Why do we transgress?

Do you think underage drinking is wrong?[/quote]

No, but it was illegal and socially considered “bad”.

What is most thought provoking is that there is no ground given for these choices.

There maybe plenty of right or wrong ways to live life: but how does stating that help us understand which is right or wrong? Not at all, in anyway, IMHO. In fact, it only attempts to gloss over an apparently comprehensive lack of understanding.

What, furthermore, provokes thought, is the rather disturbing realization that this comprehensive lack of knowledge is apparently something one is prepared to be quite (un)comfortable with.

And…

Forget.

Well Quinn is speaking biologically, not normatively. It’s true that we can’t “know” (if that is even the right word) anything about right and wrong, normatively speaking–i.e., what we usually think of as “ethics.” (Okay, some people claim such knowledge, but their claims are inevitably contentious.) We can however know quite a bit about what ways of life are likely to be successful or unsuccessful. Much of our “ethical” reasoning actually seems to be about that, at some level at least.

But if we can’t know what is right or wrong then transgression looses it’s meaning.

Transgression loses its meaning to the extent that there is no (ethical, normative) right or wrong. If there is right and wrong, but we just don’t know what it is, then we might transgress unknowingly.

We transgress due to temptation. It’s like a marshmellow test. Do we go for instant gratification or do we put it off in the hopes of something better?

Bah! I don’t buy that marshmellow test nonsense. I eat 'em as soon as I see 'em, and they keep coming and I keep eating 'em.

HG

What’s wrong with tawdry acts with inanimate objects? :discodance:

What’s wrong with tawdry acts with inanimate objects? :discodance:[/quote]

Well, indeed.

Moral authority seems to be the greatest dishonesty.

but there must surely be injustice.

What do the scriptures say?

What, Buddhist scriptures? Uh, that this (the origin of karma / injustice) is one of the eight subjects which are unanswerable, and the investigation of which is spiritually unhelpful.

Or perhaps you had some (ahem!) other scriptures in mind…?

no - those were it… :doh: