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What would our forebears have made of test-tube babies, microwave ovens, organ transplants, CCTV and iPhones? Could they have believed that one day people might jet to another continent for a weekend break, meet their future spouse on the internet, have their genome sequenced and live to a private soundtrack from an MP3 player? Science and technology have changed our world dramatically, and, for the most part, we take them in our stride. Nevertheless, there are certain innovations that many people find unpalatable.
Leaving aside special-interest attitudes such as the fundamentalist Christian denial of evolution, many controversies over scientific advances are based on ethical concerns. In the past, the main areas of contention have included nuclear weapons, eugenics and experiments on animals, but in recent years the list of “immoral” research areas has grown exponentially. In particular, reproductive biology and medicine have become ripe for moral outrage: think cloning, designer babies, stem-cell research, human-animal hybrids, and so on. Other troublesome areas include nanotechnology, synthetic biology, genomics and genetically modified organisms or so-called “Frankenfoods”.
To many scientists, moral objections to their work are not valid: science, by definition, is morally neutral, so any moral judgement on it simply reflects scientific illiteracy. That, however, is an abdication of responsibility. Some moral reactions are irrational, but if scientists are serious about tackling them – and the bad decisions, harm, suffering and barriers to progress that flow from them – they need to understand a little more and condemn a little less…
I left Jones’ Headline alone. It’s could be construed as opportunism, deliberately leading discussion to the sensational and uninformed – excused as “inviting comment”.
As societies become more scientifically literate, scientific developments may well be judged more from a position of knowledge and less on the basis of intuitive responses driven by moral heuristics. However, there is another serious obstacle to the rational approach: our emotions, and especially the most morally loaded of emotions, disgust. In the wake of the creation of Dolly the cloned sheep, bioethicist Leon Kass of the University of Chicago argued that the visceral feeling which many people have in response to the most contentious scientific advances embodies a kind of wisdom that is beyond the power of reason to articulate. Many people are guided by this supposed “wisdom of repugnance”.
Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, is not one of them. He has coined the more disparaging term “yuk response” to describe this reaction, and believes we should challenge the idea that repugnance is a reliable moral guide and the ultimate arbiter. “You begin the process by questioning the validity of the yuk response, calling it into doubt and pointing out that the yuk meter may be untrustworthy,” says Caplan. Then it becomes possible to start exploring the reasons and justifications for people’s initial intuitions of right or wrong, and see how they stand up to scrutiny.
Most of what Jones describes is cultural and parochial, of course. How shall I oversimplify? If I included an illustrative photo at this point of a nubile, bare-breasted young woman, our religious brethren would reel back, aghast. Slightly less hypocritical Western males would leer – and hope ther wives and fellow workers didn’t see them looking. Much of the rest of the world – from Euro sophisticates to Oceania – would admire her beauty. In Japan there wouldn’t be a peep even if she was barely into puberty.
Found by KD Martin at Cage Match
#57, HMeyers,
The universe is not made up of human beings. It’s a collection of matter, energy, dark matter and dark energy, all reacting according to the (now) unreconcilable laws of relativity (macro) and quantum physics (micro). The universe has no intelligence other than ourselves (that we know of). Thus, without any overall intelligence, it has no morals. It creates and destroys without any feelings of joy or animus. And it will disappear in some billions of years.
To claim the universe has morals is to anthropomorphise the universe, which just doesn’t work. It has no conscience, no intelligence in and of itself. It just… is.
Does the Sun have morals? Does the Milky Way? How about the Local Cluster of Galaxies? I think not.
#60, you ‘religious’ types are all the same, everything you don’t understand is explained by either attempting to interpreting an ancient book or saying, “God works in mysterious ways” (a great catch all). It’s amazing humanity advances at all, still believing in fairytales.
#60 Religous, me? Hardly! I just think/believe that the symbolic and the physical are both necessary for a balanced perspective, and that broad sweeping disqualification of beliefs/ideas is the practice of a mediocre mentality. Negation is just as useless as affirmation. I don’t need proof (there is no proof) just a reasonably useful explanation. thank you.
#53–amaramadingdong==that was just silly.
In that vein, if the symbolic needs to be balanced by the physical==whats your fulcrum?
Why does the symbolic, physical, or anything else need to be balanced by anything else? Why not an imbalance of the good stuff? etc.
Gibberish.
# 39 bobbo said,
“Doesn’t the illogic of this all powerful god break down at some point? No. Sign this boy up for a slot in heaven.”
Don’t forget all those virgins, too. Mr. Mustard and I will pray they are more like Victoria’s Secret models than those lovely girls cooking at KFC.
Do you think science can supply an answer to that?
Ahh, just give me that black hole, I want to see what’s beyond the event horizon.
Say, can God exist inside a black hole? How could he get out? Oh, my, what a conundrum.
BubbaRay #65 said,
Say, can God exist inside a black hole? How could he get out? Oh, my, what a conundrum.
So you are impressed by the thought of the Creator of space and time being trapped by His own creation? You remind me of the child that told me in third grade that God didn’t exist because if He did, He could create a rock so heavy that He couldn’t lift it. Perhaps you are that same child! Regardless, even as a third grader, I knew that your impossibility argument is childish. It appears that you never grew up.
#10 – Angel H. Wong
#6 Scott,
You forgot the “Let’s put this helmet onto a dog, tie it up and then hit the dog in the head with a pneumatic hammer to see how many blows to the head can the helmet take before the skull cracks open.”
Sometimes I think these “scientists” are doing these experiments while they have an erection…
Sorry I ran out of time to reply to this last night, and just barely finished my reply to bobbo.
Do you have a link to scientists performing a test like this? The last time I heard of an experiment like that, it was performed on children’s legs in a place that would cause me to lose the conversation via Godwin’s Law if I mentioned it. I think cases of that level of cruelty do exist, usually involving rats, and hopefully for slightly more useful information than that. If I’m wrong, please provide a link.
#14 – bobbo,
Science doesn’t provide the morality. Science, in many cases, should be what provides the data that is fed into a set of normal morals processing centers of the brain (prefrontal cortexes and amygdalas in particular). Then, a well informed and reasonably moral person can make a proper moral decision. Without the science, one may attempt to make moral decisions, and fail to achieve the desired result. Without properly functioning amygdalas and prefrontal cortexes, the result will also be immoral. So, both are necessary in making moral decisions. Science only provides the data necessary to make an informed moral choice.
#13 – Traaxx,
Morality? What is morality? Without religion it’s only an opinion what someone should do.
Morality is only an opinion of what one should do. That most of us have properly functioning amygdalas and prefrontal cortexes (orbital, medial, and ventromedial prefrontal cortexes) means that most of us make very similar decisions in simple to mildly complex situations. For more complex situations, the judgment calls may be more different.
As for morality coming from religion, all I can say is BULLSHIT!!
There’s just no other way to say it. If morality comes from religion, then please explain why you do not kill people that you see working on the sabbath. The bible clearly states that you must. Unless you are typing from prison however, I will assume that you do not.
Therefore, your proper morals processing centers of your brain have stopped you from reading that line in the bible, taking it literally, and acting on it. Your morals processing centers are what help you pick and choose from among the contradictory passages of the bible and let you behave morally despite the self-contradictory nature of the bible.
Obviously then, your reading of the bible was based on your morals, not the other way around.
#17 – Shubee,
What ever happened to thinking about God as the most thrilling thought in the universe?
It turned out that the true universe was even more thrilling than the thought of a spoiled child in the sky demanding absolute obedience to a set of sociopathic laws.
#30 – bobbo,
#19–Mustard==funny you would equate “the most thrilling thing in the universe” to sex and you are right. Its when you confuse religion with sex that you veer off.
Actually bobbo, forget about confusing sex and relgion. Integrate them intimately. One of the religions I would criticize the least would be the old Hindu religion from before Islam and Christianity brought the idea that sex was shameful to India.
The Kama Sutra was a religious work I could believe in.
Would that give a whole new meaning to the word Sexist, as one who devoutly believes in sex?
Of course all the gods of the Hindu religion are as silly as those of any other religion. But, at least Ganesh, with the head of an elephant, is quite cute. And, they get around that whole issue of an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-benevolent god existing in the same universe alongside evil, a complete and utter logical impossibility. They simply don’t have an all-powerful god.
# 69 Misanthropic Scott,
You don’t have to believe the lie that God is a spoiled child in the sky, unless of course, you want to.
#31 – Mister Mustard,
I’m not so certain. Animal ALTRUISM (explainable in Darwinian terms as related to kin selection and/ or recipricity) is seen in the animal kingdom.
Morality, I’m not so sure about. Inasmuchas “morality” can only be known by communicating with the organism that is exhibiting the behavior, I don’t know how that would ever be determined.
Actually Mr. Mustard, when one monkey is perfectly happy performing some task for slices of cucumber, but then is allowed to see another monkey performing the same task and receiving grapes, it seems pretty obvious, by the fact that the monkey will invariably stop performing the task after throwing the cucumber, that this has offended the monkey’s sense of fairness (morality).
Less scientific would be known cases like the child who fell into a zoo enclosure with gorillas and was rescued by one of the gorillas or cases of dolphins saving divers from sharks.
I must say… excellent discussion and input by all. What a good read!
#45 – Mister Mustard,
Poetry (bad poetry IMHO, but I’m not into poetry) as evidence for the existence of god? Or, even as a reason for consideration of the possibility?
I’m surprised by this new low for you. Please go back to your previous quality of posts where at least your religious arguments (while, obviously not convincing to me) made some slight degree of sense (except one that I haven’t really seen you make in a while, thanks).
#49 – Greg Allen,
If “science” wants to create technologies that could jeopardize the whole planet (global warming and genetic engineering come to mind) what mechanism is there to stop them?
Interesting point. Science has indeed created the technologies that cause global warming, such as automobiles, chainsaws, and the like. Would you then go back to pre-agrarian times? Clearcutting for farms, ranching cattle and the like also cause global warming.
Personally, I actually do think humans lived better as hunters and gatherers. We still caused severe damage wherever we went. However, not nearly as severe as today. And, people living in tight knit groups of 200 or so where everyone knows everyone in their tribe, may well have led more fulfilling lives. There is some evidence of this and more keeps coming to light, according to several books I’ve read.
Certainly, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle was the one we evolved for. 95% of our time on this planet was spent that way. We’re still working out how to live in our present society … and are failing.
However, I somehow doubt that you are seriously advocating this. So, just what science are you willing to throw out? How do you know before we do the research which ones, like the internal combustion engine, will turn out to be a bad idea?
#51 – Mister Mustard,
I choose to open my mind to the possibilities.
I told myself I wasn’t going to go here … but I can’t resist.
All possibilities equally?
Fire breathing dragons? Great Pumpkin? Alchemy? Odin? Zeus? Ganesh? Flying Spaghetti Monster? Elves? Tooth Faerie? Santa Clause? Scientology? Astrology? (Actually, Christianity is repackaged Egyptian astrology, so I guess you’ll answer yes to that last one.)
#51 – Mister Mustard,
I choose to open my mind to the possibilities.
I told myself I wasn’t going to go here … but I can’t resist.
All possibilities equally?
Fire breathing dragons? Great Pumpkin? Alchemy? Odin? Zeus? Ganesh? Flying Spaghetti Monster? Elves? Tooth Faerie? Santa Clause? Scientology? Astrology? (Actually, Christianity is repackaged Egyptian astrology, so I guess you’ll answer yes to that last one.)
http://tinyurl.com/9euhcm
#52 – Mister Mustard,
We’ve formed one to worship mother earth already. Wicca.
Wicca worships a god and goddess. Gaia is the hypothesis of the earth as a life form. Since it is not reproducing, it fails the test.
How about if we just try to take care of the only planet on which we can survive as if our lives depend on it? Because they do.
We could even consider the exercise in attempting to keep this planet terraformed a step toward learning how to terraform another, for the Science Fiction crowd. Personally, I think our failure to keep this planet terraformed shows that we will be unable to terraform another. That and the fact that no one has gone past LEO for the last 30+ years.
#54 – BubbaRay,
Excellent points all!
#57 HMeyers & #61 – BubbaRay,
I’m going to take the odd tack of agreeing with both of you. Morals are obviously allowed by the physics of the universe just as life is obviously allowed by the physics of the universe. But, the morals are only a property of the universe insomuch as intelligent life forms are a property of the universe.
Yes, the universe has humans and chimps and other species with morals, therefore, they are an attribute of the universe in the sense that the universe has humans in it, humans have morals, therefore the universe contains morals.
This does not in any way suggest that the morals are consistent throughout the universe or that the universe as a whole has any morality associated with it. It merely means that the universal laws allowed for life forms to evolve that have morals. The universe has morals only in the sense of containment.
In OOP terms, the top level class Universe does not have an attribute morality. Instead it has a collection of galactic clusters that each have collections of galaxies that each have collections of solar systems. One such solar system that we know of has a planet that has a collection of intelligent creatures. Some of those intelligent creatures have an attribute morality.
#60 palindromemordnilap,
#54, You ’scientific’ types are all the same, everything you don’t understand is chaos, or random, or doesn’t exsist. I guess it’s humility that’s lacking, or perhaps a fear of the unknown.
It’s fear of the unknown that is lacking in ‘scientific’ types, whatever that means. Unlike the religious who assert that the bible contains the full knowledge of everything and are unwilling to ask even the most fundamental questions such as ‘where did god come from’, some of us are perfectly willing to live with unanswered questions. And, some of the seriously intelligent among us, not me, are actively doing the science to attempt to answer the unanswered.
No one in religion is doing that. Try this: Walk into a Christian Science Reading Room and ask where the Christian Science Laboratory is. Tell them you want to be an independent observer of their scientific method. You will soon learn the difference between ‘scientific’ types and religious types.
Note: There are some religious types who do not allow their belief to get in the way of asking questions. The vast majority in my experience, however, do.
#65 – BubbaRay,
Ahh, just give me that black hole, I want to see what’s beyond the event horizon.
I just might be able to do this for you. Consider that the observable universe is bounded by the distance from us at which objects are moving away so fast that our relative motion with respect to each other is light speed.
Light from us cannot possibly get out of this ‘sphere’ any more than light from outside it can reach deep inside to us. Therefore, we are in a black hole. You are seeing what is inside the event horizon as you read this.
Are you willing to buy that? (I don’t really think I am. But, it sounds cool.)
#71 – Shubee,
You don’t have to believe the lie that God is a spoiled child in the sky, unless of course, you want to.
I’ll stick with atheism. If a single shred of evidence for god is ever found, I’ll switch to agnosticism. I have no reason for doubt at present.
As for the spoiled child in the sky being a lie, are you really willing to assert that the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religion (deliberately singular) in all of it’s many sub-flavors is a lie?
My amateur hand at poetry… first verse is borrowed of course.
I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
(2nd verse by Faith)
It must have gone where arrows go,
The straight and true from head to toe,
A glorious place of eternal rest
To shun the warped and keep the best.
(2nd verse by Science)
I shot another, with careful mind,
Force, mass, angle, all entwined;
My calculations proved exact
I found both in a tree, intact.
@61 BubbaRay
“The universe is not made up of human beings. It’s a collection of matter, energy, dark matter and dark energy, all reacting according to the (now) unreconcilable laws of relativity (macro) and quantum physics (micro).”
This statement is dead wrong.
You seem to accept the fact that the universe has matter and that matter is a property of the universe.
Yet matter is made of energy.
Similarly, life is a property of the universe, most complicated systems of matter. You wouldn’t claim life is unique to humans, would you?
What we call morality is merely a “strength in numbers” survival strategy in higher life which all higher life will have.
It will be found in all higher life everywhere and is just as much as a property of the universe as expecting all protons and neutrons in the universe to be bosons.
@79 Misanthropic Scott
“This does not in any way suggest that the morals are consistent throughout the universe or that the universe as a whole has any morality associated with it.”
Morals are merely a maximizing survival strategy.
All higher life must have morals, otherwise they will be eradicated by a competing higher life form in their environment.
An example:
An adult cat can easily eat a rabbit. Yet no one ever knows of a story of an adult cat eating a smaller cat, no matter how hungry it is.
But an adult cat is certainly capable of eating, say, a kitten. But yet this never happens.
That would be preposterous.
Higher intelligent life will never favor theft of another’s work or rightly earned property through hard work, the selfish killing of innocents because these behaviors favor a selfish individual over the good of the group or the whole.
Stories of heroes always involve personal sacrifice where an individual makes a personal sacrifice for the good of the group, the species or the earth.
Which is simply to say morality is favoring the many with some small personal sacrifices made by the few or the one for the greater good.
And any higher life will have a punishment system that tries to address the rogue individuals meant for those who do not comply with this morality.
But yet we will also bend the rules for the young, who we do not hold to the same standard as they are learning.
@61 BubbaRay
“The universe is not made up of human beings.”
The universe isn’t made up of liquid water either, but I think we can agree that liquid water is an expression of the physics of the universe.
It always exists under the right conditions of pressure and temperature.
# 82 Misanthropic Scott wrote:
Are you really willing to assert that the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religion (deliberately singular) in all of it’s many sub-flavors is a lie?
Your conclusion doesn’t follow from my premise. Apparently, you are so infatuated with the atheists’ agenda that you are powerless to break free of its spell.
#74 – Scottie
>>Poetry (bad poetry IMHO, but I’m not
>>into poetry).
That’s not poetry, Scottie. It’s “patter-singing”, from the opera “HMS Pinafore”, by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. If you’d ever heard it performed by the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, you would not call it “bad”. I love those guys.
#60 – Amo
>>I guess it’s humility that’s lacking, or
>>perhaps a fear of the unknown.
I’d say that pretty much explains the militant Atheist evangelists.