Excellent then all you have to do is offer some evidence for your hippy on a stick or whatever it is you kneel down to.
The Law Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) was a French economist, statesman, and author. He did most of his writing during the years just before — and immediately following — the Revolution of February 1848. This was the period when France was rapidly turning to complete socialism. As a Deputy to the Legislative Assembly, Mr. Bastiat was studying and explaining each socialist fallacy as it appeared. And he explained how socialism must inevitably degenerate into communism. But most of his countrymen chose to ignore his logic. Source The simple truths about human law are so clearly and simply presented, there is little need for my commentary or additions. I highly recommend reading this short pamphlet, for a better understanding of human Law, and the post Enlightenment thought that it conveys. Excepts from 'The Law', by Frederic Bastiat: Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place. What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is... legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay ... If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system. It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder. Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter -- by peaceful or revolutionary means -- into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it. "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Why? Who offers evidence for their religio/philosophical beliefs? Do you? You assert yours, and ridicule other's. You kneel to your god, and everyone else can kneel to theirs. Why are you so driven to mock and demean other's beliefs? Ordinary human religious bigotry? The topic is morality, instinct and law, not 'religious bigotry'.
Pilgrim, I don't have to do a damn thing. You like it where you are, you stay there. No skin off my ass.
There have been a few nails in the coffin of the argument presented in the OP and, for the most part, they haven't really been addressed. I'm going to outline them here for easy reference. 1) The OP's argument is based on set of bare "If . . . then" premises and the "conclusions" are simply various restatements of these premises. Some forumites have offered rational arguments against theses premises and even empirical evidence disproving the assumptions they contain, but these have gone unaddressed and the premises have gone undefended, simply offered as articles of faith and declared "self evident" despite the considerable evidence proving them wrong. 2) The OP presents the problem of accounting for morality and conscience and offers God as a solution. Unfortunately, it has been shown (and has been shown since at least 500 BC) that this "solution" simply relocates the problem. It doesn't solve it. You ask where human morality comes from and then say it comes from God. But where does God's morality come from? The "solution" faces the same challenges. 3) The OP believes in a God that would disprove his hypothesis of universal morality if he existed. His God, according to his scriptures, has ordered things like slavery and murder in the past. You can't believe in the God of the Bible and also believe that murder and slavery are universally wrong. 4) The OP is inconsistent about whether we have inherent moral knowledge or not. He says we do in order to try to prove the existence of God, then he says that our moral knowledge can't be used to examine God, which would mean that our so-called moral "knowledge" is either incorrect or completely unreliable. This despite the fact that even his own scriptures say that man has become "like [God], knowing good from evil." 5) The OP relies on an argument from ignorance. He can't think of how a Godless world would have morality, thus he deduces that it can't. This is a basic logical fallacy. 6) Here we get to the empirical proof that the OP is wrong. He admits that his assumptions about instincts are based on the assumption that each animal is driven solely by narrow self-interest in prolonging its own personal survival and that no animal has any regard for the wellbeing of any other animal. This is empirically false, as has been repeatedly demonstrated with examples. No biologist anywhere in the world treats this notion seriously. No one even vaguely familiar with animal life -- no one either having had some formal education, being an amateur naturalist like myself, or even a child who has kept up with his or her Zoobooks subscription -- can take this proposition seriously. As I've shown, I literally can't step into my own backyard without disproving this hypothesis. Related to this fictional account of animal life is the assumption that such instincts are the only kind that evolution could have produced. This, likewise, bears no resemblance to objective reality. Game theory has shown the survival advantages of cooperative behavior. You can easily observe the survival advantages of cooperation yourself by examining any social animal. The OP's arguments about nature rely on no reader ever actually paying attention to nature. For more info on game theory and its implications for biological altruism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_game_theory#Routes_to_altruism I'm putting more focus on this later point because it takes us out of mere philosophy (which I love) and into the realm of empirical verifiability. Whether he realizes it or not, the OP armed us with the weapons to disprove the hypotheses that he calls "self-evident," even as he tries to hold them as beyond any possible debate or discussion. He admits that his premises are based on certain assumptions and predictions about nature. Those assumptions can be tested. They have been tested. The OP has been empirically, objectively proven false. It just so happens that I've been reading several books about this subject lately, ranging from the psychology of psychopathy and altruism to the evolutionary benefits of cooperation. One article from an ethics book I'm reading sticks out, however, so I'm going to quote it at length here. This is from the essay "Morals Without God?" by Frans de Waal, found in Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments. You can find details about some of the research that lead de Waal to these conclusions in the video I linked to in post #171.
More from Bastiat.. The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all. .. Self-preservation and self-development are common aspirations among all people. And if everyone enjoyed the unrestricted use of his faculties and the free disposition of the fruits of his labor, social progress would be ceaseless, uninterrupted, and unfailing. But there is also another tendency that is common among people. When they can, they wish to live and prosper at the expense of others. This is no rash accusation. Nor does it come from a gloomy and uncharitable spirit. The annals of history bear witness to the truth of it: the incessant wars, mass migrations, religious persecutions, universal slavery, dishonesty in commerce, and monopolies. .. Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This process is the origin of property. But it is also true that a man may live and satisfy his wants by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others. This process is the origin of plunder. Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain — and since labor is pain in itself — it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it. When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor. It is evident, then, that the proper purpose of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder instead of to work. All the measures of the law should protect property and punish plunder. Thus it is easy to understand how law, instead of checking injustice, becomes the invincible weapon of injustice. It is easy to understand why the law is used by the legislator to destroy in varying degrees among the rest of the people, their personal independence by slavery, their liberty by oppression, and their property by plunder. This is done for the benefit of the person who makes the law, and in proportion to the power that he holds. Instead of rooting out the injustices found in society, they make these injustices general. As soon as the plundered classes gain political power, they establish a system of reprisals against other classes. They do not abolish legal plunder. (This objective would demand more enlightenment than they possess.) Instead, they emulate their evil predecessors by participating in this legal plunder, even though it is against their own interests.
This is conflicted. 'Might is right', is just reality, in a godless universe, and even in a God made one. Every deterrence for 'bad' behavior is predicated on might. Lawless anarchy leads to looting and rampant crime. It takes the might of collective power to deter it, through punishment and its threat. Evolution is not the topic here, and i am hard pressed to see any environmental pressures to evolve morality. Human morals are contrary to survival needs, in multiple areas, yet we cling to some inner sense of morality, rather than act upon our animal instincts. In a godless, naturalistic universe, morality is a human construct.. a delusion for manipulation. Psychopathy? The ASSUMPTION that normal humans are embedded with a conscience.. a 'sense' of right and wrong, and human aberrations are 'psychopaths!'? Psychopathy affirms the concept of Universal morality, and an Embedder, Who placed it there. How do we judge someone as 'psychopathic!', otherwise? Instincts, psychopathy, human law, and cultural consensus ALL affirm the existence of Universal, objective, and absolute Morality, in human beings. And since this can only be from the act of an Embedder, the natural apprehension we feel for violations of our conscience is justified. We are accountable for our thoughts, words, and actions, as our conscience constantly reminds us. Morality, it seems, is a Real Thing, and not a human contrivance for manipulation. We 'should' listen to our conscience, rather than risk repercussions for violations.
You are free to believe that if you wish. Most people's consciences seem to reject that theory. You keep going back and forth between saying that this conscience is proof of something and saying that it is unreliable. As has already been proven, even social animals exhibit instincts in favor of empathy, cooperation, and reciprocity, sometimes even at the expense of their own individual survival.
Rights cannot be granted by authority. Anything granted by authority is a privilege. Rights are what are claimed by sovereign citizens, privileges are given to subjects.
which is of no moment whatever, seeing none of those has any necessary connection to morality. Perhaps you've heard the term "kamikaze"?
Parsing distinctions between 'rights!' and 'privileges' is not the point. 'Rights!', are EITHER: 1. Inherent, given by an Endower. 2. Human privileges, granted by human power. For Natural Law to be a Real Thing, like morality, it must be embedded by Something or Someone, into the human psyche. ELSE, it is a delusion. Either there ARE 'human rights,' inherently, OR they are all delusions, and there are only privileges granted by controllers.
The distinction is an important one, and you still haven't proven your dichotomy. Plus, evolutionary explanations for cooperative, empathetic behavior have already been offered and bolstered by empirical facts.
I have offered a plausible dichotomy.. an 'either/or' for the Source of morality. It is logical, and self evident. It is incumbent on any rebuttals of this dichotomy to show how it is false, or offer other possibilities for morality. Blurring the definitions of instinct, or making unbased assertions does not refute the premise.
Even if it is "plausible," and I have shown several ways in which it is not, that still wouldn't make it true. Lots of things are plausible and not true. Your premise is about more than just the source of morality. You insert other conclusions in there as well. It is illogical in several ways that have been demonstrated but not addressed. "Self evident" is not a rational argument. Not if we abide by the rules of rational debate. You are making the assertion, so it is incumbent on you to show your homework. And other possibilities have been offered and not addressed. What I said was not an "unbased." I've provided basis, which has gone unaddressed, and it does refute your premises. I've offered specific empirical examples that disprove your assumptions about animal instincts. Your premises, meanwhile, are "unbased."
I think you are begging the question. It has not been established that 'the right wing!' opposes natural law, nor are the labels pertinent in a philosophical discussion.
No. Morality is not an embedded sense. It must be trained into people from an early age or else it will never take. Those with no conscience, the psychopaths, will never get it. Guilt is the primary emotion behind morality. If you can make a child feel guilty for doing something wrong, s/he will incorporate that wrongness into his/her sense of morality, because feeling guilty is painful. https://www.askdrsears.com/topics/parenting/discipline-behavior/morals-manners/moral-child
Human rights only exist to the degree that people are willing to stand and fight for them. Our rights in America were not bestowed upon us by anyone, they were established by the "blood of patriots, and tyrants". We declared our rights with the Declaration of Independence, and paid for them with the Revolutionary War. Likewise we have lost most of them by being cowards and unwilling to face harm to keep them. Today we are more subjects than citizens.
This is the 'chicken/egg' dilemma. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place. ~Frederic Bastiat
Exactly. That is the only possible conclusion in a godless universe. It is a human construct, for manipulation. 'Morality', as a Real Thing can only exist if an Embedder placed it there. That is impossible in a godless universe, for Who or what would, or could, embed such a thing? So in a godless universe, 'morality' can only be a delusion.. an imaginary human construct for manipulation.
