Morality instinct

I think evolution provided us with instincts to stick with the ideas and behaviors we are taught as children (in some cases the childhood indoctrination), so that when we go against them we feel bad things (guilt, fear) and when we follow them we feel much better, relaxed and even full of joy.  The evolutionary benefit of this should be easy to figure out.

Our "conscience" is one of those things we are taught -- the mores and rules of our culture.  Hence people can end up doing perfectly awful things but feel nothing if they were not taught against it in childhood.  For the most part, however, because of a sort of natural selection among cultures, what the culture teaches is fairly moral and usually a reasonably good guide.

Our beliefs are another thing -- which can have the serious downside that we believe things stubbornly rather than changing them into opinions subject to critical scrutiny.  These beliefs can be compared to furniture we sit on without noticing they are there -- we don't see them as subject to question and can react emotionally when others do, sometimes in some cultures with deadly effect.  I have found meditation about such things useful.

Whether or not "good" and "evil" exist as objective realities in themselves is a philosophical question.  I feel that we should analyze our beliefs about good behavior rationally, rather than the emotions our instinct produces, but this is hard -- not just to recognize the effect the instinct is having on us (such as creating harmful revulsions) but also to force ourselves to avoid intuitive judgments.  Various philosophical schools have tried to reduce the rational process down to deduction from fundamental principles, with a good deal of success, although in some cases with difficulties in highly artificial theoretical scenarios.  Study of this ethical history is a good idea if one wants to discern what is really good and bad rather than what our culture and instincts tell us.

We know that some people seem to be born without the instincts described above, and feel no emotions when they do wrong -- the tendency is seen to run in families (hence is genetic) and is usually called sociopathy.  I think this phenomenon serves to provide extremely strong evidence of the correctness of my opinion as described above.

Morality without religion

I think religion makes people more inclined to follow the precepts of that religion's teaching.  Whether this is more moral or not depends on the details of that teaching.  A religion can bring about, instead, extremely immoral behavior.

The person without religion has to make up their own minds and assume personal responsibility for what they do.

Here is a view of the founders of the US -- I think maybe more objective than what one usually gets.  Every country seems to want to deify its founders.  The American Founding Fathers were, except for Franklin, white male aristocratic wealthy landowners (Franklin was probably America's first millionaire and was a self-made entrepreneur).  They were fairly spread over the political spectrum, from the extreme right (Hamilton) to the center right (Washington and Adams) to the extreme left (Paine and, slightly less extreme, Jefferson).  The actual constitution was written mainly by folk in Washington's camp, the Bill of Rights by folk in Jefferson's (Jefferson opposed the original Constitution).

They were of course all well educated gentlemen, with but a couple of exceptions not Christian but Deists, although except for Adams they didn't ever express much antipathy to Christianity in public.

Many of them owned slaves and to my knowledge only Adams ever expressed any dislike of this -- being from Massachusetts that would not be surprising.  Jefferson appears we now know from DNA evidence to have been a hypocrite on that subject, having had a slave woman for his mistress (this was about then but he adamantly denied it), and not freeing any of them until his death (such manumissions for slaves close to the master were common).

The political system they created was in my opinion not very good, and has not been among the reasons the US has been so successful.  Presidential systems are inherently subject to gridlock -- something that at one point led to the Civil War and which has always, except in a few periods of one-party rule (reconstruction), hindered American political action.  After the Founders passed, very few men of distinction made it up, and then by accident -- Lincoln, TR Roosevelt -- because the political election system and general franchise fosters non-intellectual and emotional and -- well politicians rather than statesmen.

Reincarnation (rebirth)

I have had experiences that I could interpret as traces of a past life, but if one lives in a culture where it is taken for granted -- much as many Americans take Heaven for granted -- such experiences cannot be trusted entirely, but are nevertheless suggestive.  I think people around the world have such things happen to them but unless their expectations are clued, they dismiss them.

The claims just can't be tested scientifically any way I can think of.  Therefore a rational person has to withhold belief, and leave it as an opinion that it seems likely, and no more.

I will say though that a universe where sentience is like electric charge or energy -- preserved but constantly changing -- the idea sure makes sense.  It is way too easy, though, to go overboard here -- this is speculation since no one knows what sentience might be or where it might came from (although actually much the same can be said of electric charge or of energy).

One must be compassionate and not judge, but one also must not be naive and unwise in thinking everyone out there is good.  Most often the good ones are on the side of right and the evil ones on the side of wrong, and an objective observer has little trouble telling them apart.

More belief mockery

Believers should not get away with putting their beliefs or their faith outside the limits of rational attack by arguing that each person has freedom to believe what they want (or with any other tactic, for that matter).  They don't want to question their beliefs and don't want any one else to bring up things that are uncomfortable to them and raise doubts.  Attacking such beliefs on rational grounds is not a personal insult unless one uses invective.

Faith is one of those things.  The meme called "Christianity" has this teaching -- that God gives you faith.  It is really clever.  If you don't believe, then God has overlooked you, so you believe and attribute it to God while in reality it is a cop-out for believing what you have been indoctrinated with and want to believe.

I've seen the testimonials of people who have "come back" and their testimony of the joy and relief they felt.  Breaking with indoctrination is hard -- one feels guilt and fear -- and giving in and going back to the indoctrination gives you relief from that plus a good dose of serotonin to boot.  Thus most of those who have been indoctrinated into rigid beliefs in childhood either stubbornly stick with them in spite of reason, or they become hostile (sometimes extremely so) to those who "did that to me" and hate their prior religion.  Neither is healthy.  Rational skepticism in the absence of "belief" or faith -- with just reasoned opinions -- is the best.

Belief mockery

That others mock us doesn't mean we need to mock them, and, in fact, we are better off if we don't -- both from a karmic viewpoint and from how the world sees us.  (Karmic viewpoint = how our behavior affects or changes us.)

Mockery, though, is much in the eye of the beholder.  Usually the one handing it out doesn't see it as such, and is insensitive -- or the opposite may be the case and the person who thinks they are being mocked is too eager to assume it.

Criticism is not mockery.  Nor is humor.  Not even both of them together is mockery.  I would make my feeble effort to define mockery as requiring a malicious element in it.

Death by meditation

One of the stories of the Buddha's death is that he did something similar to what the Thai monk reportedly was trying to do.  He called his followers together and went into progressively deeper and deeper states of meditation and effectively committed suicide.  That some believers would want to emulate that is understandable.  The problem is one can't really do it -- it's a story.  The actual death is under some question but most commonly thought to have been brought about by food poisoning.

There is in my opinion way too much stuff attached to meditating.  It is not some magic practice where one works wonders and sees the future and all that.  It is a great way to compose oneself and gain personal insights and organize ideas in one's head, but really, it is not a paranormal thing at all.

One world one government

Who knows what the future holds.  I personally think a benign autocracy without political parties would be close to ideal, but it has such a danger attached to it that most, probably rightly, would never allow it to happen.  How does one be sure the autocrat will stay benign?

A single global government, though, is needed, and we pretty much have one.  Not the United Nations -- it is getting better but still is pretty much a joke, but the network of international treaty organizations, especially the WTO, combined with all sorts of conventions dealing with specific problems, such as global warming, freedom of the seas, human trafficking, endangered species, money laundering,  human rights, and so on.

As nations learn more and more how to act together to pull errant nations into line using embargoes and sometimes force, and as economies and political systems move more and more toward each other (i.e., socialists become more capitalist and capitalists become more socialist), and as the overall level of health and education and living standards improves and evens out, a single world seems inevitable.

Some rules of English grammar that should be dropped.

1.  Eliminate the insistence on "complete sentences."  Sometimes sentence fragments are just fine and in fact effective.

2.  Stop fussing about correct use of pronoun case.  "Me want a cookie!"  is wonderful.  Of course in that case humor is intended, but a sentence like, "She gave pencils to Mary and I" has the benefit of avoiding the alliteration and is not usually misunderstood, sounds natural, and even if it is a case of being "over-correct," so what.

3.  In that vein, the language should eliminate "whom" except as object of a preposition (where "who" still is distractive).

4.  Ban "shall" from legal documents.

5.  In fact, only allow "shall" in the polite request, "shall we" to keep the distinction between it and the question "will we?"

6.  Stop being so fussy about agreement between subject and verb.  All kinds of subtleties would become possible if the rules weren't so rigid.

7.  Change the punctuation rules at the end of the sentence to be logical by stopping the insistence that closing quotes must be outside the end-of-sentence mark.

8.  Drop the fussing about comma splice and other uses of the comma and make its use optional depending on need for clarity and style.

9.  Agree that a period is optional after common abbreviations such as "Mr".

10. Don't worry about dangling participles.  So what if someone can read it in a ludicrous way -- they won't, and if they do that's their problem (or maybe gain in pleasure). 

11. Allow use of a period rather than a question mark except for sentences intended to be questions but are not grammatical questions.  "Are you happy."  "You are happy?"  Rhetorical questions should also not need a question mark.  (Basically that would mean the question mark would indicate up-tone).

I would lie to someone who demands information I don't want to give and to which they have no right.  Refusing to answer is not a good solution, as then they assume the worst.

Pearly gates

I would much prefer there were pearly gates awaiting me than either rebirth (which I think likely but does not preserve me, only my "life spirit," whatever that might be) or extinction (a distinct possibility).

However I am too proud to let what my intellect tells me be overcome by what I would like.

When there is no note and no sign (depressive behavior is not really a sign -- unless they talk about killing themselves or the hopelessness of life) then one wonders and hopes the police do their job.

I wish the world were wealthy enough that everyone could talk to a mental health specialist at least once a month.  Absent that maybe they should put anti-depressives in the drinking water (of course that is absurd, but I do know people who are not depressive but still take anti-depressives and they are happier).

There are two things I would say to a suicides survivors:  First, do not judge.  They were depressed, and that is a disease condition -- one should not judge them any more than one would judge someone who dies of some other deadly disease.  Second, do not feel guilty -- even if the suicide note blames you.  Again, it is the disease talking.  Sometimes we think, "If only I had done such and so."  No -- we are not supermen and cannot read minds.




Well, at least that is what I've learned from my counselors (fortunately I have insurance that covers that stuff).

If there is a "God" who has a physical form, they you should get rid of the capital "G."

Scientific error

There have been a number of times respected scientists have trusted their instruments and gotten their fingers burnt.  The neutrinos traveling faster than light comes to mind.

There have also been times when the scientist believes his numbers over the rest of the scientific world, and in the end put himself on the fringe.  Room temperature superconducting comes to mind.  Here the potential profits were so great and even getting study grants so important that the people involved just refused to admit error.  They probably convinced themselves -- unless we are careful and humble it can happen to anyone.

The scientific edifice is not often in need of major demolition and repair.  Most changes happen incrementally, so whenever one has results that imply need for a major change, one should be very sure of one's data and its interpretation.  This is not something the untrained or amateur should even think of undertaking.

Pills for sleep, constipation

I'm a believer in not suffering if there is a pill available to fix the problem, but I learned the hard way that this approach should be avoided when it comes to sleep and to constipation.

Evil regimes

I think the world, or whatever part of it has the ability, has a moral obligation to stop evil regimes in the bud.  Not only do they tend to fester and infect the rest of the planet, but human decency calls out to help those they brutalize.  The fact that evil regimes in the past have been allowed to fester this way until they became calamities should teach us a lesson.

Of course it doesn't always happen -- it takes a lot of leadership and usually it requires them to present an immediate danger -- which tells us sad things about humanity.