morality
stoat | March 23, 2009Paul points to Andrew Brown who has some curious list of "New Atheist" points. I shall take up the suggestion of treating it as a quiz, and find that I score:
* There is something called "Faith" which can be defined as unjustified belief held in the teeth of the evidence. Faith is primarily a matter of false propositional belief. No. I have faith in, let us say, the validity of science. Faith doesn't rest on the thing-you-have-faith-in being false. Score 0.
* The cure for faith is science Very badly wrong. If there is a cure, it is more likely history or luxury: anyone who finishes Russells…
edyong | February 27, 2009
Both objects and behaviour can be described as disgusting. The term could equally apply to someone who cheats other people out of money as it could to the sight of rancid food or the taste of sour milk. That's not just a linguistic quirk. Some scientists believe that the revulsion we feel towards immoral behaviour isn't based on our vaunted mental abilities, but on ancient impulses that evolved to put us off toxic or infectious foods.
It seems that your facial muscles agree. Hanah Chapman from the University of Toronto has found that both physical and moral disgust cause the levator labii…
stoat | December 10, 2008Standard wikipedia joke. See how the meme spreads. Anyway:
I was listening to the renta-Odone, followed by the renta-Bishop, on R4 this morning after C4 last night broadcast a programme on assisted suicide. Everyone said all the obvious things all over again so it was a bit dull, but what I was struck by was the Bish's words were all his personal opinion, and social conventions. There was no religious grounding there at all. At no point did he say "well our source text, chapter X, verse Y, specifically states that...", and I presume thats (a) because his source text is (entirely?) silent on…
edyong | November 26, 2008Throughout our language, the vocabulary of physical cleanliness is also used to describe moral cleanliness. We describe saints as pure and thieves as dirty; consciences can be clean and sins can be washed away. But more and more, psychological studies tell us that these concepts are entwined in a very real way. The act of cleaning, or even just thinking about the concept of cleanliness, can influence a person's moral compass, swinging it towards a less judgmental direction.
This isn't the first time that I've blogged about this. Two years ago, Chen-Bo Zhong and Katie Liljenquist found that…
stoat | November 22, 2008Climate change seems to have gone a bit thin recently - James has got bored - and its distinctly chilly here, with snow in the air and a most glorious sundog. So lets talk about morality.
Paul is discussing the argument is that atheism, if true, necessarily means that morality is an arbitrary personal opinion sparked by Dawkins on morality, where we find Dawkins agreeing to Ultimately, your belief that rape is wrong is as arbitrary as the fact that we've evolved five fingers rather than six.
I see no reason to concede this, being an aetheist who believes that rape is wrong and who thinks this…
edyong | July 5, 2008
"Out, damn spot! Out I say!" In Macbeth's fifth act, Lady Macbeth's role in the treacherous murder of Duncan takes its toll, and she begins obsessively washing her hands to alleviate her guilty conscience. Now, some four centuries after Shakespeare penned his play, scientists have found that physical and moral cleanliness are just as inextricably linked as he suggested.
The link between bodily cleanliness and moral purity is evident throughout the world's cultures. Cleansing ceremonies are common in religions. Christians and Sikhs literally wash away their sins through baptism, while the…