John – You state: “Modern science is leading humanity (albeit very slowly) towards a charter for rational, logical moral and ethical behaviour.”

Modern science can tell us many things about this amazing universe we live in, but one thing at least that science can tell us nothing about is how things ought to be. For example, science can tell us that a certain quantity of cyanide will kill a person, but science cannot tell us whether or not we ought to poison our grannie with cyanide to gain her inheritance. If you think otherwise please give an explanation of how science alone, without trying to sneak in any ethical imperatives, can tell us how we ought to behave.

Good luck, because it cannot be done

Funny coincidence, I have just been reading about William Chillingworth, an English divine who died for the Royalist cause in 1644 who proposed a rationalist system of theology that was designed to be as free from error as possible. What it produced was a system of theology that was so sterile, so stripped down of poetry, narrative and song that it eventually, after running its race, withered on the vine.

Such rationalist schemes lead only to totalitarianism similar to the political correctness that is now just losing its grip on us. Its appeal to universal reason is a smoke screen that hides its deficiency. Human longing and welfare cannot be reduced to the rationality of the empirical scientist which is deficient because it cannot take into account the very things that make us human. Without a transcendent horizon this kind of rationality, when applied to the human, results in a horror, the sort of thing we saw in the French revolution, in the many brands of Communism and Fascism, all rational movements.

This is not to say that I applaud irrationalism, but a different kind of reason. The author should read Macintyre’s “Whose Justice, Which Rationality”.

I also object to the nasty little slurs on anything to do with religion, practitioners are all sexual deviants and their education is always indoctrination. The author would do better to more carefully research his material and form his argument.

Peter Sellick

Just what we need. Someone who does not believe in absolutes dumping his absolutes in the name of science on us. What a load of crap!

John writes 'As a society we need to do all we can to improve the development of ethics in our children and choose honest and the easiest ways to do so. We need to ensure just teachers, and teaching practices with no indoctrination, and just rules and just coaches and referees in sport.'

'teaching with no indoctrination' John's indoctrination of secularism and evolution disqualifies him and many others by his own standards. Don't worry John it is not just you with the corrupt nature but all of us. Man has failed time and time again at trying to make up his own rules.

Culture, in many instances, is rather a crude system to bestow unmerited privileges to ‘elders’, or other such privileged individuals in a society, and an excuse for otherwise unacceptable behaviour.
So ‘morals’ derived from culture is not a distillation of some universal wisdom by any measure!
And yes, the judgement of ethics is an innate quality to all, and so is a universal property that is an inalienable part of mind.

Just teach children the true foundations and concept of Karma, and a better understanding of action and reaction will automatically ensue.
Karma is not some fanciful belief system, but has a well grounded foundation in physics.
Just as the ordinary brain-based, conscious mind arises as function of quantum coherence in micro tubules, karma is a function of a quantum mechanical nature.
As is all of what we see, feel, experience and enact.
Consciousness, thought, experience, matter, the universe; it’s Mind.

Once this is understood, and the consequences of ‘actions = karmic results’ are part of one’s makeup, the guiding principle for one’s actions are of a truly universal, holistic nature.

For ignorance (of this) is the source of all suffering.
Let humanity arise from ignorance.

runner: "Someone who does not believe in absolutes dumping his absolutes in the name of science on us."

Ye gods runner! I was just going to say a similar thing, but not in response to the article. I read a small amount of it, and realised it was the opposing view to the one presented in GP's article "If you can get away with it, just do it" and so went to see what comments had been posted. My thought at the time was the best that could be said for it was that SusanP was doing a goob job of keeping everything balanced. And in the comments I find :

GP: "science can tell us nothing about is how things ought to be."

Yet as you say, runner, John Turner is indeed telling us how things ought to be - but from my side of the fence this time. He has attempted to disguise it in a "we will take over the world argument", but nonetheless that is what he is doing. I don't have much time for the "ought to be" argument nor do I believe "science reasoning will replace religion" in any future I can foresee.

So GP, you are indeed being told how things ought to be. Your "ought" is a bit different to Turner's methinks. Actually you ought is a bit different from most of the world's, given most of the world doesn't believe in your version of Christianity. Turner's "ought" will probably appeal to a greater audience, since its based on this we can all agree on - things we perceive and things we can deduce from that. But I repeat myself.

In any case, he has about as much chance of converting you as you did of converting the rest of us in your article. I appreciate being informed of where you are coming from, but beyond that its all a bit pointless, really. Hence by "the best that could be said for it" comment above. It applied to your article as well, of course.

The distinction between morals and ethics is an important distinction - ethics are the fundamental rules that (or should) govern human and environmental interaction, whilst morals are codes of social behaviour that within the general framework of ethics provide the lubrication as it were between individuals within groups that face different survival needs.
John's point that science, albeit slowly, takes us towards rational ethical behaviour is also well made, although lost on the likes of Sells and Runner - now as always. Constant revelations via the scientific method of the wonders of existential workings is revealing the true structure of the universal environment - a structure marvellous beyond the childish and purile imaginings of the writers of the various revelatory texts, and indeed their followers. It is that scientific (ie rational, testable and capable of being observed) revelation that in turn allows us to develop knowledge and understanding of our own very nature, and to know what of that nature to reject and what to embrace. We are neither all good or all bad.
Such an understanding is, I contend, the fundamental starting point for development of a eternally defensible universal ethic. From such a basis we can then develop a 'moral' basis approriate to individual prevailing circumstances.