Banned Wrote:What makes one moral view any better than another, when in the end, there is nothing but a howling wind in the desert?
Not hugged enough as a child?
Banned Wrote:I am discussing the evolutionary slant and nothing else.
What is 'moral sense,' when it's temporal, circumstantial, changeable and purely relative?
How can you even start by naming something as if it has an ounce of 'righteousness' ?
The theory of evolution is the explanation for the diversity of life we observe, based on the evidence we have found. It is a description of how something in nature works. It is descriptive, not prescriptive. Just because evolution does something, that doesn't mean you should; anymore than gravity making things fall means you should jump off a cliff.
Our 'moral sense', that is, our innate sentiments of empathy, fairness, justice, and reciprocity shaped by our culture, reason, and upbringing; gives us the motivation to try to be good, to act in a way that is in harmony with our moral sentiments and lives up to the values we hold to be important.
Why does it have to be atemporal, universal, static, and purely absolute in order to be a 'moral sense'? Those qualities don't seem to apply to anything else in our universe, why should they be necessary for anything at all?
It's pretty easy to name something as if it 'has an ounce of righteousness'. We're people. We're going to regard what's good for people as good, and what's bad for people as bad. Those who aren't on board with the program aren't going to be as successful at keeping their genes in the pool because sociopaths are people you want to avoid and they don't make good parents. You don't need some sort of cosmic rulebook to figure this stuff out. It's messy and imperfect, just like everything else, but it's all we've got; it's all we've ever had, and it's gotten us this far.
Here's the thing: You can't escape subjectivity. Your own personal experiences are all you have access to. If you follow an absolute, atemporal, universal, unchanging morality immune to circumstance and situation; you still have to subjectively decide that it's correct, it's real, and that you're interpreting it correctly. Even if adopting an external standard of morality is the last subjective moral decision you ever make, it was a subjective decision. It's on you, right or wrong. Just like it is for everyone else.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.
