Religion is a poor source of morality

[robvalue]

I'd like to point out that I'm still waiting for even a single non-trivial real world concrete example of "objective morality" in action. Some actual demonstration of a hypothetical scenario, involving at least a small amount of conflict between different outcomes. In contrast, I would be happy to sit here all day churning out examples of how morality is subjective. If there aren't any examples to show me, then how can I take seriously that it's a real thing? Does it apply to the real world that we live in, or not?

I didn't mean to imply that empathy is the only factor in morality. I just used it as part of the scientific explanation. I suppose empathy is a way for nature to get people to look out for their own tribe. (Metaphorically speaking!) If we see a tribe member being hurt, it feels like we are getting hurt. So it spurs us into action to help them. And if we hurt a tribe member, it feels like hurting ourselves, so we don't do it. Scientifically, I suppose you could say empathy is a side effect of morality forming, or perhaps simply the basic form that it usually takes. So it's self selecting: those that work well in a group are more likely to care about the group, and any random changes which give some feeling of empathy are more likely to make that happen. So changes which support empathy will become prevalent.

As Esq says, when we get to the point of thinking past survival situations, empathy helps us make moral decisions. It allows us to think about things in ways removed from being self centred. At this point, all sorts of other factors will affect our moral judgements. I was talking about the very basic forming of morality, the idea that a person actually gives a fig about another person in their tribe. Why don't I punch people in the face? Because I don't want to, essentially. Because I have empathy, it would feel like hurting myself.

By the way, I figured this "empathy through evolution" explanation out myself, without reading it from a science book. I used reason and evidence, and found that this was the inescapable conclusion. I'm not trying to brag, but simply to demonstrate that I'm not regurgitating scientific theory. If my analysis is off, I'm happy for anyone to point this out to me. When stuff is true and makes sense, then people working independently will generally reach the same conclusion. When stuff is made up nonsense, people working independently will come up with vastly different "answers".