Intelligence and value

Strange thread for a religious forum?

This is between people. I have to pick one first. Ok here goes general perception:

1. The *supposed* intellect bashes the *supposed* religious person using the notion that its just belief without proof essentially. In many respects the argument seems to go with that its belief in something which is unlikely. Indeed if you sat in a court of law and said God made me do it...you are unlikely to get away with it unless you are termed mentally ill.

2. *supposed* religious person argues against this person on the grounds that essentially they are closing their minds to what they see as reality. Where do they get their motives? who teaches you your motives? Where do your values in judgement come from? what drives you to do things? And religious people may call this God or spirit.

Now I will stab both of these people. The truth is in both cases noone knows.

In the first case I'm going to stab historians in the sense that only recently have they 'discovered' that history is really just history of historical evidence...not of reality (no s**t Sherlock!). Plus the 'supposed' religious people have very good points...If we were not educated rethically we would behave like animals and I'm sure this computer you see would not be here.

In the second case I'm going to say the first case has grounds in that you should reasonably judge things on balance of evidence and the possibility of occurenece, albeit vague.

The general point is that most of us are normally human, that is we don't have the minds of the great people who, despite their tendencies to follow each route, actually at heart have values and intellect and so it appears sound judgement. there is a clear difference between educated and intelligent! In any case I think we may be dawning on a new religious front where tradionalists will be seperated from radicalists in much the same way as science was seen as religious heracy.

Lets stop this and recognise

a) Humans need to feel good. Why criticise the percieved stupidity of them? Would you kill a rat just because it is stupid? If you would then you prove my point of intellect without value.

b) We are facing problems all the time. If we don't stop ensuing technology and using intellectual strength to find cures to problems like pollution or epidemics/pandemics then there is more chance our species will die.

if i understand what your saying, i agree with you. ethical values do not need a religous standpoint to come from. most ethical values are just the logical basic rules needed for humaqns to peacefully co-habit in large groups. other wise we would be like animals, though often some animals display such ethical values. most do not kill each other, they share rather than steal from each other. so what we call ethics is more or less common sense.

in what i see as a summary of heyjme's last two points, neither religion nor technology are society, they are both just parts of it. for our society to work they must coexist peacefully

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other wise we would be like animals, though often some animals display such ethical values. most do not kill each other, they share rather than steal from each other. so what we call ethics is more or less common sense.

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Think about this more deeply. In many ways humans are animlas still. We are eductaed but most of us tend to hold things towards us. We form groups everwhere and one such group is a religious sect to which we belong...Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Buddhism etc., and even groups within or about these. And this applies to to certain disciplines: science, philosophy, art and the various branches and differences. This is animal behaviour in a way. Like you say ethics is more common sense and if the truth is known largely this is true. Its basically protecting your own and this is animal behaviour. I would say one way to stop this is to actually protect and respect equally those who are not your own. Very few humans, if any, can say they can truly do this.

Can they and will they? I'm doubtful sadly.

But the question still needs to be asked: how? Plot some ideas down, probably they will be rubbish, but by joining good bits of each post there may be some consensus between most. Ironically this is one example of how we could go about solving such problems!

as far as i can see there is almost no way that humans are ever going to completely overcome the urge to respect and protect them and theirs more than any other person. the only way i can see of doing that is through a fundemental change in the way the human mind operates, which could only happen through either some strange evolutionary twist, or through some advanced genetic engineering, though that form of genetic engineering would not be allowed to be researched, as it would potentially allow people to be turned into drones such as the clone army in star wars.

Yeah...My level of stupidity is now dawning on me....Time to go play.

your by no means stupid. for all we know, u may be right and i may be wrong. we are both purely stating our opinions, mine jsut happens to be that it is a bit idealistic to expect humans to completely overcome their nature and accept everyone as an equal, i try hard to, but i know i dont succeed.