He’s trying to establish that there is a concept of “right and wrong” that is universal to all humans, in essence, absolute. If he can get me to agree to such a thing I’m willing to bet he will then question me on where that universal absolute definition of right and wrong comes from, the implication being God, of course.

Well my goodness, let’s just go all around our ass to get to our elbow, shall we?

I suspected that’s where he was going with it. And it’s a weak argument if that’s the case.

Damn the torpedoes, let’s cut to the chase! My thoughts and posture exactly, ‘cept I’m eating boiled peanuts. I’ve been hoping Les will correctly intuit where Hires will attempt to spring the trap and render it hopelessly ineffective. I’ve been searching for a link to provide to ACME products but don’t know yet which of these guys is the Road Runner and which is Wile E. Coyote. It’s important because I don’t want to assist the wrong guy. Then again this discussion is all about whether there is a right and wrong one here. Damn, I’d better boil some more peanuts and stay tuned.

More sinister yet, Hires could secretly be Jesus in disguise, and we are all about to bear witness to His triumph over the evil one.

This thing better have a decent ending or I’m gonna be one upset mentally defective guy.

Let’s get ready to rummmble!

Brock, fork over the peanuts and no one gets hurt! [yum]

OK, Hires, carry on…

Hires is a student of Jesus the Christ. That gives him superior debate-ability to the “Socratic Method”. I predict there’s gonna be all you can eat jello over at the Stupid Evil Bastard residence. Will eating evil jello make you sick?

Mild Bill, “What would it be if I was defending myself and a stray bullet hit an innocent person?” It would be an absolute opportunity to say “oops, sorry.” Duh!
Brandi, eat all the boiled peanuts you want. I’ll make more.
OK, I’m gonna stop now, otherwise it will be just me in the recent comments section.

MB,
“Nothing baffles me more about Christianity than your refusal to concede that adherents of other belief systems believe as strongly as you do”

Not the case at all, I think mormons would have to have gigantic faith to believe what they do. You can believe in anything as hard as you want, but unless it’s right, then it makes no difference.

DB,

I want to pick up on something in your 15 Oct post--specifically

It’s like those masons, they don’t even realize that their cult worships satan until they’re in it so deep that they can’t get out.

In the interest of full disclosure, I need to say that your comment caught my attention because my father and uncle were Masons. I am not—I had no interest in seeking membership. Therefore, I have no personal knowledge about the organization. What little I do know comes through having read a lot and picking up a little here and there. Do I take your statement sentence personally? A bit perhaps, but I like to think that my reaction was more in the nature of Huh?. Having said that, here we go—starting with a couple of observations.

My impression is that if someone in the Masonic order finds something disturbing in the rights or rituals they could simply stop going to lodge meetings, take off their ring, and stop paying dues. I don’t know if they would be obliged to give back their sheepskin.

How bout them Shriners? Those devious guys dress in funny costumes, march in parades, and support children’s hospitals just to keep the rest of us from discovering the true nature of their organization. Sorry about the sarcasm. I tend to do that. But seriously, would a group of satanists set up a service organization that does good work as a front to cover their true motives? There was a gentlemen’s club in London in the late 1700s (sorry can’t ember the name) that got together and did some outrageous and licentious things. (I think there might have been some satanic rites) Those guys acted pretty openly and didn’t put up any fronts. Incidentally, our own Ben Franklin reportedly attended some of their revelries during one of his stays in London.

Many of our founding fathers were Masons. I kind of knew that, but here is a quote that I found yesterday at (href=”http://watch.pair.com/mason.html) Masonic Foundations of the U.S.* The quote provides some specifics.

From American Masonic History - What Are America’s True Roots?

“Some of the greatest names of the American Revolution were Masons: Ethan Alien, Edmund Burke, John Claypoole, William Daws, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, John Paul Jones, Robert Livingston, Paul Revere, Colonel Benjamin Tupper, and George Washington. Of the 56 signers of The Declaration of lndependence, eight were known Masons and seven others exhibited strong evidence of Masonic membership. Of the forty signers of the Constitution, nine were known Masons, 13 exhibited evidence of Masonic membership, and six more later became Masons.

“There were many other Masonic influences in early American history: (1) Lafayette, the French liaison to the Colonies, without whose aid the war could not have been won, was a Freemason; (2) the majority of the commanders of the Continental Army were Freemasons and members of “Army Lodges”; (3) most of George Washington’s generals were Freemasons; the Boston Tea Party was planned at the Green Dragon Tavern, also known as the “Freemasons’ Arms” and “the Headquarters of the Revolution”; (4) George Washington was sworn in as the first President of the United States by Robert Livingston, Grand Master of New York’s Masonic lodge, and the Bible on which he took his oath was from his own Masonic lodge; and (5) the Cornerstone of the Capital Building was laid by the Grand Lodge of Maryland.”

Was our Republic founded by a bunch of satanists? Yeah I guess so. (Sorry, sarcasm again.) I originally thought that the page I just quoted included some serious scholarship. Not so for this page or for the entire site. It is hard to tell exactly what points these folks are trying to make. But it is clear that they are ladling out some conspiracy theorys. Examples: 1) The Free Masons in England and Scotland set up lodges in America to eventually establih a nation guided by Free Masonry. (Oh by the way, they observe that some Masonic symbols are rooted in demonology.) 2) The Bush family and some cabal at Yale were sympathetic to Hitler, the American Eugenics Society somehow provided justification to Hitler for the holocaust and for Mengele’s medical experiments, Dubya is now in the process of setting up the Fourth Reich. And much much more--this second conspiracy has incredible scope. (In the real world America doesn’t rate a pass on the Eugenics Society.)

Wow! These guys are much better than Oliver Stone.

Here is one other quote from the URL that links to Masonic Foundations yada yada.

“Freemasons intended that the center of power would be the Temple of Understanding, not the White House!! Thus, they located the Temple due North of the obelisk! We hope you understand now that the spirit of Freemasonry has been guiding our nation’s direction ever since 1776, and that this guidance was solidified in 1792 by incorporating Freemasonry symbols into the very street structure of Government Center. The importance of our discovery of these maps is that we found them on a Freemason Web Site, http://www.eskimo.com/~daylight/. The fact that we found these maps on a Freemason site PROVES beyond a shadow of a doubt that the intent of L’Enfante and our Founding Fathers, from the beginning of our country, was to deliberately design Government Center according to Freemasonry principles.”

Digression here. The bolding in the quote is mine. I surfed to the above listed Freemason Web Site, Seattle’s Masonic Lodge of Arts, (aka Daylight) and the only map that I could find was from Yahoo. It showed the location of their lodge. (Sorry Watch Unto Prayer guys, a very deep, dark shadow of doubt remains with me.) The masons of yore built their temples to represent the cross. They aligned the transept in the E-W direction. They probable did this to allow the sun to shine through the stained glass windows to best effect. The street grid of Washington D.C has a N-S E-W orientation. Therefore, the Watch Unto ... people would have us believe that Pierre L’Enfante was part of some deep conspiracy that probably included whoever decided to bound the district with a square that is aligned to the cardinal points of the compass. Please give me a break.

More to the point, here is a quote from the Daylight home page. “Daylight follows the objectives of the Masonic philosophy which includes the study of the liberal arts and sciences and the practice of brotherly love, relief and truth” Now that doesn’t sound very satanic to me.

Ok DB, I hope you get a sense of where I am coming from. Now, I am still curious as to how you know that Masons are satanic.

That said, here are a couple of suggestions. Take them or not--your call. (1)Browse the Daylight web site and read over the membership requirement and the part about the charitable work that they do. Then draw your own conclusions. (2) Much longer term. If you like the occasional good novel, try Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet. It is set in the 11th or 12th century and, in part, deals with how masons (use of lower case indicates that I mean the craftsmen of that time) used their tools and their knowledge of geometry to lay out and build temples. There is more to the book than that. I just focused on the technical stuff because it gives one a sense of where today’s Masons got some of their symbols. I find that sort of thing interesting; however, you may or may not.

Finally, Masons come closest to fitting Valhalla’s second definition of a cult. They have a body of adherents and a system of rituals. In order to join the masons, an applicant has to believe in a Supreme Being. However, they don’t specificity which one. The problem is that Masons have systems of religiouns rather than a sytem of religion. (Those crafty guys make it hard for us to categorize them.)

* An organization called Watch Unto Prayer (http://watch.pair.com/) put up the site. Best I can tell this is a group of former Catholics who, through bible study, determined that Jesus was the way to salvation. I took out the active links to avoid enhancing their Google rating. Bizarre is the kindest the word that I can use to characterize the content of their site.

Dammit--typos in the closing paragraph. Shame on me.

Les,

What I believe you, and others, are trying to say is that this Moral Law, as we’ll call it, is simply our herd instinct, and has been developed just like our other instincts.  I am not saying that I don’t believe in a herd instinct, but that is not what I mean by the Moral Law. 

We all know what it feels like to be motivated by instinct- by our instinct for food, or our sexual instinct.  It means you feel a strong desire to act in a certain way.  And sometimes, we do feel a sort of desire to help another person: and no doubt that desire is because of the herd instinct.  But feeling a desire to help, is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not. 

Les, suppose you hear cry for help from a man in danger.  You’ll probably feel two desires- firstly a desire to give help (because of your herd instinct), and secondly the desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct of survival).  But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the desire to help, and suppress the desire to run away. 

Now this thing that decides which side to encourage, cannot itself be either of them.  You might as well go and say that the sheet of music which tells you to play a note on the guitar, at a given time, is in fact the note itself.  The Moral Law tells us the tune to play, our instincts are merely the strings. 

What I believe you, and others, are trying to say is that this Moral Law, as we’ll call it, is simply our herd instinct, and has been developed just like our other instincts.

There are a couple of options here:

A.  Brock is controlling my mind again and making me say crazy things like we help other people because of a “herd instinct”.  I have never heard of a herd instinct, so I have to assume that YOU Brock, you boiled peanut eating bastard, planted this thought in my mind.  How did you get the frequency to the chip in my head?

B.  Hires can read minds and knows what we all think.  I must assume this because I’ve not seen anyone come close to saying any phrase similar to “herd instinct”.  He who owns this page mentioned we are social beings, but I don’t know how that translates into a herd.

C.  Hires is cleverly (NOT) building a straw man argument that ALL atheists believe humans are just higher-functioning animals (thus the explicit use of the term “herd” instead of “group”).  That’s what all of us “evolutionists” think; we are just animals, so we should satisfy our animal instincts whenever we desire.

I vote option C.

Les,

What I believe you, and others, are trying to say is that this Moral Law, as we’ll call it, is simply our herd instinct, and has been developed just like our other instincts. I am not saying that I don’t believe in a herd instinct, but that is not what I mean by the Moral Law.

No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. What I am saying is that some aspects of morality are a by-product of social evolution. Those societies that taught moral concepts that encouraged cooperation and compromise prospered and those that didn’t died out. I’m also saying that there are logically sound reasons to try and be less selfish and more concerned about your fellow man. “Herd instincts” has little to do with it.

We all know what it feels like to be motivated by instinct- by our instinct for food, or our sexual instinct. It means you feel a strong desire to act in a certain way. And sometimes, we do feel a sort of desire to help another person: and no doubt that desire is because of the herd instinct. But feeling a desire to help, is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not.

Sounds to me like you’re confusing the psychological concepts of “drives” with “instincts.”

Instinct: A behavior that is genetically programmed into an entire species. Thus, the behavior is not the result of learning, and can be seen across members of a species. For example, there are specific nest building behaviors that are part of different species of birds. If you hatch one of these birds in captivity and raise it without any contact with any other members of its species, it will still do those species-specific nest building behaviors.

As contrasted to:

Drive: An aroused state of psychological tension that typically arises from a need. A drive, such as hunger or thirst, motivates the organism to act in ways that will reduce the tension. So, for example, when you become hungry (tension caused by need for food) you are motivated to eat (method of reducing the tension).

These are two separate and distinct concepts in psychology. Humans have very few, if any, real instincts whereas we have many drives. Compassion and the desire to help others are typically learned behaviors and not instinctive. One only need to spend some time around infants and toddlers to see the truth of this fact.

Les, suppose you hear cry for help from a man in danger. You’ll probably feel two desires- firstly a desire to give help (because of your herd instinct), and secondly the desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct of survival). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the desire to help, and suppress the desire to run away.

I’ve been in such a situation and I can report that what you describe is not the case at all. At least it’s not for me.

Yes, I do feel a desire to help as a result of my upbringing, but thoughts of danger to my own person do not cross my mind nor is there any kind of a third “thing” that has to encourage me to override any kind of a desire to run away. Which isn’t to say that I don’t consider the possible danger and try to minimize my risk while giving aid, but that has more to do with the knowledge that my attempts at assistance are moot if I end up becoming part of the problem myself. I respond very well to emergencies when necessary.

Now this thing that decides which side to encourage, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well go and say that the sheet of music which tells you to play a note on the guitar, at a given time, is in fact the note itself. The Moral Law tells us the tune to play, our instincts are merely the strings.

Nice analogy, but not how things work as near as I can tell. It implies that “The Moral Law” is an outside force that manipulates human instincts, but instincts are genetically programmed behaviors that you would just know how to do without having to be taught. If all humans were born with the innate knowledge of how to perform CPR on someone who’s not breathing and performed this behavior without fail each and every time someone stopped breathing then I would call that an instinct. They didn’t have to be taught how to do it and they are unable not to do it when the proper stimulus is applied. That’s an instinct.

The reality, however, is that even when people who’s first reaction in an emergency is to run away manage somehow to override that impulse they are often still at a loss on how to help and sometimes would have helped best had they run away as they had first thought to. In this case they may be driven to help, but don’t have the knowledge or the level headedness to know how.

My morals are the guidelines I have set for myself as the standards I will try to live by. Some of them are a result of what I’ve been taught by my parents and the society I live in, some are the result of much consideration and internal debate. None of them are the result of some form of outside influence as near as I can tell.

How the hell did I get into this one Mild Bill? I hate the heard instinct! It’s nothing but troublesome. Everybody’s all “Well I heard this” and “I heard that” till you don’t know what to believe. I say, unless you heard it from me, it ain’t true. Not no way, not no how!

Vern R, “The Pillars of the Earth” is a great read.  Another one that you, and others should read is “The Hiram Key” by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas. I’ve always had a keen interest in the Freemasons and the Knights Templar histories, though I’m not exactly sure why. (Yeah, that works.) If it doesn’t inspire deeper thoughts, you’d better check and see if you have that “hollow sound” when someone thumps you.

Mild Bill, you will write and mail that DNC check now! And you will write a comment taking credit for that sick masturbation post that so offended Les, DB and BCS (though I’m not as certain he/she was offended.) It wasn’t really my post and you know it. That is all! You may return to your personal “best of” taped episodes of “Saved by the Bell.” Over and out!

Les,

The Moral Law was once called the Law of Nature because people thought that everyone knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it.  This did not mean that you could not find a person who didn’t know it, just as you find people who are color blind or have no ear for a tune.  But taking the race as a whole, they thought that the idea of decent behavior was obvious to everyone.  And I believe they were right.  If they were not, then all the things that were said about the wars were nonsense.  What was the sense is saying the enemy were in the wrong unless Right is a real thing that the Nazis knew as well as we did and really should have practiced?  If they had had no notion of what we mean by right, then, though we still probably would have fought them, we could no more blame them for that, then for the color of their hair. 

Les, you said that you do not believe there is a third ‘thing’ that guides us in our decision making.  Perhaps this may further assist my point. Another was of seeing the Moral Law is not simply one of our instincts, is this.  If two instincts are in conflict, and there is nothing in a creatures mind except those two instincts, obviously the stronger of the two would win.  But at those moments, when we are most conscious of the Moral Law, it usually tells us to side with the weaker of the two impulses.  You probably want to be safe much more than you want to help the man that is drowning: but the Moral Law tells you to help him all the same. 

And surely it often tells us to try to make the right impulse stronger then it naturally is?  What I mean is, we often feel it our duty to stimulate the herd instinct is some way, by waking up our imaginations and arousing our pity and so on, so as to get up enough guts for doing the right thing.  But clearly we are not acting from instinct when we set about making an instinct stronger than it is.  The thing that says to you, ‘Your herd instinct is asleep.  Wake it up,’ cannot itself be the herd instinct.  The thing that tells you which note on the piano needs to be played louder cannot itself be that note.

You are making absolutely no sense to me at this point. Take, for example, the following sentence:

The Moral Law was once called the Law of Nature because people thought that everyone knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it.

What the hell are you talking about? I did some searching to see if I could come up with anything that corroborates your claim above. I found two definitions for “Law of Nature” and they are as follows:

n : a generalization based on recurring facts or events (in science or mathematics etc): “the laws of thermodynamics”

and

Law of nature. (a) A broad generalization expressive of the constant action, or effect, of natural conditions; as, death is a law of nature; self-defense is a law of nature. See Law, 4. (b) A term denoting the standard, or system, of morality deducible from a study of the nature and natural relations of human beings independent of supernatural revelation or of municipal and social usages.

Your implication is that this outside force you keep referring to as “The Moral Law” is supernatural in nature and was at one time referred to as the “Law of Nature” yet one of the definitions of “Law of Nature” says it has nothing to do with the supernatural. I did come across several pages with various theological viewpoints on what constitutes a Law of Nature, none of which seems to validate the sentence you wrote above.

This did not mean that you could not find a person who didn’t know it, just as you find people who are color blind or have no ear for a tune. But taking the race as a whole, they thought that the idea of decent behavior was obvious to everyone. And I believe they were right. If they were not, then all the things that were said about the wars were nonsense. What was the sense is saying the enemy were in the wrong unless Right is a real thing that the Nazis knew as well as we did and really should have practiced? If they had had no notion of what we mean by right, then, though we still probably would have fought them, we could no more blame them for that, then for the color of their hair.

The Nazi’s had their own sense of right and wrong which was relative to their viewpoint. Did they think what they were doing was wrong? Some may have, but the majority did not. Hitler certainly was convinced that he was right and justified to undertake the actions he did. The allies felt he was wrong and because of this disagreement a second major world war was fought. Why? Because both sides thought they were in the right and neither side was willing to concede to the other except by use of force. Nazi Germany was defeated and went the way of all cultures that refused to engage in cooperation and compromise over the years. Your example only bolsters my argument.

Les, you said that you do not believe there is a third ‘thing’ that guides us in our decision making. Perhaps this may further assist my point. Another was of seeing the Moral Law is not simply one of our instincts, is this. If two instincts are in conflict, and there is nothing in a creatures mind except those two instincts, obviously the stronger of the two would win. But at those moments, when we are most conscious of the Moral Law, it usually tells us to side with the weaker of the two impulses. You probably want to be safe much more than you want to help the man that is drowning: but the Moral Law tells you to help him all the same.

Sorry, doesn’t happen with me. If a man is drowning (and I have, coincidently, saved a drowning man before) thoughts about staying safe are the furthest thing from my mind. I’m a pretty good swimmer and I’ve taken CPR classes. There wouldn’t be very much thought involved in my jumping in to save him unless there was some very obvious reason to suspect that diving straight in might be foolish and that would only slow me down long enough to figure out how to rescue him without undue risk. Whatever this “Moral Law” thing you keep insisting is responsible for pushing people to help others is not a factor in my reactions.

I notice you continue to insist on using the word instincts even after having the proper definition spelled out for you. Perhaps you should take a moment to explain what you believe instincts are…

And surely it often tells us to try to make the right impulse stronger then it naturally is? What I mean is, we often feel it our duty to stimulate the herd instinct is some way, by waking up our imaginations and arousing our pity and so on, so as to get up enough guts for doing the right thing. But clearly we are not acting from instinct when we set about making an instinct stronger than it is. The thing that says to you, ‘Your herd instinct is asleep. Wake it up,’ cannot itself be the herd instinct. The thing that tells you which note on the piano needs to be played louder cannot itself be that note.

You’ve never studied music, have you…

I still have no idea what you’re trying to claim here. You continue to abuse the word “instincts” and continue to make reference to a “herd instinct” which humans do not have. You also haven’t addressed any of the points I brought up in my previous post. Did we forget to take our medication today?

Brock,

Vern R, “The Pillars of the Earth” is a great read. Another one that you, and others should read is “The Hiram Key” by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas. I’ve always had a keen interest in the Freemasons and the Knights Templar histories, though I’m not exactly sure why. (Yeah, that works.) If it doesn’t inspire deeper thoughts, you’d better check and see if you have that “hollow sound” when someone thumps you.

Noted. Thank’s very much for the suggestion.

Les,

When I use the word ‘instinct’, what I mean is: a feeling that we ought to behave in a certain way.  Obviously you felt that you must save the man from drowning.  Good for you. But, from what I understood, you said that you saved the drowning man because there was no risk of injury or death involved for yourself.  If there was any danger (and that was my original point), would you still feel as if you ought to save him?  Most people would feel that they ought to.  Whether you’re an exception to that, I don’t know. 

You also seem to be absolutely sure that humans to not have ‘herd instinct’.  Are you absolutely positive?

Les,

Allow me to put this in yet another way, and maybe this will help you understand.

If what we’ve been calling the Moral Law was in fact one of our impulses, we ought to be able to point to one impulse inside us which was always what we call ‘good,’ always in agreement with the rule of right behavior.  But you cannot.  There is none of your impulses which the Moral Law may not sometimes tell us to suppress, and none which may not sometimes tell us to encourage.  It is a mistake to think that some of our impulses - say mother love or patriotism - are good, and others, like sex or the fighting impulse, are bad.  All we seem to mean, is that the occasions on which the fighting instinct or the sexual desire need to be restrained are rather more frequent than those for restraining mother love or patriotism.  But there are situations in which it is the duty of a married man to encourage his sexual impulse or for a soldier to encourage the fighting instinct.  There are also occasions on which a mother’s love for her own children or a man’s love for his own country have to be suppressed or they will lead to unfairness towards other people’s children or countries.  Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses.  Think once again of a piano (and you don’t have to be a professor of music to understand this).  It does not have two kinds of notes on it, the ‘right’ notes and the ‘wrong’ ones.  Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another.  The Moral Law is not any one instinct or set of instincts: it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts.

Take a visit to a large city sometime, and see what happens when you yell for help. Women are actually instructed to yell fire if they are under attack because they will be ignored if they yell help. If coming to the aid of another was an inate behaviour, virtually everyone would have it, but that is just not the case. You keep using examples of adult behaviour, but if these things were inate, rather than learned, children would exibit the same behaviours. But that just isn’t the case. Children are very self centered, looking out for others has to be taught to them.

Patriotism is an inate impulse? Les’ comment about meds seemed to be close to the mark when I saw this one.

Please excuse the multiple misspellings of innate, must be past my bedtime.

Hires, I know this isn’t my conversation but I have to point out that I think you may be confusing a “herd instinct” with a “herd mentality”. That definitely exists, as we see it demonstrated by post-ers here almost daily. They don’t have to behave like “sheep” who must wear the trendiest clothes, follow the first religion they are exposed to, or begin every sentence with a lower case letter, but they do. Do you baa-aa-lieve a “herd mentality” is a natural human inclination?

Les,

When I use the word ‘instinct’, what I mean is: a feeling that we ought to behave in a certain way. Obviously you felt that you must save the man from drowning. Good for you. But, from what I understood, you said that you saved the drowning man because there was no risk of injury or death involved for yourself. If there was any danger (and that was my original point), would you still feel as if you ought to save him? Most people would feel that they ought to. Whether you’re an exception to that, I don’t know.

You understood incorrectly. There is always a risk for injury or death in trying to save a drowning person. If they panic while you’re trying to provide aid they could kill you both. The only way I know of that you can save a drowning person without putting yourself at risk would be to stand on the shore or a boat and toss them a life preserver. If you go into the water after them, as I did, then you are putting yourself at risk.

What I said was that even knowing that there was a risk there wasn’t any debate in my head about whether or not I should have gone after this person. I didn’t sit there thinking “I want to help, but I could die too!” And there was no third overriding “instinct” that told me that I should disregard my own safety and go help. My thoughts of rendering aid are a direct result of my upbringing as my parents taught me that I should help others in need whenever I can.

You also seem to be absolutely sure that humans to not have ‘herd instinct’. Are you absolutely positive?

Perhaps you should explain what the hell you mean by a “herd instinct.” You make us sound like cows. Humans have social drives that encourage them to seek out companionship, but nothing like a “herd instinct” similar to cattle.

As for your followup post, well, you’re just sinking more into the quagmire there. I will say this much: You have some very interesting ideas on human psychology.

I have this newfangled invention called the television machine and sometimes they have shows with lions, tigers, leopards, etc., hunting.  I’m sure we’ve all seen the benefits of the herd instinct displayed in action with the noble wildebeest.  The only purpose I can see for them to herd is so there will be witnesses there to watch them being eaten alive.  This is what I believe the wildebeest are saying to each other when being hunted:

WB #1 Hey Smitty, look at that lion over there
WB #2 Yeah I see him.  Don’t worry, he’s after old Jonesy.  Jonesy is old and lame and an easy catch

WB #1 Shouldn’t we warn Jonesy?
WB #2 Screw that…better him than us

WB #1 That is ssooo cold blooded
WB #2 Hey bro’, meat’s meat and a lion’s gotta eat.

I think wildebeest #1 may be gay, not that there’s anything wrong with that!  I just noted a little lisp there when he said “ssooo”.

And obviously right and wrong depend on what side of an argument one is on.  This country was founded by democratic-minded freedom fighters (from an American perspective) and cold-blooded terrorists with no respect for law (from an English perspective).  Who was right and who was wrong?  It all matters what side of the Atlantic you’re on.  There’s no instinct or any of that nonsense involved…it is simply competing needs, wants, and desires.  How many people go to war because they believe they are wrong and their cause unjust?

Brock

1.  I have a roll of aluminum foil wrapped around my head, so your thought rays do not affect me.  My neighbors seem a little confused though.

2.  If you ever make fun of my boy Screech again, you WILL regret it.  I have access to GPS guided weapons…don’t make me use one of ‘em.

3.  I’m torn between sending my money to the DNC and the RNC.  I like the DNC because they really care about “my people”.  They even appoint them to “important” positions in government like Secretary of Commerce and then kill them in fiery plane crashes.  I like the RNC because they think Colin Powell’s and Connie Rice’s successes are typical of black people everywhere; therefore there is no need for affirmative action.  I also like the way God commands John Ashcroft to write those rockin’ tunes.  I just can’t decide!

DB

You can believe in anything as hard as you want, but unless it’s right, then it makes no difference.

Whoa…several posts and hundreds of words later you finally get what I was saying!  Notify the media!  Then the natural question is how do you know you are right (other than because you say so?).  I don’t mean to challenge your personal beliefs; I‘d just like you to see this from my perspective.  Everybody thinks they’re right…or do you think people convey “revealed lies” to others?  I believe they convey what they “think” is the truth.

Les,
Just an observation, obviously you’d say I’m way off, and I may be. It seems that Hires has not yet really brought up God, but YOU know that if you admit to anything he says then he will. So I’m just saying that your going way out of your way just to make sure that you stand against everything he says, even if it does make sense. Giving him an edge may cause a little weakness on your side and we all know you can’t have that happen!!  Horrors if he happens to be right!!
So anyways, keep picking away at the little words and whatnot that you don’t like him to use and keep overlooking his main point, I think your getting somewhere.

MB,
Yes I realize that my beliefs look as stupid to you as the mormons do to me, all I’m saying is that one IS right, I base my beliefs from the Holy Bible because it holds true to itself. You may say “well it seems to from your point of view” and you may mock it, but thats what the Bible says that people will do. It is like no religion in that I don’t have to hope that I’ve been “good” enough to get into heaven, or have to go preach to a certain # of houses before I’m saved. I know I’m saved right know, and anyone can, its not exclusive to a certain kind of people. These are all reasons (and there are tons) why I believe what I do. I do see where your coming from and I hope that you see my perspective aswell.