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RE: Make-Sense-of-Things-Monday Philosophy contest for +3.5SBD

in #newbieresteemday7 years ago

Let me clarify. I am not trying to trick you. The ethical and moral beliefs of others have a profound impact on me personally and on nearly everyone else on the planet, so I take it seriously.

When I say "there is a lack of evidence...." I am not claiming that the thing does not exist. It is possible that the main characters in Star Wars existed a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. I have a lack of evidence to suggest that those characters existed in the real world. I stand ready to modify my statement upon seeing the evidence. If you want to pray to the Jedi or guide your own behavior via virtue ethics, and you do so peacefully, that is OK with me. I would prefer people to not use the type of sloppy reasoning that causes harm to OTHERS (either directly or by proxy through their government) based on belief in things for which there is no evidence.

I say this in part because I have an abundance of evidence that suggests that conflict exists and is often justified by moral beliefs or similar beliefs about the way things should be (e.g., most wars, all political conflict, and domestic conflict, such as "my wife left the house during the day and had lunch with her friend and her friend's husband, so I punched my wife's teeth out").

I prefer for people to recognize the lack of agreement on political, religious, and moral issues, consider the possibility that humans lack an accurate and reliable internal mechanism for determining the truth of such beliefs, and follow the path by which we all refrain from harming peaceful people based on these beliefs. I would like people to understand that those beliefs are prone to error despite how emotionally attached we are to our own moral beliefs and how confident we are that the other guy is wrong.

I suspect that you prefer to not be harmed by somebody who uses sloppy reasoning to justify their harm against peaceful people, because you said in your previous reply:

I don't want engineers to tell me why I should value individual rights over collective utilitarian outcomes, how I should live my life...