Grim wrote:The necessity of proof does not mean that there is proof of necessity.

Animal behaviour and human law is an oxymoron as humans are animals.

Morally god is/and has been "evolved" to suit contemporary aims, sort of like the business suit professionals today wear to the office, more a point of identification, a frame to hold society and culture within certain aesthetic boundaries. What is missed is the inability of a person to give a proper description of their identity. The christian can no more give an accurate account of their god, or faith than I can the back of my head when I look face forward into a mirror.

Grim wrote:In it's origin christian gods reflected people worship, the lord was the Lord of the nearby castle.

Grim wrote:The hypothesized future point-of-agreement between religion and science fails to recognize that the Universal is never full; it is a priori empty. The Hegelian "appearance qua appearance" in the momentary is also the Kantian problem of the sublime. This acceptance of a post-virtual explanation that is promised as beyond normal scientific litigation, in much the same way politics is legitimized. The Hegelian "absolute Otherness" where knowledge and understanding become the physically liberating tool rather than scientific methods and discoveries is a system of metaphoric elevation, a stand-in for the Universal that Hegel sees as the only way for an Universal to come into existence: that is by positing its self as one. Here we note Hegel's fundamental break with Kantian idealism.

Interbane wrote:So then our own behavior contradicts human laws, since it must be modified. We would act precisely as animals act without laws?

No, and that is my point.

Interbane wrote:

No, and that is my point.

Then... why do we have laws? You're saying we'd be less than civilized, but not exactly animal...

interbane wrote:Don't you realize animals exhibit moral behavior?

Grim wrote:"The inner world, or the supersensible beyond, has, however, arisen: it comes to us out of the sphere of appearance, and the latter is its mediating agency: in other words, appearance is its essential nature and, in point of fact, its filling. The supersensible is the established truth of the sensible and perceptual. The truth of the sensible and the perceptual lies, however, in being appearance. The supersensible is then appearance qua appearance. We distort the proper meaning of this, if we take it to mean that the supersensible is therefore the sensible world, or the world as it is for immediate sense-certainty, and perception. For, on the contrary, appearance is just not the world of sense-knowledge and perception as positively being, but this world as superseded or established in truth as an inner world. It is often said that the supersensible is not appearance; but by appearance is thereby meant not appearance, but rather the sensible world taken as itself real actuality." - Force and the Understanding – The World of Appearance and the Supersensible World; selected quotes from Hegel; marxist.org

If morality is genetic, then our evolution should result in morality being wired into us rendering the need for laws unnecessary.

Animals do not have a moral standard of behavior, and thus they cannot behave morally.

As for the links you posted; PT Barnum said it best, "there's a sucker born every minute." To which I add and they administer grants for silly research projects.

stahrwe wrote:But here you seem to imply that science creates the necessary being so which is it?
Does science eliminate the necessay being or create Him?

Interbane wrote:

If morality is genetic, then our evolution should result in morality being wired into us rendering the need for laws unnecessary.

That's non-sequitur. If absolute morality was genetic, then you'd have a point. There are anomalies, but as I've said they are the exception that proves the rule.

It's amazing to me that you're so captivated by your delusion that you cannot analyze yourself introspectively. Let's say, hypothetically, you suddenly stop believing in god and the bible. Then, alone and naked without the leash of dogma to guide you, you're suddenly burdened with the need to plot your own course through life. What happens if you suddenly have an urge to kill someone? Let's say it's someone who has beaten up a family member of yours. Would you have no inhibitions against such an action? I know you'll answer with warped apologetics, but am hoping you'll ponder this metacognitively and live out that scenario. If you find that you indeed would have no inhibitions against killing that person, then you are one of the anomalies. You are a sociopath and need to run as fast as you can back to your bible and start reading.

Interbane wrote:What I'd hope you'd find is that it isn't dogma that elicits the inhibition to kill. I'd hope you'd find genuine compassion and empathy towards your fellow man. I assure you most if not all atheists here on Booktalk have such compassion and empathy. There is no need for an external source such as the bible to prevent you from killing.

interbane wrote:

Animals do not have a moral standard of behavior, and thus they cannot behave morally.

Non-sequitur again. They also do not have a standard of eating, but I think they manage to eat quite well. Behaviors don't require standards. Perhaps for fundies, but then that is delusional. What you're referring to is an ad-hoc examination and classification of behavior. Consider the chimpanzee who drowned trying to save a fellow chimpanzee. It does not know that it's action was morally good and utterly unselfish. It doesn't need such knowledge to act morally, since the basic mechanisms for morale behaviors come from within us.

interbane wrote:

As for the links you posted; PT Barnum said it best, "there's a sucker born every minute." To which I add and they administer grants for silly research projects.

Of course, you're an expert on the topic so you have the right to dismiss the silly non-experts such as Frans de Waal outright.

We've discussed his book, here's the link.

The little debate shows the difficulty of trying to use logic and reasoning to defend themselves. At some point, you reach rock bottom, and there is no defense except loudly shouting, “I know I’m right!” Once again, we are up against the issue which Lewis Carroll so sharply set forth in his Dialogue: you can’t go on defending your patterns of reasoning forever. There comes a point where faith takes over.

A system of reasoning is like an egg. An egg has a shell which protects its insides. If you want to ship an egg somewhere, though, you don’t rely on the shell. You pack the egg in some sort of container, chosen according to how rough you expect the egg’s journey to be. To be extra careful, you may put the egg inside several nested boxes. However, no matter how many layers of boxes you pack your egg in, you can imagine some cataclysm which could break the egg. But that doesn’t mean that you will never risk transporting your egg. Similarly, one can never give an ultimate, absolute proof that a proof in some system is correct. Of course, one can give a proof of a proof, or a proof of a proof of a proof – but the validity of the outermost system always remains an unproven assumption, accepted on faith. One can always imagine that some unexpected subtlety will invalidate every single level of proof down to the bottom, and that the “proven” result will be seen not to be correct after all.

Pages 192-193
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid; Douglas R. Hofstadter, Vintage Books, May 1989