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snarflemike
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The point is to inquire where moral obligations come from.
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snarflemike
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So where do moral obligations arise from (assuming God does not exist, so they do not come from him)?
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PetraG
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Do you mean in an ultimate sense or from the perspective of someone trying to explain human society from a purely evolutionary perspective?
Someone looking at an evolutionary perspective would say that societies that inculturate moral codes that lead to long-term survival have “more advantageous” social systems than those that don’t have moral codes or that have codes that damage long-term survival of the genes of that society. That doesn’t mean the most advantageous code is more ethical. They’d look at ethical systems as either better or worse for the long-term survival of a tribe or a set of tribes. The question of justice doesn’t even come into it, there isn’t a “good” or a “bad,” but only “advantageous” or “disadvantageous.”
Oh, do you mean how are they rationalized? The survival of moral codes are rationalized as social adaptations that are passed down that help the line to survive. So for instance, respect for elders isn’t good because it pleases God but because the society benefits because humans can pass down advantageous knowledge for generation after generation.
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snarflemike
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Not trying to explain human society - I can understand how evolution might produce moral codes. Rather, trying to understand how one person can say to another, in a moral sense, “You should do this,” or, “You should never do that,” if they are not appealing to a Lawgiver.
If evolution has molded us to think “do not kill the innocent,” or “do not take what is not rightfully yours,” that is one thing. But evolutionary molding does not equate to moral imperatives (does it?). How does evolutionary molding translate into “this is right” or “that is wrong”? Or does it?
If evolution has molded us to think “do not kill the innocent,” or “do not take what is not rightfully yours,” that is one thing. But evolutionary molding does not equate to moral imperatives (does it?). How does evolutionary molding translate into “this is right” or “that is wrong”? Or does it?
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Rhubarb
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There are no norms in a purely scientific framework. Norms in the moral and ethical sense of the word. There is no ‘oughts’ or ‘ought nots’. There can only be what is.
Some philosophers try to couch their morality in scientific facts. (We call them ‘naturalistic facts’) But there’s serious problems with that sort of project.
Some philosophers try to couch their morality in scientific facts. (We call them ‘naturalistic facts’) But there’s serious problems with that sort of project.
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PetraG
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If peoples who handed down “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” survived better, that makes their moral code “good.” It wouldn’t mean that people are really doing what is right and wrong; rather, it would be that the belief that X is right and Y is wrong gives the family line a survival advantage. The people don’t have to be right about what is right and wrong. They just have to have a belief system that leads to better survival when it is employed.
Someone with this point of view might even say that the best “evolutionary strategy” is to be in a society that has a moral code that protects the individual but for the individual with the biggest advantage to figure out how to get around it, letting the moral code in society be an advantage to the individual but with the individual not having to pay the price of following it personally, thus “having the cake and eatiing it, too.”
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snarflemike
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But do societal benefits translate to moral imperatives? From an atheistic standpoint, is human thriving a universal good? Plenty of people think that if there were no humans on the planet, that would be a greater good. From an atheistic standpoint, is it “wrong” or “immoral” to oppose human thriving? As opposed to, perhaps, stupid or short sighted?
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PetraG
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Oh, gosh no. I want you to do what it good for my family line while I do what is good for my family line. If I can convince you to do that, I’m going to be more successful. If your family line more successful, too, fine, but that’s really not my worry.
From an evolutionary standpoint, though, neither of us have to be aware of how our actions affect the evolutionary fitness of our families. We only have to act in ways that optimize our genes or our family’s genes. Results are everything.
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HerCrazierHalf
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Obligation? No. In my view of morality I simply choose to cooperate with others and subtly shape the world into what I view as a better place.
It seems as if your view is searching for an “authority” to compel moral behavior. I’m not sure such exist nor am I distressed by that possibility. “Morality” as history has demonstrated is tacitly agreed upon by the group even when it is claimed to be derived from higher.
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VanitasVanitatum
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They probably just adopted the ones society currently uses because they found it appealing.
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Wozza
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I can’t add anything to what PetraG has said so far. And all very well put as well.PetraG:
So where do moral obligations arise from (assuming God does not exist, so they do not come from him)?
But there are no moral obligations as far as the evolutionary process is concerned. Evolution doesn’t even think about what’s best (it obviously doesn’t ‘think’ at all but it’s hard not using to term to explain the process). It simply removes what works least well from the group. Keep doing this and the evolutionary filter leaves us with what works best.
And that shouldn’t be considered the best there could be. Take a thousand basketball teams and play a knock out competition. The least skillful teams will be dropped along the way until you have the best one. But that team is only the best there is out of that 1,000. If you actively went out and selected individuals then you’d have a better team very quickly.
That’s the difference between natural evolution, which can only work with whatever is available, and ‘artificial’ evolution which is controlled breeding selected animals to get, for example, the best milk-producing cows.
That said, whatever works can be considered ‘good’. If something doesn’t work then you probably end up extinct (your team gets knocked out). Which we could agree is bad. So sharing food and labour and not stealing your neighbours cow or ‘coveting his wife’ is good because it works. It allows humans to form societies and prosper. Hence we can pass on our genes. So people who thought that not sharing food and stealing was good have been (generally) removed from the breeding population. At least, enough of them so that the system works.
Now we haven’t then decided that sharing food was therefore good. It’s the people who thought it was a good idea in the first place (it was innate because of their genetic make-up) were in a position to pass on their ‘generous gene’ down the generations. And because it works in helping societies form, eventually most people within that society will also feel that it’s a good idea. Innately.
Now some people will say that God has written that innate generosity (to use that one example) on our hearts. I say that it was the evolutionary process. But I am more than willing to accept that we can agree that, if God exists, He used that process to do it.
Now scripture will also tell us that being generous is good. So we have three reasons to be generous. One: it works. Two: it is ‘written on our hearts’ (by the evolutionary process or by God via the evolutionary process). And Three: God tells us to be so.
I’m quite happy with one and two. I don’t need three because the first two work without it. Your mileage may vary.
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PetraG
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This demonstrates the difference between morality and Darwinian fitness. People have reasons for doing what they do that fits (a) the results they expect from certain actions right now and (b) the long-term results they imagine will result if they act in a certain way.
That is the way humans make choices. It can be selfish, it can be altruistic, it can be based on Maslow’s heirarchy, it can be based on a philosophy in which the person deliberately masters the promptings of instinct and instead acts according to choices that run counter to the demands of the body. People make choices to make the world better for their children, yes, but that doesn’t mean they sit down and make a sober assessment of what will give them the most beings carrying their DNA and having the best chances to continue to survive in 100,000 or a million years. Evolutionary biologists, however, would define a successful species in that kind of a time frame.
They’re not saying any human ought to want to live like an alligator or that humans ought to try to be like horseshoe crabs. They’re only trying to explain why some animals that used to live aren’t represented among the animals now while others are. They may use evolutionary theory to explain why modern humans survived and other hominids didn’t, and moral codes could be part of that conjecture, but in the end they are talking only about surviving to pass on the genes that one is carrying around, not the quality of life one has right now. I think most of us would agree that morality is usually seen among the religious and non-religious alike as something that gives humans a certain quality of life in some sense, not something that is chosen because it has an evolutionary advantage for the species or for a certain family line within the species. That isn’t to say that we humans don’t include survival of the species in our moral reasoning, but that mere survival is not the primary driver of the business of morality for most human societies, even for those that believe in evolution (which includes both religious and non-religious people, I would add).
If there is an “evolutionary” line of reasoning that affects non-religious moral codes, it is the desire for some cultural system or for a “way of life” to survive. That doesn’t actually have anything to do with evolution in the biological sense. By that point, Darwin’s theories are a metaphor only, because passing on culture and passing on DNA within a time frame of tens of thousands of years are two very distinct things.
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PetraG
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By the way: The idea that a moral code has to include edicts aimed so as to avoid wiping out the human species altogether or making a major dent in our genetic diversity is an extremely recent one, after all. More to the point, it is not yet clear that we have that kind of imagination, as a species. Remember–it wouldn’t be enough that we intend to act so as to avoid a major population collapse. Intentions count for nothing in evolution. We would have to act so as to actually avoid that fate. If that came from moral decision-making rather than mere self-preservation, that would make the human propensity to form moral codes into an evolutionary advantage (if the moral codes worked in favor of survival more often than they worked against it, that is).
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MamaJewel
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Not anymore than someone who believes in God.
People use a variety of mechanisms to justify their ethics and morality.
However, many atheists I know do their best to live ethically and morally because they believe that is how humanity can best serve its evolutionary interests. They see that humans have an abundance of opportunities to make the world a better place, not only for the human race, but for all living species. They also feel that being on top of the food chain places more responsibility on humans to take care of themselves, others, and the earth. They are pretty minimalist in their ways of living.
However, I know other atheists that are very, I think the word is “nihilistic”. They seem to see no purpose to life and have a negative regard for human beings and humanity in general. While they don’t necessarily prescribe to a hedonistic lifestyle, they aren’t exactly driven to “care” about anything in an evolutionary sense. In fact, I think they believe the earth would be better off without humans inhabiting the land.
People use a variety of mechanisms to justify their ethics and morality.
However, many atheists I know do their best to live ethically and morally because they believe that is how humanity can best serve its evolutionary interests. They see that humans have an abundance of opportunities to make the world a better place, not only for the human race, but for all living species. They also feel that being on top of the food chain places more responsibility on humans to take care of themselves, others, and the earth. They are pretty minimalist in their ways of living.
However, I know other atheists that are very, I think the word is “nihilistic”. They seem to see no purpose to life and have a negative regard for human beings and humanity in general. While they don’t necessarily prescribe to a hedonistic lifestyle, they aren’t exactly driven to “care” about anything in an evolutionary sense. In fact, I think they believe the earth would be better off without humans inhabiting the land.
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drac16
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I guess the only “commandment”, if you can call it that, would be to reproduce.
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PetraG
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The point being that believing in evolution doesn’t have any necessary effect on one’s morality, except maybe to give a relatively few number of people a rather cynical view that morality has some favorable effect on passing on genes that says nothing whatsoever about the inherent justice of the code itself.
Atheists, after all, don’t have some uniform view of the meaning of their lives or of anyone else’s life, save that they obviously don’t believe that their lives have meaning because they are made in the image and likeness of God and were intended to know, love and serve God in this life in order to be eternally happy with God in the next. They don’t think they came about because of the intention of anyone (except possibly their parents) or that the intentions that brought them into the world bind them to any moral code. They usually believe that they are the judges of what life means and what that has to do with the principles by which they choose to live.
- Honor your father and your mother. – because they deserve it out of gratitude or because you are fond of them. If you had terrible parents, on the other hand, maybe they made their bed with you and you’re having nothing to do with them.
- You shall not kill. --because living in a society where people are allowed to kill each other is no way to live.
- You shall not commit adultery. --because love triangles get really ugly and people who choose partners they can trust who trust them make themselves and everyone who knows them happier.
- You shall not steal. --See 5
- You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. --See 5
- You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. --because please, he knows you’re ogling her all the time and it makes all of us uncomfortable. It isn’t OK just because you don’t actually act on the desire. Get a life and find your own wife.
- You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods. --because nobody wants a neighbor who looks like he’d like to walk off with their lawnmower or their nice new grill. (See 9)
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HerCrazierHalf
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Isn’t this what people of most religions do to some extent? A number of people select a denomination or church that closely matches their principles and other factors.
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PickyPicky
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I’m sure that’s generally true, although one could argue that knowing we are part of one enormous family encompassing all living things might lead to one being more sensitive to the needs of our fellow creatures, human and otherwise. (But I wouldn’t bet on it!
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HerCrazierHalf
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Aren’t entire segments of the economy based on coveting? Buying the big screen cause the neighbor had a 60" TV during his football party.
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MamaJewel
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Very true. For atheists, while they don’t prescribe to any uniform “meaning of life” their moral compass does seem to point to live in such a principled way that allows each person to determine what life means and create a lived experience that reflects one’s “meaning of life”.
Maybe their is non-coding DNA that influences humans to individually judge what life means and to choose the principles they each will live by since this is what everybody seems to do at the end of the day. People with Faith beliefs still create individual lived experiences based on their perspectives of the principles they believe are to be followed. For Christians, they call this free will.
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