Morality! Thorn in Darwin's side or not?

Why should I bother to care about your feelings, there's no guidebook that instructs me to care about your feelings. You're just organized mass of chemicals and advanced animal so then why should I bother myself about your feelings. What makes human's so special that they should be treated any differently than other animals. This is the logic that will arise out of an evolutionary worldview. Hopefully my mind has been wonderfully and fearfully created in the image of God's and will not accommodate this kind of evil logic. But first I must ask SammyJean to replace her semi-nude picture with something that's a bit more appropriate, I find that semi-nude female especially offensive. And Grany Magda should also change his avatar the inscriptions on it are offensive as well.

Now before we carry on with this thread I think that we’ve all at points posted ad lib. I don’t know if the following move that I’m about to commit will be a smart one in a debate like this one, but smart or not I feel obliged to perform it. I humble myself in the faces of my opponents and retract some of my ad lib statements.to begin I would like to retract my statements on animals being selfish. The evidence that was available to me at the different times I made these statements gave me reason to make them, but having reviewed all relevant points, I have sensed a discrepancy in my logic as it relates to this area of my argument.My argument was to this effect, animals are inherently selfish, and whatever acts they perform that would appear altruistic in nature really aren’t altruistic at all but has roots in selfishness, and I also argued that altruistic behavior in animals is instinct based and since morality is a conscious decision/choice, animal cannot display genuine altruism I’m not wholly abandoning the second part of my argument though I still stand on my claim that animals actions hail from in born behavior that has been sculpted and hard-wired in their psychology by the power of natural selection.I am relinquishing this part of my argument in favor of a better substitution, which goes, animals are neither good nor bad, they are neutral creatures, they may act good or bad given the scenario they find themselves in, but this however doesn’t make them moral or immoral creatures for that matter, because their actions are are dictated by various instincts, and morality conversely is based on choices, human's can either choose to act good or bad not like the animals who have no control over the way they act, and who have no self restraint. We can restrain ourselves even if our bodies make it hard for us. In my next thread I shall start with the definition of altruism and morality.Edited by Cedre, : No reason given.

Morality/altruism has been defined on this thread so far as anything put forward by a group, usually a society, the society provides a guide for the behavior of the people in that group or society. In this sense morality might allow slavery, discrimination, lying and so on.Now morality was also defined as actions performed by organisms be it human or other organism that benefits other organisms, at a cost to itself.This is the proposed definition of morality on this thread, by those who are against a normative view of morality, that is against the view that the knowledge of good and evil are universal and fixed.Now there are a few questions one should answer first.If morality is determined by a society or by a majority vote then we may end up having moralities that benefit a few at the expense of many. Take the Nazi Germany as an example, Hitler most likely believed that the existence of the Jews was immoral, that they should be wiped out. And he infected the greater part of Germany with this wicked mindset, until it became moral to annihilate all the Jews.
Now another thing that was also mentioned is that evolution is the survival of genes. Now answer me how is killing 6 million Jewish people beneficial towards the survival of our species. If in fact the whole world were to believe that the existence of the Jews, or let us take the black population, if society believed that the existence of the black population is immoral, and the moral thing to do is to wipe them out, how would this make sure that our species survive and proliferate.So the conclusion is morality cannot be decided by a society because it may be detrimental to the human race, and if it is decided by a society then it would not have come about by evolution because it has the potential to defy the principles of evolution by endangering the very gene which it is suppose to protect.Morality has also been defined as any action or behavior that will not harm others or produce the best overall results in terms of survival, in this sense actions that would put others in harms way or hurt them would be considered to be immoral. But as I have shown above a behavior or action that is considered moral by a society in fact can do a lot of damage to others even members of the same society and what is more it benefits the one being moral or altruistic and not the one on the receivers end. But what about the second definition I give above pertaining to morality being an action or behavior that benefits the receiver and not the giver. How can you resolve this conflicting ideas.Edited by Cedre, : No reason given.Edited by Cedre, : No reason given.Edited by Cedre, : No reason given.Edited by Cedre, : No reason given.

I agree. Mmmwhy am I developing Goosebumps about this one? Let’s see if I throw a glass against a wall are you saying that I won’t be able to tell what the result will be until I actually see the result? Or a better example might be if I kill someone won’t I be able to tell that this is an immoral act until I’m arrested and thrown into jail for manslaughter? If I thumb someone in the face until I see this person’s tears will I not know that what I have done is wrong? In fact I thumbed that person in the first place to hurt him/her. You indirectly imply with the above that human beings lack foresight or foreknowledge. But of course humans have foresight fortunately that is why they make many good decisions.Let’s take the example of the slave trade, before the slave traders started trading slaves of course they knew that forcibly removing people from their lands and putting them to work in grain fields for long hours on low wages would separate families destroy marriages cause great unhappiness for many. And also before slavery was stopped people had the foreknowledge that this would bring greater happiness to more people, restore families and marriages.The truth is, even in normal day to day circumstances we don’t just make blind decisions so to speak but we sort of know what the consequences of our choices will be and we even expect certain things to come out of our moral choices. The bottom line is whatever we do we do with an intention, if I for example lie I do it with an intention to mislead, if I tell the truth again I had an intention for doing so, to lead in the right direction. What is evolution by natural selection analogous to? I hope you’re not trying to homogenize it with making moral choices because unlike natural selection that lacks reasoning power and the power to foresee humans have these faculties at their disposal. This is as far as I understood your paragraph you might want to clarify the rest. I don’t see how all of this affects our discussion about morality. I agree with the first part, but I will not agree with the second part. Whatever doesn’t hurt others is right; this is the definition that has had the greatest publicity on this thread. So now let us assume that you find your seven year old kid smoking pot, and you are against his smoking pot so you reprimand him and he cries; you have hurt him. Should we then conclude that because your kid ended up crying (this was the consequence of you reprimanding your kid) that it is bad to reprimand your kid. Another way of looking at this is, according to your kid smoking pot has good consequences as it makes him feel good and better both mentally and physically, so is it right for your kid to smoke pot because the consequences are appealing.Or we could even go back to the slave trade. Slavery has had many good consequences for the societies that promoted it. Cheap/free labor should be good, it saves on resources and you don’t have to perform the backbreaking tasks yourself, who knows of all the other benefits slave traders reaped from owning and selling slaves . My point is slavery had many good consequences for the societies who promoted it. Shall we honestly conclude that because of this it was good and even moral to own slaves? The ends do not justify the means. This isn’t true you don’t have to lie many times to know that what your doing is wrong, that it hurts others and that it will ultimately get you into a big mess if you’re caught. This is just not true; if it were true then everyone would be signing up for the army in times of danger. Certain people are just cowards and they will abandon their family in dangerous times, and some people are brave and will stand by their family. Humans are diverse you cannot stereotype us But its members can also determine morality, if we consider many of the killer cults and sects that have existed, the regimes and totalitarian governments that have existed we can easily see this truth. The pages of history are full of instances where members of society decided for the entire population what is moral and what isn’t. O yes it does, because as I have already shown above we don’t make decisions without intentions or expectations, we have a list expectations that our decisions should achieve otherwise we won’t make any decisions, we decide in accordance with our expectations. Therefore we can be sure of exactly what our actions will produce if I lie to you you will be deceived this is what I intended and it’s what I got. Another unfounded statement. Why do global politics exist? Why does the UN or the EU exist? Answer is because we care what the rest of humanity is doing, we can’t help but to care and if they do something that is not in tune with what we consider to be right or moral we are pressed to intervene. How do you explain the world wars, and all of the bloodshed that has been wrought throughout history between nations, ethnic groups etc? Because our ideas of morality eventually infringe on others ideas of morality. Guesswork These are the dangers of assuming that morality is subjective, everyone will come up with his or her own definitions of what is good and what is bad, but if we all hold to a single definition a universal norm of what is right and wrong, much of the bloodshed that nations experience will be done away with. If we can all view every human life to be worthy and priceless, a great deal of suffering in the world would be cancelled out.Edited by Cedre, : No reason given.

Now note Sammyjean you want the law without acknowledging the lawmaker or law giver, it’s not going to happen my dear. Human beings can only be priceless if deemed to be created in the image of a God, as it is only God who can give them worth, otherwise they are but like I have said masses of chemicals whose worth is determined by the society they were born in or currently dwell in, and not by an absolute being who has established from the zero our of life that human life should be priceless.However if humans are merely the product of millions of years of evolution and physical and chemical change why should they be regarded as being more special than the other animals that inhabit this earth? If we are just atoms come together then we really don’t have worth other than the worth that we ascribe to ourselves. This is what relativists are preaching, society defines what the worth of human beings is, you decide what that worth is. That is why the humanity of fetuses has been long ripped from them and society has ascertained that they are but blobs of tissue not human beings, resulting in 35,316,203 deaths from 1973-1996. But aren't we (adults)also just atomic structures aren't we also just aggregates of different chemicals, we also have no worth in that case.If society decides what is morally wrong and morally right as far as morality relates to humanity, then we can arrive at the following conclusions:1. Human life has no inherent value or worth other than the value society ascribes it. That is why it wasn’t really difficult for slave owners to establish that blacks were less valuable than whites or for the Boers of the apartheid regime to conclude that black South Africans were simply slightly evolved monkeys and kaffirs (slave/servant). And it is also why Hitler could conclude that Jews were fully ape and that blacks were mostly ape.2. It isn’t wrong to hurt other human beings physically or emotionally. This is the reason that slavery existed that apartheid went down and especially that the holocaust happened, The Jews were determined to be just animals and hey since we witness animals perish in the wild almost daily then the Jews might as well just die like their fellow animals. People aren’t too concerned with the welfare of animals anyway.3. Human beings have no meaning/purpose in life. Only created things can have a meaning or a purpose. Nature can never grant or create inherent purpose.ConclusionHumans do not have any value, because what is considered to be moral regarding humans in one part of the world will not be regarded in another part. In other words the moralities negate each other or work against each other, thus humanity has no worth. Therefore it isn’t inherently wrong to inflict pain upon humans, and to respect human life. The only time that Humanity can have any worth is when we have been created by God who has endowed us with worth and value.

I'm going to deal with Perdition's posts first, it has not yet been cleared in my mind though whose post I'll deal with next, but bear with me as I will try to reply to everyone in due time. (Breath) If that is what you believe then I’m okay with it, but your manner of expression puts me under the impression that you think I’m trying to bully you into believing in my God which I’m not by the way, in fact my religion prohibits it; however since this is a debate I believe that I’m allowed to defy and challenge your believes and not expect for you to get emotional on me and start employing ad hominem tactics rather than dealing directly with the points as I make them in my arguments. I was going to put myself forward with this paragraph but then I noticed that you had already done it for me below and so I didn't in the end. So to this same person I guess human life isn’t priority number one, since it considers a torn dirty teddy bear as the most precious thing in the world. This Indeed is in line with the point that I tried to make in my last posts, namely that worth is not in born, or it is not even a birth right to be worthy, it is rather affected by the individuals surrounds. That is if the individual happens to find him/herself in a place where his/her life is not valued due to his/her skin color, his/her life will become worthless even though he/she believes it may have some worth the majority agree that he/she is utterly worthless. Please grasp what I mean by this, as Perdition as averred above worth is not an inherent attribute of anything therefore human life is not of necessity worthy or even valuable. You may disagree with me by saying that it is worthy but then again this is your opinion that human life is worthy since it has no worth to start with other than that worth one decides or feels like to give it.So here is my initial argument; worth is determined on an individual basis like Perdition has described it above, since it is determined like this human’s do not have intrinsic or inherent worth and therefore someone can decide that humans are worthless and therefore is not morally obligated to either safe life or to respect it for that matter. Now logically point out where I go wrong in my reasoning regarding this? This is a usual reason for granting worth but the worth given in this way usually goes up and down like a seesaw. We see this in precious metals and stones, their worth ebb and flow and are not stable or absolute their worth is rather determined by current need. The worth of currency would serve as another good example of this; one day it is the leading currency but then on the next day it brings up the rear.
Nevertheless it is merely your opinion that rarities should be considered as possessing greater value than common things, in truth you saying that rarities are valuable boils down to a moral statement, thus in keeping with your moral statement, human life should be valued since apparently humanity is a rarity and all rarities are valuable, so it would be immoral to treat humans like valueless trash since they are valuable. Note however that this isn’t true or applicable for the next guy, and the next guy, and the next guy after him, they all have their determined moralities that arise out of their emotions and personal likes and dislikes, to them rarity doesn’t mean anything.If you still maintain that all rare things should be regarded as being valuable in the face of other existing moralities and viewpoints then you are attempting to create a transcended and absolute morality or opinion. And this contradicts your position that morality is subjective, because what you are trying to do is impose your opinion that all things rare are valuable on other people who obviously have their own opinions and moral codes or standards, and in so doing you have created a morality that oversteps all others, in other words an absolute morality has been established, that can’t ever be overturned.But if moralities are subjective you have no right to impose your morality since all moralities are correct and none is wrong, because to say that one morality is right and another is wrong is to establish an absolute morality which cannot be because moralities are subjective. You can’t have a subjective morality that is also absolute; it like saying that a circle is round and not round also, or that the moon is not made from cheese but is made from cheese also; these scenarios contravene the law of non-contradiction and therefore cannot be.Thus my point is as long as moralities are subjective there can be no universal absolute morality since this would automatically mean that moralities are not subjective but are objective or absolute. Thus you have no right to tell others that all rare things should be considered as being valuable, since this is what you have determined for yourself. Other people are equally capable of determining for themselves what is and is not valuable thank you. Who or what gives you the right to make the above assessment, that is that your morality is better than theirs, moralities are subjective none is wrong but all are correct , for them their moralities are better than your I guess if that is the case. But you use your morality to define the worth of a person; if you think it is wrong to hurt others than you will give them the appropriate worth that would keep them from being hurt. On the other hand if you view that hurting others is of necessity not a bad thing then others won’t have much worth in your eyes. You may not have inherent meaning or purpose in life but I believe that I do have inherent meaning and purpose which God gas bestowed on me even before I was born. And that purpose it to be happy in this life and the life hereafter. The above is not a good analogy, try something like this. If I say it is wrong to crush an orange, and my friend begs to differ, and seeing that we have determined this two ideas subjectively it will not be wrong to crush an orange or not to crush an orange, both are correct, thus if I don’t crush the orange I’m correct and if my friend crushes the orange he is still correct. This is the same thing that happens when moralities are subjective, it isn’t wrong to crush a human being and it isn’t also wrong to not crush a human being; this is so because neither morality oversteps the other thus neither one is more correct or more wrong than the other.Edited by Cedre, : No reason given.Edited by Cedre, : No reason given.

The how is indeed a more interesting question and is one that is still without a plausible answer, the where is a question relating to where in the organism morality got hardwired, and the why is still a question in question. I would ask you to provide some evidence for this statement. Since humans are also animals to a certain degree then according to what you’re saying recoiling a finger from a hot stove would be comparable to going to somebody to apologize. I’m missing the connection. I will happily disagree with the second part of your statement, I would have loved to disagree with the first part as well but sadly I don’t get what you’re trying convey with it. I'm disagreeing because I know of a lot of brats who have parents that are complete opposites of them in character and in behavior, their parents are sweet people, nice and caring and loving, yet they are total loser brats, holy terrors who are only good for causing trouble. Now don’t accuse me of judging here, it’s just the plain truth and occasionally I have also been a total loser brat. The point is not many children are chips off the old block, some turn out good others turn out bad. I guess we humans are just rebellious creatures by nature we are very poor at following trends we even disobey biological trends. This seems to be true for humans including other social animals, but I will doubt that it is out of being moral in other social animals. Animals will tend to be kind to closer relatives because they will get something out of it in the end, but I will continue to doubt that it was because of love. Animals display biological altruism, which is when an animal’s behavior benefits other organisms; at a cost to itself according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy it is not synonymous with human morality. I can’t figure out whether you are addressing animals or humans in this quote but I will take it that you are addressing humans, since animals do not choose their mating partners based on goodness of heart but on physical appearance or dominance or other traits safe goodness of heart. But humans do not also always choose spouses that are good people, some women even choose to stick with their abusive partners, and young teenage girls will often go for the bad boys as opposed to the goody goody two-shoes of the neighborhood or the class. This statement needs some kind of backing. And yet you hold almost religiously to natural explanations even when they refuse to provide answers, and won’t let a divine foot in the door, perhaps that is the only explanation, to claim it’s not is to claim all knowledge. I give you the permission to show that it is feasible. Why not? I disagree. There is adequate food supply in the world to feed the entire human population, what does lead to hunger is not a lack of food but more accurately the imbalance in distribution of wealth, namely money, money is the root of the problem not the solution. Therefore if everyone would just share a bit of their meals with someone else hunger will be eradicated for the most part. Just test this out if you don’t believe me find a few hungry people on the streets in your area and feed them and you will find that they no longer will be hungry, suppose if everyone in the world did the same, would hunger not be a thing of the past, I think it would.

Stinginess resulting from a concern for your own welfare

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and a disregard of others

The above is the definition of selfishness

The quality of unselfish concern for the welfare of others

And the above is the definition of altruism, a facet of morality. No one will disagree that it is better to be selfless than to be selfish, in fact our morality urges selfless behavior as opposed to selfish behavior. So morality is about being selfless not about being selfish. Our moral rules are against selfishness, and strongly encourage selflessness. So to reason that an individual ought to be unselfish because it is better for the group, which is better for the species, which is better for him/her, because if the species dies out, then he/she will not survive? But looking at what is better for him/her, boils down to selfishness. And rules of morality are against selfishness. In the words of morality gets reduced to this ludicrous statement: I morally ought to be unselfish so that I can be more thoroughly selfish. That is silly.So since selfishness cannot be moral and naturalistic thinking has reduced it to selfishness, thus naturalistic thinking has failed at explaining true morality which cannot be marked by selfishness.My only question is, how can morality be selfish when it is against selfishness? This doesn’t make any sense and if morality were a person I would identify him/her as a hypocrite.

Your post is a wonderful presentation demonstrating the shortsightedness of human beings and nothing more. indeed it is too much for us to be consciously aware of every single reason for all our daily actions, that is it’s enough to know that we eat because we feel hungry, and to be consciously aware of the underlying biological reason would be plain boring and wasteful, so being shortsighted in this regard may actually be good for us as it makes our lives significantly simplistic and unsophisticated. This is truly clever design if you ask me. This is probably true. but Then I don't think that morality can be brought down to a biological reason. For instance If we take hunger, we see that it can be reduced to a biological reason, why I ate dinner was because I was hungry and the ultimate reason is why I ate dinner was because my body needs food to develop and function properlyNow applying the same logic to morality we get, why we help others is because we care this is the proximate reason as determined by your line of reasoning, why we care is because by not caring we will endanger our genes including our own lives. This then is the ultimate reason. But Morality started out as a concept and is suddenly brought down to the molecular level, while it should have a conceptual ultimate reason.Furthermore if we look at the ultimate reason for being helpful and for caring it is at odds with morality, altruism or morality cannot be reduced to selfishness, because they are averse to selfishness and eggs on selflessness. The ultimate reason as per your reasoning causes us to make this ludicrous statement: I morally ought to be unselfish so that I can be more thoroughly selfish.Selflessness is when we sacrifice our welfare, happiness and interests knowingly to promote another person’s wellbeing, happiness and interests and in extreme cases we might even die as a result. This is against the principles of selfishness which is stinginess resulting from a concern for your own welfare and a disregard of others. The two are mutually exclusive.Reasoning that morality is reducible to selfishness completely takes away from what it means to be truly moral, then everyone is inherently selfish no matter how many times you deny yourself you are still being selfish. Now the question is then raised why not just be selfish immediately instead of having to abnegate oneself in the process, even endangering oneself? I mean if the goal is a selfish one, to survive, then why should I put myself through all the self denial that comes with being altruistic.It’s like I am in a position to make instant cash, but then I choose to rather undergo a schooling first and only then obtain my cash. Who in their right mind would choose that? It doesn’t make any sense to reduce morality to selfishness and it only ushers in unwanted complications.Another interesting point worthy of mention is that if morality boils down to the survival of the individual, then it kind of demonstrates further that natural selection and ultimately evolution works on an individual basis and not on a group basis. So the idea that morality an abstract idea is apparently a mechanism of natural selection is not true. Maybe you should get out of your inconsistent reasoning, and try applying logic and common sense in your way of thinking. You’re trying to stereotype Christians here, maybe you have met Christians stuck within the confines of what you know as you put it, but I have also met many atheist who do the same thing even do it better than Christians sometimes. For example many atheist are too scared to even put forward the notion of a creator, they out rightly deny existence of such a being based upon the confines of what they know while theists have understood the transcendent Wonder of the universe than what is immediately before you that is God.Edited by Cedre, : No reason given.Edited by Cedre, : No reason given.Edited by Cedre, : No reason given.

Your disavowing must issue from somewhere, be it from fear or lack of evidence as you put, though I like to think that it is mainly rooted in fear. This is an off-the-cuff statement. What kind of evidence do atheist demand? There is ample evidence to conclude that a creator exists, Anthony Flew and the bulk of ex-evolutionists/ex-atheist concluded that a creator exists because there is evidence out there enough of it to persuade. Your refusal of the evidence does not equal lack of evidence.

We still haven't ascertained that morality has in point of fact evolved, just because something may benefit an organism or a group of organisms at that doesn't mean that it has evolved.Atheists are so quick to point fingers at theists for drawing on God of the gap arguments, yet amusingly, they are not themselves blameless in this regard, often they will turn to gap arguments of their own when called for. Like this next one which goes: whatever exists exists because it was favored by nature, so morality exists because it was favored, this is not solving the problem, it’s not answering anything.Darwinists have endued unlimited power to this natural selection god of theirs, who can account for everything that exist, without any corporeal proof or sound evidence whatsoever to back it up. According to their way of thinking everything that exists exists because it was chosen. This hardly cracks the mystery as I have pointed out; they just dump natural selection with undue power that it does not deserve and claim that it is the solution for everything including concepts like morality and the like. To me this is a gap argument; we can’t explain it any other way so let’s say natural selection did it.I Think that is sloppy reasoning.You have yet to show how morality could evolve where exactly on the chromosome the morality gene is carried. And if it is a genetic in nature than why does it seem to vary greatly from culture to culture? Certain cultures have endorsed killing while others punish killing. Also you need to invalidate may claim above not simply heap scorn on it as you have done, and in so doing thinking that you have tackled my claim. With all this unanswered questions who is the one putting the cart before the horse? This claim is not well grounded; I think whether an individual will be rewarded for his altruism will depend on the place and time, and the overall surrounding circumstances. For example if you die during self-defense how can you be repaid for this act? Or if you take care of your pet whose going to reward for taking care of your pet. If you were going to crush a bug underfoot but noticed it just on time who will honor you for that act of mercy. You are far from proofing that every act of compassion is influenced by selfishness. Like I said many factors are involved, like were there people around you when you performed the selfless act. Can the person to whom you have shown kindness be able to repay you later on? These are all questions you need to consider before deciding that all altruistic acts are influenced by selfishness. Again you’re just blowing hot air; you make claims without providing any confirmation as if these claims were suppose to be axiomatic. If the argument presented in this book is so successful in answering this problem of morality and you have read the book then why haven’t you already laid out its central argument to me in any one of your posts up to this point? Let me have it, present me something in your next post from the Selfish Gene. One of the reasons why I chose a forum and not a book to discuss this issue is because a forum’s fast-paced and always on the go, a book is mind-numbing and can expend longer hours of your day, and right now I don’t have this vast amount of spare time. Why should we care about the survival of others? You’re pulling down a strawman this was not the example I gave. My example was if you read carefully that why will anyone opt for schooling if he/she can get the same cash now that schooling will get him in the future. If you could get all the cash to lead a decent life without requiring an education then why bother yourself with an education? This was my argument not what you’re refuting. In the same way I asked if being altruistic is going to end in selfishness then why not just choose to be selfish from the start. Why take the long painful route when there is an easy short cut. And these different genes belong to individuals, again evolution functions at an individual level. Mutations happen in individuals, selection chooses the fittest individuals, and that it what leads to unequal reproductive success. Natural selection doesn’t have a brain to choose a group it can only work on individuals. And to suggest that natural selection favors the survival of a species is to suggest that natural selection has a purpose, selection is a purposeless natural process, and it is not bothered if a gene survive or go extinct.It’s just a process that occurs because it occurs; you can’t endow it with a purpose. Therefore when you declare that the group should survive so that the genes survive in turn you are suggesting that selection has a purpose namely that genes survive. This is foolishness if you ask me. Selection doesn’t possess any more brain power to be giving such purpose than a wind blowing through the city does. So why should it favor anything, much less the survival of a particular gene? Common sense according to the dictionary is sound practical judgment. You are defining something else.

Where did it come from? is it genetic in nature? can it be preserved as such? Give me some proofs here, its not enough to say that it arose and natural selection preserved it.

There are only about 30,000 functional genes in humans (those that can be transcribed to produce their messengers, the proteins. You say a combination of these genes play a role in how we feel and our overall mood. Fine, but give me the names of these genes that our emotions are dependent on that make us to feel love and joy and hatred. Give me some loci; give me something in preference to just a bunch of hypothesis. Furthermore how exactly do they perform this function? How do they do this? Show this to be so? How does natural selection lacking a brain achieve this feat? Where in the genome are these moral genes preserved? Where exactly do these linkages occur? How do chemicals end up in positive moral choices? for example what would you say happens inside an individual on a chemical level that causes this individual to apologize to another individual? You know and I know that the above quote is extraneous to the discussion we are having, so why make it? Why did you make this claim when you do not know hardly anything about my personality or moral code. I will urge you to please refrain from repeating such quotes in your future posts. Why do you keep on making this sort of comments and statements, charges and attacks I will call them, if they are totally irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Stick to the discussion and leave my person alone. Edited by Cedre, : No reason given.

If you believe that you may want to respond to these next set of points.
If morality comes from people, then morality has to be subjective, entirely within the mind of a person, meaning that a person can and has the right to establish for him/herself what is morally wrong and acceptable, and hence we cannot label the actions of another person, such as Adolph Hitler, as wrong.If you blame morality on society then one society cannot label the actions of another society, such as Nazi Germany, as wrong.
Another problem that arises for the atheist from such reasoning is the following, if all sets of moral ideas are purely human invention, implying that they are prejudiced being determined by the individual or society making them, then no set of moral ideas are better than another, and hence it would be specious to prefer so-called civilised morality to Nazi morality. The problem is the instant you declare that one suite of morals is better than another; you are in fact measuring them by an ultimate standard. And the moment you own up that there must be some ultimate standard, you are arguing for the existence of God.While we're on the subject I challenge you to provide reasons as to why child torture for example is evil in other words is morally depraved behavior, you can’t do that unless an ultimate standard as said above existed. One cannot identify a crooked line unless a straight line existed, in the same way one cannot judge one action to be crooked unless a straight action existed so to speak. And the minute you agree that such straight actions exist you are agreeing involuntarily to absolute morality, meaning that morality cannot come from the human mind as every person has varying views as to what is right and wrong. As I have said above people have varying moralities, someone might say that lying is fine, while another person may find it to be the most disgusting action, and then again someone else might think that it is murder not lying that is the most disgusting action. Consider the following fictitious dialogue between a man and a child in a morally deprived world.
Why did you steal that candy? The man said to the boy after spotting him slip a lollipop down his pants.
I wanted it but I didn’t have any means to pay for it, so I took it.
But what you did is known as stealing and stealing is wrong.
Why is it wrong? The boy looked at the man curiosly.
Because it hurts other people and it can get you into lots of trouble too.
But why should I care if other people get hurt? The cheeky boy returned after a pause, the man never expected this one, after scratching his head a bitin confusion he finally said to the boy,
You should just care, because that is what normal people do, they care for one another; and you are going to return that candy because stealing is something that normal people just don’t do.The above conversation gives a feel for what might occur to our societies if God is put out of the picture, and if humans are allowed to decide morality. The man did not know how to reply to the boy’s question as to why he should care for the welfare of others, because he did not have access to an ultimate standard. The best answer he could give is ‘because normal people of this society care for each other and don’t steal from each other’. And as I have shown above many ideas about morality also exist, someone might regard lying to children in the classroom not to be immoral, but does a person’s opinion really establish what is morally acceptable and what is morally unacceptable, can we trust even the world consensuses? For at one time the world agreed that the western form of slavery was okay, and today the world agrees that abortion is morally correct. And in fact we can see just from the on-going commotion in America surrounding abortion that varying moralities do exists, people don’t agree on everything and in the end morality is determined by votes, by power. This is nonsense this is not morality, it is what the majority of the people decided is moral, well everyone can agree together that black is white and black will still only be black and nothing more or less. Perhaps but as communication varies from place to place so does morality without God the ultimate standard, we see it in the many examples I have provided. If straight actions did not exist we cannot know which ones are the crooked ones. According your worldview straight actions do not exist therefore morality does not exist also for no action can be judged as immoral. Who would judge it and using what standard. Without God, morality is reduced to whatever mode of behavior human beings happen to favor either because of their genetic makeup or conventional accords. Edited by Cedre, : No reason given.Edited by Cedre, : No reason given.Edited by Cedre, : No reason given.

I will disagree with what you have said above that complex ethics are not present in small societies. There are many nomadic societies in Africa that are among the most peaceful of societies known. Even in small societies ethics are present, it does not emerge overtime but is present right from the start, because humans are moral agents created in God’s image and are expected to recognize right from wrong because they all reflect God’s moral character. In fact small societies or young societies start out with a strong moral fiber it is when it exposed to differing worldviews of the outside world that decay is noted in the moral fiber of its subjects. The fact that a non-christian can utter moral statements and even act morally does not logically lead to the conclusion that morality does not depend on God, much less that God does not exist. This challenge misunderstands the believer’s position on the relationship between morality and God. The world owes the existence of morality to a moral God.