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if God was a human, he would be a perfect human. a perfect human could not be without fault.
Christianity brings a wide scope of code to follow by. However, one of the important questions (which rather gets over looked) is the philosophy aspect. There is really no clear cut distinction on how Christians are supposed to believe regarding the mind philosophy of their religion. Is the mind physical or is it something not physical and just relates to our physical body?
Dualism is the belief that the mind and the body are two completely different things.
Physicialism is the belief that everything is physical, everything can be explained due to the physical .
While many Christians would jump out and say Dualism is correct there are problems that arise with this position.
1. If Jesus was a human being, he had to have the mind of God entailed into the body. But if the mind of God is present, how could he be a true physical human being?
2. Another viewpoint would say "jesus was an exception" he was dualist in the standpoint that he did have two en ies. He had the gift of being God and also being human.
Christian physicalism is usually meant to be a doctrine about human persons--that we humans are the sum total of our physical body and nothing more. God created us, we are limited, but can reach him if we accept him after death.
Further, traditional dualism suffers from the problem of redundancy... that one's personality is accounted for both in terms of neurological structures and by virtue of possessing a soul... one of the two seems extraneous. Notice that this is also problematic for Dualist interpretations of the Incarnation. If Jesus' 'soul' was immaterial, what work was his brain doing?
Just wanted to shed some light on this topic, feel free to give your input.
if God was a human, he would be a perfect human. a perfect human could not be without fault.
it seems traditional dualism raises some difficult questions.
what are the counter-arguements against physicalism?
The question then is: if the human mind is totally physical, what separates us from the animals?
phil you might like this:
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Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior
NYT
By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: March 20, 2007
Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others. Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days.
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The Beginnings of Morality? Biologists argue that these and other social behaviors are the precursors of human morality. They further believe that if morality grew out of behavioral rules shaped by evolution, it is for biologists, not philosophers or theologians, to say what these rules are.
Moral philosophers do not take very seriously the biologists’ bid to annex their subject, but they find much of interest in what the biologists say and have started an academic conversation with them.
The original call to battle was sounded by the biologist Edward O. Wilson more than 30 years ago, when he suggested in his 1975 book “Sociobiology” that “the time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of the philosophers and biologicized.” He may have jumped the gun about the time having come, but in the intervening decades biologists have made considerable progress.
Last year Marc Hauser, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, proposed in his book “Moral Minds” that the brain has a genetically shaped mechanism for acquiring moral rules, a universal moral grammar similar to the neural machinery for learning language. In another recent book, “Primates and Philosophers,” the primatologist Frans de Waal defends against philosopher critics his view that the roots of morality can be seen in the social behavior of monkeys and apes.
Dr. de Waal, who is director of the Living Links Center at Emory University, argues that all social animals have had to constrain or alter their behavior in various ways for group living to be worthwhile. These constraints, evident in monkeys and even more so in chimpanzees, are part of human inheritance, too, and in his view form the set of behaviors from which human morality has been shaped.
Many philosophers find it hard to think of animals as moral beings, and indeed Dr. de Waal does not contend that even chimpanzees possess morality. But he argues that human morality would be impossible without certain emotional building blocks that are clearly at work in chimp and monkey societies.
Dr. de Waal’s views are based on years of observing nonhuman primates, starting with work on aggression in the 1960s. He noticed then that after fights between two combatants, other chimpanzees would console the loser. But he was waylaid in battles with psychologists over imputing emotional states to animals, and it took him 20 years to come back to the subject.
He found that consolation was universal among the great apes but generally absent from monkeys — among macaques, mothers will not even reassure an injured infant. To console another, Dr. de Waal argues, requires empathy and a level of self-awareness that only apes and humans seem to possess. And consideration of empathy quickly led him to explore the conditions for morality.
Though human morality may end in notions of rights and justice and fine ethical distinctions, it begins, Dr. de Waal says, in concern for others and the understanding of social rules as to how they should be treated. At this lower level, primatologists have shown, there is what they consider to be a sizable overlap between the behavior of people and other social primates.
Social living requires empathy, which is especially evident in chimpanzees, as well as ways of bringing internal hostilities to an end. Every species of ape and monkey has its own protocol for reconciliation after fights, Dr. de Waal has found. If two males fail to make up, female chimpanzees will often bring the rivals together, as if sensing that discord makes their community worse off and more vulnerable to attack by neighbors. Or they will head off a fight by taking stones out of the males’ hands.
Dr. de Waal believes that these actions are undertaken for the greater good of the community, as distinct from person-to-person relationships, and are a significant precursor of morality in human societies.
Macaques and chimpanzees have a sense of social order and rules of expected behavior, mostly to do with the hierarchical natures of their societies, in which each member knows its own place. Young rhesus monkeys learn quickly how to behave, and occasionally get a finger or toe bitten off as punishment. Other primates also have a sense of reciprocity and fairness. They remember who did them favors and who did them wrong. Chimps are more likely to share food with those who have groomed them. Capuchin monkeys show their displeasure if given a smaller reward than a partner receives for performing the same task, like a piece of cu ber instead of a grape.
These four kinds of behavior — empathy, the ability to learn and follow social rules, reciprocity and peacemaking — are the basis of sociality.
Dr. de Waal sees human morality as having grown out of primate sociality, but with two extra levels of sophistication. People enforce their society’s moral codes much more rigorously with rewards, punishments and reputation building. They also apply a degree of judgment and reason, for which there are no parallels in animals.
Religion can be seen as another special ingredient of human societies, though one that emerged thousands of years after morality, in Dr. de Waal’s view. There are clear precursors of morality in nonhuman primates, but no precursors of religion. So it seems reasonable to assume that as humans evolved away from chimps, morality emerged first, followed by religion. “I look at religions as recent additions,” he said. “Their function may have to do with social life, and enforcement of rules and giving a narrative to them, which is what religions really do.”
As Dr. de Waal sees it, human morality may be severely limited by having evolved as a way of banding together against adversaries, with moral restraints being observed only toward the in group, not toward outsiders. “The profound irony is that our noblest achievement — morality — has evolutionary ties to our basest behavior — warfare,” he writes. “The sense of community required by the former was provided by the latter.”
Dr. de Waal has faced down many critics in evolutionary biology and psychology in developing his views. The evolutionary biologist George Williams dismissed morality as merely an accidental byproduct of evolution, and psychologists objected to attributing any emotional state to animals. Dr. de Waal convinced his colleagues over many years that the ban on inferring emotional states was an unreasonable restriction, given the expected evolutionary continuity between humans and other primates.
His latest audience is moral philosophers, many of whom are interested in his work and that of other biologists. “In departments of philosophy, an increasing number of people are influenced by what they have to say,” said Gilbert Harman, a Princeton University philosopher.
Dr. Philip Kitcher, a philosopher at Columbia University, likes Dr. de Waal’s empirical approach. “I have no doubt there are patterns of behavior we share with our primate relatives that are relevant to our ethical decisions,” he said. “Philosophers have always been beguiled by the dream of a system of ethics which is complete and finished, like mathematics. I don’t think it’s like that at all.”
But human ethics are considerably more complicated than the sympathy Dr. de Waal has described in chimps. “Sympathy is the raw material out of which a more complicated set of ethics may get fashioned,” he said. “In the actual world, we are confronted with different people who might be targets of our sympathy. And the business of ethics is deciding who to help and why and when.”
Many philosophers believe that conscious reasoning plays a large part in governing human ethical behavior and are therefore unwilling to let everything proceed from emotions, like sympathy, which may be evident in chimpanzees. The impartial element of morality comes from a capacity to reason, writes Peter Singer, a moral philosopher at Princeton, in “Primates and Philosophers.” He says, “Reason is like an escalator — once we step on it, we cannot get off until we have gone where it takes us.”
That was the view of Immanuel Kant, Dr. Singer noted, who believed morality must be based on reason, whereas the Scottish philosopher David Hume, followed by Dr. de Waal, argued that moral judgments proceed from the emotions.
But biologists like Dr. de Waal believe reason is generally brought to bear only after a moral decision has been reached. They argue that morality evolved at a time when people lived in small foraging societies and often had to make instant life-or-death decisions, with no time for conscious evaluation of moral choices. The reasoning came afterward as a post hoc justification. “Human behavior derives above all from fast, automated, emotional judgments, and only secondarily from slower conscious processes,” Dr. de Waal writes.
However much we may celebrate rationality, emotions are our compass, probably because they have been shaped by evolution, in Dr. de Waal’s view. For example, he says: “People object to moral solutions that involve hands-on harm to one another. This may be because hands-on violence has been subject to natural selection whereas utilitarian deliberations have not.”
Philosophers have another reason biologists cannot, in their view, reach to the heart of morality, and that is that biological analyses cannot cross the gap between “is” and “ought,” between the description of some behavior and the issue of why it is right or wrong. “You can identify some value we hold, and tell an evolutionary story about why we hold it, but there is always that radically different question of whether we ought to hold it,” said Sharon Street, a moral philosopher at New York University. “That’s not to discount the importance of what biologists are doing, but it does show why centuries of moral philosophy are incredibly relevant, too.”
Biologists are allowed an even smaller piece of the action by Jesse Prinz, a philosopher at the University of North Carolina. He believes morality developed after human evolution was finished and that moral sentiments are shaped by culture, not genetics. “It would be a fallacy to assume a single true morality could be identified by what we do instinctively, rather than by what we ought to do,” he said. “One of the principles that might guide a single true morality might be recognition of equal dignity for all human beings, and that seems to be unprecedented in the animal world.”
Dr. de Waal does not accept the philosophers’ view that biologists cannot step from “is” to “ought.” “I’m not sure how realistic the distinction is,” he said. “Animals do have ‘oughts.’ If a juvenile is in a fight, the mother must get up and defend her. Or in food sharing, animals do put pressure on each other, which is the first kind of ‘ought’ situation.”
Dr. de Waal’s definition of morality is more down to earth than Dr. Prinz’s. Morality, he writes, is “a sense of right and wrong that is born out of groupwide systems of conflict management based on shared values.” The building blocks of morality are not nice or good behaviors but rather mental and social capacities for constructing societies “in which shared values constrain individual behavior through a system of approval and disapproval.” By this definition chimpanzees in his view do possess some of the behavioral capacities built in our moral systems.
“Morality is as firmly grounded in neurobiology as anything else we do or are,” Dr. de Waal wrote in his 1996 book “Good Natured.” Biologists ignored this possibility for many years, believing that because natural selection was cruel and pitiless it could only produce people with the same qualities. But this is a fallacy, in Dr. de Waal’s view. Natural selection favors organisms that survive and reproduce, by whatever means. And it has provided people, he writes in “Primates and Philosophers,” with “a compass for life’s choices that takes the interests of the entire community into account, which is the essence of human morality.”
i got this from a philosophy site which answers your question. There are also other arguments against physicialism that I will show you later.
"The main argument against physicalism is usually thought to concern the notion of qualia, the felt qualities of experience. The notion of qualia raises puzzles of its own, puzzles having to do with its connection to other notions such as consciousness, introspection, epistemic access, acquaintance, the first-person perspective and so on. However the idea that we will discuss here is the apparent contradiction between the existence of qualia and physicalism.
Perhaps the clearest version of this argument is Jackson's knowledge argument. (There are also a number of other arguments in this area -- for a very good recent discussion, see Chalmers 1996). This argument asks us to imagine Mary, a famous neuroscientist confined to a black and white room. Mary is forced to learn about the world via black and white television and computers. However, despite these hardships Mary learns (and therefore knows) all that physical theory can teach her. Now, if physicalism were true, it is plausible to suppose that Mary knows everything about the world. And yet -- and here is Jackson's point -- it seems she does not know everything. For, upon being released into the world of color, it will become obvious that, inside her room, she did not know what it is like for both herself and others to see colors -- that is, she did not know about the qualia instantiated by particular experiences of seeing colors. Following Jackson (1986), we may summarize the argument as follows:
P1. Mary (before her release) knows everything physical there is to know about other people.
P2. Mary (before her release) does not know everything there is to know about other people (because she learns something about them on being released).
Conclusion. There are truths about other people (and herself) that escape the physicalist story.
Clearly this conclusion entails that physicalism is false: for if there are truths which escape the physicalist story how can everything supervene on the physical. So a physicalist must either reject a premise or show that the premises don't entail the conclusion"
why do they ignore like half of the 10 commandments but judge gays to ?
I wouldn't say that Christianity is Dualist. The Apostles' Creed states a belief in the resurrection of the body. If the physical part was strictly separate from our souls, Christians wouldn't need their bodies again.
Does that one hit a little too close to home????
For the umpteenth time.... sexuality is an abomination before GOD. The act is de able. Christians therefore 'hate the sin', but not the sinner -- an at ude that is not equivalent with 'judging' someone.
Posts like Mookie's in a thread that is trying to be honest and serious should not be merited with a response.
Interesting question about the ten commandments and those who break them.
Gods on the list.
O.K. I'll bite.
Which one?
clue: He's a single father.
.....and then the thread went to .....
Sorry DR, I should have been clear. #7
I don't know, a thread starting with 6 interesting and relevant posts has got to be at least a 2007 Political Forum record.
Humans were created with three en ies:
The body: Our physical self. Tissues, organs, blood, bones, etc... all comprise our body. Unique to our DNA. Can be measured with the same physical parameters we use to define our surroundings (mass, height, width, color, smell, etc...) or measured in active terms (how strong, fast, loud someone is).
The soul: Our emotions and personality. Can be shaped by our environment. Our soul is comprised of all the characteristics that make each and every one of us unique, that which defines who we are. Are we jovial, bitter, intelligent, humorous, optimistic, malicious, resourceful, etc...
The spirit: Often, and incorrectly, used interchangably with the word soul, our spirit is our eternal lifeline. It is a mirror image of everything defined by our soul but this en y lives on forever. The spirit is also our connection into the realm of consciousness, and serves as our connection with GOD (animals have a body and a soul, but not a spirit).
So to answer your question, the mind is physical when concerning the physicallity of our brain. The physical interactions involved in our synaptic responses, the physical 'electrical' wiring that enables our bodies to heed our mind's command, etc...
The mind is also a meta-physical en y when concerning the concept of consciousness - even while self-awareness itself can be construed as a physical concept. Our subconscious thoughts, our dreams all occur in a realm which is not defined by physical parameters.
GOD of course is supernatural and cannot be constrained or bound by any of the above definitions.
Furthermore, the significance of JESUS (during his time on earth) being fully human and fully GOD has nothing to do with how that duality would be defined. It has everything to do rejecting temptation and defeating sin while being human. JESUS faced the same struggles as His fellow peers without giving in to temptation - and he did so without Divine intervention, even while being fully divine Himself. He felt pain, just like us. He went thirsty, hungry, got sick, faced the cold, or heat exhaustion just like us. He endured all of these seemingly normal human experiences and never once complained. JESUS was without blemish. It had to be this way, otherwise His self-sacrifice on the cross would hold no worth whatsoever as an atoning act. The sacrifice would have no redeeming significance had He sinned at all.
hememegoaoaba you know damn well most christians ignore at least half of the commandments, yet what REALLY gets them excited/off the couch/protesting in the streets is the thought of two men with a civil union
dam the republicans had 2 themes to the 04 election, sep 11th and banning gay marriage in states in which it wasnt permitted
Some would suggest that Jesus did not live without sin. What would you say to those people/ theologist?
They are en led to believe what they see fit....
#6 God kills constantly
So you judge them.... on the perception that they are judging gays? I see.... It's a two way street mookie.
Personally, I believe GOD's laws supercede the laws of men; most Christians believe this to be true - but it is irrelevant. The people that lobby to vote on 'moral' issues simply want their viewpoint reflected in the laws that govern their land. Does the democratic process not hold this accessibility to self-governance to be a virtue?
So basically what you are saying is that you feel angered by the fact that others (with differing viewpoints) are granted the same access to the democratic process as yourself. You would rather they not lobby at all. That's not how democracy works.
But don't fret. There will come a time when Christianity becomes an 'archaic belief system. When the Christian viewpoint becomes the minority one. And when that time comes, you will feel free to do as you please under a considerably more relaxed set of moral laws. Moral code will be governed by relativism. It will be a time when being politically correct will trump Absolute Truth itself. That day is not far from today.
Aren't theologist as close as one can get to scientific fact?
yes but they are pretty far away when it comes to contemporary philosophical ap udes.
1. A Christian by definition (in part) is one who is an adherent to the teachings of Jesus Christ, and that would precipitate them from "ignoring" any of the Commandments.
2, Christ/God condemn sexuality, therefore his followers (those that adhere to His teaching) are compelled to do the same.
With that being said, the thrust of Christianity is not to condemn sexuality (sin in every form is condemned ), but to pass along the Message that Christ defeated our compulsion to submit to the temptation of sin.
The verse reads as follows; "For Christ did not come into the World to condemn the World, but that the World through Him might be saved".
Are you following any of this mook?
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