RE: what are we supposed to say again when christians ask us where we get our morality?
May 14, 2014 at 12:34 am
(May 13, 2014 at 6:58 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote:(May 13, 2014 at 3:26 pm)max-greece Wrote: Still not arbitrary. If you could show there was benefit for the species from any of the alternative moralities you suggest then you might have had a point in suggesting they were valid. Evolution through natural selection gave us the basic properties from which we formed out moralities. It can't be any other way.
Why should it benefit the species and not the individual? If a person took this selfish attitude they surely got it from evolution so that does not answer the question any. Apparently we steal, kill, and rape because we evolved to do so; so are these morally good actions?
One point - it appears as if you have started to reply without actually having read through my whole answer. You are raising issues I covered later on.
Were we not social mammals the selfish attitude would be the more beneficial, however, being social animals its simply not how things are.
We know this through the history of our species. There are many examples of activities that would never have happened were my version of human morality not correct. Farming is an example. Can you understand why?
Quote:You will have to explain how empathy, reciprocation and a basic sense of fairness fail to provide your "ought." As I see it, unless I am misunderstanding you, that is exactly what they give us.
No because you are only cherry-picking the human behaviors you personally like. If humans ought to engage in all behaviors and emotions that they evolved then that would include killing, stealing, lying, and raping and not just feeling empathy and compassion for others. This is why you cannot bridge that gap from the way things are to the way things ought to be. You have no basis for claiming people ought to engage in one behavior over another.
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Humans do engage in all the activities they are capable of. Some are moral, some are not. Implementation of the tools that support morality through natural selection is merely good enough to maintain the species. If it isn't, the species doesn't survive. No society condones murder or theft from individuals or groups it recognises as being part of that society. If it did, that society would be very short lived indeed.
Religion (and politics) act to identify non-group members within the society enabling people to murder, rape and steal from them with impunity, often with the blessing of their God.
Quote:Quote:We have evolved the ability to overcome our instinctive morality along with other instincts too. This should not come as a surprise, and it isn't all bad news. Heroism, for example, is the over-riding of our strongest driving force - self preservation. Things cannot be morally good if they are not in the interests of the species and there would have to be exceptional circumstances for them not to be in the interests of individuals or groups.
How can you say we have overcome such behaviors when the last century was the most brutal mankind has ever witnessed? Secondly, why should people overcome such behaviors? We have made it thus far engaging in such behaviors and such behaviors are very common amongst other animals. Lastly, why do you keep putting the survival of the species as the standard of measurement? In a purely material universe why should I sacrifice my well-being just so that other bags of tissue and water called humans can be morn and live after I am gone? This does not make any sense without god.
You didn't understand what I was saying. Our natural behaviours are empathy, reciprocation and fairness. Those are the ones we can overcome to "do evil."
No other animal makes war on itself.
Survival of the species is the driver for any and all species on the planet. We are no different. God has nothing to do with it. God is about establishing power and allegiance between humans for the lowest cost.
Quote:Quote: At the same time we have to recognise that one of the best ways to get people to behave immorally is religion. Difficult to get people to fly planes into buildings without it.
Did not seem too hard to get people to try breeding apes with women and kill over 50 million fellow Russians without religion. Of course this was all for the “betterment” of the Russian people so apparently that means it was all morally good behavior.
No - it was morally abhorrent. You are correct, however, that religion is not the only way to get people to behave appallingly. Political ideology is a good substitute. In the case you mentioned it was communism but it could equally have been fascism.
Quote:Quote:I am not sure we do define universal differently - I just don't accept it as a concept. What I provided was as close as I can get - although a case could be made for including other species.
Societies get to dictate their moralities. Families and individuals get to define their's within the parameters of those of the society.
Why does it work this way? If I am the only person in Nazi Germany objecting to the mass murder of the Jews I am therefore morally wrong because society had already dictated otherwise?
Within the society, yes, you would be considered morally wrong. Were you in a different place at the same time or in another time you would be considered morally correct. Its easy to see which of these 2 positions is correct - just compare to our inherited characteristics.
Quote:Quote: History judges how well or badly they did.
How is this possible? If morals are determined by societies then how could later societies determine whether the morals of another society were good or bad? I hardly think Stalin cared what people 50 years later would think, he died the most powerful man on Earth and did so by lying, stealing, and killing his way to the top. Was he an evil man? If God exists, yes.
We determine good or bad morality by our inherited standard. Its not hard to do.
Interesting how useless God's consideration is, to us. What Stalin cared about is not the species concern. Ideally the species is concerned with is learning from the lessons of Stalin, or Hitler, Pol Pot and so on so we don't let those things happen again. Sadly we don't seem to be too good at learning. Maybe that will be the thing that actually kills off our species.
Kuusi palaa, ja on viimeinen kerta kun annan vaimoni laittaa jouluvalot!