PureX said:
So the point is that if we have an 'ability', we are obliged to use it. Maybe so.
The thing that, as far as we know, sets us apart from animals is our capacity for reason. And do we generally think much of people who don't use that capacity? Do we not regard people who are unable to exercise this ability as "handicapped"?
But then doesn't this tenet run contrary to "morality" itself? After all, morality is a system of value judgments that in effect cause us to limit our capacities and possibilities for the sake of perceived value. We have the capacity for war, for example, yet we try to limit this capacity for the sake of the perceived value of human life. Why should we limit some of our capacities for the sake of value, yet not limit our capacity for evaluation, itself?
I don't think of morality as a system to limit our capacities, but rather a system to *channel* them in productive ways. Because with our greatly advanced mental capacity, when we choose to act according to our egos, we are far more destructive than animals could ever be. I seriously doubt there are animals today who have the capacity for wreaking devastation on our entire world the way we can (and at the moment, we are doing).
Morality is the method of limiting our purely selfish desires in ways that surely do limit us as individuals, but free us as a species to grow into something better, and not destructive.
Although I would argue that even the supposed limits are, when looked at carefully, really a source of freedom. If you treat others with kindness, trustworthiness, and so forth, you are more "free" to enjoy life, have good family relationships and friends, and so forth. This is the apparent paradox in the statement in Islam: There is no freedom save in submission to Allah.
Submitting to good morals frees us as individuals and as entire communities to grow rather than destroy.
Yes, this is confusing in that it's all "natural", yet we are differentiating between the "animal man", and the "hu-man". The line, for me, could be exemplified by the fact that we have the capacity for conscious and deliberate self-destruction.
"Natural" like "evil" is a word that is used in so many ways that it only serves to create confusing prose.
Our biological structure has given us the capacity for self-awareness and self-will, which has in turn given us the ability to choose to destroy the very biological structure that has given us this capacity.
And it also gives us the ability to create something no other animal species comes even close to creating.
But are we obliged to do so simply because we have been given the capacity? If so, why? And if not, why not?
If we are not obliged to rise above our animal natures, we will destroy ourselves and many other parts of creation with us. In which case, what would be the purpose of human existence? Better we all kill ourselves this instant before we continue with such a course, because existence merely to destroy is worse than pointless. Just because the Daleks haven't figured this out yet doesn't make it any less true.
I agree, we do confuse the terms all the time. But if we define this "human nature" as self-awareness and self-will coupled with imagination and the ability to assign values, then perhaps we can move on to discuss why we would be obliged to express this "human nature" over our "animal nature" (which would be far more automatic and instinctual, I suppose).
Our closest relations are the great apes.
So tell me, if we decided to live as they do, though we are capable of much more, why would we need to exist any more?
The apes are much better at being apes than we ever could be. For them it comes naturally -- we would have to work at it.
We would have to suppress so many things about us that are part of our "human" nature -- the arts, our curiousity about the world that results in the sciences and in metaphysics, and very likely abilities that we really haven't even discovered or tapped yet (I don't believe for a minute that we are "done" evolving).
Why should we aspire to be like apes?
If this does not illustrate why we should be obliged to use our greater capacity, I'm not sure what else would.
