(May 28, 2015 at 3:03 pm)wallym Wrote: Consequence being, Omaha can get crushed by a tornado, and I can not care even a little. I can not be afraid walking into a dark room. I can do a number of things that my evolutionary impulses say not to.. The rational part of my brain is able to trump stupid stuff time and time again. And that's why I am unmoved by the evolutionary motivations of ape-men.
Of course we can't show the same level of empathy for unnamed, unknown people far across the globe. That's not the point.
The goal is to create as many societies across the globe based on secular morality. In fact, the world is actually heading that direction. Read Steven Pinker's book "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined".
While I would not expect too many people to leave their homes and family to go to distant places to help disaster victims, I would assume, that if that tornado happened on your block, you, like the vast majority of people, would disregard their personal safety to rush into a collapsing house to save people.
Most people, when facing an immediate situation where they might have to risk their own safety to save others, don't even think twice, they just do it. This is their evolutionary past kicking in, where altruism, cooperation, reciprocity and kin selection take precedence over their selfish instincts.
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.
