RE: Why be good?
May 27, 2015 at 9:10 pm
(This post was last modified: May 27, 2015 at 9:14 pm by Simon Moon.)
(May 27, 2015 at 9:04 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: Hmmm.
Are you suggesting that your "essential nature" has been hardwired with a set of criteria for knowing right from wrong? Is this internal thing at work your "conscience"?
And if it feels good to behave according to preset, external criteria, where do these external criteria come from?
They come from evolution.
Humans evolved in small groups (50-150) as a social species. Our survival mechanisms are things like: Altruism, cooperation, reciprocity, kin selection. Not being the meanest bastard in the group.
Bad behavior in the group, such as murder, rape, theft, would get an individual ejected from the group to an almost certain death.
Much of the same behavior can be seen in bonobo chimps. They do things like: share food even when in short supply, protect weaker members of the group even at risk to the individual, adopt offspring of dead parents, eject members that rape and murder, show sadness when a group member dies, and other behavior that sure looks a lot like morality.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
