I'm not sure which the "this" refers to so answer for both. On honey bees having rules of behavior I know that from both personal observations when out of interest, more than desire for honey, I raised a hive for nearly two years, but I also read several books on them. (That is how I learned to use very fine flour dust to mark a bee I wanted to follow.) I'm not sure how bees get their assigned tasks, but they are much more moral about "doing their duty" than humans are. If their job is to collect in the field they do that, until typically one wing falls off or their ability to fly is damaged. I once saw a bee with his pollen sack full return to the hive, but the other hind leg was missing. Just flying so imbalanced must have been hard. During peak nectar flow, their life expectancy is only about three weeks. They literally give their life for the hive as they can live for at least 6 months when their is nothing to gather in the field. Likewise, the defenders will give their life by stinging an invader of the hive. (The stinger is barbed and it pulls the still pumping venom sack out of their body as their victim escapes and they soon die.) If they had a congress and metals, EVERY bee would deserve a Congressional metal of honor! On " These morals evolve at least 10,000 times faster than physical characteristics do with environmental changes. " that is just a very conservative guess from what I have read. If a time machine could reach back 10,000 years and transport a new born to the current era, switching it for a just in hospital born baby, and then it got a normal up-bring no-one would notice any thing strange (physically or other wise) about it at any time in its life. Evolution is a very very slow process and at any point in time the genetic variations are much greater than the very slow drift in the gene pool average. Contrast that with the rapid change in behavior / accepted morality. Hell, in less than a decade blacks eating in Baltimore's restaurant were not noticed even if they were a large group laughing loudly and celebrating something and I had a lot to do with making that change. I was proud when the president of JHU handed me my Ph.D. certificate, but not nearly as proud and pleased as when I sat in a Baltimore restaurant about 10 years later with my step-mother and silently watch that celebration. About four or five tables had been pushed together for this happy group of blacks* in the center of restaurant which had white occupied booths along both walls. I watched the whites too - not one seem even annoyed with the joyous but boisterous blacks. I have never been as proud, but said nothing to my step-mother who was also silent, but had thought it wrong for me to take a summer off from my Ph. D. research to help a bunch of ignorant smelly blacks, as she had commented when I did so. * As I recall, there were more than dozen, two young men in army uniforms, an old black in a wheel chair, several ladies in party dresses, one of which was white - I guessed she was a "just married" bride. SUMMARY: Behavior / morals can flip 180 degrees in less than a decade, but changing hearts takes longer - I'm sure my step-mother's views were not changed, only no longer expressed.
One need only defend when one is under attack. Atheist attack people, not God. Maybe you should give some thought to the question. It's not as simple to answer as you seem to think. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! jan.
There are no reasons here, only accusations (which anybody can make). As you are obviously becoming perturbed by my question (because you have nothing to offer), I will leave it alone. But if you are going to accuse me of doing something to you in the future, please give an explanation of your claim, otherwise you are just being slanderous. jan.
Yeah yeah yeah, Jan, you've got God on your side, and yet you are a poor poor victim of nasty nasty atheists! You're such a gaslighter. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Atheists attack neither, they attack the beliefs and dogma of religions. If the followers of religions attempt to defend their beliefs and dogma, those ideas are then attacked. If the follower of the religion attempts to attack the facts and evidence of science (evolution, for example), then those ideas are attacked. It is usually when the follower of religion begins to lie through their teeth, they would be accused of lying or being called a liar, especially after it has been shown clearly they are indeed lying.
Don't you believe the Bible is totally factual? Like so dinosaurs must have been on Noah's Ark and all that stuff?
Nature and nurture.... the society we grow up in has a strong determination in what we perceive to be morally acceptable or not, but there is also an evolutionary/nature side to it. It doesn't matter to nature on iota. It matters to the species which has evolved to survive. Species which don't have such a survival instinct die out, and those with the instinct survive. Thus all surviving species tend to have such an instinct. It is evolution at work. You are conflating perspectives of nature with perspectives of individuals / individual species within Nature. Nature allows for evolution; evolution results in survival mechanisms, irrespective of whether such is meaningful or not to nature as a whole. Separate the two perspectives or you will forever be lost in trying to link the atheist's personal perspective with their view of nature's perspective, and seeing discrepancies where it is meaningless to compare. Atheists are not necessarily nihilists (which seems to be your implication). Probably only a tiny minority are, but of you have anything to suggest otherwise...?
Well, I would say you are deliberately ignoring the absurdity. Just like my new super friend ignores the absurdity that the story of Genesis is about the planet Mercury.
Sarkus, So it is conscious beings that decide what is right? So consciousness can contradict nature? Does this mean it is different to nature? So if a species doesn't ''survive'' it is because they don't have a survival instinct? jan.
That is merely a result of the scientifically illiterate who have no clue what science theorizes about the universe's origins.
Only if you exchange the meanings of "absurd" with "counter-intuitive". Once you get past the counter-intuitive paradoxes of late 19th-early 20th century science, the arrival of the universe from a timeless, spaceless "nothing" is not essentially different than accepting relativity. Not only is the idea not absurd, it's the consequence of observation, and can't be overturned (not logically) by anything less than new evidence. Further, it ripples through science in numerous ways. Nature is simply capable of creating itself -- animal, vegetable and mineral -- in countless ways. There can be no observation prior to the creation of time itself, but once the clock is considered stopped (looking back) the question itself becomes absurd. Understanding the creation of the universe compels us to understand what it means to say time was created in the Big Bang. This is entirely different than the religious question, which is rendered moot. There can be no cause, no creation, without a clock. Even God cannot exist outside of time. It's highly counter-intuitive, that's all. That why science is so hard for religious minds to accept. Even people not literate in science will tend to accept this upon their knowledge that experts are involved in interpreting the world around them. The rest of people have tried to understand science, and these folks tend to have no problem with it. They encounter all kinds of counter-intuitive ideas (such as relativity), but they have the benefit of studying the evidence (to varying degrees). This enables them to intuit the science which the religious mind rejects. This largely amounts to knowledge. Folks with little of no functional knowledge of science simply can't intuit Big Bang theory. But it's not correct to say the things not intuitive to them are absurd. On the contrary, it's absurd to say that "something comes from ..." (anything) in the context of a beginning in which the clock is not ticking. Therein lies the rub. Even God can not exist outside of time, no matter how many ways folks might try to construct such a scenario.
Yes. It certainly not the rocks doing that and there is no evidence God is anything more than a pipe dream of those worried about death ending it all. Even if God does exist, and that is possible in principle, It is quite clear He is not much concerned with what goes on here on Earth. I.e. He could have given Hitler a heart attack but did not etc. Or if he was away on vacation then, there have been many other times he could have acted. For example, given Madoff one before thousands lost their life's saving in that (or other) Ponzi scheme, Etc. These "conscious beings" even in organized societies, make rules they try to enforce as Locke (and Hobbes too) explained and called "the social contract." Not all agree with theses rules and some willing risk the punishments their society may give them. In some cases, exceptional humans will make no effort to hid fact they intentionally violated the rules as they hope the society may recognized the rules need to be changed. For example, Gandhi violated some rule (I forget which) that caused a British Magistrate to remark he should be whipped. A day or two after Gandhi learned of this remark, he went to that Magistrate's office, with a whip saying: "I'm ready for my punishment. please whip me." Unfortunately, I also forget how it all turned out, but the magistrate was not man enough to whip him. Thoreau too intentionally violated some local law (a tax he thought unjust as I recall) and ended up in jail rather than pay it. A friend came to the jail willing to pay it and his bail telling Thoreau he was ashamed to see Thoreau in jail. Thoreau replied: "I am ashamed to see you out there - paying that unjust tax." If on average the conscious beings of a society make judgments that in the long run are detrimental to the success of their society, for example encourage sex between brothers and sisters, young men with their mothers, fathers with their daughters, etc. then nature, not God, will discipline them by very natural processes, in this case caused by both copies of some gene in their DNA having the same defect.
