[gurps] Cool Nerve cell growth info

[Zan Lynx]

Hmm.  All legislation, all ethics, all morality comes down to religion
in the end.  Religion, as in, a belief in something unfounded in
evidence.

Don't take the following as pushing any point other than that religion
is a necessary, indivisible part of culture and its laws.

Even morality based in personal satisfaction has this fault, because it
comes down to, why should anyone *else* care if it makes me feel good?
And why do I feel good about it?  Biology.  Survival behaviors.  Why is
personal or species survival a "good" thing?  Well, it just is, no
special reason.  See?  Scientific evolution only moves the question all
the way back to "Why is the universe structured such, with physical laws
that promote this behavior?"

Take democracy, or at least the right to vote in a republic, as an
example.  Equal rights for all men?  Why?  Religion.  "Created Equal."
Objectively, men are not equal and there is no scientific reason to
treat them as equal.

Laws against murder.  Why?  Well, maybe I think murder is "wrong."  But
whatever chain of logic gives me that idea is going to come down to
"just because", and no other reason eventually.  "Just because." is
religion.  It is identical to "That's just how the world is." and "God
wills it so."

Perhaps murder is wrong because it leads to revenge killing and cycles
of vengeance are messy and disrupt my life (I may say "society", but if
this is about objective logic and not religion, we'd have to first
determine why the good of society matters, beyond personal convenience).
Extending this case, any action that would be excessively disruptive
should be illegal, which makes abortion illegal, since many people care
a lot about it, and it gets them excited enough to be disruptive.

Since you brought it up, is a small bit of proto-baby worth more than
your aunt?  Both yes and no.  It's current value is less.  It's future
value is more.  In 20 years your aunt will be dead, or at least a net
drain on the economy if she isn't already, in 20 years that proto-baby
would be in the prime of life.

>From that "value" view point, without any "religion", we should be
killing off anyone over about 60 and having more babies.  A "maximum
value" society would likely outlaw abortions, promote babies, limit
individual property ownership to the minimums to promote best worker
performance, and kill off the old and sick.

>From a survival of the fittest, power, "might makes right" point of
view, one of the most powerful nations on Earth is the U.S., which is
controlled by Christians, which makes them right. :)

Those are just a couple examples of how alternative, "religion-less"
moralities could arrive at the same point.

Like it or not, Western civilization and its laws are defined by
Judeo-Christian religion.  Even for Western atheists, their early
childhood acculturation, their base value sets, are set by it.  Some may
escape it by reconstructing their entire value set, which has been done
by some philosophers such as Nietzsche and A. Crowley.  But most don't
have the time, and so the things taught by parents and school are the
default values.  Probably most of my school teachers were Christian and
so I learned sharing, kindness, and consideration of others, instead of
The Will To Power.  Kindergarten would really be a different
experience. :)

Chinese culture is heavily affected by their religion.  It's the same
with India.  Every culture and its religions are an interdependent
thing.  We just can't have India without Hinduism.  We can't have the
U.S. without Christianity.  They'd be entirely different places.

On Tue, 2006-07-25 at 14:30 -0400, Michael R. Stork wrote:
> Chris J. Whitcomb wrote:
> > Yes, I'm so narrow-minded that I play a game where imagination is 
> > vital and the ability to characterize someone or something different 
> > from myself is considered a pre-requisite. 
> 
> When you emphatically state that something is unethical because it 
> doesn't fit in with your particular world-view, then  I'd call that 
> narrow-minded. I thoroughly disagree with constructing legislature based 
> on purely religious grounds, that way lies a theocracy. My mother is in 
> late stage MS, that will prove fatal and probably in the near future, 
> and research in the area of nerve reconstruction could very well save 
> her life. So when I hear someone saying that saving her life isn't 
> "worth the cost" I get a bit miffed. You're welcome to your views and 
> your religious beliefs, but when you shout them out in a public forum, 
> then you have to expect them to be challenged.
> 
> 
-- 
Zan Lynx <zlynx at acm.org>