I wanted to move it here primarily because this category was better suited for it, but also to get others in on the conversation. (It's started to sink to the bottom, and I at least find it to be relatively interesting...) DerekPritchard's original question was along the lines of "Should there be a parenting license?"

DerekPritchard
I'm consistently seeing parents who want to have a child then cant keep up with the prerequisites of society. Todays society needs provactive parents with the frame of mind to teach and educate correctly with insentive. I hate seeing kids lives slide down the drain specifically from the traits and values specifically taken from their parents. Of course im not asking for some bar exam test, but we need to start somewhere. What do you think?


Zalethon
I disagree. I am sure I don't have all the facts about it, but there are already certain checks in place. Most extremist liberals, and I'm sure some others, would say that the government has no place putting their nose in their business, including how they raise their children. However, even I believe that government interference should be severely limited. (I'm a liberal democrat, but not an extremist.)

It sounds like what you suggest would create something of a dystopian society. Would you raise a child, give him the best possible education and moral values, and then deny him the right to have a child? How would you enforce it? What would the punishment be for having a child in blatant disregard to the rules?


DerekPritchard
Well its just an idea lol. The fact that our society is evolving and too much freedom can hurt the overall potential of what this society could achieve if everyone were influenced the correct way. I'm not saying neccessarily to put more "control over the people," but to correct the flow of man. It hurts our personal morals to be controlled even "correctly," but some adjustments for the good of man kind will probably be made in the coming decades. I think its possible to eliminate many problems by leaving primitive behaviors behind as technology increases. Education would increase ten fold as is proven to be the best medicine for a provactive society. Soon we will "make" babys there we be no births there will be robots as bodys there will be less and less primitive ways per se. This is in a sense moving forward in my eyes. What do you think?


Zalethon
It still sounds very dystopian to me. To 'make' babies, by which I assume you mean apply cloning technology toward reproduction rather than actually reproduce. This could be a marvelous and miraculous advancement for those who find themselves unable to have their own children, but to rob people in general the chance to bring their own child into the world doesn't sound right to me.

As for robots as bodies, the human body is about as robotic and advanced as we're ever going to get. Again, such advancements could be very useful, and a blessing for various people. I very much doubt our entire bodies will be replaced, though.


DerekPritchard
Ok i admit im catagorizing this train of thought quite far in the future. But.. while technology does increase putting morality and basic given primitive values aside in the future it will be better to have robotic more efficient bodies that are more adapt to survival and the extraction of a constant-- "living" body. Putting an infinite life sustainability into a reality. I have seen interesting sci fi future theorys that are identical to this as well. We will be forced to leave this planet and into another solar system to continue survival. Thus making it a probable prerequisite for life as we know it. Moving attention toward "creating" babies it is much more favorable in the fact that it is more efficient it might sound disgusting now but life will evolve into more *effective ways of reproducing rather than that of primitive ways. And i dont neccessarily mean "cloning" just the thought of reproducing in a more effecient manner. With your input I've come to realize maybe its a little too far in the future to come to terms with maybe not. Do you see this as completely out of reach?


Zalethon
It doesn't sound out of reach so much as very disturbing, to me. It seems like if such a future comes into existence, it will ultimately lead to a decline in personal relationships. If we aim for efficiency rather than happiness, what is the point of continuing to survive?

You compare your ideas to a science fiction scenario, yet in most science fiction such beings that prize efficiency over all tend to be viewed in a very negative fashion.

Such technology could come into play in the next fifty or hundred years, possibly. But I doubt if the Human race will ever want to entirely adopt them, as a lifestyle.

And at any rate, currently human nature is such that these technologies would be advertised, and sold rather than freely distributed among our people, even those who could desperately use them.

 In the case of being, just the suggestion of my subconscious projecting the illusion of physical sensation suggests that I am. I exist, there's no doubt about that.

 Now, is my life just a dream, or an imagined fantasy or scenario? That, I cannot answer. I have often wondered that myself. There are a million possible ways this could be true. I am an artificial intelligence, I am in a coma, I am asleep, I am dead.

While, from an objective standpoint, I can see how cultures could have developed such religions for these reasons, I disagree that the human race is losing its excuse for religion. We are discovering more about our world every day, and I don't believe that any of it is falsified in an attempt to lead us astray. Rather, I believe that, if there is a God, he could have created the sciences in order to cloud man's perception of him. Perhaps to demand true faith, perhaps for some other reason, that may be a different idea entirely.

The answer to this seems simple: They are based on real creatures. This could mean bigfoot is real, or this could mean that many people misinterpreted local primates of some kind.

It doesn't apply so well in the case of God. If there is no God, how have so many cultures come to recognize one or multiple supreme beings? Almost always with the same basic set of rules. 'Don't kill people', for example.

That being said, I find it very disturbing most of the time when religious persons ask this question, as it suggests that if they suddenly found themselves in a world where the existence of their God was disproved,  they would go about murdering and whatnot willy-nilly. If the theory of creationism was disproved without a hint of a doubt, and you lost faith, (For good measure) would you suddenly lose your sense of right and wrong?

We can say that athiests know right from wrong by what their parents teach them, (And other environmental factors) and by the laws their Government imposes. (The more sensible laws, anyway) But this might easily be the wrong answer. I don't want to wax philosophic, as the first reply did. Right and wrong are indeed ideas, but they are in most cases based entirely in common sense...

'Thou Shalt Not Kill.' Very sensible, if you want to ensure the survival and continuing superiority of the human race. 'Thou Shalt Not Steal.' Also sensible, if you want to avoid provoking someone into ignoring that first example I mentioned. The rules against touching dead animals help to curb the spread of disease. Etc...