We need more Governors like Arizona Governor Jan Brewer!

[Plane]

>>Do the tamest and most domesticated of us become our leadership?<<

That's what you got from my post? It's not worth replying to.

bsb

Don't just skim it because it is short.

Isn't it true that the dishonest and ferocious human being can acheive reproductive success?

[kimba1]

Isn't it true that the dishonest and ferocious human being can acheive reproductive success?

I don`t think bobby brown is very ferocious.

[bsb]

>>Isn't true that the most dishonest and ferocious human being can achieve reproductive success?<<

You're not thinking. Go back to the beginning.

bsb

[bsb]

Groups can act in what we might called an immoral fashion, that doesn't mean they haven't learned to work together. It doesn't mean either that the leadership of the group isn't acting in a compassionate way towards the members of his group.

I was once coming in from 3 months in the bush. That's 3 months of humping up in the mountains with only a couple of hot showers, and a few hot meals. We had humped it back in to a point where we could be picked up by trucks, no need for choppers. I was the first one to the trucks. As I walked by the leed truck the driver said to me, "what's the matter you can't hump it the rest of the way"? My first instinct was to kill him. Not a , gee I'd like to kill that SOB, but the real deal. Kill him. As I walked past his truck towards the last truck in line I thought he better not say that to anyone else because they WILL kill him.  As a went a few more feet I heard a commotion behind me. I turned around and a good friend of mine was up on the running board of that first truck with the barrel of his weapon against the head of the driver and his finger on the trigger. I turned around, went back, and talked my friend down off the running board.

I was the leader of the first group to the trucks. It was my job to understand my men and anticipate problems. It was my job to be compassionate towards my men. That included caring for them to the point to where they didn't do something that could get them in trouble, like killing another American, no matter how much I wanted to kill the driver myself.

This is how leadership works. One foot on the pedal, the other near the brake. Aggression mixed with compassion.

Some slob can reproduce, sure. A Tiger that has a genetic predisposition to go blind later in life can reproduce also, but his line won't last long. Neither will the line of a slob, who beats his wife, and ignores his children.

Why would I care about trying to figure what a god that I don't believe in thinks is right when life itself offers so many lessons?

bsb

[Plane]

Does God beleive in you?

I don't know if Ahab believed in Herman Melville , wouldn't matter Herman would have put the Captain through his paces with or without Ahab approval.

Your belief, or lack there of doesn't change Gods role as main author in your story.

I think the tale of rage and exaustion overcoming normal judgement is working against your thesis that the inborn knoledge of good and evil is sufficient by itself. Some of us have more patience than others but there should not be a sliding scale of what is right and wrong.

I am aware that there is an instinct even in the very young twards knoledge of what is right and wrong , but it is not in itself strong or reliable , training , educateing and practice , observeing the example of our elders and higher ranks develops the basic instinct into a moral sense appropriate to an adult (or fails to , often enough).

Do you think we don't need a standardised set of mores , rules and guidences?

Who is going to set the standards , or has any right to?

[bsb]

>>Your belief, or lack there of doesn't change Gods role as main author in your story.<<

Your belief in a god doesn't alter the fact that there isn't one. Your belief in a god and your search for his opinion of what is good and what is evil doesn't alter the fact that you're only searching your own and other humans minds. Any point of view deemed to have derived from a god is only the projected point of view of a human. So if you're finding the ultimate source for divining what's good and what isn't you're only proving my point, that humans have the capability within them as a matter of beneficial evolution.

As for the story of "rage and exhaustion" proving a point other then mine? Not so. "Good" prevailed. I didn't kill the driver and neither did the soldier behind me. And the soldier behind me by pushing it a lot further then I did actually saved that drivers life. He, the driver, stopped making stupid comments after my friend stepped down off the running board.

bsb

[sirs]

>>Your belief, or lack there of doesn't change Gods role as main author in your story.<<

Your belief in a god doesn't alter the fact that there isn't one.

And your opinion that its a "fact" is duly noted

[Plane]

>>Your belief, or lack there of doesn't change Gods role as main author in your story.<<

Your belief in a god doesn't alter the fact that there isn't one. Your belief in a god and your search for his opinion of what is good and what is evil doesn't alter the fact that you're only searching your own and other humans minds. .......................bsb

   So nothing is objective about good? If it is all subjective , does evereything potentially become evil because someone won't like it?

       I can't Make God anymore than you can unmake him,when we are talking about him I understand that to you we are talking about a concept and you can understand that I am speaking of the ultimate person.

      Does a conceptual God reflect the wishes of Human beings? A God that predates us all doesn't have to , but as we are his creation we are a part of his will so from our perspective this might seem alike. God is as we see him because he made us to need him as he is.

[bsb]

>>So nothing is objective about good? ... it is all subjective...?

I didn't post anything remotely like that. In fact I posted just the opposite.

Look, the difference between you and me, in this case anyway, is that I recognize that in terms of understanding who and what we are all we have is this planet, and the tiny bit of the universe we can grasp, to go by.  You, on the other hand, recognize a super natural realm that holds the keys to our reality. The problem with your approach, from where I stand, is that you can make anything up you want. God said this, or god wants that, or god did this, etc. None of it is verifiable though. My truth is the present moment. My truth is what I and other fellow humans can and have observed while living in the present. I learn from my experiences, and the shared experiences of others. How can I learn from a super natural being whose very existence is unverifiable? Further, I've found my way to be extremely rewarding. 

bsb

[Plane]

    There is a need to decide difficult moral questions, and ignoring God seems like a mistake to me. I am not old enough to have already experienced for myself every moral delimma that I might yet experience. If God has published a guide what is the benefit of ignoring it?

     I can't make up anything about God , he is or he isn't , I can be wrong or I can discover him.

[bsb]

The most often used meditation, among 100s in the Dzochen tradition, to attain the wisdom, tranquility, and equanimity, naturally found in the luminescence of rigpa is "guru yoga". When you search for the mind of god, you are doing guru yoga whether you know it or not. The difference is that the Buddhists know that the mind of the Buddha isn't out there somewhere it is inside your own mind. Your mind is the mind of the Buddha. Christians, Jews, and Muslims have never come to that realization. The instructions in the bible come from your mind, my mind, and every other humans mind. The real author of the bible isn't out there somewhere, it is inside us, in fact it is us.

I'm not sure which question to ask myself. How did the Buddha come to that realization so naturally, or why is it the monotheistic religions didn't/haven't?

bsb

[Plane]

It is the resemblance of reciprocals , when a scheme was worked out for the earth centered universe it kinda worked , it was successfully used for predicting planetary positions and eclipses even though it was nearly exactly the opposite of the truth.

Although it seems quaint to us now , the earth centered universe model was worked on for centuries and became very sophisticated.

Does it seem silly to imagine that the center of all things was us? That is always how it looks to us.

[bsb]

>>Does it seem silly to imagine that the center of all things was us? That is always how it looks to us.<<

Extremely silly. Earth as the center of the universe is the kind of thinking that brought about man's creation of god. Man thought he was so important that he must have a god that looks out for him more then any other species. After all, god is most of all interested in man. Gee, what a coincidence. God even created man in his own image (translation: man created god his own image). It is man's creation of god that places man at the center of all things. When you realize there is no god everything changes. The truth is man is no more important then a squirrel or an ant. We, the most highly evolved great ape, have only been here for a flash compared to how long the earth has been around, and of course not even remotely close to a flash compared to the age of the universe. Most likely in a hundred thousand years, 500 thousand years, a million years, whatever, man will just be another fossil among all the other fossils. He will have never had an afterlife anymore then a bug you step on on your way to lunch. 


bsb

[Plane]

And yet all the answers are internal to the person?
How is an internal search for answers more enlightened than an external search for answers?

How is it supposed to be that in all the universe I am the evaluator?
How am I qualified to declare all the universe an idiot?
Why can't there be a designer of the universe which is the universe itself and of which I am a part?

[Plane]

>>But where do we come away with an instinctive knowledge of good and evil in the first place?<<

Think about where we'd be without it and you'll have the answer. We aren't Tigers. We don't have the predatory physical capacities they have. We can't run a deer down, kill it with our jaws, and eat it. We had to learn to cooperate with one another. We had to develop team work. A team isn't going to hold together for very long if its members are more interested in steeling, or seeking total revenge, from one another. Because of this a bias for compassion, understanding the other, was developed. Those that understood the members of a group, tribe, better became leaders. Their genes were passed on. The women who understood the group best were able to protect their children better then the women who didn't and their genes were passed on.

I highly doubt a god had anything to do with it.

bsb

A knoledge of good and evil doesn't really garuntee reproductive success nor even group success, a group that cheats another group is doing wrong isn't it?
 A tribe that steals all the Sabine women is doing wrong isn't it?
Even within the tribe doing wrong is not what evolution would discourage , only getting caught at it and bearing the wrath of the group would be discouraged in evolutionary terms.

I can see a sensitivity to good and evil is present in most of us , I don't see evolution as a complete explanation for its being there.