woodwojr Wrote:

plumage Wrote:

woodwojr Wrote:Evidence?

Genetics.

Genetics and other physical factors are the worst direction you could try to take this; from that standpoint, a person functioning at a standard level is obviously superior to someone with heritable profound physical and mental disabilities, say.

~J

That's not right at all. One will only come to that conclusion if one so desires.

There are many ways in which I am physically superior/inferior to those around me. For example, I am taller than average, which often leads people to ask me to retrieve for them something from a high place.

On the other hand, I sometimes drop a tool under the hood of my car. In this case my larger body is a nuisance and I must ask my wife to use her small hands to reach in and get the tool.

In neither case should one be able to make that case that either is "superior" in any other sense than in direct relation to the contextual task.

Evolution and genetics help us understand the way humans work. They DO NOT have anything to do with how we form our moral considerations. For that there is a much more complicated explanation dealing with cultural development.

You still haven't explained the advantage to heritable severe mental and physical handicap.

Your last paragraph is my entire point in that post. I asked for supporting evidence for the assertion "people are equal", and was given a physical characteristic.

~J

woodwojr Wrote:You still haven't explained the advantage to heritable severe mental and physical handicap.
Your last paragraph is my entire point in that post. I asked for supporting evidence for the assertion "people are equal", and was given a physical characteristic.

~J

There are few advantages for physical retardation. I'm not saying that people are inherently equal. They are not. That was explained in my previous post.

The moral equality we impose upon one another is entirely man made. Moral standards for equality have developed over time due in large part to the interaction of various philosophies. When these ideas are excepted by the majority of a population they can be said to be the standard.

Notice how our definition of equality has change in the last 100 years in America. Consider female suffrage, segregation, interracial relationships, sexism, homosexual rights, etc. These all relate to the ever-changing definition of equality that occurs as various human minds develop the ideal of equality over time and apply it to various circumstances.

This abstract idea of equality bears no evidence in the physical world. It is a human ideal. Therefore, the physical evidence that paradoxically assures us that on a evolutionary/genetic level there is no basis for equality is irrelevant to the ideal.

Certainly one might trace sources of INequality to evolutionary/genetic development, and indeed, physical differences are the root cause of racism, sexism, etc. However, it is in spite of these differences that humanity has begun to develop an ideal of equality.

*Edit*
I have tried to re-read your initial comment, and it is still difficult to tell what you were trying to say. It had seemed to me that you were against the idea of physical inequality due to it clashing with moral equality. If that isn't the case, then we probably don't disagree. In which case, moseltov.

woodwojr Wrote:I asked for supporting evidence for the assertion "people are equal", and was given a physical characteristic.

I don't interpret "people are equal!" (note the exclamation mark in alantin's post) as the statement of a fact requiring evidence, but as a moral principle we should adhere to.

It seems to me that it is just a way to say "we should treat people equally", like thelooseteeth put it.

Edit.

Here is Article 1 of the declaration of human rights:

* All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. (...)

It wouldn't cross my mind to take that for the statement of a fact, write to the UN and ask them for evidence.

Well said!
Thank you!

The nation "all human are equal" itself may be the result of natural selection, so it may not be necessarily the complete opposite of evolutionary processes.

In Japanese shops though, 「どうも」 and 「すいません」seem to prosper. I say「どうも」to thank a clerk, 「すいません」to call a waiter, and more 「どうも」「あ、どうも」「 どうもどうも」「こりゃどうも」for most situations in which I would say "thank you" or "thanks" in the states. Of course, 「ありがとう」 goes a long way too.

thelooseteeth Wrote:...There are few advantages for physical retardation...

Wow, this got off topic fast. I didn't read the whole middle section and just skipped to the end. That was interesting...

Nevertheless, the mentally retarded are genetically human. Therefore they are ontologically equal to other humans and deserving of protections that humans deserve.

plumage Wrote:Nevertheless, the mentally retarded are genetically human. Therefore they are ontologically equal to other humans and deserving of protections that humans deserve.

Yes, and that was part of my argument. My comment, "there are few advantages for physical retardation" was just to confirm that a physical inequality does exist. But that it should have no bearing on moral equality whatsoever.

thelooseteeth Wrote:*Edit*
I have tried to re-read your initial comment, and it is still difficult to tell what you were trying to say. It had seemed to me that you were against the idea of physical inequality due to it clashing with moral equality. If that isn't the case, then we probably don't disagree. In which case, moseltov.

My argument is that the assertion "people are equal" isn't something that should be just tossed around, because almost no one believes it (this is most obvious when discussing, say, certain types of criminals). Given that almost no one believes it, it qualifies as an extraordinary claim (extraordinary in the sense of unusual, here), which requires at least some evidence.

Then, another poster provided "genetics" as that evidence, making equality physical. The rebuttal pretty much wrote itself.

(The argument that it is a principle or an ideal rather than a factual statement is the strongest one, but that still makes it wrong, for reasons I shouldn't have to explain. Any use in that sense should be challenged.)

~J

woodwojr Wrote:(The argument that it is a principle or an ideal rather than a factual statement is the strongest one, but that still makes it wrong, for reasons I shouldn't have to explain.

Please do, because I fail to understand.

@woodwojr

I too would like to hear why you feel that people are not equal?

If people are not equal, who decides their value? Is it defined only by his contribution to the society or is it the political leader perhaps who decides?

How valuable are you and why?

I know that Hitler for example didn't see all people to be equal, nor did Saddam Hussein find a persons life to be very valuable but I would tend to see a few errors in this thinking..

Am I to assume that you don't?

@ On Topic:

I haven't spent much time in Japan, but when I was there, I generally used ありがとう to waitresses and store clerks. At the service jobs I worked at, I appreciated thankful customers, they made the job easier to deal with, so I want to be that type of customer. I never want to walk out of a restaurant and have the server thinking "Oh, thank god, he left..."

@ Off Topic:

http://www.ted.com/talks/aimee_mullins_p...etics.html
Here is an interesting talk about how disabled doesn't have to be a disability.

alantin Wrote:I know that Hitler for example didn't see all people to be equal, nor did Saddam Hussein find a persons life to be very valuable but I would tend to see a few errors in this thinking..

Am I to assume that you don't?

I believe he's making a pragmatic argument rather than expressing a belief; much like how some people will argue that Hitler was a great man. I could be wrong, though.

Everyone is not born with equal mental or physical abilities. That is obvious. But everyone should be treated equally with as much kindness and respect as we are capable. I would extend this not only to people but animals as well. If animals are considered a food source then be mindful to include the level of compassion used in the killing process when shopping.

adutrifoy Wrote:Please do, because I fail to understand.

Because it's an ideal stated as a fact, rather than as an ideal. It's a kind of backwards is-ought fallacy.

As for my actual personal beliefs on the matter, they're largely undetermined in this case, as there are a lot of hard problems involved. My basic inclination is to agree that people ought be considered equal, but if you give me the chance to kill a random person to resurrect, say, Alan Turing, you'll probably find out that I don't actually believe that.

~J

Ah, it is an old moral play. If given the choice of your own child being killed or ten random children you will never meet, who would you choose. Most would preserve the life of their own child knowing it is not the moral choice. In a way we make this choice every day. It is expensive to raise children in western countries. In developing countries people routinely die because they do not have $10 or so for medicine that would save their lives. The amount of money required to raise our own children 18+ years, used skillfully, would prevent multitudes of other people's children from dying unnecessarily.

There are some lives that are more important than others. Bill Gates' life, because of the billions of dollars he invests into curing disease around the world, is infinitely more valuable than my own.

bodhisamaya Wrote:Bill Gates' life, because of the billions of dollars he invests into curing disease around the world, is infinitely more valuable than my own.

何!?

.....

I watched Bill Gates speak on PBS for one time. Many people really dislike him but his compassion is incredible. Only a tiny percentage of his fortune will be inherited. The rest of it will be used for research into solving suffering in third world countries. With the exception of a house he bought a few years ago, he has maintained a very humble lifestyle despite being the richest man on the planet for much of his life. I loved the stunt he pulled a few weeks ago letting a swarm of mosquitoes go on a crowd to make people think about malaria. He reminded everyone more money is being spent each year to cure baldness than to solve malaria.

You may want to read up on what precisely the Gates Foundation does. The man has, I assert, done more harm than good to the world.

~J

Guess what really bugs me. The supposed equal value of all humans.

Imagine you were a doctor, and had to decide who would get medicine, against the deadly X-disease.
The 90 years old woman, or a little boy.
The boy with cancer, or the perfectly healthy (except for the X-disease) girl.
The professor or the thug.
The terrorist or the police-officer

Questions to this equal value thought.
Why?
How?
To whom?
Measured in what?

Try asking somebody any of these questions and you will one of these answers:
1 Well of course everybody is worth the same, cause (existentialist/humanist/ mumbo jumbo, that doesn't really answer your question goes here)
2 God loves every human infinetly much, therefore he loves and values all as much.
3 Are you ***** racist
4 You suck

cjswanson1355 Wrote:Try asking somebody any of these questions and you will one of these answers:

You forgot one:

Because! It's just obvious!

I agree, not all people are equal. Every single person is different from every other person. The notion that they are 'equal' is craziness.

The 'everyone is equal' statement originally meant everyone has the same rights. But even at that time, women and slaves didn't have the same rights as white men... So it only meant 'all white men have the same rights'.

It has never been a statement anchored in reality, but rather a guideline on how to treat others.

This is getting sidetracked, I think a better phrase than 'everyone is equal' or 'everyone should be treated equally' would be 'treat others as you would have them treat you'. Pretty much all bases are covered with this moral.

Anyway, I would like to be thanked for my work, whether I was a doctor treating kids with cancer or a kombini clerk. As for the person who said a person who serves you is in an inferior role to you, would you consider a doctor to be inferior to you? They are treating you, at your behest, serving your every medical whim, and doing it for cash. You might as well say they are whores, just doing things for money, curing whatever someone asks them to cure. (note - I respect prostitutes and the hard work they do.) I'm sure in Japanese a doctor would get a lot of honorifics directed at them.

I think a doctor diagnosing their thousandth patient with a cold is about as brainless a task for them as a kombini person stuffing your items into a bag. If someone is doing something for you, even if it's for money, be thankful that they exist and that they are doing their job adequately.

phauna Wrote:This is getting sidetracked, I think a better phrase than 'everyone is equal' or 'everyone should be treated equally' would be 'treat others as you would have them treat you'. Pretty much all bases are covered with this moral.

I agree with you... those probably for different reasons. Haha... I Think we should treat others as we would have them treat us because firstly, I believe each person was created by God and thus has an inherent value, and secondly Jesus instructed us to do so. But, I'm interested in how you can justify such a position? This is sort of picking up from our dialogue a couple of months ago...

Let me first make clear though that I am NOT saying "atheists can't be good people or do good things or have values"... we agree such a statement is ridiculous. I am asking only how do you logically justify holding a moral position like 'treat others as you would have them treat you' without a belief in God?

SammyB Wrote:Let me first make clear though that I am NOT saying "atheists can't be good people or do good things or have values"... we agree such a statement is ridiculous. I am asking only how do you logically justify holding a moral position like 'treat others as you would have them treat you' without a belief in God?

As an atheist, I too find this to be an interesting question. I must start off first by arguing that morals do not come from God. If one were to assert such a thing I would have to ask: "From which god do morals come? YHVH, Jesus, Brahma, Buddha, Zeus?"

Any sensible outlook on morality will recognize the persistence of moral relativity; this is the idea that the standards for morality differ from culture to culture, religion to religion, and so on. These moral pockets may either assert that they have domain over the one true morality, or recognize that moral behavior can be expressed differently by different people.

To be sure, the definition of morality is in constant flux--arguably so that anyone asserting that they have a unchanging written document that ordains true morality will be missing the point.

For example, there are certainly passages in the Bible that contain useful moral guidance in modern context. However, the vast majority of Biblical morality has been discarded in favor of modern morality. Child abuse, slavery, genocidal war, among other things receive no modern moral considerations in Biblical context. However, there are many blanket statements such as the Golden Rule and other such things in the Bible that can lead one to supersede the violence within it, IF one so chooses to do so.

The evidence shows pretty clearly that morality is a development of the human mind. The question that follows is, "Well, if not from God, then from what do humans derive morality?"

There are many theories for an evolutionary development of altruism through natural selection. Natural selection would tend to favor those with genes that cause an individual to act in a way that would preserve common genes; i.e. altruism. This favoring of inter-family altruism might have spread to the tribe, then to neighboring tribes, and beyond.

This is the point where biological causes no longer serve us, and it becomes necessary to view the remainder of moral evolution on the basis of cultural development. Cultural evolution does not work on the same principle as biological evolution. There is no natural selector that will lead to a historically dependent lateral development.

However cultural evolution can happen much faster than biological evolution. Ideas and philosophies can spread through cultural diffusion. Man will begin to attempt to rationalize and reason his genetically dictated tendency towards altruism in various ways until we have the mosaic of cultural answers to the morality question.

These ideas will intermix and shape one another as the ideas become more developed. The example of equality I used in a previous post in this topic is a perfect example of this phenomenon.

In any event, this process will eventually lead someone like myself, an atheist, to the concept of integrity. Integrity, as it was explained to me, is the idea that one should act "right" (whatever one's definition of that is), even when no one is watching."

To me, that means, "even if no gods are watching." Consequently, my behavior can quite literally be described as "good for goodness' sake."

*don't have time to proof read, got to go to class.