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Originally Posted by roachboy
1. you can find commonalities in any set of variables if you are willing to ignore enough to do it.
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I suppose, but that hardly disproves anything.
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Originally Posted by roachboy
2. you still did not define morality in any real way. you conflate it withe social norms in general. this conflation does not seem to me justified. you certainly do not justifyu it in your post, will.
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Of course, how silly of me. Morality: A system of ideas of right and wrong conduct. Upon morality social conduct is usually based in some way. While people do not follow morailty, you cannot deny that many social rules are built on the underlying morality of a given community.
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Originally Posted by roachboy
3. that there needs to be social norms is obvious. there does not need to be morality. the christian notion of morality is a particular development, the result of a particular history, a particular set of philosophical assumptions, etc.
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Are morality and social norms mutually exclusive? Right and wrong are built into laws, therefore there is a direct connection from morality and social rules.
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Originally Posted by roachboy
4. i do not see the logic that could possibly link the need for social norms--which are simply functional--to anything remotely like intellegent design. you do not need to posit some god to explain that it might occur to groups of human beings to work out for themselves that killing each other (within the boundaries of a group, however that is defined) is probably not functional--to figure out that kinship relations get hopelessly muddled if incest is permitted generally. etc.
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How many people have you killed lately? Now can you tell me that you have not killed someone because of social norms alone? Or is it possible that those social norms are in fact based on the morality that teaches that murder is wrong?
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Originally Posted by roachboy
5. things get even worse for your position if you start taking account of actual history in thinking about this--for example thet strictures against types actions are usually tied to particular types of property laws (inheritance patterns, etc.)
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Maybe you, as someone who clearly has knowledge of history, can help me out a bit. What society has not had laws based on right and wrong? If you named some, how did they fare?
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Originally Posted by roachboy
6. i do not know what--beyond pain avoidance--could possibly be understood as an innate human capacity. say you carried out the analysis you claimed to have carried out in your last post, will--and you find that killing people within a given community is understood as being a problem by most communities. except in particular situations, of course (sacrifice, etc)...this could follow from the fact of community, from the fact of making a distinction between inside and outside...how would you go from this to a claim about innateness? i dont get it.
[[btw your religious position is not an argument in this regard. because there is no way to move beyond the predictable conflict that woudl seperate the assumptions predicated on belief in a particular system from the viewpoints that do not--there has to be a logic to this shift that can be argued apart from a priori linkages that follow becuase you might be a fundamentalist protestant, say--not that you are, will--i am just using it as an example]]
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You're right. There is no aparent solution to this argument. That's what interests me.