Yeah. I called him in for reinforcements. I'm a very accurate sniper, but sometimes you just need a Howitzer.

"No worries, krellin. If observing *everything else* that isn't human in nature isn't a good enough source for you, I'll just be quiet. "

Everything else what? The animal kingdom is brutal and ammoral, tending towards immoral when you enter the primate arena where the tribe has known rules and expected behavior with consequences dealt out by the leaders. Primates *are* immoral creatures....youngens can't fuck the girls, or Alpha Ape beats the shit out of you...but youngens will still go off and fuck and suffer teh consequences of the *choosen immoral* behavior, for which they fear the consequences that are knowingly dished out.

I'll take all your observations of the non-human world, Bo, and use them against you.

Wait, I'm not getting the thrust of your argument here, Bo. Are you claiming that humans only did good things in prehistory? Because there are lots of prehistoric skulls that have shown up with evidence of some pretty savage blunt force trauma to the head, whereby human one appears to have bashed human two over the head with a pretty big rock.

So... maybe your argument is that this wasn't immoral because it was just competition. And to that end, maybe you're right. It wasn't immoral because it didn't violate an established moral code because no moral code existed. To that extent it was merely amoral. But that's a fairly fine distinction, as it doesn't seem that the action has changed, merely that the act has now come to be understood as transgressive whereas it used to be simply competition.

So it that what you're saying? That it takes a society to create a moral code, and that thus it takes a society to convert an act that used to be amoral into an act that is immoral? If that's what you're saying, I think that's fair, but I don't think it's adequate to establish that society creates the negative behavior, only that society constructs the concept of immorality around it.

@hecks...yes, Bo is *exactly* saying that "pre-civilization" humans were all good and peaceful. Where he can even possibly get this notion is beyond me...and further, why he *believes* it and espouses it is even more of a mystery.

Like I said...I like Bo, I really do...but he's just bat-shit crazy sometimes...the skull full of mush can't decipher with teacher's bullshit and truth sometimes...

Guys can we please calm down? Human nature/nature good and evil is very complicated subject. I'm tempted to post my book here, as its exactly what im writing about. But heres an extract:

If compassion comes naturally to us then so equally may Nietzsche’s cruelty. Our sense of community and intention to do good can also lie behind our need for warfare and conflict. If humans do possess the ability to rebel against nature, then it is clear that our rebellion must take place against the latter while we embrace the former.
If we actually are a deterministic product of nature, then it is difficult to determine whether humans share its selfishness or its compassion, or both. It could be argued, for example, that animals pursue their own survival with little regard to any moral code, often killing other animals without a fleeting hint of what we would call ethics or morality. From that argument we could draw the conclusion that morality is largely illusory, and that selfishness should come naturally to us. A counter argument might point out that animals, while barbaric or violent upon first impression, do not consume more than they need to, and so do in fact possess a kind of morality; most animals do not hunt for pleasure but out of necessity.

“Man is the measure of all things”, spoke Protagoras. To biased thinkers in search of evidence, nature provides an illicit example of greed and self-interest or alternatively of harmonious interdependence. In reality, nature may reflect more of the dichotomy and the mysteries of man than we would especially like to believe.
In failing to solve the perplexities of humans, we have been quick to turn to nature in the hope of discovering a simpler model from which to gauge our own nature. Yet from nature we have discovered only more ambiguity and more questions about ourselves. From philosophy’s perspective these questions are a positive step, and we should not despair at failing to reach definitive conclusions, but embrace the ever-widening field of enquiry into human nature.

<yawn....> Go away SYnner...tldnr psycho babble from the doctor who's very immoral existence is to think up shit that can't be proven to secure an endless tide of funding.

We hate you, seriously, and don't trust *a single god-damned thing you say*.

SYnner...serously...do you *believe* anything? Because all you did is post a bunch of bullshti psycho-babble that attempts to cover *all* the bases and truly doesn't attempt to answer any of the questions.

Seriously...we hate you...go the fuck away, moron.

So...was i forced to essentially call you a fucktard by my deterministic nature rebelling against your fuckwaddiness? Or was it keen individual human observation and chosen words of wisdom?

Wait... "doctor whose very immoral existence" or "Doctor Who's very immoral existence". I love Doctor Who. Don't go messing with my sci-fi.

Doctor Who....sadly,I am a bad sci-fi fan and have never indulged in the Whoster....possibly because I don't know where to start. Should I try whatefver they have on Netflix?

But Doctor Synner....he's an evil person...should be torn in half be a malfunctioning time machine...

@krellin - "you claim secular humanis is irrational because it has no foudning doctrine, etc....

That is *stupid*.

christianity has no founding documents...or at least it didn't until well after Christ was dead and risen. All of Judiasm/Christianity (same religion, essentially...Christianity is the continuation of Judiasm) is based upon a bunch of random writings by different people accross thousands of years that, at some point in time, a bunch of priveldged religious leaders cobbled together and called a book...leaving out some writings for unknown reasons...and then keeping it pretty much to themselves until Luther came along...

Yeah...there's a great foundation for belief there...."

To say that Christianity has no founding documents is simply false. The entirety of the New Testament canon was written in the 35 years after the death of Christ. During that time, the veracity of those accounts was established by live eyewitnesses to what had happened. The apostles and their direct followers were able to determine which teaching was in accord with the truth Jesus had taught and which were not. The process of the development of the canon was consistently guided by men who had good reasons to think that certain writings were faithful to what had actually happened and that certain were not. I am not an expert on the development of the biblical canon, but there are such people and their existence seems to be enough to prove that the development of the canon was not as arbitrary as you imply, and thus that a belief in the Bible as true is not, as you say, stupid.

At the very least, it is as good a foundation for belief as the arbitrary starting points of humanists.

I'm not sure which is less trustworthy, an idiot today who claims he knows Christ rose from the dead, or an idiot 2000 years ago who claims he knows Christ rose from the dead.

Yawn.

"Go away SYnner...tldnr psycho babble from the doctor who's very immoral existence is to think up shit that can't be proven to secure an endless tide of funding."

I don't have any funding Krellz :)

@krellin,

"All of Judiasm/Christianity (same religion, essentially...Christianity is the continuation of Judiasm) is based upon a bunch of random writings by different people accross thousands of years that, at some point in time, a bunch of priveldged religious leaders cobbled together and called a book...leaving out some writings for unknown reasons...and then keeping it pretty much to themselves until Luther came along..."

In general, krellin, it's decently well understood why books were and weren't left out. It's also confusing that you'd call the people who superintended the canon "privileged religious leaders." I guess they were privileged in the obvious sense that their decisions ended up being implemented (the tautological sense), but beyond that, a lot of these people did not meet the standards you would ascribe to power or prestige.