[MD] The End of Faith - Spirituality

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Platt]
You mean that a natural phenomena like a tornado that destroyed a 
tree is immoral? What moral choice does the tree have?

[Arlo]
Within the inorganic level, the inorganic patterns of the tornado are 
behaving morally. It is only from the vantage of the MOQ that we pass 
judgement and say that its immoral for inorganic patterns to dominate 
biological patterns. But this immorality is placed, according the 
MOQ, at the conflict between the inorganic and biological levels. And 
so we can say that for the tree, although it is incapable of 
expressing this in abstract thought, it is "immoral" for the tornado 
to destroy it. But for the tornado, from its vantage point on the 
inorganic level, it is behaving perfectly in a perfect moral fashion.

To get more detailed, we can say that it is not immoral for the tree 
not to move away, since it is physically incapable of doing such. 
However, it would be immoral for a wolf to allow itself to be 
destroyed by the tornado. In the same way it is immoral for social 
patterns to be destroyed by biological patterns, or intellectual 
patterns to be destroyed by social patterns.

Immorality occurs at the border between levels, as a result of 
conflict between the levels, and it is a reflection of the values as 
articulated by a MOQ vantage point. There is no "immorality" within 
the levels, as the very definition of patterns within a level are 
patterns of morals.