202 Hops Infused
In case you missed it, you can hear me on the latest episode of Skepticality! The episode also features Michael Shermer talking about his new book The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Led Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom.
I’m at t=38m53s. Have a great weekend!
↓ Transcript
ROB
When did we get a record player?
KATE
Craig is trying to beef up his online dating profile.
ROB
What's this? Hops-infused beard oil?
ROB
I think he just leveled up to maximum hipster.
When did we get a record player?
KATE
Craig is trying to beef up his online dating profile.
ROB
What's this? Hops-infused beard oil?
ROB
I think he just leveled up to maximum hipster.
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Nothing specifically wrong with Hops if you want to smell like Beer.
On Schermer’s book he has the Time-line backward. Truth led the way to Reason and Science followed. Morality was defined long before.
Have you read it?
“Morality” can’t be defined. It is a construct of a particular society and as such is relative, not absolute. If morality existed as a definition, then societies and groups within societies wouldn’t clash about it. As a consequence, morality can’t be said to have been defined long before, only some tenets of what you view as morality. It is impossible to state any full definition of morality with which you can’t find another group, culture or society both now and in history disagreeing vehemently. State the most anti-moralistic thing you can think of and you’ll probably find it being practiced as normal elsewhere at some point in human history.
This is not to say that there aren’t beneficial individual “morals” but they are usually at the discretion of the society within which you live and the individual themselves. I would even say that people generally think themselves to have good morals and others generally to have worse ones, especially when looking across at other cultures or other societies. The other societies or cultures will no doubt look back across the divide with the same thoughts.
Yes , morality is well defined it existed before Moses codified it in the Ten commandments else how did Joseph know it was wrong to lay with his masters wife?. What you are referring to is known as laws written by humans which may or may not line up with the absolute. Martin Luther King Jr. summed it up saying that a just law will always be in accordance with God’s law. In this instance the Truth is not a thing…
@wnp: The “ten commandments” you refer to are in themselves the construct of a particular society or group, in this case Judaism and Christianity. They are no more fundamental or well defined than any other religious rules by the thousands of sects and religions in the world, many of which will contradict across different religions or even within their own religion. The ten commandments are in themselves open to interpretation and used differently by the different christian sects, both now and over the history of christianity. There are in fact many more than ten commandments, the number and order of which varies from sect to sect. This in itself proves that morality is not “well defined” which by definition implies there are not differenet interpretations. Morality within modern religions is actually loosely defined to allow for the variety of cultures and ethnic backgrounds they are trying to encompasses. If it wasn’t, how do you explain so many sects within any umbrella religion, each with its own interpretations of “morality”? Or is your chosen viewpoint correct and all the others wrong?
If a just law will always be in accordance with god’s law, which god are you referring to? I assume you are preaching for Sharia Law to be introduced worldwide? God has no place in modern laws, which are rightfully purely human constructs, hopefully decided by and for the general benefit of the society within which they will be used.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments
I Make the statement based solely on your “report” to say what I said doesn’t require reading it. The proper question would be have you read it? You cannot begin from a position of no morality, the best you can arrive at will be a counterfeit. It would be like borrowing your silver and gold to buy a printing press to Print money to pay you back. Of course you would have to be duped to believe that the money I payed you back with had as much value as what I borrowed from you, counterfeiters don’t attempt to counterfeit anything of no value no one would accept it. Your report is even worse it is more like a 3 dollar bill perpetrating the falsehood. Morality was well defined prior to Noah. It is absolute and anything relative to absolute morality is what we call laws.
Ah, Gods law. Morality was figured out a long time ago, that’s why people were so well-behaved until the enlightenment came along. Take that, atheists!
But really, you should read the book. I would also recommend The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris.
On the contrary that is how we know that people weren’t well behaved and still aren’t. Better reading would be, “The Victory of Reason” by Rodney Stark. I guess that you accept my statement about the timeline is valid or you or Mr. Schermer misrepresented his book.
Lack of rebuttal does not imply concurrence, any more than lack of refusal implies consent. You can’t just assume victory because you’re the last person that spoke.
Well, you *can*, but you’d most likely be wrong. 😉
I appreciate everyone’s comments, but this ‘morality debate’ seems to have gone off the rails. I’m moderating further comments. As much as I enjoy philosophy, argument by assertion is a pet peeve of mine.
I am confused why people want beard oil. But then again I guess they won’t understand why I want cocoa butter for my skin either.
It makes beard slaloming a lot better. Have you ever tried sliding on an un-oiled beard? You’d only ever do it the once before reaching for the good old hops-infused beard oil, the choice of beard slalom champions the whole world over. As you might suspect, it is however a minority sport, pursued by a hardy few and watched by even less.
This is the second page of this comic I’ve read that feels like a rerun… I know it’s not, but that’s my impression.
That works out at about a 1% re-run rate. By TV soaps and film standards that’s hardly even going to register on the re-run meter.
I am in awe of those pancakes I see in the twitter feed dated ~11h ago. The Paleontologist now wants them for her 8th birthday breakfast tomorrow morning.
What’s the shiny that Craig is holding in the last panel?