JP

What in my post made you think I had no ethics? All I did was ask you where you get your ethics/morals from? Do you believe in supernatural beings? Do they speak to you and tell you what to do? Or perhaps you believe a man, who speaks to you on behalf of a supernatural being?

"Biology is completely amoral"

Do you claim not to be biological or do you claim to be amoral?

Yabby – okay, so we agree that in a materialistic universe all morality is simply made up by people, according to their preferences. If that is so, can one moral position be any better or worse than another?

Were Pol Pot’s moral views as valid as those of Gandhi? If not, why not? I presume you would not like Pol Pot slaughtering millions of people, but what makes your subjective opinion about right and wrong more valid than his? Besides, why should Pol Pot care what you think?

Stezza – I guess it was my error. When you wrote: “The only thing worse than having no ethics is taking your ethics from someone who tells you what to do”, I assumed that you were rejecting the latter position and therefore you must hold the former position, i.e. – “having no ethics”.

The only point I have been seeking to make, in relation to the original article, is that we cannot derive morality from a study of biology. Any "morality" that exists in a materialistic universe is simply made up and is completely subjective.

But a made up morality seems to be about as meaningless and useless as a made up God.

It seems to me though that when a person is raped or murdered that something definitely wrong has happened and it is not just because I happen to have a preference against rape or murder. If it is correct that these things are objectively wrong, then I think it necessarily follows that there is more to us than biology.

Methinks this extract has rather left us in the lurch as to what the author is really getting at - or is it only me who is left a trifle confused as to the author's ultimate intentions?

"Nonetheless, the idea that humans, like all other living organisms, must be understood as biological poses a radical challenge to our politics, to our ethics, and to all the disciplines that try to understand human societies and cultures. It is a challenge that cannot be ignored, and must be grasped in new critical collaborations across ‘the two cultures’."

I may be being picky but I can't tell if the point is a re-evaluation of nature versus nurture, or a review of the limits of biomedical engineering and genetic modification. I've accepted a long way back that the human is an animal, and prone to all that biology, emotionality, imagination and mental exertion can produce, but that hardly seems to be the issue. Could it be perhaps that psychiatry, psychology and the social sciences need to take greater heed of the innate (biology based) capacities of human kind for a range of anti-social and self-satisfying behaviours, or altenatively of the possibilities for balancing or exacerbation of such drives by ingrained learning or indoctrination? I don't see a great deal new here, either way.

"The two cultures"? Proposed revised interraction?

JP and Yabby,

Biology is amoral? Meaning innately? Meaning with no sense of affinity with one's own kind, no empathy, no collaboration? Meaning pure dog eat dog, with no emotionality, no sense of possible consequences, sheer instinctive survival thrust? Are we possibly making a good description here of a primal human drive?

Other life forms do not generally revel in the destruction and elimination of their own kind. Hence, a different innate biological makeup and predisposition? I would proffer that humankind's extensive cerebral capacity is both a blessing and a curse. The brain and neurological system are a function of the biology of all higher life forms, with human kind simply going quite a stage futher in relevant development, replete with advantages and vulnerabilities.

JP, people, like other species, are influenced by their genetic
makeup, which has a biological basis.

Now if you look at common "morality" that evolved in various tribes
around the world, killing one of your own tribe was not generally
accepted, but killing other tribes over fights for territory etc,
certainly was. Not much different to the "Christian" morality that
many of our nations have adopted today, as we regularly send troops
to war.

Pol Pot killed his own people, thus is morally condemned by most.

All not much different to chimpanzees, who regularly patrol the
boundaries of their territory in groups and kill other chimps who
invade, but like most species squabble regularly, without killing
each other.

But indeed our morality is quite flexible, which shows its
subjectivity. The age of consent varies dramatically across the
world. In Australia you can be locked up as a paedophile for having
sex with a 15.9 year old, in other parts of the world they think
nothing more of it. Its a subjective line that we draw in the sand.

auther/quote..""speculating about its implications
for our capacity to understand and control everything,
ranging from our cognitive capacities to aging and death.

Yet the more we know, the more we realise how little we know.""

that sums it up for me

to think of life as purely biological is a materialistic danger

everyone dies
get over it

and then that famouse law of creation
ok science...that energy cant be CREAted NOR destroyed

a living sperm accepted a living sperm
[life from life]..another law

your quoting that bacteria..[with manmade dna]
first began its life as a living bacteria

no scientist ever has made a life
let alone 'evolved' it

science cant even name the first 'life'
how useless is that

science now has found particles faster than light
[you who trust man[science]..can get decieved

name the first life
then we will talk

recall yourown words..""There is no simple progression from our ability to tackle simple problems to the expertise needed to tackle complex ones, no golden path to ever expanding powers.""

thus in time we ALL die
and our life energy then lives on forever

[E=not created..nor destroyed]
live with it

the crustation/quote..'"But lets say JP had an accident,
part of his brain was damaged.

JPs behaviour changes dramatically,
through no will of his own.""

mate..yabby..think
i got a computa...[call it mind]

my mind needs to talk to you..THROUGH the web
through the web..through your link..to your computa

'break'..any of them and the brain cant convey
[be it pj's OR YOURS..ok or mine]

the brain is no more than a telephone exchange
[beasts cant recognise the higher thoughts passing through them
but your micrsoft computer can]

beasts are beast vbecause they got no ability to make sense of the higher things..YOU can make sense of..[if you try]

im sadend that the 60 million
aborted americans alone..[aborted since vietnam war]
dont regester with more compassion...

[if you found all your yabbies
floating in ya pond..would you be more upset about 'them'..

and still switch off the mass muder of babies
..in the 'land of the 'free'lunch..?

its not as if you dont know the difference between brain and mind

""question of the mind is,
what the brain does.""

isnt as important..as the mind
that thought to ask the question

""We are walking,talking primates,""

mate primates dont talk

then your last quote..""not fallen angels""

mate...from beast to mankind
our minds evolved ever higher
after man incarnation..next we reach[if we so chose]
to be as angels..[serving gods good will]

from there we can reach the status in the finite heavens

stars..in our own right
true suns of good..realised sons of god