Morality?

[allhart]

Thanks for clarification.




I guess at least some of our difference comes down to what it means "to believe."

Even to say have faith, just my thoughts!

 

[CoderHead]

I guess at least some of our difference comes down to what it means "to believe."

Even to say have faith, just my thoughts!

While it may be interesting to get into the nuances of what you would consider "belief" and "faith," I fear it's off-topic in this thread. The question is whether or not irreligious people can be moral. I say they can.

 

[dies-l]

Even to say have faith, just my thoughts!

I don't think that faith and belief are necessarily (or even generally) the same thing, but that is a topic for another thread.

While it may be interesting to get into the nuances of what you would consider "belief" and "faith," I fear it's off-topic in this thread. The question is whether or not irreligious people can be moral. I say they can.

I tend to agree that irreligious, nontheistic, and otherwise non-Christian people can and do exercise moral judgment and decisionmaking, even often in ways that are completely consistent with Judeo-Christian morality. Christians should not be surprised by this, as it is consistent with Scripture.

 

[Penumbra]

No.

Evolution is based on the idea of the strong overcoming the weak. If ouir morality were really based on evolution, then we'd be killing sick people, refusing to feed the hungry, etc.

Sorry, but that is inaccurate. It's based on a misunderstanding of the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Evolution is based on survival of the fittest, and for intelligent species, the "fittest" are often those that work together. A pack of wolves is fit because of teamwork, an ant colony is fit because of teamwork, and so forth. Elephants, dolphins, whales, dogs, all use teamwork as part of their natural behavior. "Fit" doesn't just imply brute strength or speed, it also involves intelligence and society.

Humans are fit in part because of our complex societies which are based on complex (and relative) morality. Ensuring the health of one's society is important for ensuring the health of oneself.

-Lyn

 

[Bro_Sam]

Sorry, but that is inaccurate. It's based on a misunderstanding of the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Evolution is based on survival of the fittest, and for intelligent species, the "fittest" are often those that work together. A pack of wolves is fit because of teamwork, an ant colony is fit because of teamwork, and so forth. Elephants, dolphins, whales, dogs, all use teamwork as part of their natural behavior.

And they also leave their sick/injured/ and old to die.

You can't just redefine evolution because you don't like the implications.

Humans are fit in part because of our complex societies which are based on complex (and relative) morality. Ensuring the health of one's society is important for ensuring the health of oneself.

Precisely. And evolution says that a society cannot be fit as long as it has weak or sick or old members.

 

[dies-l]

And they also leave their sick/injured/ and old to die.

That may be true of species that produce large litters. But, compassion for the weak (or something resembling) has its place in natural selection for species that generally produce a single offspring after prolonged gestation. Add to this the impact of intelligence, which drastically prolongs the period that an offspring is dependent on its parents (hours, days, or weeks for less intelligent species; months or years for more intelligent species; about two decades for human beings), and it becomes relatively easy to understand how evolution by natural selection might just favor a sense of compassion for the weak.

You can't just redefine evolution because you don't like the implications.

I don't see evidence of anyone redefining evolution here except you.

Precisely. And evolution says that a society cannot be fit as long as it has weak or sick or old members.

Can you please cite your source? I don't believe that "evolution says" that at all.

 

[SithDoughnut]

And they also leave their sick/injured/ and old to die.

You can't just redefine evolution because you don't like the implications.


Precisely. And evolution says that a society cannot be fit as long as it has weak or sick or old members.

Please feel free to read up on evolution, as you appear to know very little about it.

'Survival of the fittest' does not necessarily apply to individuals alone, but also to tribes, packs or other groups, depending upon the organism in question. It is not called 'survival of the fittest individual' and it is not called 'survival of the fittest group', it is called 'survival of the fittest'. What exactly the adjective 'fittest' applies to is left out of the phrase, as it depends upon the species.

 

[Penumbra]

And they also leave their sick/injured/ and old to die.

You can't just redefine evolution because you don't like the implications.

Sorry again, but I'm not redefining it. That's how it is, at least for many species. Our instincts, which include a sense of commitment and belonging to a group, are part of what makes us fit.

Many animals certainly do leave their sick and injured to die, but then again, they don't wage world wars and such either.

Precisely. And evolution says that a society cannot be fit as long as it has weak or sick or old members.

Can you please specify where evolution says that? Is there some old dusty book lying around somewhere where evolution dictates us our morals?

A society that discards the old, weak, or sick probably wouldn't function that well, because people would have low morale about their future. It works for other animals, because most don't realize their own mortality, but humans do.

-Lyn

 

[Ellinas]

And they also leave their sick/injured/ and old to die.

You can't just redefine evolution because you don't like the implications.



Precisely. And evolution says that a society cannot be fit as long as it has weak or sick or old members.

Do you expect animals to have medicine, x-ray machines, hospitals? That is a very weak argument. The above mentioned animals function to the best of their abilities. Are you blaming them for not having invented rocket science?

You are redefining evolution because you do not like its implications. ToE is the most scrutinised scientific theory and has passed every test. Biology makes no sense without ToE and as a result neither does Medicine!

I am sorry if you think ToE is a threat to your beliefs but I can assure you millions of Biologists, Doctors, Anthropologists, etc; who believe in ToE are also Christians!

What more can I say apart from to advise you to read the theory before you condemn it!

 

[uberd00b]

The ironic thing is that you claim that morality exists independently of religion, but the very fact that you have a sense of morality (albeit a misguided one) shows the existence of God.

I'm interested in your reasoning here. How does morality show the existence of a god?

I'm not sure any recourse can be made to evolution. It seems to me that evolution is not the answer to the origin of morality here as evolution is a basic physical process. The conscious and conscience are several orders of complexity beyond biological evolution, in the same manner that studying atoms will tell you little about the behaviour of a gas. Unless of course we're talking about the evolution of societies, in which case let's be clearer.

(Here's me saying let's be clearer and I'm fairly sure I've mangled several concepts in my explanation )

 

[Mling]

I don't think this point has been brought up yet, but it seems *very* relevant:

People are capable of doing things that are not necessarily good for themselves or for species--and will often do them because of emotions and instincts that *are,* (or possibly 'used to be') good for the species.

People don't go around thinking in terms of "what will strengthen the species. They act on what they personally believe, and what they feel, emotionally.

We've evolved to value fairness and recoprocity as a part of what it means to be "moral." We also evolved a sense of altruism. Both were undoubtedly crucial for the species to survive.

Imagine this situation:
Hal is hunting a rabbit for dinner. Rej happens by and sees a tiger stalking up on Hal. Rej stands back and lets the tiger kill Hal, because...it means nothing to him. He has no instinct for altruism. He continues on by. Later, a tree falls on Rej, breaking both his legs and pinning him to the ground. He lies trapped there for days before dying of shock and exposure.

Compare to this one:
Hal is hunting, and Rej sees the tiger. Rej *does* have an instinct for altruism, and also understands the value of teamwork. He approaches, quietly warns Hal, and together, they kill the tiger. That night, the band feasts on tiger!

Later, a tree falls on Rej, breaking both his legs and pinning him to the ground. Hal finds him and feels compassion--not only is this person a member of his band, and thus a close comrade, he remembers the time that Rej saved his own life.

He wrestles with the tree--gets it off, gets help and pulls him back to camp. The band nurses Rej back to health. This does require temporarily offering resources to somebody who isn't contributing to their wellbeing, but in the long run, that debt is balanced by the meat that Rej's hunting brings in. Had he died, the band would be worse off.

That isn't why they do it, though. They help him because they love him.

The end result, though, is that people who survived best were those who felt felt love and valued reciprocity and altruism, in addition to selfishness. It's a delicate balance.


Well, we inherited those genes. The result is interesting--we sometimes feel a drive toward altruism and love. It's diffucult to really make an argument that a certain person is dragging down the species, but imagine that we *could.* We can imagine a hypothetical situation where a person simply consumes resources that are valuable and could go to more worthy people, and contributes *absolutely* nothing--no health, no wisdom, no love, too many children who carry too many messed up genes-- Well, people may very well still love that person, and would not want to abandon them.
It might not be good for the species to keep them alive, but
a) who cares? you love them. That capacity for love evolved from Hal and Rej. That the situation is different here says nothing more than that the situation is different here. The capacity for love is the same.

b) even if keeping them alive would not be helpful, the type of emotional state required to kill them for that reason might be more harmful in the long-run.

An elephant's size is a defense mechanism--but if it somehow got wedged in a tight place, size wouldn't be useful anymore.
Likewise, the tusks are useful as weapons (I assume...) but when poachers are looking for ivory, large tusks are detrimental to survival.

Neither of those situations is a failure of evolution. Natural selection produces very specilized creatures (humans being an interesting exception in some ways, though not in others). Anybody, or any animal, that's taken away from the area where it specializes is going to flounder.

The environment that humans live in has changed too quickly for natural selection to keep up--as a result, some of our instincts and traits get misapplied (nightmares are an interesting example). Sometimes they are used in ways that would be hard to call "misapplied," but that still aren't the pupose for which natural selection crafted them.

That we love people who can't help us back and might not be good for us is one clear example.

Another is calculus--I can't think of *any* use for calculus in the environment in which humans evolved. We didn't evolve for the purpose of doing calculus. But natural selection *did* craft us to be innovative, quick-thinking and intelligent, for purposes that *are* directly related to our survival. When survival became less of a problem, we still had the intelligence, but not the original need for it--so we turned it to other things, and look where it's brought us.

 

[kentekent]

Let's say that a Christian were to hear the voice of God. God tells the Christian to sacrifice his 5 children to God. (That actually does happen in the Bible so that is perfectly plausible, all though it was only 1 child)

Now there are 2 ways to go about this one:
1. The Christian says, no way buddy, killing kids is wrong in my book.
2. The Christian does Gods bidding.

If the Christian chose option 1 he would have made up his own mind to what was right or wrong and had no need for God to "learn" morality. He would have realized by then that he is always accountable for his actions, if not to God, then the society around him.
However, if the Christian chose option 2 he would have given up on his own personal morality because he would get all his morality from a homicidal authority figure.

How can you then know right from wrong? How can you be 100% certain that this authority figure knows best? How do know it's not just a voice in you own head because you have a mental disorder?