DoubtingThomas wrote:When I read a popular comment (with many likes) I decided to investigate it myself, and it is true
“Someone could have approached a faculty member, a guidance counselor, a teacher and said, ‘This kid gets bullied a lot, someone should do something,’ ” said student Manolo Alvarez, 17, who had history class with Cruz. “I regret definitely not saying anything.”
Robert 2 hr ago It is likely that this young man and his brother both suffered from brain damage because of their mothers alcohol and drug use when they were in utero. They likely have FAS (fetal alcohol syndrome) or a variation of it. Kids with this disorder often are not able to regulation their emotions and often act like kids with autism. They have sensory problems, never feel comfortable in their own skin, can be very reactive and can be explosive. They often have other developmental delays and lower IQs.They are also often bullied by peers and suffer physical abuse by bio-parents. I work with these kids, if they get help when they are young, most are able to learn to regulate themselves and act in a socially acceptable manner. It is criminal that Florida social services from the adoption services the parents used, to child protection, to the schools, to local law enforcement, did not attempt to help this young man when he was a child. Instead they create a ticking time bomb... and he is not the only one. Add guns into this mix and you get what we got.
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Are you saying that you agree that he has FAS?
Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.
Chinese Proverb
honorentheos wrote:I listened to the debate. Alex is a good example of "a young newly-minted atheist"
Thanks for saying my example is good.
What about the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy? It says there are "several contemporary philosophers who defend forms of it". If objective morality is real (I highly doubt it), it still has to be proved it is real. Do you have any evidence showing objective morality is real?
Your argument certainly approaches being that evidence...you are insisting upon an absolute and objective morality. If you otherwise accept the "possibility" of an objective morality then your argument is lost.
DoubtingThomas wrote:If objective morality is real, then aliens wouldn't hurt us.
unless they are evil aliens.
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires...seek discipline and find your liberty I can tell if a person is judgmental just by looking at them what is chaos to the fly is normal to the spider - morticia addams If you're not upsetting idiots, you might be an idiot. - Ted Nugent
Highly unlikely. Aggressive aliens would destroy themselves before figuring out how to travel light-years in space. Intelligent aliens wouldn't be barbaric.
subgenius wrote:Your argument certainly approaches being that evidence...you are insisting upon an absolute and objective morality. If you otherwise accept the "possibility" of an objective morality then your argument is lost.
Highly unlikely. Aggressive aliens would destroy themselves before figuring out how to travel light-years in space. Intelligent aliens wouldn't be barbaric.
Why is it unlikely aliens might be evil?
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
honorentheos wrote:Why is it unlikely aliens might be evil?
Because "evil" aliens would be fighting and destroying each other first.
I am skeptical. Although we can only represent the subject of an N of 1 trial, and our species does have an unenviable track record of first contact between civilizations, the data trends for the past half millennium are encouraging: colonialism is dead, slavery is dying, the percentage of populations that perish in wars has decreased, crime and violence are down, civil liberties are up, and, as we are witnessing in Egypt and other Arab countries, the desire for representative democracies is spreading, along with education, science and technology. These trends have made our civilization more inclusive and less exploitative. If we extrapolate that 500-year trend out for 5,000 or 500,000 years, we get a sense of what an ETI might be like. In fact, any civilization capable of extensive space travel will have moved far beyond exploitative colonialism and unsustainable energy sources. Enslaving the natives and harvesting their resources may be profitable in the short term for terrestrial civilizations, but such a strategy would be unsustainable for the tens of thousands of years needed for interstellar space travel. In this sense, thinking about extraterrestrial civilizations forces us to consider the nature and progress of our terrestrial civilization and offers hope that, when we do make contact, it will mean that at least one other intelligence managed to reach the level where harnessing new technologies displaces controlling fellow beings and where exploring space Trump's conquering land. Ad astra!
Highly unlikely. Aggressive aliens would destroy themselves before figuring out how to travel light-years in space. Intelligent aliens wouldn't be barbaric.
subgenius wrote:Your argument certainly approaches being that evidence...you are insisting upon an absolute and objective morality. If you otherwise accept the "possibility" of an objective morality then your argument is lost.
Why?
We figured out how to cooperate well enough to traverse the planet, but that hasn't made life easier on the many species we wiped out in the process. It's not a given that a cooperative species would have regard for us.
EAllusion wrote:We figured out how to cooperate well enough to traverse the planet, but that hasn't made life easier on the many species we wiped out in the process. It's not a given that a cooperative species would have regard for us.
You are right, we can't really know what alien visitors would do. However, I think alien visitors would more likely be "good". If we humans discover life on Mars the scientists are unlikely to kill it just for fun.