Morality

[nPeace]

I think @Aupmanyav was pretty clear here. If in your society rape, murder or child molestation is illegal, rapists, murderers and child molesters should go to prison.
Just don't assume that other societies have the same laws as your country.

Just take the child molester as an example. Who is considered a child according to the law varies widely over the world (between 13 and 19 years of age iirc).

When I say child here, I was referring to a very young child.
Who makes the rules in a society?
There exist societies within societies. So a gang is a society. A terrorist group is a society. A cult is a society. KKK is a society, and on and on.
There are rulers of nations crying out, "Atrocious", regarding acts committed by other ruling governments - societies.

 

[nPeace]

We must consider if we would like help in the same situation. Do unto others as one would have them do unto oneself, is another moral choice.

Regards Tony

Why must we Tony? Who says?

 

[TransmutingSoul]

Why must we Tony? Who says?

The foundation of all virtue is God's Messengers.

Those virtues are a latent potential within us.

Thus a certain level virtue changes with the times, some fundamentals do not.

We can not have a humanity if all we have is those that choose hate. It requires a majority to choose and practice love.

Regards Tony

 

[nPeace]

The foundation of all virtue is God's Messengers.

Those virtues are a latent potential within us.

Thus a certain level virtue changes with the times, some fundamentals do not.

We can not have a humanity if all we have is those that choose hate. It requires a majority to choose and practice love.

Regards Tony

Thank you.
If the foundation is God's messengers, then for you, God must be its base.
I agree with you that humanity is degraded to beast when this higher morality virtue - is shoved aside for their own "morality". ...and yes, the potential for virtue is there. However, it is being suppressed by vice, and sadly greed is it's sure death for the majority.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Then according to your view, no one should be in prison for rape, murder, or child molestation. Right? Gang members and terrorists should be exempted. Right?

Completely wrong. When did I say that? In my society, people would like such persons to be punished with death, imprisonment will not be considered sufficient. And people here, do not welcome any facility other than bare minimum to prisoners, although the civil law is different. Indians generally think that such people have forfeited their right to be treated leniently. We are generally harsh towards law-breakers. Leniency in a population of 1384 million does not work well.

The foundation of all virtue is God's Messengers.

In our books they say "The foundation of all virtues is in truth".

"satyam eva īśvaro loke, satyam padmā samāśritā l
satya mūlāni sarvāṇi, satyān nāsti parama padam ll" 2-109-13

"Truth is god in this world, all virtues depend on truth. All are rooted in truth, there is no position higher than truth." (Lord Rama in Valmiki Ramayana)

Who makes the rules in a society? There exist societies within societies.
So a gang is a society. A terrorist group is a society. A cult is a society. KKK is a society, and on and on.
There are rulers of nations crying out, "Atrocious", regarding acts committed by other ruling governments - societies.

Don't say that otherwise I would say Christianity is a gang or Bahais are a gang.
You want to term a group of people as gang? Do not fulminate, talk sense.
Majority view, just like in a democracy, forms the laws of a society.
Of course, you may say that political parties are gangs. And it is true, some really are.

In Muslim law, marrriage after puberty is permitted, whatever be the age. Even among Hindus, the old law was that a woman after attaining puberty may wait for three months, and if her father does not arrange her marriage within that time, she is free to choose a husband and marry him. (Manu Smriti )

A village society meeting in India. Note, all castes, all religions may be included. There are caste-based associations also.

Women participants making a point. They vote, they have power.

More images: khaap meetings - Google Search

 

[shunyadragon]

...and failed. Since, it has no relevance... Except to say, "Oh murder is natural for primates. Therefore it's natural for us." Is that your message?

Murder is natural in human beings. You asked for references concerning primates and I provided them.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Is morality a natural tendency towards one particular thing or other? Please explain.

Yes.

A tendency for compassion, justice and fairness. It's a basic necessity if one is going to live a social life in a cooperative society. A cooperative society cannot exist, let alone thrive and prosper, in absence of at least a minimum of moral awareness.

Tribalism gets in the way sometimes.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Thanks.
What about how we treat ourselves?
So is it reasonable to say, we have an internal guide to morality, and it is trained based on how we respond to that guide, so that we can actually reject or accept morality?
In that case, is morality fixed?

I'ld rather say that the outcome, the end-goal, the very purpose of morality is "fixed".

It is irrevocably linked to maximizing the well-being of yourself as well as your fellow man and by extension society at large, in all aspects.

What the moral road is that we take to try and achieve that eutopian goal, is in turn linked to our knowledge about the world and by extension the consequences of our actions.

It's knowledge about the world that informs us of those consequences.
Thus by learning more about the world, things we might have labeled "immoral" or "moral" in the past, may be viewed differently in the present or future.

For a simplistic example...
You are alone in a room. You are not aware of any other rooms. There's a table with a button on it. There's a label next to it saying "press for music". You press it and indeed, a song plays. The song ends and you press again: another song starts playing.

These are amoral actions. Morally neutral.
Someone enters the room and explains and demonstrates to you that nextdoors, there is another room with a human strapped to an electric chair. And every time you press the button, that person gets electrocuted and killed. While the song is playing, another human is strapped in the chair.

So you learn that you have just killed 5 humans by listening to 5 songs.
You no longer press the button.

Suddenly, pressing the button has become deeply immoral.

Yet nothing really changed in moral terms. The definition of morality is the same as before.
What has changed, is you knowledge about the world. And your new found knowledged, informs you better about the consequences of your actions. And as a result, your moral evaluation of a specific action (pressing the button) has changed radically.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Others would disagree.
What determines that helping the man is morally right?

That is determined by the very purpose and goal of morality: to maximize the well-being of yourself, your fellow man and society at large.

Leaving a person to die on the road while helping him would mean that he gets to live, isn't exactly a good way to accomplish that goal...............

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Thanks.
Could you give me the evidence of morals, "n primates today, and our primitive primate ancestors and other higher mammals", where stealing, lying, murder, etc., are morally wrong.

Other species have other types of "societies" and different social dynamics.
So while other social species DO have a sense of morality that fits their social dynamics, it's unfair to pretend as if the standards are going to be the same as in humans.

For example, a pack of wolves or a tribe of chimps don't have a concept of "ownership" of things, thus the concept of "stealing" is going to be foreign to them.


So, do not confuse the "morality" of humans with the "morality" of wolves.
When it is said that they have a form of morality, what is being meant is that within their social dynamics, there is also a "code of conduct" which tribe members are expected to follow.
If they do not, usually there will be repercussions.

Wolves for example, are known to outcast members of the pack who misbehave (like hogging food or attacking other members).

 

[joe1776]

...
For example, it may not be obvious, for one to know from conscience alone that puffing on a cigar is not beneficial, nor might one know to stay away from voodoo, or other spiritistic practices.....

Whether or not to smoke cigars and whether or not to believe in voodoo are not moral decisions. Conscience is an intuitive moral guide only.

If you don't understand the difference between a moral choice and one that is not, your can't possibly understand morality. Understanding the difference is basic.

 

[nPeace]

Completely wrong. When did I say that? In my society, people would like such persons to be punished with death, imprisonment will not be considered sufficient. And people here, do not welcome any facility other than bare minimum to prisoners, although the civil law is different. Indians generally think that such people have forfeited their right to be treated leniently. We are generally harsh towards law-breakers. Leniency in a population of 1384 million does not work well.
In our books they say "The foundation of all virtues is in truth".

You are the one who said, Right and wrong is relative to the society.
One should not condemn another society or culture, but accept that there are differences. Condemnation will only bring conflict.
I didn't say that. You did.
Did you not mean what you said?

Don't say that otherwise I would say Christianity is a gang or Bahais are a gang.
You want to term a group of people as gang? Do not fulminate, talk sense.

I am talking sense.
Please don't blame me, if you don't understand sense.

Gangs are a part of our society and have become a mini-society of their own within it. This mini-society, referred to as a subculture, is part of the larger society in which we live.

A gang is a group or society of associates, friends or members of a family with a defined leadership and internal organization that identifies with or claims control over territory in a community and engages, either individually or collectively, in illegal, and possibly violent, behavior.

Perhaps where you live, may have not be familiar with what a gang is.
I was not calling anyone a gang.

Majority view, just like in a democracy, forms the laws of a society.
Of course, you may say that political parties are gangs. And it is true, some really are.

As I said, I was not calling any organization a gang.
Every society has its own ruler. Gangs do not recognize any majority view or government as making rules for them.
They have their own leader who makes the rules. If you don't agree with the rules, you get out... if you live.

In Muslim law, marrriage after puberty is permitted, whatever be the age. Even among Hindus, the old law was that a woman after attaining puberty may wait for three months, and if her father does not arrange her marriage within that time, she is free to choose a husband and marry him. (Manu Smriti )

A village society meeting in India. Note, all castes, all religions may be included. There are caste-based associations also.

Women participants making a point. They vote, they have power.

More images: khaap meetings - Google Search

Not sure what this has to do with me, or the topic.

 

[nPeace]

Murder is natural in human beings. You asked for references concerning primates and I provided them.

Could you give me the evidence of morals, "in primates today, and our primitive primate ancestors and other higher mammals", where stealing, lying, murder, etc., are morally wrong.

Thank you. You provided references concerning primates, but not concerning my question.
In fact, what you did with your reference, is confirm your argument baseless, and unsupported.

 

[shunyadragon]

Could you give me the evidence of morals, "in primates today, and our primitive primate ancestors and other higher mammals", where stealing, lying, murder, etc., are morally wrong.

Thank you. You provided references concerning primates, but not concerning my question.
In fact, what you did with your reference, is confirm your argument baseless, and unsupported.

The references answered your questions. Humans as well as primates justify their lies, stealing, and murder, but none the less they are lies, stealing and murder. Wrongness reflects the community standards in both human and primate communities.

Punishment in primate communities.

http://dericbownds.net/uploaded_images/Wade_chimp.pdf

Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior

By NICHOLAS WADE

Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others. Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days. Biologists argue that these and other social behaviors are the precursors of human morality. They further believe that if morality grew out of behavioral rules shaped by evolution, it is for biologists, not philosophers or theologians, to say what these rules are. Moral philosophers do not take very seriously the biologists’ bid to annex their subject, but they find much of interest in what the biologists say and have started an academic conversation with them. The original call to battle was sounded by the biologist Edward O. Wilson more than 30 years ago, when he suggested in his 1975 book “Sociobiology” that “the time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of the philosophers and biologicized.” He may have jumped the gun about the time having come, but in the intervening decades biologists have made considerable progress. Last year Marc Hauser, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, proposed in his book “Moral Minds” that the brain has a genetically shaped mechanism for acquiring moral rules, a universal moral grammar similar to the neural machinery for learning language. In another recent book, “Primates and Philosophers,” the primatologist Frans de Waal defends against philosopher critics his view that the roots of morality can be seen in the social behavior of monkeys and apes. Dr. de Waal, who is director of the Living Links Center at Emory University, argues that all social animals have had to constrain or alter their behavior in various ways for group living to be worthwhile. These constraints, evident in monkeys and even more so in chimpanzees, are part of human inheritance, too, and in his view form the set of behaviors from which human morality has been shaped. Many philosophers find it hard to think of animals as moral beings, and indeed Dr. de Waal does not contend that even chimpanzees possess morality. But he argues that human morality would be impossible without certain emotional building blocks that are clearly at work in chimp and monkey societies. Dr. de Waal’s views are based on years of observing nonhuman primates, starting with work on aggression in the 1960s. He noticed then that after fights between two combatants, other chimpanzees would console the loser. But he was waylaid in battles with psychologists over imputing emotional states to animals, and it took him 20 years to come back to the subject.

He found that consolation was universal among the great apes but generally absent from monkeys — among Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior - N... Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior (Published 2007)... 2 of 4 3/20/07 10:47 AM macaques, mothers will not even reassure an injured infant. To console another, Dr. de Waal argues, requires empathy and a level of self-awareness that only apes and humans seem to possess. And consideration of empathy quickly led him to explore the conditions for morality. Though human morality may end in notions of rights and justice and fine ethical distinctions, it begins, Dr. de Waal says, in concern for others and the understanding of social rules as to how they should be treated. At this lower level, primatologists have shown, there is what they consider to be a sizable overlap between the behavior of people and other social primates. Social living requires empathy, which is especially evident in chimpanzees, as well as ways of bringing internal hostilities to an end. Every species of ape and monkey has its own protocol for reconciliation after fights, Dr. de Waal has found. If two males fail to make up, female chimpanzees will often bring the rivals together, as if sensing that discord makes their community worse off and more vulnerable to attack by neighbors. Or they will head off a fight by taking stones out of the males’ hands. Dr. de Waal believes that these actions are undertaken for the greater good of the community, as distinct from person-to-person relationships, and are a significant precursor of morality in human societies. Macaques and chimpanzees have a sense of social order and rules of expected behavior, mostly to do with the hierarchical natures of their societies, in which each member knows its own place. Young rhesus monkeys learn quickly how to behave, and occasionally get a finger or toe bitten off as punishment. Other primates also have a sense of reciprocity and fairness. They remember who did them favors and who did them wrong. Chimps are more likely to share food with those who have groomed them. Capuchin monkeys show their displeasure if given a smaller reward than a partner receives for performing the same task, like a piece of cucumber instead of a grape. These four kinds of behavior — empathy, the ability to learn and follow social rules, reciprocity and peacemaking — are the basis of sociality. Dr. de Waal sees human morality as having grown out of primate sociality, but with two extra levels of sophistication. People enforce their society’s moral codes much more rigorously with rewards, punishments and reputation building. They also apply a degree of judgment and reason, for which there are no parallels in animals. Religion can be seen as another special ingredient of human societies, though one that emerged thousands of years after morality, in Dr. de Waal’s view. There are clear precursors of morality in nonhuman primates, but no precursors of religion. So it seems reasonable to assume that as humans evolved away from chimps, morality emerged first, followed by religion. “I look at religions as recent additions,” he said. “Their function may have to do with social life, and enforcement of rules and giving a narrative to them, which is what religions really do.” As Dr. de Waal sees it, human morality may be severely limited by having evolved as a way of banding together against adversaries, with moral restraints being observed only toward the in group, not toward outsiders. “The profound irony is that our noblest achievement — morality — has evolutionary ties to our basest behavior — warfare,” he writes. “The sense of community required by the former was provided by the latter.”

Yes human morals and ethics are more sophisticated, but nonetheless primitive morals and ethics, reward and punishment exist in primate communities.

I give you what you asked for and you respond by Duck, Bob and Weave antics.

 

[nPeace]

Yes.

A tendency for compassion, justice and fairness. It's a basic necessity if one is going to live a social life in a cooperative society. A cooperative society cannot exist, let alone thrive and prosper, in absence of at least a minimum of moral awareness.

Tribalism gets in the way sometimes.

Okay, thanks.

I'ld rather say that the outcome, the end-goal, the very purpose of morality is "fixed".

"purpose of morality"? What do you mean?

It is irrevocably linked to maximizing the well-being of yourself as well as your fellow man and by extension society at large, in all aspects.

What the moral road is that we take to try and achieve that eutopian goal, is in turn linked to our knowledge about the world and by extension the consequences of our actions.

It's knowledge about the world that informs us of those consequences.
Thus by learning more about the world, things we might have labeled "immoral" or "moral" in the past, may be viewed differently in the present or future.

For a simplistic example...
You are alone in a room. You are not aware of any other rooms. There's a table with a button on it. There's a label next to it saying "press for music". You press it and indeed, a song plays. The song ends and you press again: another song starts playing.

These are amoral actions. Morally neutral.
Someone enters the room and explains and demonstrates to you that nextdoors, there is another room with a human strapped to an electric chair. And every time you press the button, that person gets electrocuted and killed. While the song is playing, another human is strapped in the chair.

So you learn that you have just killed 5 humans by listening to 5 songs.
You no longer press the button.

Suddenly, pressing the button has become deeply immoral.

Yet nothing really changed in moral terms. The definition of morality is the same as before.
What has changed, is you knowledge about the world. And your new found knowledged, informs you better about the consequences of your actions. And as a result, your moral evaluation of a specific action (pressing the button) has changed radically.

What about the one who delights in playing the songs even more, after learning about next door, but is more interested in the music... until they get bored of course?

That is determined by the very purpose and goal of morality: to maximize the well-being of yourself, your fellow man and society at large.

Leaving a person to die on the road while helping him would mean that he gets to live, isn't exactly a good way to accomplish that goal...............

Still trying to understand this purpose and goal. What set the goal, and when?

Other species have other types of "societies" and different social dynamics.
So while other social species DO have a sense of morality that fits their social dynamics, it's unfair to pretend as if the standards are going to be the same as in humans.

For example, a pack of wolves or a tribe of chimps don't have a concept of "ownership" of things, thus the concept of "stealing" is going to be foreign to them.

I don't understand.
If you are going to say, on the one hand, they have a sense of morality - no quotations - and on the other hand, say they don't have a concept of ownership - quotations, there seem to be a "framing the language to fit the argument".
Animals do protect their own, whether it is territory, food, or young.
Other animals take from them, and they take from others. There is no morality in the picture. They live and survive. That's it.

So, do not confuse the "morality" of humans with the "morality" of wolves.
When it is said that they have a form of morality, what is being meant is that within their social dynamics, there is also a "code of conduct" which tribe members are expected to follow.
If they do not, usually there will be repercussions.

Wolves for example, are known to outcast members of the pack who misbehave (like hogging food or attacking other members).

There is no morality, as animals don't rationalize. They depend upon food, and territory for their survival, and that of their young. That's it

 

[Aupmanyav]

You are the one who said, ..
A gang is a group or society of associates, friends or members of a family with a defined leadership and internal organization that identifies with or claims control over territory in a community and engages, either individually or collectively, in illegal, and possibly violent, behavior.
Not sure what this has to do with me, or the topic.

Yeah, I said and stand by that. Do you see a problem there?
I would term only the violent as a gang.
I was high-lighting the differences in cultures. The example that I gave dos not find general acceptance now.

What set the goal, and when?

Here is the basic problem. The theists would say that a God / Allah sets the rules. We atheists who do not believe in existence of God / Allah say that the society sets the rules at the time it is formed and revises the rules when its majority feels that to be necessary.

 

[wellwisher]

Is morality a natural tendency towards one particular thing or other? Please explain.

Morality is based on the team concept, where the team can become more than sum of its parts. In this case, morality would be connected to the survival of the species more than to the survival of the individual.

If you look at the Ten Commandments, these rules all have the team in mind, more than the individual. If the team becomes more than the sum of its parts, than all the individuals of the team, collectively, rise.

For example, thou shall not steal may not benefit the natural thief; individual. But the team benefits by this since there is less need to waste resources and attention trying to protect property. There are now more resources left over to expand the colony.

The first commandant is, there is one God and not to put strange Gods before him. Religion is one of those topics that can cause arguments and force people to take sides. This arguing and division does not benefit the team. One God eliminates a potential pitfall, so the team remains unified.

The term relative morality is more about the individual or the smaller team. It is designed to give advantages to some, but not to all. This is not for the team, human, but for the ego of some humans; survival of the individual.

 

[nPeace]

The references answered your questions. Humans as well as primates justify their lies, stealing, and murder, but none the less they are lies, stealing and murder. Wrongness reflects the community standards in both human and primate communities.

Punishment in primate communities.

http://dericbownds.net/uploaded_images/Wade_chimp.pdf

Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior

By NICHOLAS WADE

Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others. Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days. Biologists argue that these and other social behaviors are the precursors of human morality. They further believe that if morality grew out of behavioral rules shaped by evolution, it is for biologists, not philosophers or theologians, to say what these rules are. Moral philosophers do not take very seriously the biologists’ bid to annex their subject, but they find much of interest in what the biologists say and have started an academic conversation with them. The original call to battle was sounded by the biologist Edward O. Wilson more than 30 years ago, when he suggested in his 1975 book “Sociobiology” that “the time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of the philosophers and biologicized.” He may have jumped the gun about the time having come, but in the intervening decades biologists have made considerable progress. Last year Marc Hauser, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, proposed in his book “Moral Minds” that the brain has a genetically shaped mechanism for acquiring moral rules, a universal moral grammar similar to the neural machinery for learning language. In another recent book, “Primates and Philosophers,” the primatologist Frans de Waal defends against philosopher critics his view that the roots of morality can be seen in the social behavior of monkeys and apes. Dr. de Waal, who is director of the Living Links Center at Emory University, argues that all social animals have had to constrain or alter their behavior in various ways for group living to be worthwhile. These constraints, evident in monkeys and even more so in chimpanzees, are part of human inheritance, too, and in his view form the set of behaviors from which human morality has been shaped. Many philosophers find it hard to think of animals as moral beings, and indeed Dr. de Waal does not contend that even chimpanzees possess morality. But he argues that human morality would be impossible without certain emotional building blocks that are clearly at work in chimp and monkey societies. Dr. de Waal’s views are based on years of observing nonhuman primates, starting with work on aggression in the 1960s. He noticed then that after fights between two combatants, other chimpanzees would console the loser. But he was waylaid in battles with psychologists over imputing emotional states to animals, and it took him 20 years to come back to the subject.

He found that consolation was universal among the great apes but generally absent from monkeys — among Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior - N... Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior (Published 2007)... 2 of 4 3/20/07 10:47 AM macaques, mothers will not even reassure an injured infant. To console another, Dr. de Waal argues, requires empathy and a level of self-awareness that only apes and humans seem to possess. And consideration of empathy quickly led him to explore the conditions for morality. Though human morality may end in notions of rights and justice and fine ethical distinctions, it begins, Dr. de Waal says, in concern for others and the understanding of social rules as to how they should be treated. At this lower level, primatologists have shown, there is what they consider to be a sizable overlap between the behavior of people and other social primates. Social living requires empathy, which is especially evident in chimpanzees, as well as ways of bringing internal hostilities to an end. Every species of ape and monkey has its own protocol for reconciliation after fights, Dr. de Waal has found. If two males fail to make up, female chimpanzees will often bring the rivals together, as if sensing that discord makes their community worse off and more vulnerable to attack by neighbors. Or they will head off a fight by taking stones out of the males’ hands. Dr. de Waal believes that these actions are undertaken for the greater good of the community, as distinct from person-to-person relationships, and are a significant precursor of morality in human societies. Macaques and chimpanzees have a sense of social order and rules of expected behavior, mostly to do with the hierarchical natures of their societies, in which each member knows its own place. Young rhesus monkeys learn quickly how to behave, and occasionally get a finger or toe bitten off as punishment. Other primates also have a sense of reciprocity and fairness. They remember who did them favors and who did them wrong. Chimps are more likely to share food with those who have groomed them. Capuchin monkeys show their displeasure if given a smaller reward than a partner receives for performing the same task, like a piece of cucumber instead of a grape. These four kinds of behavior — empathy, the ability to learn and follow social rules, reciprocity and peacemaking — are the basis of sociality. Dr. de Waal sees human morality as having grown out of primate sociality, but with two extra levels of sophistication. People enforce their society’s moral codes much more rigorously with rewards, punishments and reputation building. They also apply a degree of judgment and reason, for which there are no parallels in animals. Religion can be seen as another special ingredient of human societies, though one that emerged thousands of years after morality, in Dr. de Waal’s view. There are clear precursors of morality in nonhuman primates, but no precursors of religion. So it seems reasonable to assume that as humans evolved away from chimps, morality emerged first, followed by religion. “I look at religions as recent additions,” he said. “Their function may have to do with social life, and enforcement of rules and giving a narrative to them, which is what religions really do.” As Dr. de Waal sees it, human morality may be severely limited by having evolved as a way of banding together against adversaries, with moral restraints being observed only toward the in group, not toward outsiders. “The profound irony is that our noblest achievement — morality — has evolutionary ties to our basest behavior — warfare,” he writes. “The sense of community required by the former was provided by the latter.”

Yes human morals and ethics are more sophisticated, but nonetheless primitive morals and ethics, reward and punishment exist in primate communities.

I give you what you asked for and you respond by Duck, Bob and Weave antics.

RF staff should make a film on this.
I could see it now. "Desperados - The Remake"

Pet Chimp Is Killed After Mauling Woman
A 200-pound pet chimpanzee in Stamford, Conn., Monday viciously mauled a woman he had known for years, leaving her critically injured with much of her face torn away, the authorities said. The animal was shot dead by the police after he assaulted an officer in his car.

Incidents & Attacks Involving Captive Chimpanzees

Birds come around us because they love our company. Not because the want food. They just looooove us.

 

[nPeace]

Yeah, I said and stand by that. Do you see a problem there?

The problem is glaring. If gang members rape and murder your niece, according to you, One should not condemn them, but accept that there are differences in morals.
You don't see a problem with that?

I would term only the violent as a gang.
I was high-lighting the differences in cultures. The example that I gave dos not find general acceptance now.

What are you saying then. i don't understand. Have you changed your mind, to the general view... and what is the general view?

Here is the basic problem. The theists would say that a God / Allah sets the rules. We atheists who do not believe in existence of God / Allah say that the society sets the rules at the time it is formed and revises the rules when its majority feels that to be necessary.

So in your view, there is no morality, except man decides that, and there are no fixed standards. Is that correct?

 

[nPeace]

Morality is based on the team concept, where the team can become more than sum of its parts. In this case, morality would be connected to the survival of the species more than to the survival of the individual.

If you look at the Ten Commandments, these rules all have the team in mind, more than the individual. If the team becomes more than the sum of its parts, than all the individuals of the team, collectively, rise.

For example, thou shall not steal may not benefit the natural thief; individual. But the team benefits by this since there is less need to waste resources and attention trying to protect property. There are now more resources left over to expand the colony.

The first commandant is, there is one God and not to put strange Gods before him. Religion is one of those topics that can cause arguments and force people to take sides. This arguing and division does not benefit the team. One God eliminates a potential pitfall, so the team remains unified.

The term relative morality is more about the individual or the smaller team. It is designed to give advantages to some, but not to all. This is not for the team, human, but for the ego of some humans; survival of the individual.

Perhaps now might be the time to get a bit more clarity.

Please let me know what you are discussing here, so I can be sure I follow you, and we are "on the same page".

morality
/məˈralədē/
noun
principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.
"the matter boiled down to simple morality: innocent prisoners ought to be freed"

Opposite:
immorality Mistake here. Sorry.
a particular system of values and principles of conduct, especially one held by a specified person or society.
plural noun: moralities
"a bourgeois morality"

the extent to which an action is right or wrong.
"behind all the arguments lies the issue of the morality of the possession of nuclear weapons"

I won't be on today. I have some thing to do. Hopefully, I'll be back tomorrow.