Simple question for Christians.

[Catholic_Lady]

People who don't care? Well, it can still be pragmatic. If you keep screwing people over you'll be short on allies, and also we have the law so we can lock those people up. Such people are fairly rare, who have no sense of morality (sociopaths). As for "should", well there's not much we can do. We'd like them to care about people, but if they don't, we can only give them reasons to care or deterrents not to hurt people.

We evolved as a cooperative species. We work well in groups, better than individuals. So natural selection has made us tend more and more towards people who care about society and not just themselves. It's not uniform, but it's a big trend. Society just wouldn't work otherwise! That is essentially where morality comes from. (Morality as in valueing wellbeing of others).

Thanks.

So let me make sure I understand correctly. Please correct me if I am wrong!

You're saying that it is ultimately in our best interest to "treat people as they want to be treated", because it is better for society. And if something is better for society, it is ultimately better for us personally... and that is why we should follow the golden rule. It all comes back to ourselves personally.

[The Grand Nudger]

Who else -would- it come back to, and how would you have any knowledge of that if it did "come back" to some other?  Clairvoyance, psychic powers, magic?  

[dyresand]

People who don't care? Well, it can still be pragmatic. If you keep screwing people over you'll be short on allies, and also we have the law so we can lock those people up. Such people are fairly rare, who have no sense of morality (sociopaths). As for "should", well there's not much we can do. We'd like them to care about people, but if they don't, we can only give them reasons to care or deterrents not to hurt people.

We evolved as a cooperative species. We work well in groups, better than individuals. So natural selection has made us tend more and more towards people who care about society and not just themselves. It's not uniform, but it's a big trend. Society just wouldn't work otherwise! That is essentially where morality comes from. (Morality as in valueing wellbeing of others).

Thanks.

So let me make sure I understand correctly. Please correct me if I am wrong!

You're saying that it is ultimately in our best interest to "treat people as they want to be treated", because it is better for society. And if something is better for society, it is ultimately better for us personally... and that is why we should follow the golden rule. It all comes back to ourselves personally.

Yes correctly treat others the way you would want to be treated. Look at the GOP and Republicans in general they don't treat people
the way they want to be treated that is why they are never going to win another election.

[robvalue]

From an objective/scientific standpoint, yes. Looking out for each other is a good way of making a good society, which is then good for all of us. That is what has worked, and how we've evolved to be.

On an individual level, the motives may vary wildly. Some people may simply treat people well in order to curry favour and to avoid being arrested. Personally, I treat not only people but animals well (animal welfare is fucking disgraceful). There's not a lot I personally get back from treating animals well. I actually make life much harder for myself. I would think most people go above what is needed just to keep society going, and genuinely care. For example, I stop people on the street and ask for directions. Most of the time, they help me. They don't know me, or get anything particular out of helping me. We're just wired that way, on the whole. We help.

Of course there are exceptions, and societies can become hideously corrupted when someone evil gets in charge by force.

Oh yes, we're also quite prone to follow others as well. This can be good or bad depending on who we follow.

[Kingpin]

Sorry Rob, I need to jump in on this one more time. I have a difficult time with the morality from evolution argument.

If I ask the question "Why ought anyone be unselfish in the future?" I'm looking for a justification here.

The answer is going to be that when we're selfish, it hurts the group. But you see, that answer isn't enough of an answer because that answer itself presumes another moral value that we ought to be concerned about the health of the group. So, I'm going to ask the question, "Why ought we be concerned about the health of the group?" The answer is going to be because if the groups don't survive, then the species doesn't survive. Then you can imagine the next question. "Why ought I care about the health of the species and whether the species survives or not?" You see, the problem with all of these responses that purport to be justifications or explanations for the moral rule, is that all of these things that are meant to explain the moral rule really depend themselves upon a moral rule before they can even be uttered. Therefore, it can't be the explanation of morality. When I ask the question "Why ought I be concerned with the species?", the next answer ends the series. The answer is, "I ought to be concerned with the species because if the species dies out, then I will not survive. If the species is in jeopardy, then my own personal self interests would be in jeopardy."

So, in abbreviated form, the reasoning goes like this: I ought to be unselfish because it is better for the group, which is better for the species, which is better for me. So why ought I be unselfish? Because it is better for me. But looking at what is better for me, is selfishness. So all of this so-called description of where morality comes down to, gets reduced to this ludicrous statement: I morally ought to be unselfish so that I can be more thoroughly selfish. That is silly. Because we know that morality can't be reduced to selfishness. Why do we know that? Because our moral rules are against selfishness and for altruism. They are against selfishness and for the opposite. When you think about what it is that morality entails, you don't believe that morality is really about being selfish. Morality is about being unselfish, or at least it entails that. Which makes my point that this description, based on evolution, does not do the job. It doesn't explain what it is supposedly meant to explain. It doesn't explain morality.

[robvalue]

King: I think you are over-complicating the issue.

Step back and look at our species objectively. Within the environments we found ourselves in, cooperation led to better survival than ignoring the needs of others. So any slight mutations which made people inherently value others, for whatever reason, were promoted. As time went on, this process continues. Eventually nature "perfects" us, as much as it can, for our environment. We have people who, for whatever reason, care about each other. As the potential for more conscious and rational thought increased, personal justifications would appear. But really, these are secondary rationalisations. We just are that way. It feels good to be that way, it feels bad not to be, because that's how we've evolved.

Now we can control our environment much more and make more far reaching choices, and survival isn't an obstacle. We can stop and debate morality at a much finer level. But we're still a product of those more primitive creatures, who cooperated. It's part of our programming. On the whole, of course. There will still be much variation.

To try and examine it on a personal level is problematic, and yes, it can be seen as ultimately selfish simply because it feels good to help and feels bad to hurt. But that's how we are. It's a different kind of "selfish" that helps everyone. We can now move beyond this and discuss things that never would have occurred to our previous selves. Society is so very different to then.

I'm no expert on evolution so if anyone wants to explain it better than me, feel free

[Kingpin]

This view changes drastically what it means to be moral. It reduces morality to mere survival, to pragmatics. We feel moral urgings because these moral urgings help us to survive better. They have at their core self-preservation in mind. But does self-preservation truly capture what we mean when we say a thing is moral? Indeed many things that fall into the moral category have to do with denying self.

But it's precisely this higher moral law that needs explaining and defies naturalistic explanation. Robert Wright wrote The Moral Animal – Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology and in it he writes:

"conscience, the seat of our moral sense, evolved as a survival mechanism. When ... we feel guilt because we have harmed a sibling, it is because we have thereby imperiled the proliferation of our genes. When we feel guilt because we have harmed someone outside the family circle, it is because we have potentially damaged our own (survival enhancing) status."

He merely offers an explanation for some low order moral conduct that has survival value. And then cavalierly refers to this other morality that enables us to become "a truly moral animal". He also writes, "Go above and beyond the call of smoothly functioning conscience; help those who aren't likely to help those in return, and do so when nobody's watching. This is one way to be a truly moral animal."

Arguably, certain ways of acting may have evolved (I don't believe this, but I'll grant this for the sake of argument), but morality is not merely a way of acting. How do I know this? Because there's an oughtness about behavior that we can feel that actually precedes the behavior itself. It's not a behavior pattern, but an internal compulsion that compels us to choose certain behaviors – to do what's right – even though this moral incumbency can be denied or disobeyed. If the moral element is prior to the behavior, then it can't be the behavior itself.

I'm curious what you think of guilt? Isn't guilt a conscience understanding of violating a known "ought" behavior? How do you explain feelings of guilt in an evolutionary sense?

[robvalue]

I'm afraid I need to log off as my wife is home soon and needs my help

Just wanted to let you know. I shall address these points when I return!

Lovely to meet you, and I've enjoyed the debate very much. And you too CL! Sorry for any upset I caused in the other thread, it wasn't intentional. It was a quick laugh and kudos, nothing sinister.

[Kingpin]

Go help your wife Rob. I've enjoyed this as well and look forward to hearing more.

[Rhondazvous]

I'll make this short. 

Do you think that atheists have a harder time disbelieving in the Christian god than other gods?

In other words, do you think we have to struggle in order to maintain our disbelief in Yahweh/Jesus, but have no struggle disbelieving in Allah or Shiva or Ahura-Mazda, etc?

If only the answer were as simple as the question.

Really, it's not so much disbelief that makes an atheist struggle (I pause here to say that I am speaking of atheism from my experience. Others may feel differently). All gods are equally not here. But because our society is saturated in the trappings of Christendom, it is harder to get away from the idea of Jesus. What's all up in our face is Christianity not Jesus.

For those who live in a Christian community, this may be an incessant struggle with cognitive dissonance.

I remember when I was profoundly deaf and had no reason to know about cell phones. In 1997 I begin to notice people walking around holding their ears and talking to themselves. To see one or three people doing something crazy, we think that person is crazy. But when we see everybody doing it, we begin to wonder if maybe we're the one who is crazy.

Christians know what kind of society they have created for us. It's disingenuous of them to take the power of suggestion and tell us we secretly know god exists. I say disingenuous because they may come in here acting obtuse, but they did't sustain a worldwide religion for thousands of years without knowing something about human psychology.




That's why having a place like AF is important. Here we can remind each other what planet we're on and what world we're in.