At 11:08 AM 1/11/99 -0500, John Clark wrote:
>Terry Donaghe <tdonaghe@yahoo.com>
>
>
> >please explain how you can, in good faith, follow a philosophy
> >which can be construed to justify anything.
>
>
>Morality is important, civilization would be impossible without it. Far from
>denigrating morality I celebrate it, but it needs no approval from
inanimate matter
>to justify it, such a thing would be an insult. Morality has a much more
>illustrious bloodline. Calling morality subjective is the greatest compliment
>you could give it because it means it's the product of the most important
>thing in the observational universe, intelligent sentient beings. The only
thing
>that fits that bill are humans. Hydrogen gas has no say in the creation of
ethics
>and that bothers me not at all.
IAN: But the existence of sentient beings with subjective concepts has everything to do with objective physical things such as Hydrogen (there's no concept free from a physical being), and therefore rights are the product of physics; and a right is a claim made by a physical being.
"What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday,
& our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow:
our life is the creation of our mind."
Buddha (The Dhammapada)