Atheism, Gnosticism & the Problem of Evil

[Seax]

Serving a natural purpose (or any purpose) has nothing to do with the naturalistic (or moralistic) fallacies. 

It's the suggestion that a thing being natural might not be interchangeable with it being good, or that a thing being deemed good may not make that thing natural.  That with respect to these two sets - the good and the natural, if we made a venn diagram - there may be overlap, yes, but also content which would not fall within their confluence.

Is this something that you actually reject?  

That is the more conservative interpretation, but many take it to mean that we cannot derive morality from nature. I disagree with this on the grounds that morality is an evolved instinct and therefore a product of nature to begin with. I agree that we cannot take everything that is natural to be moral, but I don't know that anyone actually believes that. It would also be selfdefeating, because compassion & cruelty, life & death, extinction & survival, prosperity & catastrophe are all part of nature, so you need some other guide to tell you which of these things are moral & which aren't.

This also means that we cannot necessarily apply things that might serve nature's end on the grand scale within a smaller microcosm; like survival of the fittest. Darwinian struggle is a natural and good thing, because it serves nature's purpose; God's purpose. But trying to apply it to human society by eliminating all safety & labour regulations destroying all social safety nets so only the strong survive would be a mistake, as humans are a social species that maximises fitness through coöperation and social cohesion. It would be pathological, maladaptive, immoral and would not serve nature's purpose.

Natural is good, unless it's big and grand, big good is bad, and therefore unnatural.  IDK...I think you may be confused.  Here again you take a circuitous route to an unremarkable conclusion.

That's not what I meant. I mean that we cannot apply general principles of nature, like only the strongest survive, on a smaller scale because different species have evolved different survival strategies. The human strategy is a cooperative, social one.

As for unremarkable, I'm not trying to be novel. What I'm talking about ought to be unremarkable, because it is the purpose for which our moral instincts evolved.