Morals without God or Darwin, just Empathy

I know. And as common as rape is today, I would have to guess we are not doing much teaching. Matter of fact, I don't think we have learned a thing since Biblical times.This entire topic is a big circle. Rapists have not learned, have a brain mal-function which causes them not to feel empathy, and have only survival drive. Poor things, it is not their fault.Don't you understand what you are doing? I already told you we have choice, I already told you we have the Knowledge of Good and Evil from God. You are doing such a nice job of explaining how God made this work.Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

You have never seen a girl go out and buy baby items, and then abort her baby because she hates her boyfriend? I have.

I guess I have learned better than some, then. Yeah for my screwed up mixed up parents. My head still screams when I see loss of innocent lives, and I don't gloat over this country's 'success'.And yes, 'love thy neighbor' is preached in many ancient religious texts, way before any behavior science tried to claim it was survival instinct. No one has to preach survival as if they were driving a mule. We already have plenty of natural selfishness driving our survival, and plenty of intelligence to make it work. So much for the Bible not being scientific. The ancient Israelites seemed to have the brain already figured out. The said 'we have choice' and we have 'knowledge of good and evil'. They are evolved gifts that God has given us absolutely to help us survive. Any creature which has the intelligence to choose would self-destruct without knowledge of 'right'. That is; spiritually, and physically.

My point? Reducing men to a lot of mal-functioning animals is pretty much what Hitler did.

No, I was being sarcastic. That is why I went on to blame my messed up parents for my 'superiority'. After all, they taught me, right? No, but you have said we recognize the fact that people are all the same.

Sure, you have said that we have things which tell us right from wrong. You have scientifically proved this. The Bible also said we have these things, and the writers did not have to go to behvioral science class to find out. I have not indicated anything. I have said that, according to you,we have survival instinct, intelligence, and empathy. You have said that those who feel no empathy are mal-functioning. You now say we choose to do wrong regardless of empathy, intelligence, or survival. In other words, if the brain is normal, the person is wrong. They are NOT mal-functioning. It is NOT some natural reaction. Get it? I agree it is not so cut-and-dried.Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

For the umpteenth time, why are those promoting 'survival' here, so full of 'hate thy neighbor', make fun of thy neighbor, talk down to thy neighbor, mock thy neighbor, ridicule, get revenge on, accuse of ignorance, and feel superior to thy God-fearing neighbor? I thought love was a 'natural' instinctual and/or learned behavior? Please do not continue to ignore the fact that we have the ability to HATE, and please do not make HATRED out to be another acceptable survival tactic.

I agree that for a topic entitled 'Morals Without God or Darwin, Just Empathy'...calling rape a product of this same empathy that is supposed to be so 'moral' is confusing at least.

Yes, sorry, I was planning to re-write and my connection went down so it got through anyway.Empathy IS a tool. Empathy alone does not cause morality. Our ability to empathize is not always used, and at other times it is used to help us enjoy immoral actions. The rape case is easy to dismiss; most of us can not relate to this enjoyment of another's pain. Ha, but we have all had our sweet revenge, which is a natural selfish survival tendency based on imagining our enemy's discomfort. It does seem that morality does not stem from empathy.What I see is that loving ourselves is natural; then, loving our family, then, others like us, with loving our enemies and our neighbor in general last on the list. This tells me that whatever our survival mechanisms are, they are still geared to the small tribe. People don't write books reminding us to survive by stealing, lying, or murdering when we have to. We end up asking and reminding each other to be better than 'natural' with love for those outside of our tribe. Many political movements ask us to be better by looking to the global community, etc. Yet we are remaining the same by and large, waking today with the same old urge to yell at the kids and the dog, make fun of someone online, lust after someone on tv, etc.Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

If you are the rapist in question, and you have used empathy to get enjoyment out of your actions, is this because you have had no trusted authority figures? Can I make an excuse for the rapist who has just not learned? I think not, unless he is deemed insane. This is because we are all rapists in a sense; we all love to make people squirm. Fellow debators, fellow employees, next door neighbors, whom soever we feel is our competitor. This IS natural behaviour, and for me, morality is about rising ABOVE natural behaviour and towards something which is just a bit more complicated than what we can express. The choices which you make are based on something more than what you have learned and your ability to empathize. You can see that what you have said in your OP about deriving good morals from empathy is not enough. Some people do not recognize 'hurting another' as evil, and you know as well as I do that there is more to this than learning. This is what you say now, but again; sounds more like what Jon wrote; Not that I am picking on you at all, I am just so sure that these natural explanations for morality are most confusing and impossible to articulate.

Larni, when I think about morality, it does me no good to imagine the wonderful workings of some sub-conscious survival of the species factor, when everything that I see and feel around me clearly shows that as a species, we are all for 'survival of the fittest'. This is natural, it is no different from what other animals do. They defend themselves, their offspring, and their social group. We wish at once to make ourselves the same as animals, and yet we ascribe to our nature some nobility of purpose that is belied by our very own consciences.Here again, I say, loving our enemies is not natural. It IS taught, which is to say, that I DO have to invoke a higher power to discover this morality, and to keep it.Btw, I did not mean to say that the threads were boring, but that the thought of morality without God is so empty. It sorta makes all of our sacrifice and all of our heroism just another possible outcome of biological stimulus; a learned behaviour, both replicable and mechanical.

When I talk about 'learning morality' I have in mind knowledge that is not part of who we are, but external. I can learn how to play a game, for example. I can learn by watching others play the game, but if I were alone without training, I would be only lucky to guess the correct rules.I feel we can 'learn' morality, but we already have[/i] the rule; it is our conscience. We have the skills needed to partake in the game; intelligence, and empathy. We must 'learn' to play well. With good decisions, our conscience is sharpened, with bad decisions, it is dulled.A rapist for example, may lack some of the ability to play fairly. He may not have sufficient intelligence, and may be found insane or incompetant. The point is, that most often he is judged as one who has just not practiced. It is assumed that he has been given the same rule as everyone else, and his failure is his own.You, on the other hand, have praticed using your conscience till it is sharp. You no longer make costly mistakes in wishing harm on your opponant. Yet, you admit that it was naturally 'you' who used to feel the opposite, as much as it was 'you' who taught yourself to ignore the other voice. The one thing that I would say to make my position known, is that I don't believe the voice of the conscience is 'mine' at all. but God's.

Ah...I am disappointed with this response. A sacrifice of heroic proportions is altogether forgotten, when the do-er makes claim to his own nobility

So I am a 'happy accident' in a world of unfortunate malfunction? I would be selling my self short by attributing my morals to 'nature', which may as well be, Nature? Nature or God, or Nature as god, any way you cut the cake, my 'blessings' are not my own. The good that I do is always my achievement, but, if I must blame my success on anything, why must I call it 'nature'? Must I be indebted to nature and thank s/he/it for my luck in this draw?No thanks. I would rather believe that all men are equal, that there is no 'happy accident' or any stupendous malfunction, but a true and living spirit of God which lives in and equalizes everyone. This is the source of our equality, this is the true God whom we pay homage to in every person we meet. In all things visible to us, there is no equality amoung men. We are different. I find no glory in loving another for the sake of his fleshly existance as part of homosapiens, but in seeing the goodness and the purity, the suffering and the complexity, of the soul which is captive in this existance.Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

I really didn't think we needed to discuss whether God is more or less likely to be 'real' or true. I say, nature made none of us equal. Some are strong, some are weak. Some have high IQ's some low. Some are right-brain, left-brain, ambidextrous, short, tall, ugly, comely, sick, healthy, etc. I won't to make morality just another item on that list. What I love about fellow human beings is not nature, and the fact that they are human. It is not what is in their minds or hearts, but but what is in their soul. God is the equalizer, giving human creatures of every discription the exact same potential to be perfected.