Yes. I’ll elaborate on one component, but I’m hesitant to invest a great deal of time in going on, having observed something of your style of interaction so far. It may, however, make me feel a little better about engaging you in what appears to have been an effort at distraction away from the issue of evolution.
Human children are not born with the capacity to protect and nurture themselves. They would not survive if adults did not take care of them. As a result, the genes of individuals who do not respond with nurturing care to their offspring would not be propagated any further than that second generation.
Humans are thus more likely to be genetically disposed to provide nurturance to children. Indeed, childlike characteristics evoke sympathetic responses from adults, even in an individual who is not their child. These biological characteristics would support, in part, the emergence of moral prohibitions against causing harm to children.
You specifically countered my assertion that the morality regarding the treatment of children has evolved over time by loosely suggesting examples of how children always been cared for. I don’t disagree that children have been cared for; see my point above regarding a genetic disposition to care for them. My point is to show that the prevailing cultural views of the parameters around appropriate or acceptable treatment of children has changed markedly over time. You argue otherwise. I’m asking for any example to support your contradiction of my point.
Well, now see right there you add as almost an afterthought a crucial confirmation of the point that I am making. Do we regard selling children into slavery as morally acceptable these days?
Another key issue with your statement is your snarky use of the word “somehow”. There’s no head-scratching magic to it. There’s no vexing conundrum in seeing the evolution of our views about what is right and wrong to do from the middle ages to today. We didn’t get here “somehow,” we got here through a pretty consistent lineage of evolving “beliefs” about what is right and wrong. (Why “beliefs” by the way should be such a challenging word, I have no idea.)
Like selling children into slavery? Child labor more generally? Corporal punishment?
Corporal punishment was (and still is in some places) considered good for children, kind of like operations or shots. I’m not defending it, but it is not at all like real torture.
If you are claiming that an objective morality exists you are going to have to do a lot better than note a few things agreed to by most humans over time. Care to share it? If there is objective morality, but no one knows the rules, it is a bit worthless, isn’t it? The Biblical version was quite explicit.
Perhaps, but that just exemplifies the point. It’s certainly not the case, at least in the US, that corporal punishment is regarded as generally acceptable. A few decades ago, school personnel could generally use corporal punishment. Attitudes have changed so that most people would be, if not horrified, then at least taken aback at finding that a teacher paddled a child.
But if, as you assert, some regions still hold similar views as were prevalent 50 years ago, while others do not, it does not make much sense to explain these differences as arising from a common external agent.
Says the person whose approach seems to be “I assert things and demand you prove me wrong, and while you’re at it please do all my homework for me”{/QUOTE]
Ah, no. I have challenged others assertions, and then when I have asked them to support their position they have run a mile. When I have made an assertion, I have supported it with cites. If you are too lazy or closed minded to take a look, that’s not my problem.
Ah, no again. I have not denounced anyone. I began with a definition of creationism which is entirely valid and supported by a number of external references. Some here enjoy taking pot shots but don’t like it when someone actually can refute their positions.
If you had been following the thread you would. The discussion move to naturalism, and to the idea that nothing exists beyond the natural world. One exampleI have given to suggest otherwise is the existence of an objective moral code. Keep up please.
Oh most certainly not. We observe an absolute morality. I am precisely arguing that such a morality can not have arisen from a purely naturalistic universe. I am not assuming that, I am arguing that. No-one hs answered yet, but I am a patient man.
An example of objective morality: "The torture of an innocent child is wrong.
Please explain this in the context of a purely naturalistic universe.
That’s the question that hasn’t been answered. If you can cite the post where it has, and to which I have not given a rebuttal, I will leave the thread.
The discussion on objective morality arose from a discussion about the validity of a purely naturalistic universe, which has been submitted as the alternative to creationism. My point has been (and I tire of repeating myself) that if objective reality exists, it questions such a naturalism).
You seek to refute the existence of an objective morality and yet in the same breath seek to justify exactly that in the form of the torture of an innocent child. Curious?
Societal rules regarding the torture of the innocent are the result of an inate understanding that such a prohibition is appropriate. Naturalism mitigates against such an inclination developing, particularly where that child is part of a village competing with my village for scarce resources.
“A few things agreed to b most humans over time” is perhaps an understatement, but it is still pretty close! Thank you.
As to the rules, I can’t be more clear. The torture of an innocent child is morally wrong. Always has been, always will be. Now explain how that works in a naturalistic world in which for millennia individuals, families, communities, towns, cities and countries have fought over scarce resources.
Point 1 is a gratuitous assertion that you have failed to demonstrate or support except through repetition of the point. You are the one who has persistently evaded answering the question of how you claim that it is “objective morality.”
There have been several posts addressing a taboo on the torture of children from a naturalistic perspective. Trinopus, DrFidelius, Hentor the Barbarian, and I have all provided “naturalistic” reasons to have prohibitions against torturing children. That would indicate four more “answers” to your Point 2 than you have provided to demonstrate that there actually is an “objective morality” as you have asserted in Point 1.
I also see no “rebuttal” to those posts by you or anyone else. Now, I have no care whether you abandon this thread or continue, but, as I have already noted, you are failing miserably to persuade anyone of your opinion. Your continued claims of others failing to respond are rather hollow in that context.
How can we answer this if we disagree with the premise? Statement 1 is incorrect. Even so, there have been several attempts to answer 2- to show how this could be considered morally wrong in a “purely naturalistic universe”.
This is a false understanding of how evolution (and naturalism) work. A natural inclination against harming children could easily evolve, even if that child “is part of a village competing with my village for scarce resources”, if this trait was more helpful in general (in terms of providing for kin children) than harmful (in terms of giving resources to non-related children). In addition, this could evolve as a cultural trait (as opposed to genetic)- if the tribe adopts and cares for stray children, and teaches the children to care for other children, then this idea could easily spread from generation to generation by teaching (Dawkins’ “meme”).
There’s also the point, of course, that there have been cultures in human history that did not value unrelated (outside-the-tribe) children, and would have seen nothing wrong with capturing them and harming them- even harming (torturing) them for their amusement.
Is the torture of a guilty child wrong? Is the mistreatment of an innocent child short of torture wrong? Is the torture of an adult wrong, and does guilt or innocence enter into the question? How is guilt or innocence determined? Do we use a jury system or can we depend on spiritual advice?
We may be arguing past each other. Please define the terms of your statement to ensure that we are on the same page.
(This is not even getting close to the question of what to do if a person sincerely believes that their god wants them to do something that might be seen to be immoral.)
Perhaps you’ve never heard of the Inca, or the Chinese? Both cultures tortured innocent children (although I suspect you’ll be in shortly to claim that torture means something other than
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Some perspective is needed. “What I and my neighbors believe about this issue at this time” does not equal an objective TRVTH regardless of how strongly you happen to believe it.
You have a problem in your assessment of objective morality. It’s an understandable hurdle you’ve failed to clear, as undoubtedly, you’ve been raised to believe “God told us what’s right and wrong, so that’s how we know.” Now, whether the Deity, who arguably killed nearly all of humanity in a flood, wiped out all the firstborn Egyptians, tortured Job, mentally tortured Abraham, as well as Moses, obliterated a couple of large cities,and commanded the massacres of numerous Bronze Age tribes, the enslavement of their children and the forcible rape of their women, is actually in a position to dispense rules of moral behavior (Do as I say, not as I do) is, to me, up for debate.
A better explanation for the revulsion we feel at the thought of harming a child is related to the subject of Neotany, or paedomorphosis. Child-like features trigger a nurturing mechanism in not only humans, but many animal species as well. However, it’s not like harming children is always universally taboo. The practice of infanticide is not limited to ancient Rome and Sparta … it’s alive and well in India and China.
I know it’s comforting to think that our most noble traits are the result of divine creation and influence, and that something as base and random as nature, where physical laws somehow manages to make sense out of chaos, couldn’t result in behaviors like tenderness, honesty, and courage … but they did. Now, if God, in all His wisdom, foresaw this and is proud of it, that’s a plus.