James Swayze <swayzej@earthlink.net> writes:
> I headed off the issue of "playing god". I said, (paraphrasing
> myself as it's been a while) "Some people would accuse me of
> 'playing god' but I disagree. To play god, I would have to call
> energy into existence from nothing and form that into matter. I'd
> have to wait a few billion years for that to become life. I'd have
> to wait a few more billion years for that life to become human
> beings. Frankly, I don't have time to 'Play God', I'd rather just
> use what's already here."
Beautiful! You sound like a very good debater.
> Most were xians issuing the usual canned platitudes. One I recall
> decried the fact (they're opinion only) that there seemed to be a
> total lack of morality on either side of the aisle.
Actually, this is where we could improve our memetic artillery. Many
people want to hear moral arguments for or against doing something,
and we should be able to give them. As long as the concept of morality
usually falls into the purvey of conservatives, the debate will be
biased. Somebody says: "but what about ethics?!", there is an
embarrassed silence as most people cannot come up with anything to say
since they do not know how to make good ethical arguments, and then a
conservative (of any color - red, blue, green, brown, whatever) rushes
the stage, spruting his or her standard line, filling the silnce. But
if we ourselves argue for the ethics of our actions, then we can
acually use this interest in ethics to make people more open to it.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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