re morality was re political atheists in article ql inn a gap caltech edu keith cco caltech edu keith allan schneider writes livesey solntze wpd sgi com jon livesey writes i don t expect the lion to know or not know anything of the kind in fact i don t have any evidence that lions ever consider such issues and that of course is why i don t think you can assign moral significance to the instinctive behaviour of lions what i ve been saying is that moral behavior is likely the null behavior that is it doesn t take much work to be moral but it certainly does to be immoral in some cases that s the craziest thing i ever heard are you serious it doesn t take much work to be moral also i ve said that morality is a remnant of evolution really and that s why people discuss morality on a daily basis because it s a kind of evolutionary hangover like your little toe our moral system is based on concepts well practiced in the animal kingdom this must be some novel use of the phrase based on with which i am not sufficiently familiar what do you mean by based on and what is the significance of it for your argument so you are basically saying that you think a moral is an undefinable term and that moral systems don t exist if we can t agree on a definition of these terms then how can we hope to discuss them no it s perfectly clear that i am saying that i know what a moral is in my system but that i can t speak for other people but this doesn t get us anywhere your particular beliefs are irrelevant unless you can share them or discuss them well we can what would you like to know about my particular moral beliefs if you raise a topic i ve never considered i ll be quite happy to invent a moral belief out of thin air jon
