Morality! Thorn in Darwin's side or not?

No they don't both stem from evolved qualities. I have no shot at building even the simplest house. I believe myself to be as intelligent as people who can, but I don't have the know how to make a house. Technology is something we pass down by writing in parallel with any evolution that might be going on.I highly doubt that you have evolved to be able to build a working rocket ship. You have exactly the same ability to do so as did Abraham Lincoln.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I wouldn't use the term 'body count' as if fails to capture the idea but it is one method of assessing what we are doing. We can review the success of our moral behaviour. Consider the Catholic church's position on the use of condoms. Clearly this an example of a failed moral policy that has caused death and disease for millions. We can know this by looking at the result of the behaviour. Prohibition of alcohol is the quintessential example of a moral policy. It has the intent of reducing the cost of individual behaviour to society. After trying it we can see that it is a bad idea that fails because the cost to the individual is too high. Yes it is but moral consensus finds the common ground. I would say that the two are proportional. Being able to survive across a range of environments will, on average, equate to more surviving and less going extinct.

I don't see any difference between the two apart from capacity. What is the difference between a crow dropping a nut on the rocks and human breaking a nut with a rock? Or a chimp fishing for termites and a human fishing for fish?Intellect and physiological ability are the only 2 assets that any creature has to resist the universe's attempts to kill it. Maybe luck comes in there somewhere too.Brace yourself now, I am going to attempt some math. Doesn't the probability of survival increase as the creature's habitable zone increases? Isn't probability of survival an objective yard stick for measuring evolutionary success?

Not so different from a squirrel or a bird using last years nest or the learned behaviour of any animal.

Remember how evolution works. It works through babies generation by generation. It does not work through longevity. And no, for many species longevity does not mean more babies let alone more successful babies. We have to go out to your babies production of babies to determine your fitness. For most life it is a posthumous award. Still, even though we don't have numbers, I think you have done well on your math. It makes sense that a larger range offers more resources, more probability for survival for both you and your babies so in that way a larger range can be helpful. But then, for most life, modern technological humans being a major exception, a wider range also means more probability of speciation events. Still, the only measure of evolutionary success is fitness, not survival.

That's an attempt to dictate morality by fairly arbitrary means. They might as well say you'll be more moral if you wear green socks. I don't see what it has to do with actual morality. Again, it's an attempt to dictate morality. Real morality comes from within; it's a willingness to conform to society (although it doesn't sound very attractive when put that way). Forced morality doesn't fail because of "cost to the individual". It fails because the internal pressure to "conform" is greater than the external pressure. The carrot is more effective than the stick. So being more "highly evolved" depends on being average?

I disagree. It is much different from the learned behavior of most animals.The learned behavior for most animals is the animals they can hang out with. Humans can draw on much more than that simply by leveraging reading and writing. Beyond that, you don't have to learn how to program your smart phone because I can do that for you. So you can even draw on stuff you cannot understand.One of my favorite human inventions is calculus. The topic is easy enough to teach to high school students. Yet it was beyond all by one or two people during the time of Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz. Yet no one ought to be insisting that high school students are more mentally evolved that Newton's peers.

Yes, I was referring to longevity and survival at the species level and I think that a species that could survive in any environment should rightfully be considered more fit than a species that can only survive under particular conditions. Voila, a scale of evolutionary success. Wouldn't an ability to survive in many different environments reduce the probability of a speciation event?

I agree that the impetus for morality comes from the individual but I wonder if it is a willingness to conform to society. I would say that it is an attempt to get society to conform to the needs of the individual. You need more antifreeze in your oatmeal. Being more highly evolved depends on the probability that your species will survive. As the range of suitable environments increases so do the odds of survival. I used the qualifier 'on average' because there is always the possibility of an extinction event until the species can survive in any environment.A moral code that helps your species survive can be considered objectively correct.

I agree. My point is that the only difference for humans is the scale at which we interact and our intellectual capacity. Taking the fur from a bear and using it as a coat is not really so different from collecting twigs for a nest. They are both efforts to modify one's immediate environment.Our evolved qualities that allow us to kill the bear and make the coat have enabled us to survive in a wider range of environments. This increases the probability that we will survive as a species because we can adapt as the environment changes.Greater adaptability seems a legitimate measure of evolutionary success.

Forgetting my beliefs, it would be true that if the belief is correct, then its results would promote truth and discovery, even faster than trial and error.If the belief is false, including the belief in a theory, then it will be struggling to make headway with practical applications.Genuine spirituality is natural congruent with the universe, false spirituality is a lie.
In other words whatever science proves to be correct is truth and spirituality.

Well, it isn't. The discipline determined quite some time ago that the only scale of evolutionary success is fitness and fitness is assessed by counting babies. You may not be wrong that wider range and environmental flexibility might have a positive impact on fitness, but fitness, as defined, will always rule.It has to be this way. The more babies the more mutations and genetic variability. The more babies the more the spread of beneficial new traits. And that is evolution. I don't think so. Evolution is reproduction with modification. Change will take place. The broader the range the less chance some portions of the population will mix with others to share new traits. The population begins to differentiate by suite of traits. Where you have population differentiation I would think there would be more chance of speciation.Please don't think of speciation events as bad. That is how evolution drives the diversity of life. The bush gets ... well ... bushier.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Why?A species that has had very little selective pressure and has genetically drifted into a diverse and adaptable group versus a species that has had a very high level of selective pressure whose genome has been trimmed down to an exact fit for a specific environment and has little to no adaptability.To me, it would seem that the highly specialized species should be the one that is considered "more evolved". Not the one that has had very little pressure.

Being able to kill a bear with a gun that you are not capable of making does not demonstrate that you have evolved. That killing would instead be evidence of a completely different process.

Well, maybe black is white in some cases but I'm not seeing it. Can you elaborate? How would an individual; "get society" to conform to his needs? I'm the first one to say that consensus is the first step toward objectivity - but I think what you're talking about is only consensus, not real objectivity.