QUOTE (Mr Walker @ Dec 30 2007, 09:02 PM) 
QUOTE (Michael Shermer)
If God does not exist, then what is the origin of morality? The answer presented in part 1 of this book is that evolution generated moral sentiments out of a need for a system to maximize the benefits of living in small bands and tribes. Evolution created and cultured honed moral principles out of an additional need to curb the passions of the body and mind. And culture, primarily through organized religion, codified those principles into moral rules and precepts.
And I couldnt let this one go. In my opinion it is wrong, at a very basic level.
Let's ignore its opening premise, which suggests that we have to find an evolutionary reason for ethics, morality etc because god does not exist.
Despite the opinions of some other contributors, there is little, or no, evidence among animals of any moral sentiments. In fact, evolution has nothing to do with either sentiment or morality. Most observations of "moral" behaviour in animals are imputed by humans applying their own cultural values (particularly of the late 20 century. Observers of animals in all the preceding centuries came to completely differnt conclusions.
And some contributors simply refuse to acknowlredge facts. Primates, who live in conditions very similar to those described above as producing honed moral principles, actually display very non moral principles.They kill injured or different young. Senior males do kill not only any potential rival young males, and very young baby apes, but also impregnate all the females as soon as they take over a band.
The killing of breast feeding young promotes fertility in the females, and increases the dominant male's chances of propogating his own genetic material. Young males hunt and kill apes of different species and even from different "tribes" of their own species.
If God does not exist, then what is the origin of morality? The answer presented in part 1 of this book is that evolution generated moral sentiments out of a need for a system to maximize the benefits of living in small bands and tribes. Evolution created and cultured honed moral principles out of an additional need to curb the passions of the body and mind. And culture, primarily through organized religion, codified those principles into moral rules and precepts.
And I couldnt let this one go. In my opinion it is wrong, at a very basic level.
Let's ignore its opening premise, which suggests that we have to find an evolutionary reason for ethics, morality etc because god does not exist.
Despite the opinions of some other contributors, there is little, or no, evidence among animals of any moral sentiments. In fact, evolution has nothing to do with either sentiment or morality. Most observations of "moral" behaviour in animals are imputed by humans applying their own cultural values (particularly of the late 20 century. Observers of animals in all the preceding centuries came to completely differnt conclusions.
And some contributors simply refuse to acknowlredge facts. Primates, who live in conditions very similar to those described above as producing honed moral principles, actually display very non moral principles.They kill injured or different young. Senior males do kill not only any potential rival young males, and very young baby apes, but also impregnate all the females as soon as they take over a band.
The killing of breast feeding young promotes fertility in the females, and increases the dominant male's chances of propogating his own genetic material. Young males hunt and kill apes of different species and even from different "tribes" of their own species.
Top, top post Mr Walker! Mr Walker I am going to the library tomorrow and printing this post of yours out. Excellent writing chap!
Here is something that may contribute to what you said here written by aldous Huxley in his book 'The Perennial Philosophy':
There is the extraordinary fact that "man stands alone"---that, so far as we can judge, every other species is a species of living fossils, capable only of degeneration and extinction, not of further evolutionary advance. In the phraseology of Scholastic Aristotelianism, matter posses an apetite for form---not necessarily for the best form, but for form as such. Looking about us in the world of living things, we observe (with delighted wonder, touched occasionally, it must be added, with a certain questioning dismay) the innumerable forms, always beautiful, often extravagantly odd and sometimes even sinister, in which the insatiable appetite of matter has found its satisfaction. Of all this living matter only that which is organized as human beings has succeeded in finding a form capable, at any rate on the mental side, of further development. All the rest are locked up in forms that can only remain what they are or, if they change, only for the worse.
It looks as though, in the cosmic intelligence test, all living matter, except the human, has succumbed, at one time or another during its biological career, to the temptation of assuming, not the ultimately best, butthe immediately most profitable form. By an act of something analogous to free will every species, except the human, has chosen the quick returns of specialization, the present rapture of being perfect on a low level of being. The result is that they all stand at the end of evolutionary blind alleys. To the initial cosmic Fall of creation, of multitudinous manifestation in time, they have added the obscurely biological equivalent of man's voluntary Fall. As species, they have chosen the immediate satisfaction of the self rather than the capacity for reunion with the divine Ground. For this wrong choice, the non-human forms of life are punished negatively, by being debarred from realizing the supreme good, to which only the unspecialized and therefore freer, more highly conscious form is capable.
But it must be remembered, of course, that the capacity for supreme good is achieved only at the price of becoming also capable of extreme evil. Animals do not suffer in so many ways, nor, we may feel pretty certain, to the same extent as do men and women. Further, they are quite innocent of that literally diabolic wickedness, which, together with sanctity, is one of the distinguishing marks of the human species.
We see then that, for the Perennial Philosophy, good is the separate self's conformity to, and finally annihilation in, the divine Ground which gives it being; evil, the intensification of separateness, the refusal to know that the Ground exists. This doctrine is, of course, perfectly compatible with the formulation of ethical principles as a series of negative and positive divine commandments, or even in terms of social utility. The crimes which everywhere condemned as wrong; and these wrong states of mind are, as a matter of empirical fact, absolutely incompatible with that unitive knowledge of the divine Ground, which according to the Perennial Philosophy, is the supreme good.
In my view it is just as much an assumption to say that morals procceded from an evolutionary urge for survival as it is to say that morals were created (or discovered) by great saints, gurus, mystics, and sages as a means for discovering the divine ground within us all.
A great philosopher once said this:
In every one of us there are two ruling and directing principles, whose guidance we follow wherever they may lead; the one being an innate desire of pleasure; the other, an acquired judgment which aspires after excellence.
--- (Socrates) Phaedrus
Where is the mention of mere survival (though all perennial philosophers would agree that survivial is a definate help but not an end in itself). What is the principle that aspires after excellence?? Not to mention that many are happy to die for pleasure (overeating, drug addiction). Wouldnt former principle be willing sacrifice itself for excellence? Jesus and Gandhi for example believed that maintaining virtue was better than survival. And Socrates says: The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being. These are just some of many, many examples. One can know nothing about evolution, religion or art and 'survive' and passon ones genes. Animals do so. But man is not just happy with survival itself. Survival itself isnt fulfilling enough in both the short and long run.
According to many scriptures and spiritual realized peoples survival though a great help isnt an end in itself because
a) Our true nature (whether it be called Godhead, Tao, Nirvana, infinite consciousness etc) though immanent in physical reality transcends it and therefore never as to concern itself with survival because it is infinite.
That this relative reality is only one of infinite (or less) relative worlds that we change to at death. I found this piece of writing from a very unorthodox christian mystic who claims that all of mans drives are aimed towards God:
Nature's intent is neither food, nor drink nor clothing, nor comfort, nor anything else from which God is left out. Whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, secretly Nature seeks and hunts and tries to ferret out the track in which God may be found.
---Eckhart
And in the east we have the same thing expressed differently:
To realize and experience our all-fill Spiritual Nature,is to feel the fullness of life. So long as this is not experienced one feels a sense of sad imperfection, and man's intellect suggests methods of regaining his sense of fullness, which are called desires. Each desire in the bosom of man is an attempt of his intellect to discover a fuller satisfaction in his own life.
---Swami Chinmayananda
I myself agree with the mystics (for they speak from experience and not just from scripture).
QUOTE
My point is that; morals, religion, ethics and philosophy are only possible in a self aware consciousness, combined with a brain capable of cognitive thought. The evolution of human society and culture, when looked at dispassionately, draws one inevitably to this conclusion. If there was no god, then all the constructs are created by the godlike nature of sentient, and self aware, man; rather than through the forces of evolution.
It may have been culture which codified the principles, but strangely it was only a very few individuals in each culture who did so, and in most known cultures they specifically attributed their codification, not to themselves, but to a supernatural source.
The reason for this phenomenum is, of course, open to even further debate.
It may have been culture which codified the principles, but strangely it was only a very few individuals in each culture who did so, and in most known cultures they specifically attributed their codification, not to themselves, but to a supernatural source.
The reason for this phenomenum is, of course, open to even further debate.
I think to say that morals is just a survival tool (though if we all did abide truly by decent morals it would most definately help ensue it) is to grossly simplify morals for theory's sake and (with all the evidence available) to be apathetic to wider philosophic possibility.
Here is another difference between man and animal written by Huxley:
Animal grace comes from when we are living in full accord with our own natureon the biological level---not abusing our bodies by excess, not interfering with the workings of our indwelling animal intelligence by conscious cravings and aversions, but living wholesomely and laying ourselves open to the 'virtue of the sun and the spirit of the air'. The reward of being thus in harmony with Tao or the Logos in its physical and physiological aspects is a sense of well-being, an awareness of life as good, not for any reason, but just because it is life. There is no question, when we are in a condition of animal grace, of propter vitam vivendi perdere causas; for in this state there is no distinction between the reasons for living and life itself. Life, like virtue, is then its own reward. But of course , the fulness of animal grace is reserved for animals. Mna's nature is such that he must live a self-conscious life in time, not in a blissful sub-rational eternity on the hither side of good and evil. Consequently animal grace is something that he knows only spasmodically in an occasional holiday from self-consciousness, or as an accompaniment to other states, in which life is not its own reward but has to be lived for a reason outside itself.
NO WAY!!! LOL
