Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 22, 2019 5:40 pm
Re animals versus humans in relation to morality, surely you cannot be that thick not to know the significant difference between the brain and mental capabilities of humans and other animals.
That humans are higher moral beings is represented by the higher number of mirror neurons [related to empathy] in their brain as compared to minimal in the primates and none in the lower levels of animals.
True, but not relevant. Really, this is not proof of anything at all.
Let us grant that humans are
immensely better than all other animals. If they are still animals, so what? Paramecia are immeasurably below lions -- much more distant, in fact, than lions are from us; yet lions still kill. What feature of our sophistication makes it logical to think we can't, or shouldn't, kill?
But in point of fact, this argument too is irrelevant. That's because it fails to refer to the key term at all. It doesn't even make any use of the supposition "Atheism is true," so it's not an argument
for that proposition, nor is it an argument
from that proposition. It's just off topic, then.
So it may be that not killing has some utility for us, sometimes; of course it's equally obvious that sometimes killing does have utility to us. Either way, the fact of its utility to us won't make it
wrong to kill, of course, if Atheism is true. It will merely leave it as optional -- and not as a morally "better" or morally "worse" thing to do than not killing.
Secular morality absolutes are reasoned out logically and not based purely on experiences.
Establishing a reasoned moral absolute do not mean, there will be no killings by humans.
I has stated the reasoned moral absolute is merely an ideal and a guide.
The usefulness of this ideal is to enable us to generate a variance which can be improved upon.
Don't keep bringing in atheism, the concern with this OP is the concept of evil and how can we reduce the problem of secular evil.
Why argue about theism versus atheism, the critical approach is to deal with the problem of evil within reality.
If 10% of the people in your area are malignant psychopaths [potential killers] what can arguing about theism or atheism themselves do about it? If God threatens Hell upon those who kill, what positive results can theists produce in that society when psychopaths are generally [a]theists.
But if we are to establish the moral and ethical model with the idea absolute maxim,
"no human can kill another human" [as reasoned]
we will straight away generate a
problem statement that will trigger needed actions to close whatever the variance or moral gap.
The theistic moral model cannot drive continuous improvements to reduce the number of killings.