God and Communism

It's been a few years, but I distinctly remember Piaget's theory of child, and adult, development being based on brain physiology.

I think you have the psychology of Freud and his minions confused with the hi-tech, brain mapping psychologists of today.

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I would agree that though learning and physical circumstances can affect our choices,
We can choose to oppose at least some learning and physical circumstances,
And gravitate toward an inherently desired ideal,
(Such as "goodness" or "justice").

However, besides intuition, reason also assists in this stabilization,
(If one thinks that "injustice" is "justice", one can have difficulty gravitating toward "justice".)

 

I see it this way. I don't know of a single Communist, Agnostic, or Atheist who thinks indescribably torturing countless human "sinners" for eternity is moral.

I do know of billions of obviously slimy lying bastards, willing to swear on a stack of their sacred Bibles, that they believe their beloved model of morality, their GOD, is quite entitled to do so, because he was inexcusably dissed by a mere HUMAN'S, (i.e. Eve's) constitutional curiosity.

It is manifestly apparent to me which group is the most "moral."

 

I agree with the above, but it really is more complicated than that. The effective functioning of a group is fraught with problems and for each of these problems an emotive drive has evolved or been recruited. The drive to belong and work for the group wouldnt be enough, because too often the benefit to the group is not proximate enough to the costly behavior required.

Imagine the benefits if there were innate drives to respect rules and hierachy, to be able to empathise and feel a drive to help those in need. Or another drive to reciprocate and expect reciprocity and fairness, to surpress freeloading. In fact a lot of innate human emotions are aimed at surpressing freeloading, -indignation, anger, revenge, conscience, guilt, shame. All drives that promote altruistic activity towards others in the group at potential cost to self can be said to be moral drives. There is good evidence for the various seperate moral drives.

Imagine a warrior tribe, in long term conflict with surrounding tribes in a resource limited environment. Strong leadership with fighters with a strong sense of loyalty, suspicion and disdain of outsiders, strong respect for rule, hierachy and order throughout, this group is most likely to thrive. Recognise the rightwing mindset?

Then conditions change, resources are more plentiful, the fighting stops and they produce more of some things than they need. A group that can then be outward looking and engage in trade and cooperation with others, becoming less exclusive, without such strong need for internal heirachy, this group will do well, -achieved by people within the group with a liberal mindset coming to the fore.

Having people within a group with different balances of those moral drives can therefore be adaptive.

I am just speculating here and it could well be bollocks. Nevertheless there is good evidence that whilst compassion has no right or left wing prederiliction, respect for rule, hierachy and in group loyalty are innate moral drives more associated with the right wing.

 

Forget Freud and the Behaviorists, long dead and buried. I mentioned Bowlby because his attachment theory still hangs around, Piaget because he ignored genetically determined individualism, but I have less beef with that.

 

You can't think of Hitler, Pol Pot or Stalin? Their ideas of sinners were non aryans or bourgois, purely constructed ideas, little different from say Christian notions of heretics or witches

 

One, Hitler was a Cafflik. Two, that leaves you with two people opposed to my billions of bullshitting believers. Next.

 

Damn you, you're making me into an apologist. But billions of bullshitting believers didnt do the torturing. And your "two people" hardly acted alone. The Spanish Inquisition were pussies compared to Stalins Commisariat and the Kmer Rouge. Also include the Gestapo and camp commadants, cos Hitler was afeeist, and didn't butcher Jews because they didn't go to church on sunday.

 

Then stop defending the indefensible; a bunch of bullshitting "believers*" whose absolute epitome of decency and morality is - in any philosophical logic you care to quote - an absolute fucking farce.

*craven scabby-gutted God grovellers more intent on saving their yellow arses than any truth, justice, or morality,

 

Neither did hundreds of millions of Stalin's or Hitler's minions harm or want to harm a single hair of the enemies heads. This didn't stop Christian dominated Western morality declaring them criminals and calling for their extermination.

 

But billions of bullshitting believers didnt do the torturing. And (but)your "two people" hardly acted alone

.....sorta defeats your argument, doesn't it?

 

Correct, it must be accompanied by submission to the group's ideals, nurture, not nature.

The innate drive, as you put it, to belong to the group elicits this behavior.

Anger is primal, indignation and revenge are perversions of it.

All learned behavior

And that would be.....

Yes, but add a peace treaty and cooperation and everybody eats high on the hog.

Assuming they are not subverted by the warrior class.

I can agree that some people are driven by moral values, but I cannot agree that morals are innate, they are a learned, often coerced behavior.

I agree, except for the innate thing. (had to google the term "bollocks." a curious term)

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Huh??

I read that as; "decent bible believers don't torture, but Stalin and Pol Pot's evil followers, i.e. the 'Carmmunists,' do."

I think Brokenbeacon momentarily and regretfully "dropped his (Christo-capitalist) handcuffs," so to speak. This is okay by me; I still on occassions unconsciously drop mine, even 55 years after I got out of the Camps.

The moral of the story is never send your kids to a Christian concentration camp for their inculcation/education.

 

Bollocks = tadpole tanks.

 

For clarification, I was thinking you were referring this ...

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No. You misread it. 3 times. You had 3 (read: three) opportunities to get it right, but failed.

You seemed to claim that in the atheist camp only "two" people were torturers and in the christian camp billions were. I then pointed out that it wasn't the billions of believers that were doing the torturing but the leaders and their fanatical and psychopathic enforcers on both sides. As I implied previously, I don't see much difference.

BTW am I the only one who doubts that children go to torture class in christian schools?

 

reading the bible is torture class . . .

:devil:

 

The nurture assumption, the blank slate, "Give me the boy and I'll give you the man" (Watson. Or was it Skinner), it's all been buried by behavioral genetics, the first time psychology was exposed to proper scientific method.

Two decades of twin studies show that personality traits, psychological make-up, attitudes and behaviors are predisposed by genes and modified by nurture. The degree to which this happens varies from inidvidual to individual, but on average 50% or more of the variance depends on genes and 50% or less on nurture. It furthermore shows that most of the "nurture" effect comes from the "non-shared environment", i.e. outside the family, it comes from peer groups etc.

Of course these simple figures mask a complex nature/nurture interaction, which varies from 0% - 100% between individuals.

Seperate to moral instincts, of course, as I mentioned previously, a lot of the content of moral code is 100% learnt.

Take religion for example. Some religious behavioral code is based on instintive morality (e.g. the Golden Rule), some is based on idiosyncratic notions of "purity", entirely constructed, e.g. "pray 5x a day", "no sex before marriage", dress codes. Some codes are a mixture: "kill the infidels" (instinctive emotive tribalism, whereas the idea of killing them is a construct).

The strength of commitment to notions of purity or sanctity is one of the moral personality traits (interestingly stronger in right wing mind sets). And yes the degree of religiosity (but not the religion itself) is heritable; i.e. ~50% of the variance in religiosity is due to genes, -in western cultures. I expect the effect of nurture in high pressure Muslim cultures is much stronger and perhaps here 80 -90% of the variance is due to nurture.

 

My use of it is an effect of some post-childhood nurture. An English corruption of the American language.

 

It doesn't matter what the drives us to make our choices, -innate, learning, nauture/nurture. We are responsible for our actions. We are responsible for ensuring that we live by the codes of our communal living. When it comes to it we should use reason to overcome emotive drives.

A psychopath lacks the ability to empathise and has no feel for the fact that torturing a child is repulsive. But he is obliged to have learnt the laws of the land and his continued sharing of the community is conditional on his compliance. (Cognitive mental capacity is another matter)