>>You're the man in the shack, aren't you.<<

The one that talked to his table for a week to see how it would react?

Sounds about right for Yuyutsu.

Cheers,

Tony

Dear Pelican,

<<What was once thought to be obtained only through religion eg. manners, treating others with respect, loving each other as fellow humans etc can be done through education ostensibly from parents and then reinforced through modelling behaviours at school.>>

Religion starts at home, not in church. When parents teach their children manners, respect and loving each other, they are teaching them the foundations of religion.

<<It sounds like social engineering>>

If the intention behind education is social, then it IS social engineering, if the aim is to produce good behaviour, then it's a secular manipulation, but if the aim is to teach children goodness itself, rather than to imitate good behaviour, then it is religious education at its best.

<<A hard task nowadays with manners falling behind other factors particularly in the media where titillation and scandal are the norm and consumers are also to blame for buying it and thus reinforcing the market value.>>

Indeed. If you expose your children to the media, then you do them a disservice by bringing them into this world. Society is hungry for economic growth, so it pulls the other way, but your children should not become its victim. As a parent, your loving duty is to shield your children from society's influence. If you cannot, then better not have them.

Yuyutsu,

What the children are being taught are the foundations of good (and useful) social interaction, reciprocation, cooperation etc....values that assist social cohesion and the health and survival of social groups.

Dear Poirot,

<<What the children are being taught are the foundations of good (and useful) social interaction, reciprocation, cooperation etc....values that assist social cohesion and the health and survival of social groups.>>

They hopefully learn all that and if society benefits as a result, then so be it, but it should be incidental.

Society is only a tool, not a goal unto itself. Society (usually) aids physical survival and physical survival (usually) aids religion. This is the correct order.

Richard Dawkins in his attempt to prove there is no God used a proposition that because there is positive energy found in matter in the universe there is also equal negative energy (eg black holes) and one cancells the other out leaving a total of zero energy. Obviously he is not in a position to have a sense of purpose to his life beyond his obsession with pure science. Next he will be telling us reality is a mental delusion that it does not exist in a solid state. That the complexity of our universe all came from one proton. That the complex design of the Universe is inherit within the one proton. Where did the proton come from with such comprehensive design energy?

I think we've seen your theory before on this thread, Josephus.

>>Next Dawkins] will be telling us reality is a mental delusion that it does not exist in a solid state.<<

Ah yes. Here's Yuyutsu to help us out again.

>>Do I exist in a corporeal form? I do not exist in any form, corporeal or otherwise. I know myself beyond existence<<

Hmmm. Yuyutsu and Dawkins, philosophical bedfellows?

Hold the front page...