Russell, I see you've fowarded the message I sent you, not to God but to the list :) I think that most people are simply not interested in this stuff. I don't feel altogether comfortable discussing this on list, because people can/will rightly think that I'm wasting bandwith for way off topic subjects. >Recall that this is a universe without ANY creating God that is postulated - >the Christian God is not the only one that is excluded. Yes. I named the Christian God because is the one you most probably have in mind as a basis for your absolute morals. But my postion is consistently atheistic. (Or perhaps agnostic, in wich case you might win the argument...) >Can you summarise your non God-dependent basis for absolute morality? > Yes, but perhaps you should first produce your proof for this : >[Arcane hidden aim (TM): To show that everything is pointless and >valueless in such a universe. ] Anyway, I think that the problem was better set up at the begining of the thread. The key question is, IMO, this : There's a continuum from inorganic matter to thinking beings, right ? At some point, 'souls' enter into the picture. By 'soul' I refer to the fact that you (and I) are self-aware beings, possess identity, love and hate things/other people, etc, etc. I could name that 'the mind' as well. Three positions : a) I obviously don't know *why* the mind exist. What's more, I consider the existence of the mind as a basic phenomenon wich can't be explained. Agnosticism ? b) Your explanation is that souls (or the mind) are god-given (or designed into the universe, wich is the same thing). Religious position. Created Universe. c) Yet other people think that all phenomena can be explained from the point of view of inorganic matter. Physics and Chemistry will explain the 'meaning' of consciusness. Atheism. Godless Universe. Now, you seem to think that there's a link between the way the mind and morals are explained. You seem to think that if one chooses a position to explain the existence of souls, one must hold that position all the way and use it to explain morals as well. Why you think that, it's not clear to me. How do you manage to prove it is so, is not clear either. Why are living things alive ? I don't know. In your created universe, that's part of the plan. Do living things try to stay alive ? Certainly. Why ? I don't know. It's built in. But since living things try to stay alive, what's the most clever way to do so ? My answer is : Morals. For animals, morals mean biological competition, or the law of the jungle. For humans it means economic cooperation. So the my morals are roughly those of your point #4. >People may choose to adopt certain standards in order to >accomplish common good that suits them. eg they may form societies that have >laws that protect property, human life and individual 'freedoms Societies (and its matching morals) come in two flavours: 1) FORCED division of labour, or collectivism, or militarism. E. g. nazis, communists, imperialism, inquisition, etc. Individuals are sacrificed for the 'common good'(as understood by dictactors) 2) VOLUNTARY division of labour, or individualism, or laissez-faire, or roughly your point #4. Individuals work for themselves (private property and inalienable rights). Now, I claim that individualism is the only morals that work *in the long run*. Choosing collectivism leads to death. So individualism is the only morals that are not self-denying. Take makes them absolute. We can start a whole new argument on the meaning of 'absolute' :) Regards, Juan. _______________________________________________ http://www.piclist.com View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist