DavidF

I would like to commend you on your clear, concise and rational posts. Anyone who cannot understand what you are saying, are simply doing so wilfully.

The evidence for evolution is irrefutable and provides the foundation for our current medical, agronomic and construction engineering today. I always find it ironic that the very technology that the creationists use to proselytise, is the result of scientific inquiry and refinement. Seems they have no difficulty using the benefits of science, but have a major impediment when science fact conflicts with their treasured beliefs.

Your patience is a credit to you.

Thank you

Sells,

"Congratulations on an excellent article. Your exposure of the use of the theory of evolution for ideological purposes is trenchant." - Sells of Michael Ruse.

Pleased you did comment psitively on Michael Ruse, he is good writer. One small thing though: He is not a believer. He is in my camp not yours'.

Like me he is a critic of Dawkins, when steps out of the field of Genetics. But when, say, paleo-anthropolist, Richard Leakey, the Pre-Cambrian Extinction, he is knowledgeable.

Michael,

If you are still following OLO here; your ISIS article was excellent, methinks! Suspect Sells [Peter Sellick] thought you one of his own.

If you haven't read already read it already, Richard Leakey's, "Sixth Extinction" is very interesting. It would not be hard to guess the main meal topic at Louis', Mary's and Richard's house [tent?], when little Richard was growing-up? :-)

I have always felt Mary should been given more kudos for key discoveries

When Australia finally becomes a Republic we must make sure that we do not fall into the same trap as the United States and make reference to a high spiritual being that is abstract and based on superstition. To rid ourselves of a Monarchy will be a triumph but the satisafaction will be an anti climax if we include any such mention of religioun. All religioun is from the dark ages when everybody was gullible. Today with the right sensible logical education we can teach our children that it is a waste of tome and space to even consider praying. If somebody want to believe in spirits that is their problem but please do not damage our young with all that codswallop.

csteele, That’s a terrifying question you ask: “What if you had control of the God button and had to make a decision of removing humanity or the rest of the life on earth which would it be? You know my answer.”

Pardon my obtuseness, but I think your answer is “remove the humans”? My answer is different, but I’m certainly torn – mainly because I see it as the humans who might one day make the question real and not hypothetical. I’m rather angry with the humans, so loving them as instructed is a challenge.

You say, “Surely humanism is just a reflection empathy.” No, I don’t think humanism is an emotional state at all, but a principle. For myself, there are many people with whom I do not empathise, so my obligation to be just cannot be based on empathy: it’s way too fickle. If justice was based on empathy, then the moral rule would be “One SHOULD empathise equally with everyone” – every human at least – which would sound silly.

You seem to be trying to graft moral ideas onto a fabric made of emotion, and I don’t see that working.

Pax,

Hello bushbasher. Thanks for easing me off the misrepresentation hook: amazing the things we accuse each other of. You say, “evolution says nothing of ethics or values. even if altruism is an evolutionary construct, the science of evolution does not say that altruism is "good", just that it is adaptive. morality is simply not something evolutionary theory can, or attempts to, deal with.”

Perhaps we agree. I believe evolution just gives us facts – or, an explanation of facts. It doesn’t give us value, and shouldn’t try to. Trouble is, many people try to glean a morality out of it: some are in this discussion (eg rstuart). When I tried to recommend humanism a while back, it was the strict and consistent evolutionists who baulked.

If we don’t get value or morality from God, or from the facts of evolution, then from where? Same question for david f.

david f, thanks for replying. You don’t accept the supernatural because it involves a leap of faith. I agree with under-one-god who says that “All that we believe is based on faith”. You have decided to believe only what your senses reveal to you. So be it. I have not made a decision to limit myself in this way. I see this as the main difference between us: you do not or cannot regard non-empirical pathways to knowledge or belief as reliable. You avoid them as a matter of prudence, which you might describe as intellectual honesty. I understand this, and am even very sympathetic to it, but it’s a voluntary self-limitation and it happens that I don’t subscribe to it.

This doesn’t mean there is a God, of course: one must really apprehend God for oneself, and I’m not attempting to push you towards that. I'm just saying that we all make leaps of faith - I towards God, and you to your view about what can and can't be real. And I'm not suggesting that your position is eccentric: you are in large company.

Pax,

Goodthief,

“csteele, That’s a terrifying question you ask”

What a terrifying answer you give. You would really sacrifice all the teeming millions of species with all that splendour, diversity, uniqueness etc for the human species? Can you see why some might regard it as pretty damn species-centric? Possibly understandable in a gnat or a dolphin or even a chimp, but in an enlightened person such as yourself?

‘And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.’ Gen:6-6

It does however fit in with what I regard as two of the great conceits of the human race, thinking that God made us in his image and secondly that, along with millions of species, he created billions of stars and galaxies just for us.

Justice has to be based on empathy.

Justice and equality are just words without empathy, a lack of which allowed the USA to become the great slave owning nation of the 19th century despite the bold words at Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.“

It took Wilberforce and the Shakers in England to tell the horrors of the slave ships and the brutality of servitude, and in so doing were able to go harvesting empathy, ultimately causing the end of slavery.

Without empathy we don’t have compassion or sympathy, those incapable of these emotions are called psychopaths. I don’t think you are one so I don’t agree when you say “there are many people with whom I do not empathise”. To take an extreme example, if you were to witness your worst enemy being burnt alive like most people you would intervene. One SHOULD be capable of empathising with all humans to some degree.

So I’ll stand by the notion that true morality is derived from true empathy. So if someone has a more encompassing empathy than yourself does that make them a more moral person?