Why do you believe in God?

[AntiTheist]

From an individual survival perspective, guilt seems like a very serious mis-step. Our consciences frequently urge us to take actions that hurt our reproductive prospects. Jumping into a pond to save a drowning stranger, for instance.

Well, in the example you’ve given, that action is highly unlikely to hurt the reproductive prospects of the stranger or the rescuer – in fact, assuming that the rescuer saves the stranger, it’s going to increase the species’ reproductive chances.

If most of the population of a species is programmed to save other members of the population from death, then it could only increase chances of survival in the long run.

Sure, there are going to be odd cases where an individual’s cooperative instincts lead him to make a fatal move, but more often than not, it’s going to be beneficial for everyone involved.

But if you’re absolutely right about guilt, that makes it just one more pesky part of our nature that we should try to transcend, right? There’s certainly no reason to give any moral credence to the collection of “shoulds” that happened to get encoded into our brains, is there?

No, there’s not.

The only thing is that the “shoulds” encoded in our brain are good rules of thumb for having a stable society, and most of us want to be part of a stable society – not least of all because we understand that it’s good for us as individuals in the long run – so most of us have some good motivation for obeying at least some of those cooperative instincts.

 

[NaturalEnquirer]

Well, in the example you’ve given, that action is highly unlikely to hurt the reproductive prospects of the stranger or the rescuer – in fact, assuming that the rescuer saves the stranger, it’s going to increase the species’ reproductive chances.

If most of the population of a species is programmed to save other members of the population from death, then it could only increase chances of survival in the long run.

Sure, there are going to be odd cases where an individual’s cooperative instincts lead him to make a fatal move, but more often than not, it’s going to be beneficial for everyone involved.

But that’s not how natural selection works. It works on individuals. If this woodpecker’s nose happens to do a better job at getting bugs out of trees, that woodpecker has more babies and the population shifts accordingly.

But if Joe dies trying to be a Nice Guy, and Jack sits on the sidelines being a Bad Guy, who has more kids? Why do you think that natural selection will favor the person who happens to be inclined to be Nice rather than Bad?

 

[AntiTheist]

But that’s not how natural selection works. It works on individuals. If this woodpecker’s nose happens to do a better job at getting bugs out of trees, that woodpecker has more babies and the population shifts accordingly.

It does work on individuals. If you have instincts to help out other members of your species, your chances of survival increase as well because you’re part of a group. Others are going to be more inclined to help you out once you help them out.

If you’re a lone wolf, your chances of survival are going to be slimmer.

Humans are hardly the only animals to evolve cooperative strategies…we see similar behaviors in other social animals.

I mean…there are books on the subject if you’re interested in learning more, but if you’re just trying to blindly insist that that’s not how evolution works, you’re not going to be very convincing.

 

[NaturalEnquirer]

It does work on individuals. If you have instincts to help out other members of your species, your chances of survival increase as well because you’re part of a group. Others are going to be more inclined to help you out once you help them out.

If you’re a lone wolf, your chances of survival are going to be slimmer.

Humans are hardly the only animals to evolve cooperative strategies…we see similar behaviors in other social animals.

I mean…there are books on the subject if you’re interested in learning more, but if you’re just trying to blindly insist that that’s not how evolution works, you’re not going to be very convincing.

How ironic. I viewed this exchange exactly opposite. Let’s see.

Guilt is something we evolved as part of our development of cooperative behaviors that aid survival.

Utterly unsupported assertion.

I responded with an example scenario where altruistic behavior diminishes reproductive chances. You responded with an appeal to authority. Not even a specific authority - just “there are books about this, man!”

To be fair, you also included a false dichotomy (lone wolf vs cooperative). But my point is, I’m the one making specific points; you’re the one making blind assertions and committing logical fallacies.

Edit - also, please do acknowledge that the evolution of altruistic behavior is widely recognized as being difficult to explain via natural selection. I know cuz Wikipedia says so.

 

[Windfish]

Guilt is something we evolved as part of our development of cooperative behaviors that aid survival.

This is not directed at you necessarily, AntiTheist, but I would like to ask this: why is that evolution is always the go-to explanation? “Oh, we evolved x because of y and z” but we don’t really know that. That’s a possible scenario, sure, but you can’t just pull something that you think seems reasonable out of thin air and say that is how it went down.

For me, the miraculous history of the Church is, to me, a no-brainer. Dr. Gomez was an atheist until he was called to investigate the Eucharistic miracle that happened in 1996 at Buenos Aires. It is remarkable stuff, and I think atheists should take a look. Miracles, actually, are very, very common in the Church. I think there is a Eucharistic miracle being investigated in New England that happened a month or two ago.