that's fine, as long as he's not making a profit.

This was a question that was asked during an interview. I had to answer immediately. "Yes," I replied, "For the greater good, it would seem the logical thing to do." — Arnie

So, you automatically assume that whatever humans need is 'greater' than what any other species needs. That's a normal anthropocentric response.
It's the kind of automatic response which condones clear-cutting of forests, strip-mining, dumping nuclear waste in the wilderness and spilling crude oil in all the oceans. For the greater good.
If you form your moral structure around what humans want, you can end up supporting a whole lot of damage to humans, both directly and indirectly.

Why should dogs have to die to save human beings? I know we are talking in the hypothetical, — Arnie

There is nothing hypothetical about it. Dogs have been killed and tortured for hundreds of years to promote humans' medical knowledge and research. But if that's okay, why not bull-baiting and dog-fights? Blood sports give humans pleasure. Is that also the greater good?
We do these things because we want to and we can.

If animals were produced specifically to create vaccines that would save humanity, perhaps that could be the slightly better take to it? — Arnie

They are. Not just vaccines; all research. The rodents bred in a factory have no other purpose or life than to be used for scientific experimentation. They never see the outside of a cage, for a hundred generations, expect to be injected or grafted or x-rayed.
Pretty much like the production of meat for the greater good [to be consumed by humans].

Is there even a "correct" answer to this? — Arnie

In the anthropocentric and Old Testament view, it's perfectly fine: all the world is ours to subdue, plunder and trash.
In some world-views, it's quite wrong.
You have to make up your own mind, but first it's a good idea to learn more.

Forum content on a database can be worth a lot. — Shawn

To whom? What for? I've never heard of this before. If you know more, please tell.

You convinced me. Let's transfer the legally contracted debt of people who signed for it, to those who never took out that debt, never saw any of the money, and are busy working while the kids are partying it up in school. — fishfry

That's not happening and nobody's planning it.

Fred has no job or money. He's a low earner. — fishfry

Well, at least he's not "vastly outearning" the hard-working people who will not have to take up the tax burden! Did he recently graduate from college, try to repay his student loan but didn't earn enough to cover the accumulated interest? In that case, he may be eligible for relief from some of the accumulated interest. On vacation, not.

Everyone can claim to be oppressed, especially if being oppressed gets them nice benefits in your communist paradise. — fishfry

Does that mean I shouldn't be on the workers' side after all?

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. — fishfry

That's what communism actually means - nothing to do with Stalin or Mao.

Don't hold your breath for human nature to change. That's the problem with communism. Humans. — fishfry

Well, that's the problem with every ideal.

Swathes of pains are beneficial for various reasons. — AmadeusD

Can be this, can be that... are not valid reasons for a loving god to torture the innocent.

The excuses come long after the fact and put into a different context from the indictment.
Pain may have the benefit of warning us that something is wrong with the body - but a clever creator might have devised a less unpleasant warning sign. Some pain can be necessary in order to prevent greater harm, but that is not why Jehovah invented trichinosis. Nor does being nibbled to death by piranhas cleanse a cow of anything but her flesh. Rapid growth of bones may cause pain, but it's not the pain that causes growth. Neither does drowning all the creatures in the world - even the little flat world of the OT - cause the tiny remnant of humanity to become virtuous: one of the first things Noah did after landing was get drunk and curse his son for catching a glimpse of his junk.

Then you can always fall back on "He's too big for us to understand."
Okay. In that case, he's too big and inscrutable to give us coherent standards of moral behaviour.

Do you think that other people with different experiences might be capable of forming such a concept? — Pantagruel

It's theoretically possible, but I have not encountered it in god-related literature.

Perhaps you lack the relevant experiences or abilities? — Pantagruel

Well, I dropped some acid in my youth, but all I saw was the Void looking back at me.

The point isn't even that you're finished by the time you're seven. Your brain's not even done yet. But you're set on your way and given the wherewithal to develop into something complete. What that will be depends on what happens to you, and of course on the choices you make, but how you make those choices is guided by what happened in those first years. — Srap Tasmaner

How does that give anyone a purpose?

Are we born and remain autonomous free agents? — Srap Tasmaner

No and no.

Rationally, I suppose, choosing our values and so forth, decade after decade? -- I presume that's a caricature of your view, so what's the real view? We are formed — Srap Tasmaner

The real view? At about age 2, children begin to assert their character (Their temperament is already evident at two months.) They test the limits of autonomy, dependency and external constraint. By 7, understand about truth and falsehood, justice and injustice; manipulation and control; power dynamics. Their personality is roughly formed and they know who they are (that's usually the age at which a child recognizes if they've been assigned the wrong gender) but they don't know very much about the world.

In the next 10 or so years, they learn about the environment, other people, their society and culture, their own status in that social environment and their aspirations. Somewhere between 15 and 20, they question the beliefs, assumptions and values of their elders, and set out their own philosophy. (This is why censors are so adamant to deny them access to literature that doesn't support the status quo.) Not all adolescents are articulate; they don't all write down their thoughts - many are and do. The less intellectually inclined act out their doubts and opposition. The opportunistic keep their assessment to themselves and watch for opportunities to take advantage of its weaknesses. The meek accept the prevailing system and go along. The most fragile egos escape into materialism, fantasy or chemical placebos.

but what's the nature of these — Srap Tasmaner

The 'nature' of moment-to-moment decisions? See problem, work out solution, make a plan, act on plan. See desired objective, work out path to desired object, make a plan, act on plan.

What's their origin? — Srap Tasmaner

The brain.

Do you freely choose what you notice? — Srap Tasmaner

You notice what affects you.

Do you choose what ideas occur to you? — Srap Tasmaner

You choose from the ideas that occur to you. (Must be a home invasion. Just a burglar. My teenage son sneaking in past curfew. The next door neighbor, drunk and come to the wrong door again. Shoot him! Just threaten to shoot him. Run away! Hide and watch. Wait till he comes up the stairs and push him off. Hit him with a vase.)

If you are moved by something you observe, something that changes your worldview or your values, did you choose to be so moved? — Srap Tasmaner

No, but you have a pretty good idea by age 20 what kind of something would move you and what kind would not.

Cherry picking teachers is misleading. A quick Google search on "how much to college graduates earn?" said that they make $50k their first year. "Average college graduate salary" yielded $67,786. — fishfry

Which is quite reasonable. Plumbers make about $60,000; a welder's average is $47,000. Still not vast, and they don't start out $50,000 in the hole.
If their graduate kids make a little more, they can buy their old parents a cruise of something.

Can you try to focus on the conversation? — fishfry

It's not been easy. But I learned some things.

What do Biden's tax cuts have to do with his illegal student loan forgiveness? — fishfry

Student loaninterest forgiveness for low earners.
Only that no tax burden of the kind you've been ranting about is being placed on the working class.

But still, you said you're a communist. Aren't communists supposed to be on the side of the workers? — fishfry

So long as the workers are being oppressed. Once social justice and balance are established, there are no sides and classes. Everybody shares the resources and contributes to the community. That means, every child has the opportunity to learn as much as he or she is able to and wants to, without penalties. A just society would have no such thing as student debts, or any other kind of debt-load that keeps growing, even while you're paying. A just society would outlaw compound interest and 90% of the other financial legerdemain on Wall street.

You're make a big show of defending the workers - represented by a skilled occupation, the holder of which probably considers himself middle class, anyway - while assuming that the working class is a static, unchangeable entity: nobody in, nobody out, beleaguered forever by white collar workers.
That's as gross a misrepresentation as that of NY crime and that of Biden's policies.

We don't actually have much capitalism anymore, we have an oligarchy causing unsustainable inequality leading to a revolution or a cyber totalitarian nightmare. — fishfry

That is the inevitable outcome, every cycle. Boom, growth, consolidation, wealth concentration, political corruption, bust, depression, protest, repression or revolution.

Maybe it's our job to elevate it. — BitconnectCarlos

We've done a bang-up job so far!

Would it be better for them to die slowly of old age? — BitconnectCarlos

That's what I'm doing and I consider myself lucky, so YES. Have you ever drowned?

Some pain can be cleansing. Some pain can be justice. Some can be necessary. Some can be for growth. — BitconnectCarlos

Bull. Shit.

It is him taking life - murder, right? — BitconnectCarlos

By whose definition? Are you at all familiar with criminal codes?

How do we judge the giver and taker of life according to human standards who operates outside of nature? — BitconnectCarlos

By rejecting him.

So are you rejecting the concept of god that you perceive as being advocated in the world around you, or are you rejecting the most reasonable concept of god that you yourself have been able to formulate? — Pantagruel

I am rejecting the concepts of gods.
Some that I've read about are less gruesome than others; some are even attractive in their way, but none are credible - and I've read a fair amount of mythology. The guy in the Bible was pretty awful in the OT, but he was at least in some kind of acceptable proportion to the people he harassed. Once the Roman-European Christians raised him way above his level of incompetence, he became both grotesque and absurd.
I have not formulated a reasonable concept of god, since that's an oxymoron, but I've both encountered and depicted some tame versions of the Christian one in fiction.

Do we also consciously decide which ideals to hold, and how passionately? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. Not all at once; over time, one observation, idea, judgment and commitment at a time.

"Give me the child till the age of five-- " you know the rest. — Srap Tasmaner

I do. Aristotle apparently said “Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the foundations of the man”. Now that could mean he would observe how a child behaved between infancy and the age of seven to predict what kind of man that child would become. Or it could mean that in seven years, he could teach a child how to be the right kind of man.
Loyola perverted that to "give us a child till he's 7 and we'll have him for life", meaning that if they had control of very young children, they could program them to Jesuitism. (just boy-chidren, mind; neither of them knew a damn thing about girls).

Almost everything that matters happens when you are a child. — Srap Tasmaner

Then there's no point living past puberty, right?

Yes, that's a car -- not a human. We don't say that about someone who is deaf or blind. — BitconnectCarlos

No, we say that about a world full of blindness, leukemia and leeches.

How much life do they deserve? Should such a life also be pain free? — BitconnectCarlos

It's not about quantity. It's about punishing them for the perceived iniquity of one tribe of humans.

That is faith for you. — BitconnectCarlos

No, not for me! Pain cannot be the most wonderful thing to happen to any feeling entity. Faith may be able to find an excuse for any amount of cruelty; reason cannot.

Nor can God be judged by human standards. — BitconnectCarlos

What other standards are there? If somebody wants my admiration, they have to earn it.

He could, but maybe the suffering is for a purpose. — BitconnectCarlos

Faith can find an excuse for any amount of cruelty; reason cannot.

With this simple sentence, you've put yourself in the "God" position. You've now judged God and thus assumed the role that you know better about how run the universe. — BitconnectCarlos

No, just the tiny corner of it that we can see and experience. When your car stalls and you have to pull off to the shoulder, you can't help knowing that's not supposed to happen, even though you're not qualified to design car engines.

et's just start with the flood. God presumably kills a large portion of humanity. Was he wrong to do that? — BitconnectCarlos

The people, probably. The animals, definitely.

Religious people say God will give and take life as he does. — BitconnectCarlos

God does whatever he bloody well likes. That doesn't make it right by human standards. And it's the humans are expected to do all the praising and adoring. Can they, in good conscience?

So how much life should everyone have? — BitconnectCarlos

Killing willy-nilly is the least serious indictment. It's all the suffering inflicted on innocents who know nothing of good and evil that I can't forgive any sentient entity who did it. The bigger picture doesn't come into it: if the god is omnipotent, he has the power to reduce the horror in each pixel.

You don't really make choices about your blind spots, for instance. — Srap Tasmaner

Maybe not, but if it's not of supreme importance, we leave wiggle-room for them.

But it's up to us whether to call such stubbornness "principle" or "prejudice" — Srap Tasmaner

I don't think it is. We may have a theoretical grasp of the situation, but I, personally, can't understand it well enough to judge.

Exactly how to hold people accountable for prejudices they
grew up with, and may only dimly be aware of, is rather hotly debated these days. — Srap Tasmaner

When it comes to absolute commitment, dimly understood childhood conditioning is not a major factor. This kind of all-or-nothing decision is made consciously, with a head full of passionately held ideals.
I'm not particularly interested in praising or blaming, except when it's about causing harm to others.

We may firmly believe that some course of action would be "the right thing to do" and still not do it. Why? Who knows. — Srap Tasmaner

Lots of reasons. It's too difficult. It's too costly. It's frightening. We might fail and be humiliated.
Sometimes we opt for a compromise: do only some of it and then turn back; support the people who do it, while we stay in the background; do the next best thing; do three other good things to make up for bailing on that one....

So what appears to be principle or prejudice may be neither, but merely an inability to act otherwise, whether accompanied by an ability to think or choose otherwise or not. — Srap Tasmaner

Okay. But are all commitments like that? Just habit or coercive circumstance?

In the computer learning scenario you describe above, people read things mostly just once and have to work with that, — baker

Why? Once you've downloaded something, it's available all the time. You can go back to it, or parts of it, as often as you need to.

Which is the same thing that happens in oral culture -- one has one chance to hear something and has to make the most of it. — baker

Not so. A lay or ballad would be sung over and over; a legend would be told around the campfire on many nights; people tell their children the same story many times. Don't you have any young children? They demand the favourite stories, familiar stories, again and again. There may be minor changes from from one telling to the next, but stories from several thousand years ago are still being told.

The idea that has permeated the public school system for the last hundred years or so (depending on the country) was that all children should get the same basic education. Which meant that all children, regardless of their socioeconomic background, should read Homer and Shakespeare etc., study history in detail, mathematics to considerable intricacy etc., ie. the classical educational canon. — baker

I haven't seen much of that. Usually, the complexity and sophistication of the material is graded: basic levels of every subject in the early grades; heavier subject matter and more choice in the later ones. It's actually okay for the plebes to read Shakespeare - that's the audience he was writing for.

This has led to the plebeification of education and culture — baker

I can live with that. Actually, I can manage without patricians altogether.

Quite a lot of the reading people used to do was for entertainment, rather than learning. Reading a book is a private, solitary pursuit. It's possible we have less quiet, solitary time than we used. (I only read books in bed anymore, before falling asleep. Nearly all of my research is done on the internet. Since the advent of Covid, I haven't been inside a library.)
The pervasiveness of televised entertainments simply make it easier to be enjoy passively, in a way that leaves one's hands free to eat, or do tasks that don't require much mental effort. It's also a medium that people can share, comment on and discuss, having seen the same show at the same time. Even since television, there have times when one has free time, but "there's nothing on". Streaming gives us flexibility to watch a prime time show of our choice whenever in the day we have a free hour or half hour. Books are not always convenient; electronic devices are.

I didn't understand most of that, especially the part about a game.

For an individual, how do you make a commitment to yourself you can't back out of? — Srap Tasmaner

Jumping off a tall building would do it.
For lesser commitments, you don't; there is always the possibility of failing, chickening out or changing your mind.

How is this kind of commitment different from other choices we make and why do we do it? — Srap Tasmaner

I think maybe, to prove our resolution - to the authority (human or divine), to our fellow acolytes, and to ourselves. An absolute commitment is unconditional; if you want to be sure and to demonstrate that you won't renege, you have to make sure that you can't renege. Once the steering wheel is off, all further decisions are out of you hands; no longer your responsibility.

The botched and imperfect world we live in, full of design flaws and disease also seems to indicate sloppy work. And the fact that a god would design an animal kingdom where predation, torment and suffering are a constant necessity for most species to eat, suggests a love of cruelty or more sloppy work. — Tom Storm

That's the second reason not to believe in gods. Whether they're as powerful as the believers claim or not, they're not worthy of praise. I can't worship anyone who fails to meet my standard of morality.
The first reason was the stories believers tell about their gods.

I do not believe in gods. This is all it takes to be an atheist. — Tom Storm

Exactly!
The word was not coined by atheists, who were perfectly fine going about their business without a load of guilt or fear and without a label. The label was stuck on them by believers as an accusation - or a brand. So they said, what the hay, the shoe fits close enough.

As for gods punishing... Do you suppose they also exchange prisoners?

If you put it that way, that is the way it's put. (But it's still just living.)

A distinction that while the "lower" levels might be described as transactional, this top layer is not. — tim wood

I'm open to adding as many layers as Maslow, or even subdividing them into more layers. But your meaning of 'transactional' eludes me. It seems to me the base layer - once an organism is no longer dependent on its parents - consists largely of transactions with the environment, while the upper ones require transactions with other conscious organisms.

Not all these transaction are necessarily direct one-to-one bargains. Your anonymous charitable giving may not bring you face to face with its beneficiary. It makes you feel good (improving your life) and helps someone else also feel good (improving the community's life). But first, you had to acquire something to give, presumably by working for a third party, and you had to do the giving through a charity (unless you threw it through the recipient's window at night, like St Nicholas), thereby interacting with a fourth party, who then interacted with the recipient, who then used the money - if it was money you donated - to interact with some fifth party.
Lots of transactions going on!

I think we need to make a distinction between ‘just living’ and perpetuating a particular way of living. — Joshs

I attempted to. That's why I didn't say 'just live'; I said 'keep living'. In order to choose any goals or aims, one must be vital enough to choose. One must perform the basic actions entailed in survival; these are the minimum requirement.

Organisms don’t just live, they continually enact a specific normative pattern of interaction with an environment. It is this normative pattern that survives or perishes, not simply being alive as an abstract concept. — Joshs

I thought it was the organism that survives that survives and inevitably perishes. Obviously, both of those events take place in a an environment. Nothing abstract about that.

To keep living as a body doesn’t capture what is relevant to the specific aims of a living system. It is these aims which are synonymous with what it means for it to continue to be what it is over time. — Joshs

That sounds to me like a hyperbolic description of a simple matter: be born, live, eat, eliminate, rest, want things, procreate (or not) die. There is no meaning to being what it is over time: it already is and has no choice about what it is.

We live for the sake of our norms , not for the sake of an abstract notion of life. — Joshs

We tend to cling tenaciously to the very concrete fact of being alive. But beyond that, or overlayed on that, are all the short-terms goals of making our lives good, each according to his or her notion of good.

In the first, one is driven, but in the second is one also the driver? — tim wood

The underlying necessity is the same: to keep living. The layer on top of that is: to live well. The first one is much the same for every being; the second diverges. The particular requirements for a good life differ from species to species; the desires we hope will improve our life* varies by individual.
So, there are root, long term, permanent aims that require small daily action to keep going, each one of which is proposed, planned and executed with purpose.

*For some, that means accumulating goods or reputation points or power. For some, it means being loved and valued and needed. For some, it means doing good to others of his kind, or other species, or the world. For some, it means fighting for a cause. For some, it means being part of something greater than themselves. Each of those central goals requires a different series of small, purposeful actions to achieve. We may not think of these desires, intentions and acts as a coherent whole, but that's what every life adds up to.

Ergo, proving that the Christian God "couldn't exist" is really just pointing out the universal historic fact that concepts are constantly being updated to keep pace with cultural evolution. — Pantagruel

Doesn't need proving or disproving. You either buy a particular insurance package or you don't. I don't buy any of them.

I am really surprised to see a self-described communist want to burden the working class with the student debt of people who will vastly out-earn them. I wonder if you could address this point. — fishfry

'Vastly' is a big word. By quick look-up, the average welder's pay is $22.55/hr, while the average primary school teacher's is $23.44/hr. The teacher starts working life with a $58,000 student loan; the welder gets certification for $475.

You keep saying it's the working class who will be 'burdened' by educating its children, so that they can still work when all the working-class jobs except home renovation and domestic service are automated out of existence. Why do you think poor people's kids shouldn't have a choice of careers?

President Biden will announce plans that, if finalized as proposed, would cancel up to $20,000 of the amount a borrower’s balance has grown due to unpaid interest on their loans after entering repayment, regardless of their income. Low and middle-income borrowers enrolled in the SAVE plan or any other income-driven repayment (IDR) plan would be eligible for the entire amount their balance has grown since entering repayment to be canceled under the Administration’s plans. This group of borrowers includes single borrowers who earn $120,000 or less and married borrowers who earn $240,000 or less.

As for transferring the tax burden from the elite to the working class - - - ? I guess it depends what newspaper you're reading.

President Biden’s tax cuts cut child poverty in half in 2021 and are saving millions of people an average of about $800 per year in health insurance premiums today. Going forward, in addition to honoring his pledge not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $400,000 annually, President Biden’s tax plan would cut taxes for middle- and low-income Americans

You keep defending that one deluded man, and don't care how his co-workers struggle to give their children a chance in a fucked-up capitalist society.
I saw a pretty funny sign last night:
"Did anyone think to unplug America and plug it in again?"
The system's been cracking for a long time; all anyone can do, short of smashing it and starting over, is apply patches here and there.

So you take the position of God then - leave us to figure out what to do for ourselves. — Fire Ologist

I think no god was ever there at all. And 8 billion ain't exactly solitude.

I said that Congress should pass a law funding college costs if that's what they want. — fishfry

I think you said quite a lot more than that.

I'm surprised to see you cheering on the transfer of billions of dollars in debt from the elite to the working class. — fishfry

I'm not aware that the elite had been paying for student loans. Citation?
Did we discuss restructuring taxation at all? I have some views on capital gains, shell corporations, off-shore accounts and price-gauging that wouldn't affect most union members.

Trashing the welder. — fishfry

Just that one. He probably beats his wife and votes for T***p, too.

I couldn't actually parse that except that I must have done something bad. — fishfry

I don't think you've done anything at all.

I'm very cheerful. I don't have to pretend a cracker is human flesh, or that a magic prince will eventually come back and take a second shot at rescuing us.

I don't believe I've said anything to lead you to believe I'm against education. — fishfry

Only for people who can't afford it.

You said the welders militarized the police. — fishfry

No i didn't. I said

That welder who'd rather see his taxes go toward militarizing the police is doing his family no favours. — Vera Mont

Don't tell me there isn't one single yahoo in the welder's union who wouldn't rather beef up the police than give some pansy a degree in social work. There is. And he's an idiot.

You're quite anti-worker for a communist. — fishfry

No, I'm anti representing all working class people as thinking like you.

I was speaking more to the illogic of someone claiming that necessarily God cannot exist. — Fire Ologist

To whom do you refer when you capitalize God? It's perfectly logical to say that Zeus, Quetzalcoatl, Osiris, Jehovah and Allah cannot possibly exist. Some nebulous supernatural entity somewhere might exist, but we wouldn't have been introduced to it.

I don’t think we could have thought of Jesus as the Messiah prophesized in Judaism. — Fire Ologist

You can't? I wonder why. The late revisionists were able to scrape a couple of coherent verses out of Isaiah's rants to back up their claim - 60-300 years post-crucifixion - that a messiah had been promised to the Jews - who didn't buy it.

Why throw in the sacrament of gathering to eat his flesh and drink his blood to have eternal life? — Fire Ologist

There was nothing new in human sacrifice, or eating demigods.

Or why was it God himself becoming a man, living poor and being killed, so that he could rise again? Why is the incarnation leading to poverty and bloody death needed? — Fire Ologist

So he could forgive the imperfect man he created for falling for his tainted fruit con.

Already the religious institution committee would have said “nope - preposterous - it will never stick! Let’s go back to Zeus or Baal, or Odin and work around them.” — Fire Ologist

No, the Pharisees largely considered him just another crackpot, though a few thought he was a prophet (of which Israel had a long tradition - even if they were mostly crackpots). I very much doubt they would have heard of Odin; Zeus would be out of bounds under Roman rule, while Jupiter had never really made a splash in Mesopotamia, and Baal was very much not the Jews' cup of poison. A long while later, Constantine got some serious mileage out of it. Then the Europeans converts ran with it - at considerable cost to common folk the world over.

And the message of action - love, sacrifice for others, forgiveness, the value of life, that God cared so much, held each one of us in such esteem, that he would rather die on a cross to lead us to him than leave us with nowhere to go, but preserving our freedom to live by our own choices, like creatures in the image of God. — Fire Ologist

Yeah, all that. In action. When?

The trades are "real work." Tradesmen built the college buildings, they operate the plumbing and the electricity and haul the trash. — fishfry

Sure. But a society needs a variety of skills. And it needs to recognize the need for education, and the need for recognition of talent, in whatever class, whether they can play basketball or not, whether they can afford a huge debt-load or not.

A metaphor for the attitude of the elite towards the working class today. — fishfry

You're lecturing a communist about the working-class and elitism?

The US is $35T in debt and still spending like a drunken sailor. — fishfry

On many of the wrong things, because they're bound by old obligations, treaties, contracts, attitudes and fears. Investing in youth is one of the right things it should be spending on.

When this whole thing crashes everyone's going to go, "Oh how did we let it get this bad?" — fishfry

Don't they always? Then, for about 20 years, the ultra-rich keep their greed in check and their profile low. Then they start buying up politicians and smaller businesses and countries again.

It's not the welders who have militarized the police. — fishfry

Of course it isn't. But that's where their taxes go anyway, because the people who have lots of property want it protected at public expense.

If there are Q's in the continuum who haven't bothered me, I promise not to bother them.

It just means that, as a thinking being, there is no reason to conclude the Non-existence of anything. — Fire Ologist

Except things that quite obviously made up. Even if it's not proved 100% beyond doubt, the preponderance of evidence precludes paying homage or tithes to, making sacrifices for or obeying the rules of an improbability.

An atheist doesn't necessarily claim (though some may) that no kind of supernatural entity could possibly exist, or that no entity which might seem like a deity to humans could possibly exist. Most of us simply reject the god-forms that have so far been held up to worship by human agencies of one kind or another. It's perfectly rational to trace both the provenance of a deity-figure and its mythology to a human culture, human attitudes and concerns, human ideas and human interests. Interesting, but not faith-inspiring.

But I doubt you would say that it's just a quid pro quo of doing and in return getting. — tim wood

In a way, that's what a social contract always is. But it's not that simple or two-dimensional.

I "hear" duty, and not as a consequence of accepting responsibility, but as ground for that acceptance. — tim wood

I don't know what that sentence means. We have duties and obligations, responsibilities and debts - all different, each resulting from a set of circumstances that are partly given (of the environment and a condition of survival) and partly undertaken by the subject for his or her own reasons.

duty for duty's sake — tim wood

No such thing. Duty has no 'sake'; it's always in service to something much larger. There is duty for the sake of patriotism, or an oath, or as a condition of citizenship, or as part of a binding contract.

being both a good example of what I call boot-strapping — tim wood

I really wish you wouldn't. It grates very hard on my grammatical nerves.

If it's God, then I hold that to be a matter of faith, — tim wood

Which I don't have, and therefore should not discuss how it works on the faithful.

which I hold to be personal, from the self and not from God but from an idea. — tim wood

Usually not an idea that originates with the faithful. While each believer does a little customizing of the canon, the bulk and overwhelming content of it comes from other minds. A very, very few interpreters of the god's requirements tell all the faithful how best to gain the god's favour. They may think they place themselves in the god's hands; in fact, they place themselves in the ruling prelate's hands.
In the secular realm, the same role is played by heads of state and, in turbulent times, the leaders of ideological factions: the loyal subjects, patriots and freedom fighters receive their purpose from their figurehead.
To me, that seems a lot like abrogation of responsibility - but it does provide a clear, straightforward meaning for their life. And death.

That leaves the question as to why assume responsibilities. — tim wood

We are social animals. We crave community, family, closeness, affection, recognition, a sense of belonging and contributing and being valued. To that end, we take a series of small and large decisions that result in what we know as ordinary life. That includes adults taking responsibility for the young, paying their dues, keeping the peace, lending a hand, making the world around them liveable for others as well as themselves. That requires no supernatural intervention.

Profession correlates strongly with IQ. — Lionino

Profession corresponds strongly to background, expectation, opportunity and the economy. Even the dumbest offspring of CEO's and department store magnates are aimed at university from their gold-plated cradle, through top-flight nursery school through tutors at prep school, and if that doesn't work, their parents can buy a test-stand-in or a department chair. Even the brightest offspring of dock-workers have a hard time getting through high school.

in an unskewed sample of pipe-fitters, — Lionino

In a capitalist system, there are no unskewed samples of anything.

Why? Do pipes mess up adults' DNA?

The working class should fund the education of the cognitive elite who will vastly out-earn them in their respective lifetimes? Did I understand you correctly? — fishfry

No, you obviously don't. A pipe-fitter can have intelligent children.

Pretty good deal for the Eloi, — fishfry

Hardly; they're food source, life insurance and pension plan for your dear Morlocks.

The entire population (wherein the rich are taxed heavily, the working class lightly and the poor not at all) should fund the education of the society's young, so there is no predetermined high-earner class in the next generation.
I suspect a nation of welders would starve to death pretty fast. And a debt-driven society will inevitably collapse under the burden. Student loans - agreed to by unemployable youth who hope for a future, come at 5-15% interest. They won't earn enough to live on, let alone pay off $50, -100, 000 for years after they graduate, so the interest just keeps on accumulating. So the most ambitious and clever of them will vie for the lucrative corporate and money-shuffling jobs that do nothing for the population - because they can't afford to work in low-paid public service or helping professions.
That welder who'd rather see his taxes go toward militarizing the police is doing his family no favours.

I do not here mean any sort of instrumental purpose, either as a cause or any kind of interim goal. — tim wood

Folk appear to have missed this constraint you placed on the topic. — Banno

You're right, I did miss it. I should not have responded. If all the meanings of 'purpose' are eliminated from discussion, there's nothing left to discuss but God.

The proper human purpose is a relation to God, — Leontiskos

Only for those who believe in a god.

If you get married and have kids you will tend to find purpose, — Leontiskos

From day to day and year to year until the kids are grown. Had I considered procreation my purpose in life - as some (mostly female) people do (and fall to pieces if they fail to achieve it), I would have tried to procreate, instead of taking care to prevent it. Though they gave me cause to make plans and set goals that centered solely on them, the children I did raise were not the purpose of life, any more than taking care of stray cats is. These are responsibilities I assume freely, of choice, and that choice then entails purposeful actions directed toward its fulfillment.

Well, yes, but you had already more or less said or implied the possibility that if the universe had a mind it was more likely to be "cold, mean and indifferent" — Janus

That wasn't my intention. It's simply a matter of scale. If the universe is sentient, whether we would judge it from our perspective benevolent, hostile or indifferent, it's so much bigger than us that our perspective could not possibly take in the scope of its intelligence or intent. From its perspective on that scale, even supposing it was aware of our existence, I surmise that it would be unlikely to differentiate between humans and bats or any other sentient species in any of the trillion or so galaxies it surveys.

I just assumed it was a species of Earth termite that I had not heard of before — Janus

Probably because I misspelled it the first time.