Ethics Seems A Morass Which We Have

The Belief That The Animals Exist Because God Created Them - And That He Created Them So We Can Better Meet Our Needs - Is Contrary To Our Scientific Understanding Of Evolution And, Of Course, To The Fossil Record, Which Shows The Existence Of Non-human Primates And Other Animals Millions Of Years Before There Were Any Human Beings At All.

In The Past 20 Years Alone, It Adds Up To More Death Than Were Caused By All The Civil And International Wars Adn Government Repression Of The Entire Twentieth Century, The Century Of Hitler And Stalin. How Much Would We Give To Prevent Those Horrors? Yet How Little Are We Doing To Prevent Today's Even Larger Toll And All The Misery That It Involves? I Believe That If You Read This Book To The End, And Look Honestly And Carefully At Our Situation, Assessing Both The Facts And The Ethical Arguments, You Will Agree That We Must Act.

The Notion That Human Life Is Sacred Just Because It Is Human Life Is Medieval.

My Fear Is That That's What's Going To Happen With Robotics And The Military. Importantly, This Discussion Has To Involve Not Just The Scientists, But Also The Political Scientists. It's Got To Be A Multidisciplinary Discussion. You Can't Have It Be Another Repeat Of What Happened With The People Working On The Atomic Bomb.

There Is An Obvious Evolutionary Explanation For The Scarcity Of Altruistic Saints: Without A Strong Predilection For Their Own Interests, Our Ancestors Would Have Been Unlikely To Survive, Reproduce, And Give Their Own Offspring A Chance Of Doing The Same. Now Conditions Have Changed And For Most Of Us, Surviving And Reproducing Isn't Such A Struggle But We Still Carry The Genes Of Our Ancestors And They Influence - Not Determine, But Influence - Our Behavior.