Ah; you assumed. Does that mean you're joining me in the state of being ignorant?

I can't say I support it, no. However, it is clearly sensationalist reporting, which I absolutely despise.

Natural selection is inseparable from evolution. I'm just making the point that natural selection does take place between societies but sometimes it's not what our society or certainly I would think of as good or right. I guess it a bit of a red herring.



Just being clear.



Well yes I agree (the dolphins things could go either way, but that's not really the point I'm trying to make right now. I personally wouldn't eat or kill a dolphin.), but notice I'm arguing against a moral premise by showing that by what seems to be to be it's logical conclusion. I don't actually believe any of these things are right, because, like I said before I'm starting from a different premise.



That's 100% utilitarian. If the benefit gained from slaughtering them was greater than the benefit gain from letting them alone you're right back where you started from.



Well, obviously it's bait, or rather response to bait. I was just responding to an equally troll post that was said with the idea that it made some sort of meaningfully point. The existence of God is an epistemological question, not an empirical argument, but like you said, that is not for this thread.



We survived and got the natural resources and they didn't. Hence natural selection. Natural selection by definition is not forward thinking because it's a process and doesn't think.



But you still haven't demonstrated any sort of ethical basis for saying that slaughtering a particular animal or human is wrong.



0.o

Natural Selection and Evolution are different, if you can't grasp this you have no business being involved in this debate.

Evolution is the change of one thing into another, in the common case it is the change of one species into another over time. Before Darwin it was a common belief that evolution occured (it was also supported by the Church) but the belief was that God caused these changes to occur.

Darwin merely discovered a mechanism by which evolution could occur without divine intervention as a result it is called Natural Selection. The understanding and theory of this mechanism has developed over time to give us the current theories.

The resurgence of belief in new earth nonsense is almost certainly a reactionary response to the realisation that the Darwinian and pre-darwinian Evolutionary theories were too close together was causing too many people to jump ship when they realised a god wasn't necessary. The further religion is from science, the less likely someone is to make the leap from one to the other.

I assume you are inferring that using natural selection as a moral guide is bad because it doesn't involve thinking. The problem is neither does using rules purportedly made by a supernatural being. The modern positions advocating evolutionary ethics and Christian ethics are equally mindless.

No, it means I made an assumption based on an educated guess (the geography). Ignorance is refusing to seek out knowledge, and/or accept it when offered.

In the slim chance I have an interested audience, I suggest you take a gander at this Wikipedia article to complete my patchy description of evolutionary ethics.

look dolphins are cool

Hey, they are cool!

You win the argument

That' s what I said- it's an integral part of it. Regardless, it's an issue of semantics that has nothing to do with what I was talking about.



I was just responding to emon's attempt to explain the basis for his moral beliefs. In his defense, it was not yet fully articulated to the point he wanted it to be. Regardless, it's beside the point.


I'm arguing against the people who were saying that it's wrong to kill dolphins because of the fact that they are intelligent creatures. This is a totally arbitrary basis for a moral judgment and is therefore meaningless. You might as well say gay people should be eliminated from society because they gross you out. That's an equally arbitrary statement, and so far no one has been able to demonstrate why the first statement is any any way shape or form better than the second. Utilitarian rationalization doesn't count, as I have already pointed out earlier.

And I don't care what you think of my basis for morality is, that a topic for another thread. Thumping your chests about the superiority of science over religion won't help you make your point here. My beliefs are totally irrelevant.