Re: Chicken and Xian Family Values

[The Magic Pudding]

All true. Though there is nobody to whom any ultimate responsibility for those choices can be assigned.

Ultimate responsibility?  That's a funny notion.  With what that lays I don't know, the big bang, or whatever preceded it I suppose.  It's not really useful for me to worry about that in day to day life.  If a car part malfunctions remove it, same goes for people.  I do think it wise though to consider why these things failed and perhaps prevent future failure.  Nevertheless I can assign responsibility for hindering the smooth operation of a car or society to a timing belt or an antisocial human respectively. 

[En_Route]

All true. Though there is nobody to whom any ultimate responsibility for those choices can be assigned.

Ultimate responsibility?  That's a funny notion.  With what that lays I don't know, the big bang, or whatever preceded it I suppose.  It's not really useful for me to worry about that in day to day life.  If a car part malfunctions remove it, same goes for people.  I do think it wise though to consider why these things failed and perhaps prevent future failure.  Nevertheless I can assign responsibility for hindering the smooth operation of a car or society to a timing belt or an antisocial human respectively. 

It is a funny notion and once you see it such it is yet another pointer to the absurdity of a God who sentences some of his creation to eternal torment.

[jumbojak]

I don't know how you can deem anything right or wrong using rationality and logic alone.

If a star goes supernova and destroys the planets orbiting it, billions of life forms may die. Does this mean that it was immoral for the star to go supernova?

If you answer that the star doesn't make moral choices, then I have to question how you think you can make any choice what-so-ever.

Your body moves because your muscles contract and relax, they contract and relax because of electric signals sent from the brain. The brain operates on electric signals.
All of this occurs because it has to. Everything obeys the physical laws of material existence. Gravity attracts, electro-magnetism can attract or repel.  All of this is predictable and happens exactly how it should because the alternative is impossible.

Now when you make a choice, do you really think you can decide to have an electron go down one path in your brain as opposed to an alternative path? You can no more decide the path of an electron in your brain than you can decide the path of lightening as it travels from the sky into the ground. Everything obeys the unchanging laws of material existence. There is no magic aspect to you, no metaphysical aspect that is uncaused (by the laws of material existence) which can decide to cause anything in material existence to disobey the laws that must be obeyed.

You only think you make choices, your mind rationalises that which is inevitable and you tell yourself, "yeah, I made that happen, that was my decision", thus you think you are alive, conscious and able to make choices when really you are merely an observer. Just like the a star, you do what you do, because you have no choice, you must obey the laws of material existence.

Now how does morality have anything to do with that?
A star cannot be moral, neither can a rock or an atom, neither can you.

An expolding star is incapable of rational reflection, in the same way a toddler is. Neither is capable of reasoning about their action, and in the case of the star, you do not even have access to a compatibilist free fill. Our capacity for reason is what grants us the capacity for morality.
aIt may be true that rational beings are totally deterministic ( although quantum uncertainty could show that this is not the case ) however this does not change the fact that we are presented with choices that we do make every day. Whether or not we could have made any other choice is irrelevant to the fact that we process input from our senses and decide what to do next.

And just because there is no materialistic principle which compels us to act morally does not mean it is impossible to do so. There is no materialistic principle which compels us to think rationally. We are free to contradict ourselves and and commit any number of logical fallacies, however an individual who does so is irrational. In the same way we are free to behave in a manner which is not in accordance with rational moral principles. When someone does that they are acting immorally.