Evolution not God

[Valjean]

Ok, would you the they way a cat develops moral standards is the same way a human develops moral standards?

Morality involves harmonious interaction. Most cats aren't even a social species,. There would be little need for morality in solitary species.

Our moral standards are a combination of a hard-wired psychological operating system with a cultural overlay.

A culture is a learned survival strategy. Obviously these vary widely, as do their behavioral standards. I suspect the initial or founding standards start out mostly utilitarian, but often persist long beyond their actual utility.
How tight or loose* the cultural norms are, whom they apply to, and how they're taught, supported and enforced also vary a lot.


* https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1197754

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Ok, would you the they way a cat develops moral standards is the same way a human develops moral standards?

Yes, as long as you don't claim that there is one correct standard for the morality in humans.

 

[Nakosis]

Yes, as long as you don't claim that there is one correct standard for the morality in humans.

Of course not. "Correct" would require someone with the authority to declare what the correct behavior is for all of humanity.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

So can we agree on this: Biology is the basis of morality, but there is no objective morality.

 

[Valjean]

Of course not. "Correct" would require someone with the authority to declare what the correct behavior is for all of humanity.

And here lies a problem, when certain Abrahamic religions cite God and His rule book(s) as dictating the proper, universal values and social organization, and followers endeavoring to impose them -- universally.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

And here lies a problem, when certain Abrahamic religions cite God and His rule book(s) as dictating the proper, universal values and social organization, and followers endeavoring to impose them -- universally.

Or for Ayn Rand's Objectivism or other similar political and philosophical ideologies. It is not particular to religion.

 

[Valjean]

So can we agree on this: Biology is the basis of morality, but there is no objective morality.

Unhappily, there are many who do see moral rules as objective and extrinsically dictated, rather than based on utility or consequentialism. IE: Moral is what pleases God, not what's useful for society..

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Unhappily, there are many who do see moral rules as objective and extrinsically dictated, rather than based on utility or consequentialism. IE: Moral is what pleases God, not what's useful for society..

Yeah, that is one version of morality. In philosophy in meta-ethics there is the debate of realism.

 

[1213]

Like it or not thats the
example that is set in the bible.

Please explain why do you think so?

 

[1213]

Don't like what?

The moral that is based on "survival for the species".

Keep in mind that our 'moral' and psychological programming was optimized for small-band, hunting-gathering groups, but the tribalism that was utilitarian fifty thousand years ago causes all sorts of problems in the unnatural, crowded, multicultural society we now inhabit.
At one time, eliminating a potential threat to your band was common sense, and, in many cases, a stranger constituted a potential threat.
Until recently, there was no reason for moral consideration to extend beyond one's own little band.

I don't know about you moral, but my moral is based on the Biblical idea to love others as oneself, which is very old, was in the Biblical texts long before Jesus. And I think it is good in all times.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

The moral that is based on "survival for the species".

I don't know about you moral, but my moral is based on the Biblical idea to love others as oneself, which is very old, was in the Biblical texts long before Jesus. And I think it is good in all times.

There is in science no concept for the survival of the species. It is the replication of the fittest genome. That is something else.
As for your morality that can be based in the biological. It is just called reciprocal behavior.

 

[Audie]

Good, right and evil seems to be subjective opinions. If the highest standard is "survival for the species", it opens door for example to kill people that are not seen useful. That is why I don't like it.

I said like it or not, that's what the Bible gives you as per God's example.

God, in your chosen book, kills people for capricious and arbitrary reasons. Like
being displeased. See " subjective". You supposedly read the Bible. You list some
reasons.

Right wrong etc may " seem" to you or me or the man behind rhe tree, to be just " subjective opininons"..

Obviously this is not so, nor is just " survival of the species".
You religionists can and do take puzzle of what the
" more to it" and make up a god, and attach a set of culturally derived rules, and pretend " goddidit".

And, weirdly, exempt " god" from his rules.

The deep basis for human morality is survival.
For the species and the individual.
I am well in my rights to kill depending.
The door has always been open.

Your " useful" is undefined., and in no way takes into account human ( oe other animals') instincts and emotions.

Withal what you " don't like" is dissatisfaction with your own strawman. You came up with a simplistic, reduction ad absurdly parody of how things really are. A black and white, either/ or
that while no more connected to reality than
saying there's either day or night, no in between,
is, though, sadly typical of the crude binary thinking of fundamentalists.

 

[Audie]

After all of these threads, all of this pondering, when will you accept that morality is subjective?

I don't believe there is a concrete basis for morality. Everyone's moral code comes from their own life experiences, personality differences, the way they were raised, culture, etc. There are so many variables that determine one's version of right and wrong that we can never get to the bottom of what truly is right and wrong.

You need something more concrete than
survival, and secondarily, what works best, as a basis?

The details built on such basis can be highly subjective, silly, harmful,etc but the core is
still survival. Which, I'm, is pretty concrete,

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

...



The deep basis for human morality is survival.
For the species and the individual.
I am well in my rights to kill depending.
The door has always been open.

...

I have learned that differently as per biology in science and how that connects to human psychology and morality.
Now if you can expand more I might become lucky and learn something new.

 

[wellwisher]

View attachment 73145​

What provides the moral for humanity's standard is evolution. Notice I said provides a standard, not a absolute.

They way I see it working is that "right" choices means survival for the species. Those that survive pass down through culture and genetics those correct choices. Those choices wrong enough to cause early demise don't get passed down. Over time, the human brain gets wired via culture and genetics to feel certain choices are correct and other choices are wrong. So we get an inherent feeling for what is right and what is wrong.

Now this is far from perfect since that only requirement is that it only requires it to be correct enough to allow survival until one is able to procreate.

In the past, these feeling of right and wrong get encoded into various religions. However not all religious morality comes from this evolutionary process. Individuals get inspired by whatever experiences they have and add to this religious moral code. Both ideas which are successful to survival and ideas which are not overly detrimental to survival get passed down to future generations.

There is a fairly wide range of what we as a species find as morally acceptable since as long as an idea is not overly detrimental to the survival of the species, it gets passed on.

I see my morals as partly evolved, partly inspired by my life experiences. Some even passed on to me by other people's concepts of God however there was no need for an actual God to declare absolute moral law.

If you look at the theory of evolution, it is about optimization, under various environmental conditions and circumstances, helping to drive evolution; natural selection. Nature, left to itself, is usually very healthy and integrated, and not sick and disorganized. The former tells me efficiency, while the latter would require inefficiency, which is not natural.

If we use the correlation of evolution and morality, the best moral systems, like nature, should also be the most efficient, in terms of costs, just as natural is based no the lowest natural cost. Cost and efficiency would be an objective way to compare moral systems, since nature seems to make the most of each situation, both in singular and as a group.

The huge national debt in the USA, therefore, cannot be due to the best moral system leading. This would need to be connected to one of the worse moral systems in Government, leading. Nature and evolution, stays tight in terms of resources, and does not need to borrow from the future; eat the seed potato. This would be unnatural.

Religion is not allowed to control government morality; legal separation of Church and State. One has to conclude secular morality in the USA and the USA government is an inferior type of morality, based on its high level of inefficiency.

Picture if nature decided to evolve, based on huge deficits in resources, like the US Government immoral system. The leaders of the herd, lead the herd to wipe out their large fields of grass, until next year the fields are gone. We now need to invade and borrow fields from neighboring herds of other animals. This would be based on short term thinking, which is not how nature works. Short term thinking morality, leads to extinctions; low tier moral system. It may need to be retired until it can get more efficient with resources.

Before the 1960's, culture could do much more without government, all with little deficit spending. The basic family unit could handle many of todays social cost, that the current immoral system uses to drive the deficits. It is like nature over feeding and then dying back toward extinction; immoral virus. We may need kill the immoral virus, instead of continue to feed it. We may also need to become objective and base policy on the natural ways, instead of the wasteful unnatural ways of immorality.

 

[Audie]

The moral that is based on "survival for the species".

I don't know about you moral, but my moral is based on the Biblical idea to love others as oneself, which is very old, was in the Biblical texts long before Jesus. And I think it is good in all times.

Base your morality on the parts you happen to
choose to like. Killing everyone but the virgins,
and csrrying those off as sex slaves was groovy then, but not now. Iyo.

" love others as yourself " is nonsense.

Give it a try, as a woman being raped.
Me. I didn't try. I am not insane.

 

[Audie]

If you look at the theory of evolution, it is about optimization, under various environmental conditions and circumstances, helping to drive evolution; natural selection. Nature, left to itself, is usually very healthy and integrated, and not sick and disorganized. The former tells me efficiency, while the latter would require inefficiency, which is not natural.

If we use the correlation of evolution and morality, the best moral systems, like nature, should also be the most efficient, in terms of costs, just as natural is based no the lowest natural cost. Cost and efficiency would be an objective way to compare moral systems, since nature seems to make the most of each situation, both in singular and as a group.

The huge national debt in the USA, therefore, cannot be due to the best moral system leading. This would need to be connected to one of the worse moral systems in Government, leading. Nature and evolution, stays tight in terms of resources, and does not need to borrow from the future; eat the seed potato. This would be unnatural.

Religion is not allowed to control government morality; legal separation of Church and State. One has to conclude secular morality in the USA and the USA government is an inferior type of morality, based on its high level of inefficiency.

Picture if nature decided to evolve, based on huge deficits in resources, like the US Government immoral system. The leaders of the herd, lead the herd to wipe out their large fields of grass, until next year the fields are gone. We now need to invade and borrow fields from neighboring herds of other animals. This would be based on short term thinking, which is not how nature works. Short term thinking morality, leads to extinctions; low tier moral system. It may need to be retired until it can get more efficient with resources.

Before the 1960's, culture could do much more without government, all with little deficit spending. The basic family unit could handle many of todays social cost, that the current immoral system uses to drive the deficits. It is like nature over feeding and then dying back toward extinction; immoral virus. We may need kill the immoral virus, instead of continue to feed it. We may also need to become objective and base policy on the natural ways, instead of the wasteful unnatural ways of immorality.

If YOU looked at rhe ToE you might not be so
mixed up.

It's NOT about some abstract undefined " optimizing".

It's not " about" anything.
The theory describes and explains
the how's and why's of organisms
changing over time.

Who has the most offspring devices the winner.

A moose having high antlers is hardly " optimum"
The moose being plagued by biting flies and mosquitoes is not optimum for moose,

It's tough to find an organism living in optimum conditions for its health and longevity.

That is something any sort of student of biology and ecosystems knows.

Your thing about church and state has zero to do
with evolution, and your " logic" is so flawed that w
wonder how you could write it.

The US national debt similarly has zero to do with evoluti9n.

One could thovmake an analogy.

Organisms, with no foresight, adapt to the immediate advantage, and, often go extinct as a result.

The US debt was curated in a similarly short sighted way.

 

[Nakosis]

If you look at the theory of evolution, it is about optimization, under various environmental conditions and circumstances, helping to drive evolution; natural selection. Nature, left to itself, is usually very healthy and integrated, and not sick and disorganized. The former tells me efficiency, while the latter would require inefficiency, which is not natural.

If we use the correlation of evolution and morality, the best moral systems, like nature, should also be the most efficient, in terms of costs, just as natural is based no the lowest natural cost. Cost and efficiency would be an objective way to compare moral systems, since nature seems to make the most of each situation, both in singular and as a group.

The huge national debt in the USA, therefore, cannot be due to the best moral system leading. This would need to be connected to one of the worse moral systems in Government, leading. Nature and evolution, stays tight in terms of resources, and does not need to borrow from the future; eat the seed potato. This would be unnatural.

Religion is not allowed to control government morality; legal separation of Church and State. One has to conclude secular morality in the USA and the USA government is an inferior type of morality, based on its high level of inefficiency.

Picture if nature decided to evolve, based on huge deficits in resources, like the US Government immoral system. The leaders of the herd, lead the herd to wipe out their large fields of grass, until next year the fields are gone. We now need to invade and borrow fields from neighboring herds of other animals. This would be based on short term thinking, which is not how nature works. Short term thinking morality, leads to extinctions; low tier moral system. It may need to be retired until it can get more efficient with resources.

Before the 1960's, culture could do much more without government, all with little deficit spending. The basic family unit could handle many of todays social cost, that the current immoral system uses to drive the deficits. It is like nature over feeding and then dying back toward extinction; immoral virus. We may need kill the immoral virus, instead of continue to feed it. We may also need to become objective and base policy on the natural ways, instead of the wasteful unnatural ways of immorality.

Greed can be beneficial in certain circumstances. So I think this is probably a genetic trait. However, greed can also be self destructive so culturally it becomes seen as a negative trait. So we end up with a conflict between our instinctual and cultural morality. Greed drives prosperity. I suspect if we went with "all greed is bad" society would collapse. Religion I see as part of the cultural influence on morals, there is also genetic, certain feelings of right and wrong we are born with , and experiential. Ideas of right and wrong we individually develop base on rules we rationally adopt for our personal benefit.

It is not always about the best or most optimal morality, though intellectual, it might be what we wish to strive for. We are constantly conflicted by these different sources for our morals. Sometimes genetics wins, sometime culture, sometimes experiential. What's best, I don't know if that is clear though I tend to lend toward experiential myself. However that limits itself to my personal life experience.

Anyway the point I meant to make is not what is best but how we ended up with these moral ideas/feelings of what is right and wrong. These are the moral conflicts I see within myself, genetic/instinctual, cultural/religious, experiential/intellectual. So for me I don't there to be a "God" to explain why morals exist.

Hopfully my morality is more beneficial than detrimental. Intellectually that is what I want but my not be what I get. There are a lot of causal influences I had no control over. So they "feel" right but may not always be the best.

 

[PearlSeeker]

They way I see it working is that "right" choices means survival for the species. Those that survive pass down through culture and genetics those correct choices. Those choices wrong enough to cause early demise don't get passed down.

We have inherited tribalism - cooperation but also violence, competition, aggression...

 

[syo]

What provides the moral for humanity's standard is evolution germs.

We are mecha!