I really like one quote from Protagoras, an ancient Greek philosopher (490 BC — 420 BC).
Humanity is the measure of all things.
It's a big statement, and there has been a lot of debate about what Protagoras meant. It seems to me that it's all-encompassing but not that hard to understand. We can only find out the kind of knowledge that we can apprehend with our human minds, and for me that means the minds produced by millions of years of biological evolution. It would also mean that our moral judgment comes from the same source, not from some code handed down by a god in the sky. We make the kind of moral judgments that are appropriate to our condition as human animals. Protagoras of course knew nothing about the theory of evolution, but he was indeed a skeptic about the existence of gods once saying, "Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not or of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject, and the brevity of human life."
In the intervening 2400 years for a long time we forgot about Protagoras' wisdom. We were seduced by the Platonic notion that the measure of all things is external to mankind in some heavenly Forms or Ideas. However, we also picked up a lot of experience and new knowledge along the way which now enables us to see more deeply into the significance of his aphorism. The theory of evolution is one of the most important lights we can shine on this principle that humanity is the measure of everything.
I'm on the Friendly Atheist Forum, and every time the subject of morals comes up, one of the Christians argues that without God to give us laws and enforce them, "man is a wolf to man." That's actually a translation of a Latin phrase Homo homini lupus est, which is found in the Roman dramatist Plautus. There's just one problem with it. We know now from modern research that wolves are not particularly "wolfish" to other wolves in the pack. They are social animals with rules for getting along. So are we humans.
At first glance it would seem that natural selection (survival of the fittest) would produce totally selfish individuals. Won't an individual survive better if he is selfish, always looking out for Number One? Well, not necessarily for a couple of reasons. Wolves are top predators in the food chain. They survive better precisely because the pack cooperates in the hunt. However, there's an even more important reason. Evolution is not just about the individual surviving. For any type of organism to stay in the gene pool it must also pass its genes on to its offspring and those offspring must survive long enough to reproduce.
One reproductive strategy does allow for selfishness in the individual organism. Many fish simply produce a bazillion eggs. Only a tiny, tiny fraction of those eggs will ever become mature fish which reproduce, but it is enough to keep the chain of inheritance going. So it doesn't matter even if the fish eat some of their own young. However, there is another way, which is arguably more efficient, and that is to have an instinct to take care of one's offspring. We see this maternal instinct preeminently in birds and mammals but social insects also cooperatively raise their young. Moreover, it is not just a maternal instinct. In many species, including humans, males feel a close bond with their mates, and so they hang around to look after the mate and the offspring.
Parental affection is probably the primary source of unselfish behavior, but as I mentioned above, there is also cooperative behavior to obtain the necessities of life. So people are genetically shaped to feel affection for at least the members of an in-group, a clan or a tribe.
Evolution has implanted in us and in many other social animals two main engines for other-regarding activities. They are empathy, the propensity to feel what others are feeling, and what Dawkins calls a debt calculator, a faculty for remembering both those who have done us a good turn and those who have failed to return the kindness.
Aren't we taught our moral principles? Don't they come from religion? I'm certainly not denying the importance of cultural inheritance; I'll get to that in a moment. However, it appears that very deep genetically-coded instincts are the foundation of our moral judgments.
Psychologist Marc Hauser has done some interesting research, which indicates that religion is of no importance in determining most moral judgments. Hauser poses moral puzzles for people to answer. Many of his questions involve a train that is going to kill some people unless .... For instance, suppose five people are trapped on the railroad tracks, and a train is going to kill them all. There is a switch you can throw which will put the train onto a siding, but then it will kill one person who is standing there. Do you throw the switch? The majority of people, both Christians and atheists, said yes. The death of the one person is an unfortunate side effect, but it is better to save five lives.
Now try this. Five patients in a hospital are dying because they need an organ transplant, each one a different organ. There is a perfectly healthy man in the waiting room who could furnish all these organs. Is it all right for the doctors to grab him and give his organs to the five patients? I would be very surprised if you said yes. It seems to have the same result as the first problem; one person dies so that five can live. However, 97 per cent of all people, both Christians and atheists, reject this.
I think it is important to note that Hauser is not talking about people directly thinking about moral laws such as Thou shalt not kill. He is talking about making moral judgments in a concrete situation. Hauser compares the moral decision-making process to speaking a language. English speakers automatically say I was but you were. They don't need to stop and review the rules for agreement of subject and verb. In fact, linguists say that the rules underlying a language enable us to produce an infinite number of well-formed sentences. In like manner, the rules underlying our morality enable us to make decisions in an infinite number of situations without necessarily employing our conscious minds.
In the case of the moral puzzles the people react instantly and are unaware of the rules they are applying although we can later analyze them. In the second example there seems to be a rule about not using other people as mere instruments. In throwing the switch to send the train down the siding, there was no intention to harm the person there, and his death is an unfortunate side effect. However, grabbing a person and taking out his body parts to save others is something completely different.
I mentioned cultural evolution, and I think it is important. Many people will be aware that there is a fairly new theory that mental units, called memes, jump from one mind to another and evolve in ways that are similar to biological evolution. For instance, we could say that a religion is a whole collection of memes, a memeplex. Again it's a question of survival of the fittest. So it is no accident that the three biggest religions (Christianity, Islam and Buddhism) all contain a missionary meme, a command which says that it is your duty to spread this religion to other people. Other religions without the missionary meme (Judaism, Jainism) are much smaller and survive just by the believers having children.
We also need to note that this cultural evolution is not always prosocial. One only needs to think of the Nazis or some of the genocidal hatred in the Old Testament to know that a social environment can be a force for good or evil.
However, there is kind of cultural evolution going on, and it seems to be undermining much of what the traditional religions taught without religious folks even being aware of it. Historically, religion was quite brutal. The Old Testament more than once represents God as ordering the Israelites to slaughter the little children of their enemies. Today if someone said God told him to kill black babies to protect the white race, 95 per cent of both Christians and atheists would regard him as a dangerous fruitcake who ought to be locked up.
St. Thomas Aquinas, the foremost theologian of Catholicism, said that in heaven one of the pleasures of the saved will be listening to the agonizing cries of the damned. Some people may still believe in hell, but very few would talk like that today. People used to enjoy brutal spectacles such as torturing animals and watching public hangings, many of them people executed just for theft. No more. Football star Michael Vick was treated very harshly for being involved in dog-fighting, but 150 years ago it would have just added to his luster as a sportsman.
I cannot fully explain it, but for the last 300 years at least there has been a cultural evolution towards greater tolerance and less violence. It has been affecting both the religious and the non-religious. Atheist Robert Ingersoll was fond of saying that God had become much more civilized in the century preceding his time.
It is my belief this trend originates in the complex of ideas which we call the Enlightenment. It was the Enlightenment which produced democracy, and democracy in turn means that every citizen is entitled to respect and fair treatment even if his ideas are not the same as yours. There has also been a tendency to extend our sympathies farther and farther beyond our immediate families and even our nations. When a tsunami devastates people on the far side of the world, many contribute generously to relieve their suffering. In other words, tolerance and humanity are spreading wider and wider.
So, no, I do not think we need a god to tell us what is right and wrong and to scare us into doing it. I can't say that I always do the right thing or the unselfish thing, but I try, and my effort is just because I want to do it, not because I am afraid I will be sent to hell.
To me humanity is the measure of all things. I know what makes me happy and being human, I can guess that it makes others happy too. Instead of the perplexing and often contradictory commands of a god, I find that I can get by quite easily with the simple "creed" formulated by the 19th century freethinker Robert G. Ingersoll:
The time to be happy is now.
The place to be happy is here.
The way to be happy is to make others so.
Humanity is the measure of all things.
It's a big statement, and there has been a lot of debate about what Protagoras meant. It seems to me that it's all-encompassing but not that hard to understand. We can only find out the kind of knowledge that we can apprehend with our human minds, and for me that means the minds produced by millions of years of biological evolution. It would also mean that our moral judgment comes from the same source, not from some code handed down by a god in the sky. We make the kind of moral judgments that are appropriate to our condition as human animals. Protagoras of course knew nothing about the theory of evolution, but he was indeed a skeptic about the existence of gods once saying, "Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not or of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject, and the brevity of human life."
In the intervening 2400 years for a long time we forgot about Protagoras' wisdom. We were seduced by the Platonic notion that the measure of all things is external to mankind in some heavenly Forms or Ideas. However, we also picked up a lot of experience and new knowledge along the way which now enables us to see more deeply into the significance of his aphorism. The theory of evolution is one of the most important lights we can shine on this principle that humanity is the measure of everything.
I'm on the Friendly Atheist Forum, and every time the subject of morals comes up, one of the Christians argues that without God to give us laws and enforce them, "man is a wolf to man." That's actually a translation of a Latin phrase Homo homini lupus est, which is found in the Roman dramatist Plautus. There's just one problem with it. We know now from modern research that wolves are not particularly "wolfish" to other wolves in the pack. They are social animals with rules for getting along. So are we humans.
At first glance it would seem that natural selection (survival of the fittest) would produce totally selfish individuals. Won't an individual survive better if he is selfish, always looking out for Number One? Well, not necessarily for a couple of reasons. Wolves are top predators in the food chain. They survive better precisely because the pack cooperates in the hunt. However, there's an even more important reason. Evolution is not just about the individual surviving. For any type of organism to stay in the gene pool it must also pass its genes on to its offspring and those offspring must survive long enough to reproduce.
One reproductive strategy does allow for selfishness in the individual organism. Many fish simply produce a bazillion eggs. Only a tiny, tiny fraction of those eggs will ever become mature fish which reproduce, but it is enough to keep the chain of inheritance going. So it doesn't matter even if the fish eat some of their own young. However, there is another way, which is arguably more efficient, and that is to have an instinct to take care of one's offspring. We see this maternal instinct preeminently in birds and mammals but social insects also cooperatively raise their young. Moreover, it is not just a maternal instinct. In many species, including humans, males feel a close bond with their mates, and so they hang around to look after the mate and the offspring.
Parental affection is probably the primary source of unselfish behavior, but as I mentioned above, there is also cooperative behavior to obtain the necessities of life. So people are genetically shaped to feel affection for at least the members of an in-group, a clan or a tribe.
Evolution has implanted in us and in many other social animals two main engines for other-regarding activities. They are empathy, the propensity to feel what others are feeling, and what Dawkins calls a debt calculator, a faculty for remembering both those who have done us a good turn and those who have failed to return the kindness.
Aren't we taught our moral principles? Don't they come from religion? I'm certainly not denying the importance of cultural inheritance; I'll get to that in a moment. However, it appears that very deep genetically-coded instincts are the foundation of our moral judgments.
Psychologist Marc Hauser has done some interesting research, which indicates that religion is of no importance in determining most moral judgments. Hauser poses moral puzzles for people to answer. Many of his questions involve a train that is going to kill some people unless .... For instance, suppose five people are trapped on the railroad tracks, and a train is going to kill them all. There is a switch you can throw which will put the train onto a siding, but then it will kill one person who is standing there. Do you throw the switch? The majority of people, both Christians and atheists, said yes. The death of the one person is an unfortunate side effect, but it is better to save five lives.
Now try this. Five patients in a hospital are dying because they need an organ transplant, each one a different organ. There is a perfectly healthy man in the waiting room who could furnish all these organs. Is it all right for the doctors to grab him and give his organs to the five patients? I would be very surprised if you said yes. It seems to have the same result as the first problem; one person dies so that five can live. However, 97 per cent of all people, both Christians and atheists, reject this.
I think it is important to note that Hauser is not talking about people directly thinking about moral laws such as Thou shalt not kill. He is talking about making moral judgments in a concrete situation. Hauser compares the moral decision-making process to speaking a language. English speakers automatically say I was but you were. They don't need to stop and review the rules for agreement of subject and verb. In fact, linguists say that the rules underlying a language enable us to produce an infinite number of well-formed sentences. In like manner, the rules underlying our morality enable us to make decisions in an infinite number of situations without necessarily employing our conscious minds.
In the case of the moral puzzles the people react instantly and are unaware of the rules they are applying although we can later analyze them. In the second example there seems to be a rule about not using other people as mere instruments. In throwing the switch to send the train down the siding, there was no intention to harm the person there, and his death is an unfortunate side effect. However, grabbing a person and taking out his body parts to save others is something completely different.
I mentioned cultural evolution, and I think it is important. Many people will be aware that there is a fairly new theory that mental units, called memes, jump from one mind to another and evolve in ways that are similar to biological evolution. For instance, we could say that a religion is a whole collection of memes, a memeplex. Again it's a question of survival of the fittest. So it is no accident that the three biggest religions (Christianity, Islam and Buddhism) all contain a missionary meme, a command which says that it is your duty to spread this religion to other people. Other religions without the missionary meme (Judaism, Jainism) are much smaller and survive just by the believers having children.
We also need to note that this cultural evolution is not always prosocial. One only needs to think of the Nazis or some of the genocidal hatred in the Old Testament to know that a social environment can be a force for good or evil.
However, there is kind of cultural evolution going on, and it seems to be undermining much of what the traditional religions taught without religious folks even being aware of it. Historically, religion was quite brutal. The Old Testament more than once represents God as ordering the Israelites to slaughter the little children of their enemies. Today if someone said God told him to kill black babies to protect the white race, 95 per cent of both Christians and atheists would regard him as a dangerous fruitcake who ought to be locked up.
St. Thomas Aquinas, the foremost theologian of Catholicism, said that in heaven one of the pleasures of the saved will be listening to the agonizing cries of the damned. Some people may still believe in hell, but very few would talk like that today. People used to enjoy brutal spectacles such as torturing animals and watching public hangings, many of them people executed just for theft. No more. Football star Michael Vick was treated very harshly for being involved in dog-fighting, but 150 years ago it would have just added to his luster as a sportsman.
I cannot fully explain it, but for the last 300 years at least there has been a cultural evolution towards greater tolerance and less violence. It has been affecting both the religious and the non-religious. Atheist Robert Ingersoll was fond of saying that God had become much more civilized in the century preceding his time.
It is my belief this trend originates in the complex of ideas which we call the Enlightenment. It was the Enlightenment which produced democracy, and democracy in turn means that every citizen is entitled to respect and fair treatment even if his ideas are not the same as yours. There has also been a tendency to extend our sympathies farther and farther beyond our immediate families and even our nations. When a tsunami devastates people on the far side of the world, many contribute generously to relieve their suffering. In other words, tolerance and humanity are spreading wider and wider.
So, no, I do not think we need a god to tell us what is right and wrong and to scare us into doing it. I can't say that I always do the right thing or the unselfish thing, but I try, and my effort is just because I want to do it, not because I am afraid I will be sent to hell.
To me humanity is the measure of all things. I know what makes me happy and being human, I can guess that it makes others happy too. Instead of the perplexing and often contradictory commands of a god, I find that I can get by quite easily with the simple "creed" formulated by the 19th century freethinker Robert G. Ingersoll:
The time to be happy is now.
The place to be happy is here.
The way to be happy is to make others so.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people — House
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