What is a man?

[Fist and Faith]

Andy Kafka? Was he on Taxigrad?

[babybottomfeeder]

Can we please get back to the topic. It is a thought provoking one, for me it is the most important one.

Why are we created?

You can't answer this until you answer why we act.

Can we choose our choices? You can't answer this until we lay down the foundation for fatalism followed by determinism.

I'm a hard one fan of the moral good of man. We need a discussion constantly running on this topic or else we begin to become complacent.

--I believe one must rely on faith alone to suggest the moral good of God.

-- We cannot go fact finding as this is not faith

-- We SHOULD go fact finding where man is concerned however.

How else can one constitute the world?

[Orlion]

Can we please get back to the topic. It is a thought provoking one, for me it is the most important one.

Why are we created?

We weren't

You can't answer this until you answer why we act.

We act in reaction to some stimuli.

Can we choose our choices?

No.

You can't answer this until we lay down the foundation for fatalism followed by determinism.

Naturalism is the way to go. We may be able to choose between option A and B, but we do not get to choose that A and B are the options.

I'm a hard one fan of the moral good of man. We need a discussion constantly running on this topic or else we begin to become complacent.

Ah, but a 'moral good' does not imply a 'divine good'. Ayn Rand believed in a 'moral good' and that Man was noble (that's actually where the term 'objectivism' comes in), but she certainly did not believe in a diety or that religion constituted good.

--I believe one must rely on faith alone to suggest the moral good of God.

-- We cannot go fact finding as this is not faith

-- We SHOULD go fact finding where man is concerned however.

How else can one constitute the world?

To suggest a moral good of any sort seems to require faith to me, whether it involves a supernatural being or a natural one. There is no real definition of a moral (I assume you mean also 'objective') good, it is hard then to fact-check or experiment or observe to ascertain its existence outside of human constructs.

To me, morals evolve. Depending on the social environment, some morals fair better than others, and these others die out. Though observable, this does not in any way imply that the morals that survive are superior ones, merely that they helped society survive during their time period.

[sgt.null]

Andy Kafka? Was he on Taxigrad?

Mensch (Yiddish: מענטש mentsh, from German: Mensch "human being") means "a person of integrity and honor." The opposite of a "mensch" is an "unmensch" (meaning: an utterly unlikeable or unfriendly person). According to Leo Rosten, the Yiddish maven and author of The Joys of Yiddish, "mensch" is "someone to admire and emulate, someone of noble character. The key to being 'a real mensch' is nothing less than character, rectitude, dignity, a sense of what is right, responsible, decorous." The term is used as a high compliment, expressing the rarity and value of that individual's qualities.

In Yiddish, from which the word has migrated as a loanword into American English, mensch roughly means "a good person." A mensch is a particularly good person, like "a stand-up guy", a person with the qualities one would hope for in a dear friend or trusted colleague. Mentschlekhkeyt (Yiddish מענטשלעכקייט, German Menschlichkeit) are the properties which make one a mensch.

During the Age of Enlightenment in Germany the term Humanität, in the philosophical sense of compassion, was used to describe what characterizes a "better human being" in Humanism. The concept goes back to Cicero's Humanitas and was literally translated into the German word Menschlichkeit and then adapted into mentsh in Yiddish language use.

In Modern Israeli Hebrew, the phrase Ben Adam "Son of Adam" (בן אדם) is used as an exact translation of Mensch.

[Fist and Faith]

Why are we created?

I don't believe we were, so I define us in different ways than you do.

You can't answer this until you answer why we act.

Even if I assume we were created, I don't see the logic in this. Why we were created could very well tell us why we act.

Can we choose our choices? You can't answer this until we lay down the foundation for fatalism followed by determinism.

Again, I think you're insisting on something that is not at all the case. Free will and determinism are not the only possibilities. Pure stimulus & response is neither. However, I believe we have at least some free will.

I'm a hard one fan of the moral good of man. We need a discussion constantly running on this topic or else we begin to become complacent.

The topic of morality does, indeed, come up quite often.

[babybottomfeeder]

Can we please get back to the topic. It is a thought provoking one, for me it is the most important one.

Why are we created?

We weren't

You can't answer this until you answer why we act.

We act in reaction to some stimuli.

Can we choose our choices?

No.

You can't answer this until we lay down the foundation for fatalism followed by determinism.

Naturalism is the way to go. We may be able to choose between option A and B, but we do not get to choose that A and B are the options.

I'm a hard one fan of the moral good of man. We need a discussion constantly running on this topic or else we begin to become complacent.

Ah, but a 'moral good' does not imply a 'divine good'. Ayn Rand believed in a 'moral good' and that Man was noble (that's actually where the term 'objectivism' comes in), but she certainly did not believe in a diety or that religion constituted good.

--I believe one must rely on faith alone to suggest the moral good of God.

-- We cannot go fact finding as this is not faith

-- We SHOULD go fact finding where man is concerned however.

How else can one constitute the world?

To suggest a moral good of any sort seems to require faith to me, whether it involves a supernatural being or a natural one. There is no real definition of a moral (I assume you mean also 'objective') good, it is hard then to fact-check or experiment or observe to ascertain its existence outside of human constructs.

To me, morals evolve. Depending on the social environment, some morals fair better than others, and these others die out. Though observable, this does not in any way imply that the morals that survive are superior ones, merely that they helped society survive during their time period.

Your relativistic view is shared by many on here I think but I completely disagree. How does moral good suggest faith? We can observe it in the faces of children and in the history of our world. There are so many eyewitness testimonies that belief is not even an option.