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Mr. Yanniru wrote:
"I have two questions for you to consider:
1. How do you derive morality from science, and
1. Short answer: There are moralities for the individual and for the group. Our laws describe the interaction.
a) Individuals may choose their own morality as long as they don't violate the rights of others as defined by law. There are gray areas such as marijuana laws. It is an imperfect system, as was nature's even more so.
b) Writings of John Locke had traced the evolution of thought in public policy to derive empirical ideas for morality in public policy, and some of his conclusions are encoded in our Constitution. The writer of the Declaration of Independence was considered a scientist, as was Ben Franklin, elder statesman at the Convention where our Constitution was drawn.
The supposed "social improvement" people -- the Communists -- did not choose a system like ours, but instead a hierarchy resembling the government of any large group of chimps or baboons...
No I am not calling them names. I am saying the government's structure simply is a monolith based on natural politics with social rhetoric as lubrication. While we have complaints about behavior of the U.S. government, we should also note how millions of persons were knowingly killed by Communist governments in their own country in the 20th Century to advance the country's "egalitarian" agenda -- "we're all in thie together!" -- which was supposed to be better than the U.S.'s mixed approach of part government, part market. Our Preamble does say the purpose of the Constitution is, in part, to "provide for the general welfare."
Evolution does also occur in the realm of ideas and, on a completely separate branch, in the human gene pool under U.S. law, but good science would not conclude we know the latter is going toward "improvement."
2. If you were to believe that afterlife exists, how would that change your behavior?"
2. Short answer: It's not "yes" or "no" that matters but "in what way is there an afterlife?" that matters. We know our ideas live on and create consequences...some more than others. All the more reason to try to be fair, rather than unfair. It bears re-thinking occasionally.
Do our bodies live on? Do our minds live on?
Does our point of view live on? These are separate questions. The mind sometimes hardly lives while we are alive.
We know the universe is a long proposition and that we are part of it. So if you insist,"I am the Universe," you know you'll be around a while.
See how that feels.
Thank you.
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