RE: Evolution cannot account for morality
May 28, 2022 at 4:01 pm
(This post was last modified: May 28, 2022 at 4:01 pm by Fake Messiah.)
Incest wasn't necessarily a taboo, like in ancient Egypt where a king could marry his sister and his daughter, but that was tied with their religion.
But when it comes to morality and evolution the problem is that what has evolved was during the times when people were hunter-gatherers, so when they switched to agriculture and civilization they were faced with numerous new questions for which people didn't necessarily evolve to. Like the creation of billionaires, retarded people (who usually died quickly in food scarce hunter-gatherers society), gay marriage, trans people, slaves, etc.
These were hard questions with which people battled for centuries. And what usually is behind these decisions is the ideology of the society itself. West stands on humanist-capitalist foundations where human feelings are at the center, so billionaires and gays are allowed if they don't seem to step on other people's feelings, but slaves are not allowed because it is considered that they suffer too much.
Other societies don't understand that. Communists could not understand the toleration of billionaires, so they would call these societies decadent. And this is why societies don't understand each other. Or a theocratic society could not understand democracy where all people have a right to vote because they consider people to be sinful and wicked, and as such in a need to be guided by a few people who were supposedly chosen by God. And so on.
But when it comes to morality and evolution the problem is that what has evolved was during the times when people were hunter-gatherers, so when they switched to agriculture and civilization they were faced with numerous new questions for which people didn't necessarily evolve to. Like the creation of billionaires, retarded people (who usually died quickly in food scarce hunter-gatherers society), gay marriage, trans people, slaves, etc.
These were hard questions with which people battled for centuries. And what usually is behind these decisions is the ideology of the society itself. West stands on humanist-capitalist foundations where human feelings are at the center, so billionaires and gays are allowed if they don't seem to step on other people's feelings, but slaves are not allowed because it is considered that they suffer too much.
Other societies don't understand that. Communists could not understand the toleration of billionaires, so they would call these societies decadent. And this is why societies don't understand each other. Or a theocratic society could not understand democracy where all people have a right to vote because they consider people to be sinful and wicked, and as such in a need to be guided by a few people who were supposedly chosen by God. And so on.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
