: No I am saying that there is in fact a message encoded in this universe, not in pi but in the human being. It can be called reason or rational thought, that capasity within us that alows us to understand what is right and wrong and then do right when we want to do wrong. It can be called love, put someone else's intrests before your own, choiseing to surpress your own urges for the good of others. But I prefer to call it the Tao because it represents the universal idea of right and wrong. Once again, I have to disagree withyour assumption that your (and admittedly, my) ideas about what is "good" and what is "evil" are trained behaviors and not inherent, in-dwelling essences. We are not all born with these opinions, and in many cultures, people are trained to have entirely different notions of right and wrong. For instance, the Yanomamo believe that the most appropriate way to resolve a conflict between adult males is for the two to take long sticks and take turns whapping each other on the side of the head. First one to fall was wrong. In their interpretation of the universe, that is perfectly rational and sane behavior. The Jivaro believe that this world, the one we experience daily, is illusory, and the only way we can understand the "real" world is to consume a concoction of incredibly potent hallucinogenic drugs. This also seems irrational and unreasonable to us, but they grew up in a different social order, with different ways of interpreting their surroundings, so their understanding of appropriate and inappropriate behavior is fundamentally different from ours.
I'm not saying that their interpretations of the world are in some way better than ours (nor am I suggesting that they are worse) but the fact that their way of understanding their surroundings is so dramatically different from ours suggests to me that concepts of "right" and "wrong" are learned, culture-bound, and situational, rather than absolute.
(WARNING, TANGENT!
Naturally, the "test case" is murder, and that's the issue most critics will raise. "Isn't murder always wrong?" they will ask, and yes, in the same way that "animal cruelty" is always wrong, by definition. There is nobody out there who thinks "animal cruelty" is acceptable, any more than there are people who think "murder" is acceptable. The real question is "is animal testing" the same as "animal cruelty?" Is meat-eating the same as animal cruelty? Is state execution the same as murder? Is fatal testing on chimps (who are 98.4% genetically identical to us) "murder" or simply "animal cruelty?"
Ultimately the question comes down to whether you feel a creature is similar enough to yourself to be considered "one of us" rather than "one of them." Are people from another country "close enough" that it's murder? If so, are chimps? Other primates? other mammals? other animals? where is the line? I'm not telling you here, I'm asking. Where is your personal line between "like me" and "different from me"? and do you think other people draw that line in thesme place as you?)
So, if some of us have fundamentally different perspectives on whatis right and what is wrong, we can't logically surmise that these ethical guidelines were placed there for a purpose. An at least equally parsimonious explanation is that humans, as "pack" animals, are driven to form social groups, and the commonalities you note about "acceptable" behavior are simply the effects of individual self-interest. (e.g. "I don't want to get kicked out of the group, so I'd better do as others do.")
This is an evolutionarily successful strategy (if you get the rest of the group sufficiently angry at you that they kick you out, odds are you'll starve) so it's no surprise that all societies have commonalities of behavior, since all living people are descended from ancestors that didn't get themselves "kicked out of the group." It still says nothing about the existence, or non-existence of one or more deity-like beings, so I still remain agnostic.
: I enjoyed the book better than the movie though. Books are always better.
Oh yes, absolutely! Me too! (but Jody Foster is still worth the price of the ticket any day! ;-)
-Floyd
None.
