The Atheism of Dolphins

LanthonyS · March 23, 2009 at 11:34 AM

Here I am again 😀

Very short this time! for readability.

1: I agree. Look up Edward Wilson. He wrote a paper entitled “The Biological Basis of Morality”, which attempts (very thoroughly) to describe how we can interpret many elements of our past, and other natural phenomena, as the origins of our current religious/moralistic/societal tendencies. But, as you implied–THERE’S MORE THAN ONE POSSIBLE REASON!! and furthermore, more than one of them is often right; e.g. I go to the store because I want a chocolate bar, that’s a very simple conclusion. In reality, however, I am also thinking, “I really need exercise,” or “Have I been out at ALL today?” or “I could drop in at Steve’s on the way back.”

2: Also read C.S. Lewis, my favourite Christian philosopher! He wrote a paper whose name I can’t recall at the moment (if I do, I’ll report it to you), detailing

a) that we can hardly say what ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are … it’s like a piano, whose keys are all ‘right’ at some time and ‘wrong’ at others–it depends on the context, the goal, the piece. As we know, there’s nothing that’s ever “wholly and impenetrably” wrong (except perhaps blaspheming the Holy Spirit… :)).

–and b, that we don’t like to put ourselves in the wrong: instead, we all seem to act by a ‘standard of morality’, and when you say, ‘You broke the rules!’ you can reply ‘No, see, I was ____,’ or ‘It was only because HE _____ed!’ Say ‘You murdered him’, but ‘It was only in self-defense’; we exclude ourselves from the rules, or create Special Exceptions.

What I’m getting at is that I think that requires either a very complex mind, or one devoted to an ideal. Even if a chimpanzee or dog could hold a ‘set of what’s right and wrong for each circumstance’ table in its mind and expect each other member of its species to adhere to it, there’s also not much organization for recompense. I mean, if a fox challenges a bear, “You took my den!” then the bear would simply maul it to death. [There are of course exceptions; for example, animals that live in herds expel ones that aren’t playing fair, or that don’t recognize the pack.]

As for religion itself, when I was young I thought reading to my cat from the Bible would cease its mewling. It didn’t. I concluded that cats don’t understand English. Then I concluded that this paragraph was a lot of non sequiturs.

So I’ll echo the words of the wise Anon above me: “Yeah, who know?”

anon 2 · March 24, 2009 at 8:07 AM

who know? yes, we can’t.

LanthonyS · March 25, 2009 at 6:29 AM

Oh, I wouldn’t say that “the goal of wanting an innocent person to die for your own pleasure is wrong in all cases”. Or rather, I would, but I wouldn’t say you can tack on a “for”. That gives it a purpose … for example, “hitting Bb” … “for the fact that the score has it written down as the next note” is good, but “hitting Bb” … “for my own personal pleasure” is absolutely wrong for a concert pianist on stage. It’s “hitting Bb” that is ambiguous, and, I think, “having an innocent person die”–in fact, it’s so frequent a theme in fiction that it must have been justified millions of times.

And a different thing, to your second paragraph; I can’t remember who said it (though I read it in Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder), if it was the author or someone she quoted;

“If our minds were simple enough that one could understand them, we would be too simple-minded to understand them.” (Similarly, “If we were intelligent enough to understand our own brains, our brains would be too complex to understand.”)

I really like that quote.

Lastly, C.S. Lewis mentions in the same paper that “Anybody seeing us from the outside would be able to see everything we’re doing, but would be no closer to understanding why” (unless they could understand our speech). Which, I guess, applies back to the animals.

LanthonyS · March 26, 2009 at 6:27 AM

That’s fine, but who ever has an evil intention?
I doubt anyone but psychotics has a long-term goal of “hurting people” “for my own pleasure”, and if we count “self-gain” as a wrong intention, we’re all dreadfully guilty (which is of course the central point of most Christian denominations: you’re sick; you need to buy this ointment).

As for short-term goals, if I ever consider my own intention for what I’m doing, then it’s also justified-sounding and innocent-sounding. Does that mean I have no conscious “intention” for, say, picking up a mug of tea, or flicking on the TV, in which case how can I be penalized, or does that mean that I only have good intentions, such as soothe my throat or laugh at Seinfeld?

And what do you do about good intentions that cause harm, for example, I give some money to a beggar and he spends it on cocaine? Or I make a set of comics that offends someone so badly they burn down an embassy?

As always, there’s the practical (pragmatic, if you will), and the ethereal (spiritual, if you will), though I hate to leap to dualism. If both have an effect on our lives, how can we disregard either?

(Rereads paper on Dooyeweerd’s Dimensional Analysis…)

LanthonyS · March 26, 2009 at 11:43 AM

As alluded to above, sure, in the ethereal, good intentions that cause harm are good… but if everybody did that, we’d have a ton of good-natured people and a very miserable world. You simply can’t make an absolute (oops, never mind, rereading that sentence :P) that is true for both; … thought dropped…

And the reverse also… bad intentions that cause good are bad? Isn’t the majority of the Bible, and God’s actions, turning bad intentions into good ends? I think that the final, tangible result has got to be more important in the long run than the intention… but that eventually, the results one tends to generate will tell on their intention.

After all, we all have to have a buffer of “good things” happening… we can make mistakes, even terrible mistakes that result in death, only because millions and millions of good things are happening at the same time (though I wouldn’t say vice versa).

I keep losing my stupid train of thought! I ought to just give up.

Oh, one more complication before I hit ‘Submit!’. In the world of confusing causes and effects, can we ever be certain when we link an intention to a result? If not, we might say that we can just focus on a person’s intention, which gets thrown into the general communal pile and pushes a certain result; or we can count intention as meaningless, since a great deal of results occur with no relation whatsoever to the individual’s intention?

I assume we both have the Sermon on the Mount in the back of our heads, saying, “If you look lustfully at a woman, you’ve committed adultery in your heart; if you hate a man, you’ve committed murder in your heart,” –but we can’t ignore the level on which there’s a difference between a hateful glance and a killing stab!

Which is where intentions cease to matter? I think. Oh dear. My friend walking by comments, “You guys should get a life” 😛