(June 5, 2013 at 7:02 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote: Ok, but I am still curious as to how you reason from all of these descriptive statements about how Humans think and behave to a moral set of normative rules telling us how we ought to live. I think you’ll find you cannot construct a valid proof to support this line of reasoning.
You are probably right that I couldn't construct a valid proof. Without more knowledge and study of primitive cultures and how their systems of religion and law developed, all I would be doing is speculation built on guesses. "I think it could have developed this way" isn't a proof, and might not even be on the right track.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
