(May 12, 2011 at 2:58 pm)diffidus Wrote: If you believe in God, then how to behave is simple: This life is transient and if you do good things you will spend the rest of eternity in Heaven, whereas, if you behave badly you go to Hell for eternity. If you truly believe in God, then you cannot question the morality of this because God, being perfect, could not be in error.
If you do not believe in God, then this life is still a fleeting transient moment compared to the age of the universe, but how to behave is not so clear. Since this is the one and only existence, then the only rational course is to pursue those things that serve your own ends and maximise the pleasure and happiness of your short vacation from the dark abyss of eternity.
With regard to the latter, this means that the only grounds for altruism is if you happen to be a person who enjoys putting others before yourself. If you happen to be selfish thats OK too. The only thing you need to avoid is breaking the Law, since this may take away your freedom which would diminish your existence. Apart from that, it is a free for all - a morality of ends?
Our innate moral tendencies do have evolutionary origins, which is what defines our view of good and evil. However, moral absolutism is a different story, as we would observe in religion. In such a case, stoning of adulterers would be considered moral in that particular culture.
Morality is a necessity in the survival of complex species; if all individuals of a particular species only live for themselves, this would result in competition among themselves, killing one another as a result. However, when individuals of a species have moral tendencies, they may help one another out, aiding their survival as a species and passing on their genes to the next generation. The closer the genetic similarity, the higher the tendency for 'altruistic' actions: for example, individuals of a family would tend to care for one another more than those from another family, while there is a natural tendency for racism unless given the knowledge that we are all of the same species.
