(June 12, 2013 at 11:57 pm)crud Wrote: @Rahul, thankyou
This is one example how something we call "love" could of evolved purely for preservation of the speices.
But in a wider context it doesn't really fit the mold.
Why do I care about the Africans starving to death?
Not sure that is the right question. Why do you care about Africans starving to death less than you care about poor people in your immediate vicinity is probably a better question. One I am not going to answer here - you think about it.
That you care at all what happens to people in Africa is down to empathy, which, along with love relates to morality. All of these appear to be evolutionary based but developed culturally. Its interesting to note that apparently ancient Roman society regarded empathy as a sign of a character flaw.
To me that confirms that Roman's had empathy (for their fellow human beings) but fought against it in much the same way as those seeking celibacy fight against their natural sexual urges.
It is an integral part of being human that there is a constant internal war between our different senses. On the one hand we crave love, we want to act in a moral fashion and we feel for our fellow human beings but on the other we are, probably, genetically rather mean with our resources. We give to charity but only usually a tiny fraction of our overall wealth - on the basis we might need it.
It appears that self preservation is the strongest urge. In some ways it drives morality and in some it opposes it.
Now let me re-raise the question I put to you in my last answer. Why do you feel that this is more nihilist that the concept that we are all basically bad and reliant on an external benign dictator to instil in us the few positive qualities we have. To me one of the most horrific qualities of religion is that it debases us in relation to an imaginary being that is supposed to be all-good but actually behaves incredibly badly.
