object in set A are designed. Natural objects have no history of manufacture and cannot be traced back to a manufacturer whom we can question.
Natural objects are all significantly more complex than human manufactured objects.
Natural objects (that perform higher order functions) can all replicate themselves in a process which causes random variation to the make up of the object and one in which objects whose parts do not perform a useful higher order function will cease to exist. A process which we can logically see could feasibly result in only those objects whose parts do combine to perform a higher order function existing at any one time. We can deduce pretty accurately from our knowledge of evolution that there must have existed billions of natural objects whose parts did not come together to perform a higher order function.

3. The amount of instances that form the basis is extremely weak, so much so as to be completely damning to the analogy. Human artefacts represent a tiny proportion of all things in set A. There is an estimated 300 trillion tonnes of human artefacts in the world. There are an estimated five million trillion trillion bacteria. Even if we average human artefacts at just 1g, bacteria alone outnumber human artefacts by five trillion trillion times. All the failed organisms from the process of evolution outnumber human artefacts. by several trillion times more than this. It is ludicrous to suggest that anything about human artefacts tells us something about natural objects by strength of analogy. It would be like claiming you knew something with great certainty about all architecture because you studied one brick.

You seem to have some meaning of the word purpose, which you are not making clear, which the apparent goal of DNA does not fit, but which the apparent goal of a God would fit. Both goals are apparent, I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this distinction. The goal of successful replication simply derives mechanistically from the chemical properties of DNA. The goal that God has in mind simply derives mechanistically from the properties of God, I'm not seeing the difference. You seem inexplicably more happy that a magical being dictates purpose than that a chemical structure does, but I'm in the dark as to why that makes any difference. Both are purpose.

In essence I think what you're saying is that you don't like the fact that apparent purpose is derived mechanistically from chemical structures, and you'd rather it was derived emotively from an anthropomorphic entity.

It seems your argument is that if we believe it is derived mechanistically, we might as well not bother doing anything because it's all ultimately pointless, whereas if it's derived emotively we can all get behind that and feel good about being a part of it.

I can see your point, but personally, I dwell more on the other side of the coin. If purpose is derived mechanistically, then it is impossible to avoid. we might talk esoterically about nihilism, and some might convince themselves that it's the best way to satisfy the many competing desires their DNA has mechanistically instilled in them, but by-and-large the population will have purpose whether they like it or not because it is as unavoidable as gravity.

To place purpose in the mind of an anthropomorphic God, however, is to create a purpose that can instantly be questioned. What if we've misunderstood what the purpose is, what if we've not been listening properly and are actually working against it. We end up with all this paranoia and guilt that has dogged the religious since religions began. The power of the 'interpreters', the fear of transgression, the confusion and doubt over the 'true' purpose etc. A minefield of psychological trauma.

Personally, I'd rather have a mechanistic, inescapable purpose, that is unavoidably instilled in every person from birth than one which is vague, unknowable, open to interpretation and largely in the hands of an elite few.

As others have already pointed out the many other flaws in this argument - the fact that the 'designers' would fall into the same set as all the things they deigned and therefore create a Russelian paradox, We have no example of a thing that has not been designed in the universe so the argument is unfalsifiable - I will simply try to explain the set theory argument in clearer terms.

To start, there must be two sets A{all things where the whole exhibits a higher order function than the parts} and B{all things where the whole does not exhibit a higher order function than the parts}.

Many human creations are in set A, a pile of rocks is in set B, all animals are in set A, many human creations are in set B (humans could pile rocks without any design or purpose). So at the moment we have the observation that some of the things in set A are designed (by humans), some of the things in set B might also be designed (it is possible that a human deliberately piled rocks with the intention that they should serve no purpose other than to look like a natural pile of rocks).

No matter how many human devices there are on the planet, they will be outnumbered by the weight of animals - bacteria, beetles etc. So as things stand, all we can infer so far is that a small proportion of the things in set A have been designed, as have some of the things in set B.

Your argument then goes on to say that because a small proportion of the things in set A have been designed, it is logically compelling to presume that all things in set A have been designed. Of course, a small proportion of things in set B have been designed too, so the argument must be applied there also. Thus the argument dissolves to - because some things have been designed, all things must have been designed (seeing as set A and set B together comprise all things). This is obviously nonsense.

This is the problem with inferring (without cause) that all members of a set share all the same properties as all other members of a set. This is simply not how logic works. The only things members of a set can be logically demonstrated to share is the one characteristic that makes them members of that set. We could, using Bayesian inference, say with increasing certainty that all members of a set share a non-necessary property as the number of members that share that property exceed half the set. If more than half of all people called John turn out to be clever, we can begin to infer with increasing certainty that all people called John are clever.

But human creations do not come anywhere close to half of set A, the number of bacteria alone outnumber human creations by whole orders of magnitude, not to mention the fact that once we know a mobile phone is the creation of a designer, a further mobile phone does not become further evidence of this theory.

So all we have in terms of data is still that a very small proportion of all things in set A are designed. By what logic do we then presume that it is even likely, let alone inevitable, that all things in set A must share this same property? We know it is not a necessary property (as has famously been referenced, if you assemble all the parts of a watch randomly, with no design, in a different order over and over you will eventually assemble a working watch). We also know that a small proportion of things in set B are designed, which together comprise the set {all things}. So we are left with no reason to presume that all the things in the set share the same property as some small proportion of the things in the set.

You're repeatedly using terms without agreed meanings and it makes it extremely difficult to understand what you're saying. Rather than try and second guess what you might mean, I will try to explain myself better and see if you can specify where you disagree, apologies if it sounds like repetition.

Firstly we need to establish what you mean by meaning. I understood it to mean purpose, but you seemed not to be happy with the proximate purpose evolution gave us (to propagate our DNA). It seems you want there to be some other purpose, but I'm not sure why.

Part of your post above changes from talking about meaning, to talking about reasons "why?" but these are two different questions. Purpose, values, meaning, reason,... these are all very different issues but you seem to be using them interchangeably.

The purpose of our lives, according to materialism is to secure the survival of our DNA.

Our values are in tilled in us by our DNA and by our culture (the result of years of interaction between brains and environment, and they primarily serves as learnt techniques for achieving our purpose above.

Meaning is an extremely subjective term. Fundamentally, meaning is just a picking apart of an thing into it components. When we ask what a word means, we expect the answer to simply be in the form of other words, we could continue asking forever and continue answering in other words. So when you say that life doesn't have meaning under materialism, that cannot possibly be true. The fact that we can disassemble aspects of our experience automatically entails meaning.

Reason is the same as cause and effect. One thing happens in order to bring about another. Here you seem to be saying that because, under materialism, things happen simply because prior things caused them (rather than because of the thing they cause). But this is the problem with any overarching story, none of they can give an ultimate reason because we can always ask why. If God made the world, then why?

We all have to stop asking "why?" at some point, even the religious.

(1) Any human contrivance where the parts are so arranged that the completed whole is able to achieve or be used to achieve activities of a higher order than any part alone (e.g., a watch), are the result of intelligent design.

(2) Objects of nature have a structure where the parts are so arranged that the whole can achieve or be used to achieve activities of a higher order than any part alone (e.g., a cat).

(3) Hence, objects of nature are the result of intelligent design. — Sam26

3 Does not follow from 1 and 2 even inductively.

In 1 you have taken a subset of the group 'all things where the parts are so arranged that the completed whole is able to achieve or be used to achieve activities of a higher order than any part alone' The subset being 'those things of that type which humans have made'. You have neither demonstrated, nor deduced that this is the only or exhaustive subset of this group.

In 2 you have stated that there exists at least one other subset of the group 'all things where the parts are so arranged that the completed whole is able to achieve or be used to achieve activities of a higher order than any part alone'. The subset being those type of things which are found in nature.

You've then simply declared that the two subsets must share all properties - if one subset is designed then so must the other subset be, but you haven't provided any logic as to why that should be the case. All we know about these two subsets, is that they must share at least and only the one property that makes them both part of the same set i.e that the parts are so arranged that the completed whole is able to achieve or be used to achieve activities of a higher order than any part alone. There's no reason, inductive or otherwise, to presume that they will share any other properties, such as being designed.

It's wrong to reward people for any achievement, luck or effort. The only reason cited for the lack of justification for rewarding luck is that it would be 'unfair'. This implies that those who have worked hard to achieve some personal goal are rewarded 'fairly'. In what way would bestowing an award on someone who has achieved high grades through their own hard work be 'fair'. They may be motivated entirely by their own self-interest, studying only to become as wealthy as possible for their own self-indulgence. So what could possibly be the function of such a reward that would qualify for our normal use of the term 'fair'?

Christine Korsgaard for example, outlines how, following Kantian principles, there are forms of moral knowledge which contain both the information and the incentive. To reward 'good' behaviour is to undermine the function of this duality by interfering with the rational self-assessment of behaviour that is required to reach 'good' conclusions. For Kant, one must follow a duty based on the rational assessment of that duty, acting to obtain a reward is not moral behaviour.

It is often said that punishment and reward structures serve to teach children what behaviours are 'good', but the problem with this approach philosophically is that it detaches the motivation to do good from the belief about what is good. If one takes a Humean distinction between a moral belief (that one should attend school as much as possible) and a desire (to satisfy that moral belief). Rewards interfere with this process by creating an unrelated desire (to obtain the reward) leaving the moral belief (that one should attend school as much as possible) hanging without any related incentive.

Of course happiness has several possible meanings. There's the momentary happiness of consumption (in all its forms), and we certainly have lots of that, but that's different from what one might call happiness as satisfaction, or fulfillment - the deep, profound satisfaction of a life well-lived, a life of creativity, of goals fulfilled; which is different again from the happiness of _ataraxia_ or a Buddhist sort of desireless state. All these latter kinds of happiness might even require momentary unhappiness in the former sense, or perhaps better to say discomfort, but they seem to be worth it. Generally, the satisfaction of long-term goals seems to give that deeper sense of fulfillment - perhaps even long-term goals beyond one's individual span, the happiness of raising kids, or of contributing to society, planting trees, etc. — gurugeorge

I agree with your separation of the different types of happiness, but I'm still not getting the connection with materialism. You mention raising kids as an example of just that kind of long term selfless sense of deeper fulfillment and I'd agree entirely, but you can't get much more materialistically hard-wired into our DNA, than the desire to raise kids. It's a direct result of a chemicals pre-priming neurons to fire in a particular way, but it creates on hell of a powerful meaning to life.

But the further you go from the kind of happiness that depends on the satisfaction of range-of-the-moment whim, the less there seems to be any point, unless there's a point to the over-arching context of existence. — gurugeorge

This is the bit where you're losing me. Given the examples you've provided above. The long-term investment in teaching, landscaping, learning are all things that people seem to have no trouble committing to, but more significantly for this discussion, evolutionary biologist have no trouble finding material purpose for. Some (such as the urge to learn) have even been fairly clearly identified by neuroscience. So I'm not seeing how any of this gets lost in materialism.

some meaning or significance to the fact that anything exists at all, some over-arching context that gives our individual stories a meaningful place, to get the full spectrum of the best possible life. — gurugeorge

Again this comes back to my first question. What would such a meaning look like? What would be an example of a meaning or significance to the fact that anything exists at all?

The problem is that you haven't defined 'Rationality' in a way that is consistent. In the first part of your claim you seem to class rationality as that thing which has replaced religion, the authority of God, the thing that drives the move towards materialism. In the second half (the evidence) you seem to equate it entirely with intelligence - the ability to choose a course of action which will accurately produce the desired result.

These are two different definitions so your argument that one is evidence for a flaw in the other fails.

Rationality in philosophy (as opposed to Rationalism, which is even more unrelated to what you're citing as evidence), is having reason behind opinion or action. It's simply being able to justify one thought by logical consequence of a prior thought. Intelligence then becomes merely a 'tool' of rationality. Those with greater intelligence will be more able to link one thought to another with logical inference.

Your archetypal villains (lets presume they even exist), have high levels of intelligence which they apply to do evil things. They have an evil intention, and they are intelligent enough to see a course of action that will bring that intention about, they are using intelligence to do evil. They are not necessarily using rationality to do evil, we are as yet uninformed as to their chain of reasoning. No-one has given us any insight whatsoever into how they justify their actions by some logical inference from previous thoughts (which in turn are derived logically from thoughts prior to those...).

All I can see that you're actually arguing is that intelligence is a double-edged sword because, like any powerful tool, it can be used to do good or harm. The same argument could be made about Guns or Electricity. Rationality has nothing whatsoever to do with it.

1. What is the measurement of Sam's vehicle purchase. How much more carbon emissions do you expect and what impact do you think it will have? — Hanover

The actual quantity is irrelevant, its going to be more than zero which is what it would be if he didn't buy the car, plus £50,000 at least could certainly be better spent. Clean water for 5,000 children for a start. I don't know what moral system you're using which makes that 'little impact'.

2. It is a logical fallacy to attack the speaker's hypocrisy as a basis that their position is incorrect. — Hanover

I didn't attack your moral position on the basis of hypocrisy, I attacked hypocrisy. In consistency is shown to be one of the most consistent trait people associate with negative behaviour trust values.

3. Granting everyone equal rights (egalitarianism) will not eliminate poverty. Not everyone owes their poverty to not having equal rights. — Hanover

Egalitarianism, by definition, means that everyone is equal (by whatever metric). Poverty is a relative term so by simple logic, if everyone had equal wealth no-one would be poor.

4. This is a strawman. I didn't say allowing the wealthy the ability to get wealthier would cure poverty. I presented the tautology that poverty is cured with wealth. — Hanover

How? Poverty is cured by redistributing wealth in some way. I cannot see any logic whereby simple wealth alone can reduce poverty, it has to somehow make it into the hands of the poor. As we have plenty of wealth to go round already, how is making more going to help?

5. An egalitarian stopping point is how you intend to define when you should stop giving, suggesting that when you've reached the arbitrary mean, you've given enough. I'm not judging your generosity, but I see that as no more or less arbitrary than tithing 10%. — Hanover

Its not arbitrary because its the point at which you no longer become both the benefactor and the entitled. A dichotomy that makes no logical sense.

6. Some people do give to the point of poverty, with some taking a vow of poverty. That you think it's silly isn't based upon any philosophical basis. It's just you disagree. I have no problem with people giving whatever they want. — Hanover

See above

7. I don't care how you give, but it's good you do. — Hanover

This is fashionable equivocation. If it's good that I give, then it's bad that others do not. How can it possibly be 'good' that I give my excess wealth to charity, but also 'good' that others spend theirs on personal luxuries. What definition of 'good' covers both those actions?

Brilliant, I didn't think philosophy was that easy... All those wasted years. All right here goes.

I do think Sam's car purchase would have a measurable impact.
I think if you were hypocritical that would make you wrong.
I think egalitarianism as a solution to poverty is logical.
I don't think the cure for poverty is for the wealthy to get more wealthy.
I think an egalitarian stopping point isn't arbitrary.
I don't think it would be fine if people gave until they were completely impoverished I think it would be silly.
(I don't refuse work, I give my excess to charity, usually Survival International, to help those Congolese bushman you're so fond of)
And I think Sam shouldn't buy another car.

You're right it's so much easier without having to bother presenting any logical arguments.

So how does doing what makes you happy because we seem to like being happy miss that criteria? Are you specifically looking for meaning outside of the human experience?

I'm saying that the purchase and use of a sports car is within the acceptable limits of resource use — Hanover

By what standards? Many well respected ethicists and even quite a few economists would disagree with you. You can't have a concept of 'acceptable resource use' without 'unacceptable resource use' so what would be unacceptable and why?

what we have here is a sidetracking of a conversation where Sam wanted advice on the best car to get and you decided a good lecture was in order. — Hanover

If Sam wanted advice on the best car he'd have asked on a sports car forum. Unless he's a complete idiot he'd have known he was asking a community of philosophers. Presumably the idea that at least one of them might be an ethicist had crossed his mind, also presumably (unless he's been living in a box for the last 30years and the entire environmental movement has gone unnoticed) the idea that at least one of these ethicists might have responded to his query as to which car to buy with the answer "none of them". If he honestly expected an uncritical conversation about the merits of different sports cars from a community of philosophers I can only imagine he's never met a philosopher.

While you might feel your resources are limited compared to those closest to you, the truth is that you're fabulously wealthy, with your carbon footprint greatly exceeding the Congolese. It's disgusting really how you flaunt your wealth and burn the resources that the bushmen would never think to destroy. — Hanover

As I said, I'm not an idiot I'm hardly going to start critiquing other people's morality without ensuring I've met those standards myself. You may not agree with my ethics and I'd be glad to have a discussion with you about them, but I am a strict egalitarian. As Parfait points out, we cannot just keep giving all the while there exists someone less well off than ourselves otherwise we will end up in a perpetual cycle of giving. We would eventually end up the one who was worst off, someone would have to give to use, who would then be the worst off, and so on.

Parfit, and dozens of ethicists after him, recognised that the only logical way out of this is to focus not on relative poverty, but on equality. That's why I ensure my income (and therefore expenditure) is no greater than the average (in price equivalent dollars, according to the World Bank figures). That way I'm not using more than my fair share of the world's resources as measured by their economic value. To go any further would enter Parfit's cycle of giving.

Its not perfect, and there are many other considerations, but its a damn sight more arguable a position than just throwing your hands in the air and saying we might as well do what we like.

That the Universe is intrinsically meaningless is a logically necessary implication of the materialist/mechanistic worldview, — gurugeorge

I don't understand your logic here. What is the thing you're looking for like? What properties would a 'meaning' have that you're finding absent in materialism?

I don't know if you're being deliberately polemic, but I don't understand your argument at all. You seem to be saying that because all our purchasing choices involve some degree of unnecessary resource use we should abandon all attempts to limit their impact. All wars kill people so should be we abandon any attempt to minimise wars? All our actions have impacts, no matter how small. Moral consideration is about minimising those impacts, we don't abandon the project just because we can't eliminate them altogether.

As to me, the computer is second hand, it's powered by electricity from renewable sources and purchased from my earnings which I maintain at or below the global average. I'm not an idiot, I'm not going to pronounce on other people's morality without first having attended to my own.

Your suggestion that the purchase of a sports car is immoral gets nothing more than an eye roll. So move along and feel superior. — Hanover

Are you seriously suggesting there's no moral component to purchasing decisions? Have you even read any modern ethicists? Peter Singer, John McMurty, Iris Young all have written extensively about the ethics of purchasing.

I can't believe on a forum supposedly about philosophy (even a tangential sub-forum) I'm having to defend myself for bringing ethics into a discussion about sports cars.

Or maybe you've read all those eminent ethicists and have concluded in your wisdom that they're all wrong and there's no ethical dimension to purchasing, in which case 'move along and feel superior'.

it just seems our beleagured poster is being asked to defend himself for simply having the extra money to spend as he wishes. — Hanover

Oh the poor man, fancy having to deal with the dual burdens of having enough spare money to spend on a sports car and being asked to justify one's actions morally. Gosh life can be hard sometimes.

But rationality has questioned God's existence and where does that lead to? A moral vacuum that can't and hasn't been filled since God was put on the stand. — TheMadFool

This is patent nonsense. The number of self-declared atheists in the world has grown rapidly over the last 200 years. A time when we've seen the abolition of slavery, the end of oppressive colonisation, the universal declaration of human rights, emancipation of women... The list goes on. Where on earth are you getting this rubbish that morality had gone out of the window with the abandonment of religion?

Your argument doesn't follow at all.

For a start you need to review your understanding of the scientific method (or stop misrepresenting it, whichever is the case). Science does not profess to 'know' anything, it is a set of theories which are tested for their utility by their ability to make accurate predictions with the least consideration of conflicting or invented phenomenon.

The 'meaning' of life is widely construed as the purpose for which one lives (certainly in the context of this thread, that is exactly what it is - the question "why do anything?", and "why have children?").

So a scientific approach to this question would be to propose a theory about what our proximate reasons might be based on, and most congruent with, phenomenon that we already have useful theories about.

The theory scientists have come up with that meets those criteria is that of reason having been written into our neurons by our DNA because it provided an advantage which meant that particular chemical was propagated in favour of any other.

You might not like that theory, but it's a theory nonetheless. It's simply not true to say that science says there's no meaning to life.

I fail to see how any other approach - religion, in the case GG was referring to - gets any closer. Religion might say that the purpose of the universe is God's purpose, but then you'd just have to ask why God came into being, why he chose that purpose and not any other purpose, why the universe is God's purpose and not just left purposeless.

All we can ever produce a proximate causes because we can infinitely ask why. Science has a perfectly good theory as to the proximate objective to life - do what seems to make you happy because we seem to like happiness.

The world is full of crank ideas and pop-scientific rubbish, so don't get led down the garden path. — Wayfarer

Yes absolutely, be sure to refer back to Wayfarer before deciding what to read, don't for heaven's sake presume to use your own intellect to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Yes, I've always found that an odd tenet. Surely one who is truly repentant, without simply being scared of hell, must therefore know their sins are immoral intrinsically. That means that they committed them with the capacity to work out they were wrong (even if they didn't carry out that calculation at the time).

Someone who does not repent is someone who continues to believe they were right to do what they did.

Who has committed the worse wrong?

Well, the problem could be solved in multiple manners. The Church could be much much better at policing its own members and prosecuting them. There could be advisory standards in place so that priests never have much one-on-one time with children, if at all. — Akanthinos

Absolutely, I think these are all good solutions, but in order to enact them there needs to be a culture that sees priests and nuns as just as much of a threat as other professions with access to children (which means more of a threat than average). With the continued attitude that religion is somehow equated with morality, I don't see how that's going to happen. We see it on this forum in most debates touching on religion, but also in my field, its pretty much automatic that a religious representative is on any board of ethics. Someone representing an institution that can't even prevent its own highest echelons from abusing children doesn't deserve any special treatment with regards to ethics.

I think that's not really as widespread amongst Christians as they claim it is. — Akanthinos

The trouble is early Christians knew they weren't going to get any takers if the offer was simply 'behave well and you'll go to heaven' that's far to much like hard work. The real advertising scoop for Christianity was the big emphasis on forgiveness. Now you can do whatever the hell you like in life as long as you get in a quick apology before death you'll be fine.

Honestly, Saatchi and Saatchi could not have come up with a better campaign.

Science says the universe is intrinsically meaningless. — gurugeorge

Where does 'science' say that? I've scanned through my Encyclopaedia of Science, can't find any pronouncements to that effect. Is it in a paper I've missed?

I didn't say that the priesthood or anything about religion caused priests to become child abusers and if that's the impression my comment has left then I'd like to make that abundantly clear. I don't like organised religion, but I'm not in the business of making accusations about it that aren't backed by evidence, it has enough issues that are to go on. All I said was that it is one institution (among a number of others), that allows child abusers access to victims and a means to cover-up their behaviour. The fewer such institutions we have the safer our children will be. It is a simple corollary of that fact that there will be more child abusers in the priesthood than in professions that do not have access to children.

I think the fact that a group supposedly professing knowledge of the divine manage to restrain themselves from abusing children to no greater degree than any other group shows absolutely clearly how utterly useless religion is at instilling moral values. If those at the very top of religious orders who have spent an entire lifetime studying scripture can't even stop themselves from doing something as blindly obviously wrong as abusing an innocent child how anyone could suggest that religion is responsible for morality is beyond me.

Why would having two cars fuck up the planet faster? You can only drive one at a time. — Hanover

Because two cars take more resources to make than one. I don't know how well you know maths, but two is more than one.

Also, having cars for pleasure rather than purpose would certainly tend towards an increase in unnecessary driving and a tendency towards an unnecessarily low fuel economy. But in these two last respects, if I have stumbled across the world's first ecologically minded sports car enthusiast who is actually thinking of converting his entire fleet to run off waste chip fat and only use them to drive old ladies to the shops on Sunday, then he has my sincere apologies for the misrepresentation.

Do you not see the title to this section, it's the lounge. — Sam26

I wasn't talking about the appropriateness of the subsection, I was referring to your evident surprise that when posting anything on a philosophy forum you might actually encounter someone with some ethics.

This is a philosophy forum you know. If you just want to talk about cars without any philosophical implication then you might want to consider a sports car forum. I hear they're pretty light on ethics.

Ahhh, am I messing up the planet for you. Poor baby. — Sam26

Well yes, I'm not sure how you think using patronising epiphets absolves you of moral responsibility.

As I said, if you're just going to cherry pick the bits that suit your world view and ignore the rest, I will leave you to it.

I already have a Toyota Corolla. — Sam26

Here's an idea, how about just sticking to the one car instead of fucking up the planet for the rest of us?

Here's an article by Forbes outlining the main biases in business leaders - https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2017/09/13/the-impact-of-unconscious-bias-on-leadership-decision-making/#bbdcc525b3f4

The economist Sanjit Dahmi "It is likely that the top levels of management in firms (henceforth, CEOs) exhibit several behavioural biases."

Greg Filbeck - "Evidence indicates that CEOs tend to be optimistic, overconfident, risk averse, and self-interested. Optimistic and overconfident CEOs overestimate future earnings growth and underestimate the earnings' risk, thereby perceiving a larger cost for issuing equity than debt."

Kiseo Chung - "We find that CEOs are significantly more likely to purchase targets near their birth place, consistent with either informational advantages or familiarity bias."

But don't let me interrupt your neat little world view with actual data from experts in the field.

Excellent idea, lets just ignore people we disagree with. I don't know why philosophy didn't think of that earlier, it really would have saved a lot of work.

If you're a woman nobody will discriminate against you just because you're a woman (that would be irrational) — Agustino

What world are you living in! Since when does anyone behave entirely rationally, have you ever even picked up a psychology textbook?

I'm curious as to what moral code you're using where "a guy who is aggressive, and committed to step on someone's neck to achieve the sales target for you" is seen as honourable competitive behaviour, but appealing to the power of your government to equalise pay is somehow 'cheating'. What rulebook are you using exactly?