Morals not an option?

[Postmaster]

Hey I think that similarities of morals found in major world religions are due to them being evolutionary hardwired into human being brains. And the differences in religion are the ones that make up self determination or the choice of free will. Any views?

 

[bananabrain]

you want to read dan dennett on this, postmaster, his books "darwin's dangerous idea" and particularly "breaking the spell", on the phenomenology of religion. it is possible to argue that a lot of religious features are of evolutionary use. another important book for this is "acts of faith" by starke and fink, which looks at it from a market competitition PoV.

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[Postmaster]

Thanks for your help BB appreciated

 

[wil]

I believe the similarity in moral requirements is simply that religions were in affect early forms of governing. killing bad? no rocket scientists required to figure that out. stealing, coveting, will cause consternation, jealousy and anger...well in any group of people it is fairly easy to see in a short period of time what pisses others off and realize that there are some ground rules required to keep the peace.

Early small societies the alpha male with the big stick solved those problems. As populations grew out of hand we needed more control, religion filled that void. The alpha male with the big stick became invisible and thru lightning bolts and plagues, controlled the winds and the waters.

Later gov'ts took over that responsibility and without the alpha male needed tons of alpha males and an organized army/police force to maintain order.

 

[Postmaster]

I guess.. But also looking at other animals like monkeys they demonstrate turning murderous and invasive on other monkeys of another social group even there own species and its organised. Or for Hornets that kill and invade wasps which in this case is a different specie. Makes you wonder if this kind of behaviour is hardwired.

Looking at human history it really shows were no different we just do it in a more complex way. I do believe a time will come when it will stop though I hope Abrahams right.

 

[Resigned]

Hey I think that similarities of morals found in major world religions are due to them being evolutionary hardwired into human being brains. And the differences in religion are the ones that make up self determination or the choice of free will. Any views?

I think there are two issues to address: survival and morality. There is a huge difference in "surviving" and behaving morally and ethically. There would obviously be things that we would "learn" from a living in a society devoid of morality, such as:

1) Inbreeding would weaken the species;

2) Children must be protected from predators, be taught to feed themselves, work and survive;

3) Killing the king of the village would likely result in death.

But these evolutionary imperatives, while perhaps not unethical or immoral to a society, do not speak to anything greater than survival. Surviving isn't the end all, morality or not. Civilizations have risen and fallen, not because they had any trouble "surviving" but because they did not have moral and ethical principles that fostered advancement of their societies...


Nature has preprogrammed successful animals with a desire to survive, and once you add our ability to have a sentient perception of death, you have a formula for a more deep seated fear (at least, one that can be expressed by doing something more than just fleeing, like all other animals do). And I don’t mind telling you, I have a deep seated fear of death within certain circumstances.

 

[juantoo3]

Hey I think that similarities of morals found in major world religions are due to them being evolutionary hardwired into human being brains. And the differences in religion are the ones that make up self determination or the choice of free will. Any views?

OK, I see two distinct lines of questioning.

First, is morality hardwired? In the same sense as "eat or be eaten?" No, I don't think so, although it would be interesting to read the books BB points to. There may be some elements of morality that are "hardwired," but if it can be proven so it would go far in establishing an objective basis for morality, and I think you will find a general consensus among atheists that that is not possible.

Second, are the differences between religions based in self determination and/or free will? This seems to me a bit more tricky. I think perhaps an argument might be made in this direction in some instances, but I'm not sure how it could apply to all instances. For example, murder is a pretty universal "thou shalt not." However, in some cultures stealing is a sign of prowess and is encouraged, as long as it is not directed within the tribe but rather outward at an "other."

I believe the similarity in moral requirements is simply that religions were in affect early forms of governing. killing bad? no rocket scientists required to figure that out. stealing, coveting, will cause consternation, jealousy and anger...well in any group of people it is fairly easy to see in a short period of time what pisses others off and realize that there are some ground rules required to keep the peace.

Early small societies the alpha male with the big stick solved those problems. As populations grew out of hand we needed more control, religion filled that void. The alpha male with the big stick became invisible and thru lightning bolts and plagues, controlled the winds and the waters.

Later gov'ts took over that responsibility and without the alpha male needed tons of alpha males and an organized army/police force to maintain order.

I realize time constraints and posting limits, but this is really, *really* oversimplified. There's a whole lot of "in-between" being glossed over.

I guess.. But also looking at other animals like monkeys they demonstrate turning murderous and invasive on other monkeys of another social group even there own species and its organised. Or for Hornets that kill and invade wasps which in this case is a different specie. Makes you wonder if this kind of behaviour is hardwired.

Looking at human history it really shows were no different we just do it in a more complex way. I do believe a time will come when it will stop though I hope Abrahams right.

Well, here we are again at differentiating between "us" and "them," our tribe and the "other" tribe. In the animal kingdom it seems common to exact on others what is unthinkable on our own, particularly among social primates. Killing one of ours is murder, killing an other is at worst killing (not murder) and at best an act of heroism.

I think there are two issues to address: survival and morality. There is a huge difference in "surviving" and behaving morally and ethically. There would obviously be things that we would "learn" from a living in a society devoid of morality, such as:

1) Inbreeding would weaken the species;

2) Children must be protected from predators, be taught to feed themselves, work and survive;

3) Killing the king of the village would likely result in death.

But these evolutionary imperatives, while perhaps not unethical or immoral to a society, do not speak to anything greater than survival. Surviving isn't the end all, morality or not. Civilizations have risen and fallen, not because they had any trouble "surviving" but because they did not have moral and ethical principles that fostered advancement of their societies...

Nature has preprogrammed successful animals with a desire to survive, and once you add our ability to have a sentient perception of death, you have a formula for a more deep seated fear (at least, one that can be expressed by doing something more than just fleeing, like all other animals do). And I don’t mind telling you, I have a deep seated fear of death within certain circumstances.

Welcome to InterFaith, Resigned. Survival and morality do seem to have an association, but I don't think it is explicitly an evolutionary one. Who knows? I've been looking for answers for years, and I cannot make a blanket claim either way. In a purely animal state of "red of tooth and claw," as humans must have been a couple hundred thousand years ago, morality would not have been an intellectual pursuit. And yet we have evidence from about 30 thousand years ago give or take that shows humans were seriously considering matters of life and death, using some type of spiritual and/or ritual practice to invoke favor and fortune in the hunt, and even interacting both positively and negatively with neighboring cultures. Somewhere in between we began to consider morality and ethics in a more intellectual manner. In part because we were developing the tools (brain power) to do so. And in part is a mystery with no viable explanation any atheist scientist is willing to submit to...why we are moral if we have no logical or rational reason to be so.

I will go a step further. Morality is contrary to selfish desires. Selfish desires is "me" focused. I want what I want when I want it. Nevermind if it belongs to you, if you get in my way I will do what it takes to move you out of my way (up to and including murder). That's the mentality of any "terrible" three year old, and evolutionarily speaking that is about where other animals leave off, even domesticated ones (with few and simple exceptions). Morals requires going beyond the selfish mindset and beginning to look out for the welfare of others. This is also where love enters the picture.

So yeah, from where I sit I see a lot of things working against morality, and yet we are still moral animals. Morality is sufficiently vague and expressed in different culturally significant ways, but we all have long had morality in some sense for thousands of years.

 

[Postmaster]

Yeah I think that possibly there is an uncontrollable hardwired circuitry in your brain for morality and this is exactly the same for almost all humans alive. What we do culturally is totally different and those that make and pioneering culture even if its on a micro level is also different which I consider to be mysticism. You really can't define outcome from a sociological point of view but maybe there is some system to it?

 

[c0de]

Yeah I think that possibly there is an uncontrollable hardwired circuitry in your brain for morality and this is exactly the same for almost all humans alive. What we do culturally is totally different and those that make and pioneering culture even if its on a micro level is also different which I consider to be mysticism. You really can't define outcome from a sociological point of view but maybe there is some system to it?

The newest theories in the field of linguistics hint at a similar
type of idea: that there is some actual hard wiring in our heads which
makes up our ability to develop language. This hard wiring must be the
same for all humans, this is why all languages are basically the same. For
example, structurally, Japanese is just a mirror image of English.

Noam Chomsky said that if aliens were to come and observe humanity,
they would classify every single human as speaking one language.

But now to the main point that relates to this discussion directly. The
reason why this theory in linguistics is so, eye-brow raising, is because
it raises a very big problem. If such a 'hardwiried circuit' exists, then it
is part of our genetic code... and if it is part of our genetic code,
then it had to evolve... This is fine, but the problem is that the whole
circuit came into being so recently, and suddenly, that they can't
understand how the hell it evolved. I mean, evolution takes millions of
years. But the circuitry responsible for developing language only just
came into being, like in a blink of an eye (50,000 years or something).

The same 'problem' is raised by this idea of yours Postmaster.
If such hardware exists in our brains, how the hell did it evolve so
quickly in Homo Sapiens? Because it doesnt fit in with regular evolutionary
theory, the evolutionary biologists will try and reject the entire idea...

But for me, since I believe in God (and evolution), it is easily explained.

 

[Postmaster]

Although Im quite pleased to accpet evoloution there is still some quite puzzling question marks over it. Like for instance there is always missing speices of fossiles when your looking for proof, theres transitional remains missing for humans aswell. I guess it will always be a theroy untill otherwise.

 

[Resigned]

Although Im quite pleased to accpet evoloution there is still some quite puzzling question marks over it. Like for instance there is always missing speices of fossiles when your looking for proof, theres transitional remains missing for humans aswell. I guess it will always be a theroy untill otherwise.

First, all animals are by definition "transitionals". So, moving on, fossilization itself is incredibly rare, especially for higher evolved creatures. Just the fact of the fossil evidence defies your claim of disbelief in evolution in that evolutionists aren't able to manufacture fossils in such a way to perpetrate a fraud. Sure, science can make errors (science functions from both failure and success), but when you show striation, upthrusting, hard fossilization, and chemical/radioative testing, you've pretty much built a case where different disciplines come together to support a specific assertion, rendering it as fact.

If you took the time to truly understand the process of fossilization, you would have a greater appreciation of those “surviving” elements we find today.

How do you explain the fossil record showing, for instance, the changes in Eohippus into modern horses? Remember, your sweeping "God did it" does not explain anything. It tells us nothing of how. It just says, "we don't and can't ever know".



Archaeopteryx is clearly a transitional. Eohippus is shown in various stages. Whales have intermediaries. I could go on for a week supplying reams of scientific evidence but if you explicitly choose to sweep away all the evidence before you, I believe you are missing out on the exploration of your history. Why would you ignore the facts written in stone (yet prefer the stories inscribed on parchment).



Let's approach it from another direction-- why don't the gods supply a plethora of fossils proving that they have no correlation and display no evidence of any transition, period, and put to rest the question once and for all? Surely such a thing is quite within the capabilities of the alleged supreme being.


I'd say this horse is not only dead, but has joined Eohippus as a Montanan fossil.

 

[Resigned]

Welcome to InterFaith, Resigned. Survival and morality do seem to have an association, but I don't think it is explicitly an evolutionary one. Who knows? I've been looking for answers for years, and I cannot make a blanket claim either way. In a purely animal state of "red of tooth and claw," as humans must have been a couple hundred thousand years ago, morality would not have been an intellectual pursuit. And yet we have evidence from about 30 thousand years ago give or take that shows humans were seriously considering matters of life and death, using some type of spiritual and/or ritual practice to invoke favor and fortune in the hunt, and even interacting both positively and negatively with neighboring cultures. Somewhere in between we began to consider morality and ethics in a more intellectual manner. In part because we were developing the tools (brain power) to do so. And in part is a mystery with no viable explanation any atheist scientist is willing to submit to...why we are moral if we have no logical or rational reason to be so.

I will go a step further. Morality is contrary to selfish desires. Selfish desires is "me" focused. I want what I want when I want it. Nevermind if it belongs to you, if you get in my way I will do what it takes to move you out of my way (up to and including murder). That's the mentality of any "terrible" three year old, and evolutionarily speaking that is about where other animals leave off, even domesticated ones (with few and simple exceptions). Morals requires going beyond the selfish mindset and beginning to look out for the welfare of others. This is also where love enters the picture.

So yeah, from where I sit I see a lot of things working against morality, and yet we are still moral animals. Morality is sufficiently vague and expressed in different culturally significant ways, but we all have long had morality in some sense for thousands of years.

Thank you for the welcome.
I think we’re largely in agreement on this. Obviously, people learned to co-exist with one another. Clearly, we somehow didn't all kill one another because -- we're clearly here. So there must have been some morality.

The idea that it's god-implanted is mere assertion. I’d suggest there are two possibilities: One, that morality is the sentient labeling we give to behavior that supports the species and allows it to survive, and is fully natural, or Two, that morality is implanted by a divine being (for humans and animals both).

Okay, others opt for #2, I opt for #1. Now it's time to go out and compare notes and put on the table the evidence that will define either #1 as knowledge, or #2 as knowledge. The “others” now have to prove god exists before they can even begin to prove morality is god-implanted.

Values and ethics aren't faith-derived. If anyone thinks otherwise, imagine this: Tomorrow, it is discovered for certain there is no god. Would such information suddenly cause you to steal from me?

If you answer no, then god isn't needed.

If you answer yes, then you are corrupt (not you personally, the greater “you”), and immoral and that is your personality fracture, not morality's weakness.
For myself, I'll cite Jane Goodall's study of chimpanzees as the natural analogy to human tribal customs that evolves into law (and which codifies morality).

Further, we consistently see humans -- with no specific religious connotation, have survival-based laws that preclude wanton murder and thievery. Further still, we see simple indigenous tribes have better morality (and I’ll qualify that in a moment), than industrial nations have -- for instance, some South American Indian tribes have no concept of thievery because they communally share everything.

I will also cite clear differences in moral precepts. Egyptian royalty married brother to sister; i.e., engaged in incest by our standards, and functioned successfully for thousands of years. In today's culture, such liaisons are forbidden. Which is morally correct?

Clearly there is a broad range of morality, it has changed in time according to culture, and it shows clear analogy to lower animals in their social behavior as well.

I believe our sentience has allowed us to explore. As you move further away from humans, you find corollaries of human behavior that resides in us still, that have proven successful evolutionarily throughout time, and are maintained, and you also see hints of where our sentience comes from. That's why we see a degree of self-awareness in chimpanzees but not at all in ants -- yet hierarchal structuring of both societies have similarities. Are there offshoots? Yes, nature is not perfect, and never has it been claimed it is, and what do we see? An imperfect nature, with a lot of starts and stops, successes and failures.


We have evolved a sense of survival, it is evident in almost every animal, and the methods to which we go to survive get more complex as -- surprise! -- the higher towards sentience you go. At the same time, we also see vestiges of self-sacrifice for the greater good, just like a lowly bee will sting an invader and die, for the greater good of the hive.
Also, why would god create mankind out of dust, give him sentience, a special place in the universe, and then give animals such similar abilities—just at a lower “wattage”? Yet more confusion, making it seem as though we evolved our characteristics from animals similar to us, who share 99.9% of our DNA, instead of humans being qualitatively different. Why would a god do this, particularly when the bible says man will have dominion over all beasts? What is more likely, that god purposely made these similarities so to confuse and confound us, or the story was set down within the limited parameters of knowledge of the natural world that existed at the time?
And lastly, (then I’ll shut up), why is it we see rudimentary social structures in animals that don't really have any special creation? Why do higher apes adhere to "moralities" in terms of not blindly killing one another? I suppose there are those who must believe that the gods have touched them as well.

Interestingly, I would like to see anyone use the primary Judeo gods as a role model for moral behavior. Just make a list of the things Yahweh or Allah have done, and then go on and try to live according to their morality. They are the example after all, right?

Morality is both transitory and fully natural in its source. Take gods away tomorrow and humans would behave pretty much like they do with gods in place. We are a mixture of selfishness and cooperation and it serves us pretty well. Most people do behave morally.

 

[juantoo3]

The newest theories in the field of linguistics hint at a similar
type of idea: that there is some actual hard wiring in our heads which
makes up our ability to develop language. This hard wiring must be the
same for all humans, this is why all languages are basically the same. For
example, structurally, Japanese is just a mirror image of English.

Ummm, I'm not sure I agree with this. I have looked into linguistics in the past. Even taking into account that with the differences between Western languages (such as the format contrast between Germanic languages including English and the Romance languages including Spanish), there seems to be a common source usually ascribed as the Indo-European precursor (sometimes also called Aryan, although I doubt many of our East Indian friends will agree with the eminence attributed). However, Indo-European *does not* account for the Oriental languages. In short, I don't think it is accurate to suggest Japanese is a mirror of English, linguistically. They are two *very* distinct languages. And since Japan was closed to the West until fairly recently (mid-1800's), I think what may be touted is simply a modern cultural phenomenon, such as how American English is so heavily influenced by other languages. China and Korea, in contrast, rather seem to hold English as a comfortable second language, in the case of Chinese even using the Latinized alphabet of Pinyin English to teach their children *how to pronounce* their individual words, as the Chinese ideographic writing is quite distinct in structure compared with Western alphabets. Korean is quite similar in this regard.

http://www.interfaith.org/forum/and-the-whole-earth-was-1610.html

http://www.interfaith.org/forum/the-origins-of-language-210.html

But now to the main point that relates to this discussion directly. The reason why this theory in linguistics is so, eye-brow raising, is because it raises a very big problem. If such a 'hardwiried circuit' exists, then it
is part of our genetic code... and if it is part of our genetic code,
then it had to evolve... This is fine, but the problem is that the whole
circuit came into being so recently, and suddenly, that they can't
understand how the hell it evolved. I mean, evolution takes millions of
years. But the circuitry responsible for developing language only just
came into being, like in a blink of an eye (50,000 years or something).

Well, that's the thing...*if*. Depending how language is defined, then it can easily be said to be an artifact of evolution...because animals *and* plants communicate, and communication requires a language of some type. Birds chirp, Lions roar, Horses whinny, Whales sing; all of which are examples of language.

If we narrow our consideration to human spoken words, then we bump up against the problem of the anatomy of the vocal chords. It seems Neandertal do not have vocal chords that compare with ours, leading some researchers to conclude that Neandertal could not speak words, rather they would have had a more glutteral growl. I'm not sure I agree, and other researchers agree as well that Neandertal may have had a more simple vocabulary, based in part on the fact that Neandertal had larger brains than we do.

Writing came along quite late in human development, so it is useless in trying to determine what language consisted of any further back than about 5 thousand BC or so.

 

[juantoo3]

I think we’re largely in agreement on this. Obviously, people learned to co-exist with one another. Clearly, we somehow didn't all kill one another because -- we're clearly here. So there must have been some morality.

The idea that it's god-implanted is mere assertion. I’d suggest there are two possibilities: One, that morality is the sentient labeling we give to behavior that supports the species and allows it to survive, and is fully natural, or Two, that morality is implanted by a divine being (for humans and animals both).

Considering that herding and pack animals tend to exhibit elemental morality, there *is* something of a case to be made for an evolutionary connection...as you say, "clearly we somehow didn't kill one another" *completely* "because we're clearly here." Of course, genetics does tell us of the Mitochondrial Eve and the comparable genetic Adam (bottleneck with founder effect) and the disappearance of the Neandertal is usually attributed to some type of warfare between the stout and stocky and the tall thin and gracile, with Cro Magnon ultimately the victor. So there is also a large case to be made for the subjectivity of morality. We are moral when it is in our interest, and we are amoral when it is in our interest...which means the definition of what is moral is a moving target of itself. This statement can only be made to make sense in a purely animal (evolutionary) sense, because the purpose of religion is to codify and attempt to pin down and solidify morality into a set of rules that are no longer contingent and situational...at least until the philosophers of a couple hundred years ago who for what seem to me rather hedonistic reasons attempted to reintroduce situational ethics.

My point being, there are components of morality that seem to have an evolutionary connection, and there are components that defy an evolutionary connection...which tells me that the whole subject of morality is not simply one or the other but a mix of at least the two, and possibly more that I haven't factored in yet.

Okay, others opt for #2, I opt for #1. Now it's time to go out and compare notes and put on the table the evidence that will define either #1 as knowledge, or #2 as knowledge. The “others” now have to prove god exists before they can even begin to prove morality is god-implanted.

Well, yes, I can agree that "G-d implanted" is an assertion, insomuch as G-d really can't be proven, at least not in the typical traditional scientific / logical manner. However, it serves logic well to remember that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Having said this, it still remains that an intellectual explosion occurred in the Homonid species Homo Sapiens Sapiens. We were playing with fire two hundred thousand years ago...what other species plays with fire? We were playing with tools almost as long...I have seen scant evidence of perhaps a half dozen other species *furtively* using tools. We were *manufacturing* tools a hundred thousand years ago...I have seen research implying one other observed instance of another species manufacturing a tool. We were *making* fire fifty thousand years ago...no other species even plays with fire, they sure don't make fire. We (Neandertal *and* Cro Magnon) were burying our dead with grave goods about fifty thousand years ago... few other species bury their dead (if one counts elephant cemeteries), and no others bury their dead with grave goods. In spite of the hype otherwise, other species don't paint on cave walls or create works of art (elephant and gorilla painting for tourists notwithstanding). And somewhere in the midst of all of this we humans crossed the intellectual threshold into conscious rational thought...something no other species has yet demonstrated.

There are other matters of human evolution that are counter intuitive to evolution as demonstrated among other creatures. If we are "carnivores," why have our canine teeth gotten smaller? If we are carnivores, why do we eat grain when it is evident our physiologies are not evolved to eat grain?

If we could show other species evolving in intellectual capacity and crossing the sub-conscious threshold into consciousness...then we could definitively say without reserve that such is evidently a product of evolutionary processes. But since the process is unique in humans...and G-d cannot be proven or disproven...and a lot of other matters that we have yet to even enter into surrounding this issue...I for one cannot confortably say that there is no unique impact on the human species, perhaps described as supra-evolutionary.

Values and ethics aren't faith-derived. If anyone thinks otherwise, imagine this: Tomorrow, it is discovered for certain there is no god. Would such information suddenly cause you to steal from me?

I think this may miss the point of morals, ethics and values. They do not have to be faith derived...rather faith is used as a teaching tool to instill. Whether the Sermon on the Mount or the Ant and the Grasshopper or Jack and Jill went up the hill...our mythos are teaching tools to instill our cultural values, mores and norms. And this moral collection is what helps bind and coalesce a tribe into a cohesive unit.

We also have to be careful brandishing the term "faith." It is possible I am not using the term in quite the way you meant. Afterall, if one considers the aspect of superstitious faith, there is the ready comparison with gambling. And this was a matter that long intrigued psychologist B.F.Skinner, who figured out how positive reinforcement worked to bring about changes in behavior in animal and human subjects. His work in negative reinforcement is sometimes referred to obliquely by the anti-death penalty bunch as evidence that the death penalty does little or nothing to deter murder. But the most intriguing demonstrations Skinner was able to show is the power of *intermittant* reinforcement in producing behavior. In this sense, faith and superstition are very similar, and if some ritual behavior is somehow perceived to produce *even intermittant* results, the superstition will persist. This is evident in those "religions" that lean towards the practice of magic and manipulation of nature...i.e. various paganisms and Taoism.

For myself, I'll cite Jane Goodall's study of chimpanzees as the natural analogy to human tribal customs that evolves into law (and which codifies morality).

Further, we consistently see humans -- with no specific religious connotation, have survival-based laws that preclude wanton murder and thievery. Further still, we see simple indigenous tribes have better morality (and I’ll qualify that in a moment), than industrial nations have -- for instance, some South American Indian tribes have no concept of thievery because they communally share everything.

I'll need to see this study by Goodall and about the South American Indians before I comment. I think I know what you are alluding to, but I would rather be more certain without being presumptive.

I will also cite clear differences in moral precepts. Egyptian royalty married brother to sister; i.e., engaged in incest by our standards, and functioned successfully for thousands of years. In today's culture, such liaisons are forbidden. Which is morally correct?

Clearly there is a broad range of morality, it has changed in time according to culture, and it shows clear analogy to lower animals in their social behavior as well.

It was typical for a girl of 12 to 14 years of age to marry and start having kids of her own a scant hundred years ago in many cultures and societies...yet in the West that is almost universally frowned on now. In some cultures it was common for older men to engage teenage boys as love interests (with all that entails), and we condemn that now as pedophilia. It has only been since the enaction of the Jim Crow laws of the 1930's that marijuana has been illegal in this country, prior to that it was listed in the pharmacopeia. No argument from me, morality has a great deal of cultural subjectivity.

As you move further away from humans, you find corollaries of human behavior that resides in us still, that have proven successful evolutionarily throughout time, and are maintained, and you also see hints of where our sentience comes from. That's why we see a degree of self-awareness in chimpanzees but not at all in ants -- yet hierarchal structuring of both societies have similarities. Are there offshoots?

That's just it though...I don't think we rightly can say there are corollaries of human behavior in other species...not without applying a heavy dose of anthropomorphism, which is a rational and logical no-no. That degree of self-awareness in chimps is trivial...yet is more pronounced in lesser apes like various social monkey groups, which is counter intuitive to what we traditionally think of simian groups. Socially, we share more in common with lesser apes than with great apes.

Yes, nature is not perfect, and never has it been claimed it is, and what do we see? An imperfect nature, with a lot of starts and stops, successes and failures.

Gotta love Mandelbrot for seeing beauty in ugliness and perfection in imperfection. Nature isn't imperfect...quite the contrary, in being able to overcome so very many obstacles in so many marvelous, fascinating and ingenious ways; nature is the embodiment of perfection.

We have evolved a sense of survival, it is evident in almost every animal, and the methods to which we go to survive get more complex as -- surprise! -- the higher towards sentience you go. At the same time, we also see vestiges of self-sacrifice for the greater good, just like a lowly bee will sting an invader and die, for the greater good of the hive.

I don't buy into the teleological argument...it has long ago been dismissed as invalid. There is no "higher" order, there is no "lower" order, there are only environments and adaptations to accomodate those environments (or die trying). Evolutionarily speaking, humans are no more evolved than ants, goldfish or turtles.

Also, why would god create mankind out of dust, give him sentience, a special place in the universe, and then give animals such similar abilities—just at a lower “wattage”? Yet more confusion, making it seem as though we evolved our characteristics from animals similar to us, who share 99.9% of our DNA, instead of humans being qualitatively different. Why would a god do this, particularly when the bible says man will have dominion over all beasts? What is more likely, that god purposely made these similarities so to confuse and confound us, or the story was set down within the limited parameters of knowledge of the natural world that existed at the time?
And lastly, (then I’ll shut up), why is it we see rudimentary social structures in animals that don't really have any special creation? Why do higher apes adhere to "moralities" in terms of not blindly killing one another? I suppose there are those who must believe that the gods have touched them as well.

I am not G-d, I cannot say why G-d would do anything. One can as easily ask other pointless and fruitless questions...like why did G-d make an imperfect world (if one so chose to see the world in such manner)? Why does G-d make the innocent suffer indignities at the hands of the guilty? Why do the crooks and cheats and greedy get to live under the same blue skies and taste of the same air and water as the righteous? I don't know, and the answers ultimately have no bearing on the subject at hand, even though it would seem that they would.

Interestingly, I would like to see anyone use the primary Judeo gods as a role model for moral behavior. Just make a list of the things Yahweh or Allah have done, and then go on and try to live according to their morality. They are the example after all, right?

I suppose we could as easily hold Adolf Hitler, Ghengis Khan, Napolean Bonaparte, Jack the Ripper or Ted Kaczynski as role models, and live according to their morality. They should make such wonderful examples of human nature at its finest.

You do see why your argument is fraught, correct?

Morality is both transitory and fully natural in its source. Take gods away tomorrow and humans would behave pretty much like they do with gods in place. We are a mixture of selfishness and cooperation and it serves us pretty well. Most people do behave morally.

I'm not sure I agree. The trouble with intermittent reinforcement is that it *does* occasionally work. The trouble with superstition is that it does have a basis or it would not exist. The trouble with sympathetic magic is that it must work *at least sometimes* or it would not exist. The trouble with G-d is that unless there was something there, He would not exist in the minds of humans. He may not be *what* we imagine Him to be, but unless He were there we would not bother to invent Him. ("Him," and "He" being relative terms used only out of tradition; I hold no illusions of an old man sitting on a cloud with a handful of lightning ready to hurl at the first person to displease Him)

 

[TheKhan]

Racism is hardwired, maybe in our social practices. Its a form of group thinking territorial attribute, and very natural.

Morality. For young fellas to step up to the plate to save infants in grave danger also seems to be hardwired as (evident in monkey`s), whether we want to look cool in front of the ladies is the motivation, I do not know. Mothers wanting to save their babies, Alpha males biting off young monkey pinky fingers to keep the peace, and look cool in front of the ladies again..

This is interesting, never really thought of it this way. I don`t know if Moral is hardwired. I could probably tell you for each action performed if it is hardwired or not. And I can tell you when exactly morality goes out the window.

Good question.

Maybe somethings are hardwired into our basic social responses as groups of people, and some others are hardwired into our DNA. And others are luxury.

TK

p.s. I noticed a post in this thread about Japanese being a mirror image of English. Japanese is derived from Sanskrit. And the first five J alphabets are "a","i","u","e","o". If someone could prove that Latin is derived from Sanskrit, or some root language that originates somewhere between the middle-east and India, all our languages are a mirror of that root language. And right now I`m not convinced that the root language happened in Indo-Europe that is virtually around Iraq(why call it Indo?btw). Because the east does not seem to be influenced as much as the west by Babylon (thus making me have some doubts that Indo-European theory is Zionist material). As things pass from the new to old in some instances, everything doesn`t have to lead to the oldest cradle.

 

[Nick_A]

Hi Resigned. You wrote:

I believe our sentience has allowed us to explore. As you move further away from humans, you find corollaries of human behavior that resides in us still, that have proven successful evolutionarily throughout time, and are maintained, and you also see hints of where our sentience comes from. That's why we see a degree of self-awareness in chimpanzees but not at all in ants -- yet hierarchal structuring of both societies have similarities. Are there offshoots? Yes, nature is not perfect, and never has it been claimed it is, and what do we see? An imperfect nature, with a lot of starts and stops, successes and failures.

Do you believe that nature living by the law of survival of the fittest is either moral, immoral, or amoral?

If a bird throws a chick out of her nest because she deems it unfit, is it being immoral? If she one day outgrew this urge and just raised all her chicks as equal, would this be an evolutionary step in moral awareness and of the species?

 

[c0de]

Resigned + Juan



@ Resigned

Welcome to the forums

Values and ethics aren't faith-derived. If anyone thinks otherwise, imagine this: Tomorrow, it is discovered for certain there is no god. Would such information suddenly cause you to steal from me?

If you answer no, then god isn't needed.

If you answer yes, then you are corrupt (not you personally, the greater “you”), and immoral and that is your personality fracture, not morality's weakness.

This is a circular argument. In order for you to declare someone
"corrupt", you first have to subscribe to morality, which is
based in an objective truths like "right" and "wrong". If there is
no God, then such objective concepts can not exist.
(Because without God, everything becomes relative)

You also asked the question, 'why would God create man?'
In the Quran God says that He created mankind to have mercy
on us. If man's ultimate destiny is eternal life in heaven,
why would anyone complain (with this purpose)?




@ Juan


Hey dude. All the points you raised about linguistics are
answered in an authors@google talk available on youtube
with Noam Chomsky. He deals with your points right at
the beginning. Just type "google authors chomsky" it
should come up. If you can't find it let me know, i'll toss
you the link. It is an interesting talk, you will enjoy it.

 

[Paladin]

I'm not sure Resigned has a circular argument going there Code because his premise and his conclusion are not the same. He seems to think that right and wrong are indeed a priori. (or did I miss something?)

The problem seems to stem from the belief that there is such a thing as an objective concept of right and wrong, or morals. Aren't they all subjective by their very nature?

If we pre-suppose God as "other" then it could be argued that morality is objective or outside the human consciousness and within a Divine consciousness, but this puts us in conflict all over again no?

 

[c0de]

I'm not sure Resigned has a circular argument going there Code because his premise and his conclusion are not the same. He seems to think that right and wrong are indeed a priori. (or did I miss something?)

Yea but that is exactly what has to be proven before
you base your argument on it, or else it is just begging the question.

(... I hate these philosophy terms so much !!!!)

 

[c0de]

p.s.

I assumed that Resigned does not believe that such concepts of
morality are a priori because he was using concepts which defend
moral relativism. For example, when he cited the Ancient Egyptian
marital practices.