Darren New wrote:
> Kevin Wampler wrote:
>> "Of course, one of the consequences of this is then that we are also 
>> too cognitively limited to understand what’s right and wrong"
>>
>> This, unfortunately, doesn't follow from the point I'm making.  What 
>> would follow is that we're too cognitively limited to understand 
>> what's right and wrong for *God*, but it's perfectly consistent to 
>> believe that doesn't at all preclude us from understand what's right 
>> and wrong for humans.
> 
Sigh.. Are we seriously rehashing a more than 2,000 year old argument 
that Aristotle solve with, "I don't know, but the gods certainly don't 
seem to have a clue either.", and Plato later "fixed" by stating, "Yeah, 
well.. Even if the gods don't know, its real anyway, so must be like 
some sort of thing that just exists, which permeates everything, so 
those paying attention can figure it out." Both views are based on 
*ignorance*, but the later one at least has the value of a) not positing 
that a god has to make all of it up, or, even more absurd, that any of 
the gods we have invented describe that god in the slightest, and b) it 
would provide an explanation, if such a bloody thing was needed, for why 
everything from Corvids, like Ravens and Crows manage to have bird 
funerals, or a sort, to other primates, showing the capacity to let 
themselves lose, to help a friend win.

It does present a problem though for people suggesting a god doing it. 
Why bother making it so damn common, yet so inconsistent, and seemingly 
bound *entirely* to the level of social interaction, cooperation and 
mutual trust a species needs to survive, almost like an "adaptive 
trait"? If, as a god, you could have made it bloody clearer that it was 
put there divinely, that good and evil are real concepts, not just 
general vague, "everything that my species doesn't like is evil, while 
all the stuff that makes me feel nice I'll call good.", why make it 
indistinguishable from something which that happened by necessity, not plan?

Its like the latest two Mr. Diety movies. One a angelic PZ convinces god 
that its a lot of work to make everything in 6 days, but there is this 
algorithm that will take a lot longer, will generate species with all 
the same half assed mistakes that the deity planned to use anyway, being 
lazy, it would just take a lot longer, but he would get all the credit 
anyway. The next one was him talking to his son, trying to work out the 
whole original sin, trinity, salvation thing, to which the result was, 
"So, I am sacrificing myself, who is me, to myself, who is you, to pay 
for a sin that never happened, because we used PZed's molecular machine 
thing, instead of the 6 day creation, so no original sin was ever 
committed?"

Basically, ridiculous, since it requires ignoring all the stuff that 
implies that a god just simply *unnecessary* to come up with it in the 
first place, and assuming that a god came up with it, because, well.. 
there just happened to be one, that's why! Think nearly the same 
argument is going on over at a news paper site, sort of. Some clown is 
using the same arguments in a book, to suggest the afterlife is real, 
and, as usual, you get the bozos defending the idea showing up and 
saying, "It doesn't matter if Einstein **specifically** and **clearly** 
stated that he didn't believe in a god, so and so says he did, in such 
and such book, I Googled it damn it, it must be right!", in their own 
defense of, "See, smart people believed it, just like all the dumb ones 
did, so argmentum populum, is *must* be so!"

There is nothing insightful (to who ever started this mess) about any of 
it, unless you simply haven't seen the argument before. Just as there 
are lots of people claiming that there is some "deep" theological ideas 
underpinning modern theology, point to a bunch of scholars that are 
supposedly making them, then, invariably, when those people are asked 
what the "deep" issues are, they trot out the top 10 list of overused, 
constantly rebutted, and/or just fallacious, arguments everyone else 
uses. Its like listening to someone tell you that his shirt isn't red, 
saying it is, being replied to that, no, its not red-red, but special 
red, just as so and so, only to, when asking them, get the same, "No, 
its not red at all.", argument. Not only are the arguments used in 
religion all circular, their supporting authorities are moebius shaped, 
with one referring to the next, who refers to the next, who refers to 
the first one, none of them making any different arguments, or offering 
better evidence, just an infinite regression of CC: tags.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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