[MD] Dawkins quotes RMP on religion.

[Ham Priday]

 [Platt]:
> The levels are in constant battle with one another. But, it is immoral 
> moral
> for a higher level to completely destroy a lower level on which it depends
> for its survival. That's suicide.

 [Krimel]:
> What good is a system of morals based on levels when hierarchy of levels
> provides no guidance as to which level has moral priority?

My point exactly.  The contest of levels is a battle going on in the 
MOQuists heads and being spilled out here in debates.  If the universe must 
constantly battle itself in this schizophrenic scenario, it hardly 
exemplifies goodness and can't be the "moral universe" posited by Pirsig. 
Moreover, where does the battle end and how does it affect its conscious 
participants?  What is our reward for being good?  If we don't know what's 
good or moral, how do we play the victor in this battle?  Do the inorganic, 
biological, and social levels all become intellectual?

Can you imagine life on this planet after the intellectual level gobbles up 
its rock core, vegetative matter, and oxygen?  We would have Intellect left 
to itself with nothing to ponder, figure, or rationalize!

The way I see it (and I suspect how Pirsig meant it), Intellectual is just a 
euphemism for "rational".  The more thought-out and reasonable an action is, 
the more likely it is to produce a favorable result.  But unless you can be 
persuaded (as Platt apparently is) that atoms, trees and earth plates are 
thinking entities, the actions of Nature are not directed by reason, hence 
can never be moral.

To repeat myself for the umpteenth time, Morality is a code of social 
conduct derived from man's sense of values.  The universe -- also a 
construct of man's values -- doesn't "know" anything, let alone what level 
has priority over another, and is by necessity a-moral.

[Krimel, to Platt]:
> Are you willing to go further and say that what we experience
> pre-intellectually is a function of our biology.  It is the memory
> of our ancestors encoded in our genes?

Krimel, the human individual is a "being-aware" representing the 
awareness/otherness dichotomy.  The organic body that serves as the being of 
his awareness is borrowed from otherness.  Self-awareness which directs all 
value-derived experience is NOT biological but psychical, including any 
ancestral memory that may be thought to influence consciousness.

Maybe somebody here should introduce a "morality level".  Bo?   (Sorry, but 
I couldn't resist ;-).
--Ham