6:45: Awoke, had a cup of coffee, looked over a couple of briefs
7:17: Took his morning “porcelain constitutional”
7:53: Called his temporary clerk; citing “inherent authority” granted the Executive under the Constitution, demanded work begin on compiling a database on “non-traditional uteri”—defined by Justice Alito as “those potential gestational chambers that are used for purposes that do not include GOD’S MANDATE that we ‘be fruitful and multiply.’” This includes such abominations as the introduction into the giddyslit of synthetic or organic objects that have the potential to do grievous damage to future conception(s), such as gourds or roughened beads.
8:17: Prank phonecall to Cameron Diaz in which he identified himself as “the Patriarchy Police” and informed her that, now that rape has been legalized, she would need to leave Tuesdays and Thursdays open between 11am and 2 pm (with a working lunch, which would “likely consist of strawberries, whipped cream, honey, or flavored gels”).
8:24: Called his car service; readied his briefcase (Saltines, Ativan, legal pads, coat hangers, 9mm Glock), and gave his wife a wholesome missionary kiss.
8:30: Off to bring fascism and theocracy back where it belongs. Because remember: you can’t spell “THIS IS GOD’S LAND, AND THE HEATHENS SHALL LEARN TO TREMBLE AND GENUFLECT BEFORE THE LAWS OF THE LORD” without “USA.*
[all times Eastern]
Darn, the ABC news link is broken…what was it?
busted link, aaaaaaawwww
Ha, had to get “genuflect” in there for that all important, yet tricky, U.
9mm? Like some sort of pussy foreigner?
No, no, all-American Sam Alito would carry nothing smaller than a .40, and probably a .45.
t/w: Standard, as in “standard small arms round for real men”.
Huh. Busy morning.
Did you mean Ativan, or is there some new uber-sedative wine I should be buying.
On another note, you are on fire lately. No pressure, but every damn thing you write is spit-take good.
TW: We expect you to keep this up.
Damn, something the Demothugs missed is that Alito worked at NSA for awhile. I gotta figure that’s true because now that he’s the most dangerous and powerful man in America he should have totally destroyed any freedoms I might have left, yet I, for the life of me, can’t see any difference. Just like those guys at NSA that are tapping my phone calls and destroying my freedoms without me noticing.
Giddyslit? Is that what kids are calling it these days?
A)9mm? Like some sort of pussy foreigner?
Agreed. .54 Casull, I’d say. With some seriously overpowered handloads…
B) Cameron Diaz? Hel-o-o-o, the broad can’t even remember her lines fer chrissake…
SB:six
gun justice
9mm? Like some sort of pussy foreigner?
Maybe it was the closest he could get to a Luger… but then, you’d think he could just borrow one of those from the Capitol Police.
The good news is that Jeff knows these details because Judge Alito’s house is bugged, with strategically positioned video cameras, all because of the brutal fascist dictatorship that we live in.
I’m just glad that I don’t have to watch a “porcelain constitutional” in progress.
Best line of the story:
“In the courtroom, he will take the seat at the far right, the one for the court’s newest member.”
Heh.
Sam gets more judging done before 9am than most people do all day.
9mm? Hey, he was appointed by a cowboy; he’s gotta tote a revolver. How about one of those nifty S&W 500 mags? Those bioches kill on both ends.
On the other hand, the .54 Casull idea does have some merit.
.54 Casull?
I’ve heard of the .454 Casull, but maybe they’ve brought out a new, bigger cartridge?
Makes me wonder what Sam will be having for lunch…
the Spotted owl slow roasted over imported rainforest hardwoods?
…and what he has planned for the afternoon. So much Constitution to shred he may even skip his nap.
Ta, Jeff, so hilarious to make fun of a defenseless LD actress, when you fail to comment on the new totalitarian theocracy that plans banning whole avenues of scientific research on the sayso of one religious demigogue, George Bush.
No comment?
Speaker, think of the benefits to you. If cloning is allowed Dubya could clone himself and run the new Dubya! And again! A perpetuating series of Dubyas to rule over this benighted land forever!
But he decided to forgo that. I think it is rather big of him not to create a Grand Army of the Re-Dubyas and send them marching against his foes.
Speaker —
Yes, I have a comment: stop asking me to comment. When I have something to say on the subject, I’ll say it. In the meantime, you’ll get nothing and like it.
speaker-to-animals=one-trick-pony
Speaker-to-animals,
In the immortal words of Eddie Murphy, “Have a coke and a smile and shut-the-fuck-up.”
fffffffffffhhhhhhhhttt!!
JAYsus speaker, this one note rant is getting creepy.
You got blueprints for a chimera sexslave stuffed away under the massage oils and blowup doll somewhere?
That’s some funny shit.
I’m not sure which is worse. Cam Diaz believing that rape will be legalized or Kerry believing the 54% of highschool students drop out. That’s a coin flip.
lol, here is where the totalitarian arguments of the dems come true–GW seeks to impose religious ideology on a branch of scientific research.
ha ha, where is your separation of church and state now?
btw, i am a registered republican. that is why i am so disgusted with this.
What did the founders fear most of all?
Demigogues.
Damn you, McGehee! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
Keep your jedi mind tricks away from my typin’ fingers!
..and i do like it. very much.
Darleen–
From Sam Alito’s cookbook, Politically Incorrect Cooking for Reight Whingers (courtesy of Two Dragons at the AIR), here is the definitive barbecue recipe:
I’ve found that old-growth rainforest wood makes for a great smoked meat. I’ve got a smoker out back that I made out of a BookMobile (you remember those, right? Reagan put them all out of commission in the 80’s, in a secret bid to increase illiteracy rates among minority students.) and you can stuff several whole Harp seals in there and still have room for a few Spotted Owls or several pounds of darter snails. Or if you use the hooks you can hang several Ridley’s turtles up–they take a while to smoke because of the shell, but the meat practically falls off the bone. Or you can take all the shelves out and cram an entire young pilot whale in there. The drippings can cause a lot of thick smoke, so I installed a long pipeline that vents it off in Antartica.
Here’s my recipe for Basic Reich-Winger barbecue sauce:
1 barrel of Iraqi crude (if not immediately avaliable, molasses will do)
30 gallons of the blood of baby manatees (or ketchup–NOT Heinz!)
2 cups powdered weapons-grade uranium (or iodized salt)
2 cups fresh-ground blackened Palestinian splodeydope eyeballs (or black pepper if you need to substitute)
17 cloves of garlic, minced
40 onions, diced
1 bunch celery chopped fine
Mix Iraqi crude with non-Heinz ketchup in the cleaned and sterilized aluminum hull of a Greenpeace boat. Add diced onions, minced garlic, chopped celery, and season to taste with uranium and blackened eyeballs. Simmer until vegetables are soft and flavors are mixed, stirring often with the femur of an illegally-poached giraffe.
–TwoDragons
Posted by: LC Denita TwoDragons, G.L.O.R. at September 1, 2004 12:18 PM
Link is now dead, apparently.
[eye roll]
Gosh, Bush has his work cut out for him if he’s going to ban whole avenues of scientific research exactly the way you think he wants to, with this Congress. Did you notice them at all at the SOTUS?
I read some of your other comments, s-t-a, on the speech itself. A few things occur to me:
1. Bush used “embryo” because more Americans understand “embryo” than “blastula.” If he’d said anything about implanting blastulae, can you imagine the head-scratching that’d go on among perfectly well-educated people who don’t happen to be as conversant with biology as perhaps they were in school? (Note that I will not make the liberal mistake of assuming the American public consists of a bunch of ignoramuses. But you might bear in mind that your expertise in this area doesn’t mean that Bush has to speak directly to you in this venue. If he were speaking to a gathering of biologists, I’d expect him to use appropriate jargon.)
2. Human-animal hybrids – I think you must know he’s talking about something more ethically challenging than human liver cells’ being grown in sheep, as I think your example was. Do you honestly believe that even if Bush were as luddite as you seem to think he is, he’d put forth a bill that said only “no human-animal hybrids” without many paragraphs and/or references to indicate exactly what was meant by the term? And if it excluded your example, would it have a prayer, so to speak, of passage?
3. Do you acknowledge any ethical debate in this area, or are you an anything-goes type of guy/gal? I ask because that’s certainly the impression you give, yet you appear to be a person of good will. Is there nothing at which we should stop?
What I think is even worse is Bush imposing his right-wing religious fanaticism on us with this whole slavery issue. He is just the last of a long line of wacko-Christian Presidents that have violated the separation of church and state and banned slavery. When we finally come to our senses and elect a secular humanist, then I can own slaves and can stop paying all these salaries and benefits that those theocrats impose on me.
jamie.
Sure. Look at the Schiavo effect and terri’s law. The dems are too gutless vote against anything that might loose them votes.
There is no debate. There are only pronouncements issuing from the star chamber of luddites to GW’s ear.
Yep. Because there’s nothing worse than a half-gogue.
s-t-a:
Point taken re: Terri’s Law [another eye roll], though (a) it’s my opinion that we lifers should never have had to go that far, and (b) it’s arguable that Republicans who went for it now wish they hadn’t, which could have a salutory effect on future legislation.
But as for debate on ethics in the biosciences, I’m asking whether you believe that there’s anything worthy of debate, not whether you perceive that Bush believes there’s anything debatable about it. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t, maybe he’s pandering to the Religious Right at the expense of the Libertarian Right or something, but I was speaking to your beliefs. So…?
jamie, the “bioethics” council could have been a tool to resolve ethical conflicts. But Bush fired all the actual scientists on the council. There are only ethicists and philosophers left. It has become an echo chamber. And they are on record as being against every sort of biological advancement from cosmetic surgery on up.
Let us scientists police ourselves, like professionals, like doctors and lawyers. Quit treating us like mad-scientists and greedy children. Don’t you think we know the dangers and the ethics better than laymen?
But my base point is that Bush seeks to impose his relgious principles on a branch of scientific research. I believe that must be wrong.
I cannot bear it.
Speaker meant to say that he had no ethics.
SPQR, i’m a she.
I’m a kzinret, not a kzin.
religious demigogue, George Bush.
1. It’s “demagogue.” (From Wikipedia’s etymology of the word: “The word is derived from the Greek words demos (people) and agogos (leading).” Italics in original.)
2. To claim Bush is doing anything based on religious convictions or out of a desire to enforce them is utterly ridiculous. I challenge you to provide proof or evidence that this is what he is doing or that he is motivated by religion. Many make the claim, but no one can prove it.
Another classic.
Muslihoon, my spelling sux. i’m famous for it and frankly, i don’t give a damn. i’m a mathematician.
Just how would you interpret this sentence?
In a word? No. Note that even Doctors and Lawyers have laws that police them.
You believe it based on what? Your own morality? Your own code of ethics? What do you think ethics can legitimately be based on– everything but religion? What makes it unethical, for example, to do experimentation or organ harvesting on a comatose patient?
on what he said. like i showed Muslihoon ^^.
sure, we should obey laws. But i meant we should have our own ethics organ, like the AMA or the Bar association. The “bioethics” council can’t represent us–there are no scientists on it anymore.
i believe that would be the Hippocratic oath.
No, you misunderstand my question(s).
Upon what should ethics be based, and why is it wrong to include religious principles? How does one separate thier religion from their morality from their humanity from their ethics?
again, Maybee, your example is not only in violation of the oath (no doctor would perform it), but it is also against the law. you make no sense.
and, ethics should not be based on individual religions, not for supreme court justices or for presidents or for scientists. sorry.
a law is a moral consensus, based on aggregate ethics.
Should Alito and Roberts make judgements as Roman Catholics?
Speaker, you don’t get it. An “ethics council” does not have the job of “representing” us. That is the job of elected officials in their various capacities.
For federal laws, Congress adopts legislation and the President carries it out.
Not a “council” of bioethicists, doctors or witchdoctors. They are irrelevant.
The bottom line however is that the nation is having a debate about science and ethics all the time. And the ethics that are going to be carried out will be the people’s ( through their representatives ) not that of scientists, doctors or any other self-annointed. That’s what being a representative democracy is all about.
again, Maybee, your example is not only in violation of the oath (no doctor would perform it), but it is also against the law.
Rather like how performing abortions used to be a violation of both the Hippocratic Oath and the law?
“SPQR, i’m a she.
I’m a kzinret, not a kzin.”
I thought they were non-sentient? Oh wait…
Bush should fire them then. Cut the pork.
kestro.
Yup.
Scott Free.
you are so oldschool.
The protectors transported kzinret to the Map of Kzin when they built the Ringworld, and bred us for thought and speech.
You may not reguard that as an improvement.
Chmee:
Josef Mengele
(There’a an exception to every rule.)
SB: added
and subtracted
oh, yes, mojo, the obligatory nazi reference.
thanx.
well, time for me sheath my claws and silently fade away.
i have a night shift.
Ta, all.
We are cross posting and you thought I was reasking about the hippocratic oath. I was not. But it is interesting that you bring up the law, because as SPQR points out, it is new ethics law that we are discussing here, and the process by which said laws are developed.
Well, you have me confused, because I thought we were talking about development of new laws and ethics policy, not whether some individual scientist chooses to follow the established laws or not.
I don’t get the Alito and Roberts comparison.
Alito and Roberts will make judgements as Roman Catholics partially at least, because that is what they are. They will also use every other experience in their lives that has served to develop their sense of law, their perspective, and their reasoning. People are the totality of their experience, after all. But of course, they should not rule based on religious law rather than US law.
So what I am asking (and part of what I think Jamie tried to ask) is this:
If law is a moral consensus, who’s morality is taken into account? And is religious morality to be excluded from representation when coming to a consensus?
Upon what would you, personally, base your morality and ethics if you were to propose an ethics code?
Well, if you don’t like the ‘obligatory Nazi reference’, you could always look up Unit 731. Lots of Nazi-less unfettered pursuit of science there, and since the scientists were within their nation’s laws and were not charged with war crimes by the victorious powers, their activities were therefore entirely ethical, QED.
B) Cameron Diaz? Hel-o-o-o, the broad can’t even remember her lines fer chrissake…
Who wants to talk?
You just said the secret words! Give the woman a cigar! Now, all you have left to do is the simple part… cleanly seperate religious influences from the rest of the aggregate ethics both on a cultural level and on an individual moral level. Simple. You have 15 minutes…
Seriously, any ethical statement from any source, be it religious doctines, cultural mores, or traditional practices (such as the Hippocratic Oath) is logically equally true. You cannot evaluate one on scientific or rational terms.
A societies ethical codes are derived from the combined ethical codes of individuals. Individuals draw their ethical codes from their upbringing, from parents, friends, schools, news, religion, learning and experience… in short, from the society they grew up in. Its a vicious cycle.
What you need to do is stop panicking, calm down, and persuade the American public that this reaserch is ethical. Enumerating the scientific benefit that may be obtained from this reaserch is one part of that. But you need to address the ethical concerns of the skeptics, and to do that you have to treat them as rational human beings, which by and large they are.
Alito will always make judgements as a Roman Catholic, because he is one. He will make judgements as an Italian, and as an American, and as a male, and as a lawyer. Each of those influences is as valid as making judgements because you’re a mathematician or a science-fiction fan.
As for scientists making their own decisions my problem is that public policy decisions are not scientific. I trust scientists to decide the composition of a chemical compound, or estimate the age of a fossil. I trust a doctor to diagnose my illnesses. I trust them because there is an objective standard to be judged against. With public policy there is no objective standard.
SPQR, i’m a she.
I’m a kzinret, not a kzin.
Aren’t kzin females non-sentient?
“The word is derived from the Greek words demos (people) and agogos (leading).â€Â
Demos Agogos. used to gig there in the 50’s, man.
Oh, the polyester.
Er, “60’s”.
What can I say? It was some good shit, man.
What a dreadful, awful man. To actually SAY he belives in (gulp) GOD and humans shouldn’t be killed.
That’s almost as bad as if he’d said something like…like:
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The protectors transported kzinret to the Map of Kzin when they built the Ringworld, and bred us for thought and speech.
Or speech, anyway.
From now on when I want to say something, I’m just going to email Civilis and have him write it for me.
Seriously, any ethical statement from any source, be it religious doctines, cultural mores, or traditional practices (such as the Hippocratic Oath) is logically equally true. You cannot evaluate one on scientific or rational terms.
Maybe you can’t.
I am still trying to get my mind around speaker being pissed that she can’t try to create life because Chimpy is so retarded he thinks life comes from a creator.
Makes me wonder what Sam will be having for lunch…
the Spotted owl slow roasted over imported rainforest hardwoods?
…and what he has planned for the afternoon. So much Constitution to shred he may even skip his nap.
Thanks, darleen. That’s the best laugh I’ve had in a while.
Yep. Because there’s nothing worse than a half-gogue.
Hemi-demi-gogue?
MayBee,
Don’t sell youself short. I missed your post, you said what I was trying to say. I’m longwinded, overly fond of big words, and gramatically confused at times. I’m also an engineer with a literal mind, so I tend to spell things out clearly and very specifically.
Frankly, I agree with Speaker-to-Animals that the Republican party has not encouraged debate on the ethical principles in biological sciences, preferring to please the social conservative base, and that this could be detrimental to the country. But I’m willing to accept a compromise, and I believe the Democratic party and the hard left fringe are just as destructive to scientific research. I also believe that her style of argument alienates more people than it persuades. Then again, I further believe anyone who gratuitously breaks Godwin’s law (sp) hurts their own side in a debate as well.
You are neither. You lack the bravery.
Though, I have to admit, you have the scream-and-leap tactics down pat.
[Taps Sarcasm Detector; No Repsonse] Mine’s always broken, so I can’t tell if you’re joking with me or not, so I’ll respond seriously.
I’m a computer guy. It’s one of the reasons I’m excessively literal, because computers are as well. Provable and logical mean something to me. Ethical statements cannot be proven either true or false because different evaluators will give different answers.
I can make ethical decisions because I have free will and an educated conscience. I can evaluate others decisions because I believe in a moral framework beyond myself. I believe in right and wrong, good and evil. Those concepts, however, do not exist in any tangible form. They must be accepted, like anything divine in nature, on faith alone.
To quote a favorite fictional character, THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY.
Mathematicians have night shifts?
TW: third (third watch?)
I think they’re just incapable of speech, sort of the way speaker is incapable of realizing she’s worse than useless in her debate.
STP
Huh? I’m interested in you providing a link that this horror of a council are demanding the cessation of harelip and cleft palate repair.
And why do you act so shocked at the suggestion of harvesting of organs from comatose patients? Obviously you were following the Schaivo case and were thus familiar with Felos and Dr. Cranford, the latter of the activism that lesser humans who cannot live as full a life as he defines it should lose their rights as human beings and become chattel to be disposed of as their owners see fit.
And let’s also not forget the professor who said infants have no “right to life” and their parents should be allowed to kill them. And places like the Netherlands where elderly are beginning to avoid hospitals least they be deemed sick enough to be euthanize.
Doctors “police” themselves? Puh-leeze.
Thanks, MayBee and Civilis… I was putting kids to bed and am grateful for your continuing the thread with Speaker-to-animals so cogently. Exactly what I was trying to get across: who decides? And on what basis? If scientists (I’m not speaking of medical doctors, who, recognizing the Godlike power they may hold over patients and the ancient truism that absolute power corrupts absolutely, have an explicit moral framework within which they operate – most of them, anyway) routinely self-policed and came up with results similar to what their society values, there wouldn’t be a field of bioethics. The very existence of that field acknowledges that scientists – specialists by definition – are trained and predisposed to consider their own speciality in narrow terms, rather than in the larger context of humanity and society. It isn’t that scientists can’t make good ethical choices, but that nothing about science requires that they do so, and a lot about science requires that they discount their own moral compass in order to observe as accurately as they’re able.
Take, for instance, that “Project Implicit” thing that’s going around. For grins, I read the FAQs on its website, and sure enough, the researcher includes this:
…which is correct, if an incomplete articulation of the study’s findings. This is how it is in science: you will have an agenda – even a hypothesis is an agenda – which you will be more or less successful at keeping from influencing your research. The more successful you are, the better your science, but the less moral judgment you bring to your work.
(I use “you” in the sense of “one.”)
At least, so it seems to me.
TW: But I lack the high-level scientific credentials to say with any authority.
GET YOUR HANDS OFF OF MY UTERUS!
You know you like it.
Everyone should cut speaker some slack. She is evidently heavily involved in this ESCR, and does seem to really know this science. Her debate on the bioethics IS respectable and reasonable. I just don’t think she will change anyone’s mind here.
Hell, Nikkolai, I’m even on her side on the science part.
Civilis, I’m about to go do some things away from the computer, so I can’t answer your question fully. However, the short version — and I’m both a computer guy and a logician, so I bow to no one in my ability to be excessively literal — is that you’re almost on the right track. You’re correct that you have to have an axiomatic basis on which to build your argument.
You’re erring only in the assertion that you can’t make an axiomatic basis on which to evaluate moral or ethical questions without referring to some divine, or supernatural, or external reference. I will build for you a basic argument for ethical reasoning based only on evolution and the assertion that survival of the species is a core value for all species.
I have a totally open mind on the subject, it’s not really a matter of changing it because I am not sure what it is yet. But you aren’t going to influence me with bitching and moaning about dictators, star chambers and how ethics is a religious concept alien to science.
Charlie
I will build for you a basic argument for ethical reasoning based only on evolution and the assertion that survival of the species is a core value for all species.
I don’t doubt you can. It would be a collectivist morality and thus, servicing an external value.– the good of the ‘organism’ supercedes the good of its individual members.
If there is no God, then life is purposeless.
I’m totally on board with Feds funding stem cell research. But I have my limits on what I find acceptable, moral, and ethical. Everybody does, hopefully even speaker.
My problem with speaker-to-animals is not that she won’t change people’s minds, it’s that she wasn’t trying to change people’s minds.
Instead, she wanted to tell people their opinons don’t matter. Don’t worry, society, science can make the best ethics decisions on your behalf because you are a buch of religious rubes.
I reject that. She would do better to keep in mind B Moe’s words.
I’d like to think I am cutting her slack. My goal is not to stop her goal, which I think is a noble intention. My goal is to get her to think about the tone of argument she uses and the motives she imparts to others. I want people to get along. She obviously knows a lot about biological science, and she contributes to the debate. She just seems to be doing her cause more harm than good.
I didn’t mean to misinterpret you. I think I understand what you’re trying to do and there is an argument to be made for a utilitarian set of moral axioms. Its just that translating it into workable rules does not work.
To take a science-fiction parallel (as I believe we have some SF fans in the peanut gallery) look at Asimov’s three (four) laws of robotics. It produces a simple moral framework not grounded in faith that passes a quick moral inspection. Implementing it is an absolute nightmare. “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” Ignoring the definitions of robot and human (tricky enough, but not relavent to our debate), define injure, or inaction, or harm, such that the definition encopasses all known examples and includes no ‘false positives’.
Your general point is well taken. I admit we can generate at least a set of general guiding principles. I just wouldn’t want to start writing a code of laws based on them myself.
Now, define purpose. 8-)
MayBee, exactly what I’m trying to say.
TW: indeed. heh.
I don’t doubt you can. It would be a collectivist morality and thus, servicing an external value.– the good of the ‘organism’ supercedes the good of its individual members.
Funny, I basically start with the Objectivist view. The notion that a moral or ethical view either starts with God or is “collectivist” would be a tremendous shock to Ayn Rand.
So we’ll start easy: is it collectivist to sacrifice your own life to ensure that your children survive? And how does God come in to that?
If there is no God, then life is purposeless.
Maybe to you.
Before I forget, I need to salute the genius of this(from Jeff):
cracks me up every time I look at this post.
Charlie
Ayn started with the individual and that human as “divine”. You started with survival of THE SPECIES (which is actually where Robert Heinlein starts but he also divides that up with the POV of the heroic, moral individual ala Randian). A morality specific to species survival would state YOUR decision to sacrifice yourself for your children is subject to a larger morality…if your children’s survival is not in the best interest of the species then your action is immoral. Quite different than a morality that has the individual as an end, not a means.
Notice, too, I didn’t say YOU or I or anyone couldn’t find or create meaning within our own lives. I’m saying if existence is random, -birth,death, rinse and repeat – and your molecules have no more value than the molecules within a oyster or piece of quartz, then LIFE is without purpose.
Gee, Darleen, are you Civilis too? You seem to be referring to Civilis’ writings in the first person.
But go back through the comments. I was noting to Civilis that his claim, that is was impossible to “evaluate [an ethical claim] on scientific or rational terms” is demonstrably false: you can, for example, start out with an assertion that the individual is the source of value (not Divine, Ayn Rand would have cut you to shreds on that one; you’re implicitly making a deistic assertion there) and develop a rational ethic; you can take Heinlein’s step of a hierarchy of survival values (individual, family, tribe, nation, species) and get a similar rational ethic. It’s even a bit easier to make it make sense, because Rand’s system has to sort of go around the barn to account for people who sacrifice themselves for their children — not to mention people like Ragnar Dänesskold.
Buddhism also manages this rather nicely, based on what was essentially a psychological insight: there are actions that lead to peace of mind, and other actions that don’t. Here, the axiomatic basis is the notion that avoiding “suffering”, dukkha, is the desirable Good. Again, this is a rational basis for ethical argument with no reference to God.
As to whether life is purposeful, well, “purpose” is a tough word. in English, it kind of implies a subject and an object—the (somewhat archaic) verb form “to purpose” is transitive. That means there must be a Doer, a Purposer.
Needless to say, I find this argument vacuous and uninformative.
But again, the assertion was that if there is no God, then life is purposeless. I simply noted that while Civilis may feel that way, I don’t believe in God in any normal sense, and I don’t find life to be purposeless.
Charlie
Without seemingly like I’m taking a running leap at solipsism, I’m only me, not Civilis.
I put “divine” in quotes for a reason. Even Ayn Rand herself spoke at length about writing Man as heroic being. She didn’t consider man as merely another mollusk on a branch of coral in an indifferent ocean. She (for want of a better term) worshipped Man’s unique capacity for rational thought. Man is different from the animal world. Man can manipulate the natural world while animals are at the mercy of it..
Man as “divine.”
You could take the girl out of her Jewish upbringing, you couldn’t quite get the Jewish upbringing out of the girl.
Re Civilis, I figured as much, just tweaking you.
On the “divine” thing, well, maybe you could explain to me again what your point would be then?
In any case, though, you exhibited both Rand and Heinlein as examples of rational ethics not based on diety, and certainly not collectivist. Since Civilis’ assertion was that any ethic based on survival was necessarily inherently collectivist, you by exhibiting two counter-examples, disprove his assertion.
Charlie
Not “diety” per se, but certainly based on Man as separate and superior to the natural world.
And once you make that assumption…like assuming the concept of “free will” … then you start leaving collectivist, Man as animal, Man exists at the pleasure of other men, behind.
A reference to diety then becomes the assumption of the morality, even if the divine is within Man himself (created in the image of God) and life with meaning becomes possible.
But gee, Darlene, I don’t believe in any of that stuff. No God-Creator-with-Personal-Qualities (in fact, I think that notion is as close as could be to blasphemous). I don’t think that humans are special and distinct, or superior to the natural world. (You’re saying Man is unnatural?) And I see no justification whatsoever for assuming any one man is better than another, so no justification for one man justly existing at another’s pleasure, or under another’s coercion.
None the less, I woulda sworn I thought life had meaning.
You sure you’re not defining “life has meaning” as meaning “thinks about life like I do”?
Maybee is right. I’m not even trying.
I’m astonished and horrified that GW glorified progressive research in other fields in his SotU, while essentially proposing to outlaw biotech. i thought other people would be horrified too. I was wrong.
Gw’s premises are based on scientific ignorance of the fields of biotech and nanotech. I think the reason he is clueless is his advisory board, the “bioethics” council, has been purged of those inconvenient evil irreligious scientists, leaving only group-think ethicists and “philosophers”.
The land of the free and home of the brave? As far as biotech is concerned, this is the land of banned and home of the frightened.
and for those of you worried about us playing god with biotech, watch out for nanotech. we’ll be gods. we’ll fulfill the Turing Heresy.
If God made man in his image, that must mean man hs the inherent capacity to make sentient beings in ours.
Unless of course we screw up and make gray goo instead.
Speaker–If ESCR is really ALL THAT, how about doing the heavy lifting off-shore, say Brazil or somewhere (see Dr. Willerson’s work outside FDA regarding adult stem cell regeration of cardiovascular system–quite amazing). If the results do come, the dough and U.S. approval will follow.
nikkolai, that is already happening.
We can decide to be second class citizens in the world of science, or not.
there is vast health-benefit for the citizens and vast ecomonic benefit also for the country that does biotech.
think of the trade imbalance when americans have to go to china or korea for alzheimer’s therapy.
or pay black market prices here.
Our medical system will no longer be the best in the world.
And, I find Ayn Rand overated and dreadfully boring. She has absolutely no sense of humor.
snore city.
Hmmmm.
She was a screeenwriter.
Sex and the City by Ayn Rand.
There’s something in this.
From seed magazine–ten things bush forgot to mention in the SotU
glad i’m not the only one that noticed.