re morality was re political atheists livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes explain to me how instinctive acts can be moral acts and i am happy to listen for example if it were instinctive not to murder then not murdering would have no moral significance since there would be nothing voluntary about it see there you go again saying that a moral act is only significant if it is voluntary why do you think this and anyway humans have the ability to disregard some of their instincts so only intelligent beings can be moral even if the bahavior of other beings mimics theirs you are starting to get the point mimicry is not necessarily the same as the action being imitated a parrot saying pretty polly isn t necessarily commenting on the pulchritude of polly you are attaching too many things to the term moral i think let s try this is it good that animals of the same species don t kill each other or do you think this is right or do you think that animals are machines and that nothing they do is either right nor wrong animals of the same species could kill each other arbitarily but they don t they do i and other posters have given you many examples of exactly this but you seem to have a very short memory those weren t arbitrary killings they were slayings related to some sort of mating ritual or whatnot are you trying to say that this isn t an act of morality because most animals aren t intelligent enough to think like we do i m saying there must be the possibility that the organism it s not just people we are talking about can consider alternatives it s right there in the posting you are replying to yes it was but i still don t understand your distinctions what do you mean by consider can a small child be moral how about a gorilla a dolphin a platypus where is the line drawn does the being need to be self aware what do you call the mechanism which seems to prevent animals of the same species from arbitrarily killing each other don t you find the fact that they don t at all significant keith
