Morality is a Logical Consequence of Evolution, not Creation

There is a lot of discussion on this site and elsewhere about Good and Evil, whether or not morality is absolute and could only be determined by an all-powerful creator. I hope to make a logical argument that morality (i.e. our understanding of good v bad / right v wrong) is a logical product of Evolution and not Creation.One thing that is often not considered in these discussions is: what do we actually mean when we talk about right and wrong, or good and bad? (I’ll leave the term evil aside for the moment.) Generally speaking, something described as right/good is considered to be beneficial; whereas something described as wrong/bad is considered to be harmful. To whom or what it is beneficial or harmful will of course vary from situation to situation, and may be disputed. But what cannot be disputed is that there is an emotional response to our consideration as to whether something is right or wrong, good or bad. Morality is not a dispassionate issue. We instinctively apply a different set of emotions towards good things than we do towards bad things.Beneficial things that make us feel happy, safe, healthy, etc we label as right/good, and harmful things that make us feel unhappy, frightened, ill etc we label to be wrong/bad. There is an obvious reason for this.The emotions that we feel towards good and bad things are an entirely logical consequence of evolution. In the same way as we fear a lion, or recoil from heat, our emotional reaction is a control of our behaviour that aids our survival. If we did not feel negative emotions such as anger or fear towards certain types of behaviour that are harmful to us, we would never have survived as a species. Our emotions drive us away from bad (harmful) behaviour and towards good (beneficial) behaviour.As humans are a social species that benefits from cooperation between individuals, when we consider whether something is good or bad, we are more often than not considering whether it is beneficial or harmful to a group or society as a whole, rather than simply to the immediate selfish concerns of an individual.This means that it is meaningless to say that a god (or anyone for that matter) has defined x as right/good and y is wrong/bad without any reason. If there is no reason why x is good and y is bad, then the words good and bad have no meaning. x and y would be totally interchangeable and there would be no emotional attachment to the consequences of something being good or bad.There is no such thing as absolute evil or an entity called evil. Like good and bad, the word evil invokes an emotional response. Simply put, evil means very bad. We all have the understanding that something that is evil is very harmful. But, again, something can only be considered very harmful if there is a reason for considering it is in some way very harmful. The word evil is meaningless otherwise.Morality is not something that any entity could cook up and then inject into us. Even if we consider that it is good or right to do something because it is God’s will, we are still considering the consequences of what that means. Is it beneficial to follow God’s will or is it harmful? That’s why people get so worked up about it. If it is neither beneficial nor harmful to follow God’s will, then what does it matter? Good or bad would both be viewed with equally cool indifference.So, even if there were a creator, he couldn’t have invented the concept of good and bad. He may well use the concept to his own ends (e.g. by convincing us that we should do this or that because it is beneficial to do so). But then you have to consider why a creator would want to convince us that it is beneficial to behave in a certain way — and why he created us in the first place. The only reasonable conclusion is because it is beneficial in some way! That would seem to imply that there could be no such thing as a perfect, all-powerful creator; for why would it need to manipulate things to its advantage?

---

"Bring on the wall!" - Dale Winton

Thread copied here from the Morality is a Logical Consequence of Evolution, not Creation thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

I think this point is illustrated very well by the fact that so often, people label things that they fear or don't understand as "bad" even if there is no logical reason to call it thus (i.e. there's no demonstrable reason that it is harmful). Thus, foreigners, miscegenation, homosexuality, gender equality, genetically engineered food, vaccines etc. become "bad" or even "evil" because people's initial gut reaction is discomfort or fear. It is only after they've decided that it is bad that they try to come up with some argument for why. And, of course, because the explanation is designed to fit with our initial gut reaction, and not drawn from data or methodical observation, they are often ridiculous and alogical: "it will destroy marriage", "it will destroy the family", "technology only causes harm", "cuz God said so".

---

We have many intuitions in our life and the point is that many of these intuitions are wrong. The question is, are we going to test those intuitions?
-Dan Ariely

Hi Jumped Up Chimpanzee, interesting thread. "good v bad / right v wrong" for whom?Evolution -- the change in frequency of hereditary traits in breeding populations from generation to generation -- by definition occurs within a breeding population.Natural Selection -- the differential success of hereditary traits in individual organisms that allow them to survive and breed -- by definition occurs at the individual organism level within a breeding population, and it causes frequency change in hereditary traits in the breeding population, with a overall result in increased fitness\adaptation of the population to the ecology.Conclusion: natural selection of hereditary traits in individuals results in a net fitness benefit to the breeding population. In evolutionary terms, this should be fairly clear: whatever provides a net benefit to the breeding population to increase fitness\adaptation to their ecology is "good" and whatever provides a net disadvantage to the breeding population to increase fitness\adaptation is "bad" and whatever is in between is neutral ground. Behavior between individuals within a breeding population is part of the ecology that individual organisms occupy. In a social species this includes behavior between all individuals within the social group.Conclusion: "good" behavior results in a net benefit to the social group and "bad" behavior results in a net disadvantage to the social group.In this context we can look at some behavior patterns and compare the behavior of an individual against the behavior of the group:

• A predator that attacks members of a social group is not behaving "bad" according to it's "moral" pattern, it just has an unfortunate effect on the social group.
  ​
• An individual that kills the predator causes a net benefit to the group, and thus this "hero" behavior is "good" for the group.
  ​
• A group of individuals that hunt down and kill the predator cause a net benefit to the group, and thus this behavior is "good" for the group.
  ​
• An individual that kills for food causes a net benefit to his survival, but this alone is of relatively neutral benefit to the group.
  ​
• If he shares the food with others there is a net benefit to the group, and thus this "sharing" behavior is "good" for the group.
  ​
• A group of individuals that kills for food causes a net benefit to their survival, but this alone is of relatively neutral benefit to the rest of the group.
  ​
• If they share with others there is a net benefit to the group, and thus this behavior is "good" for the group.
  ​
• An individual that randomly kills members of their social group is providing a net detrimental "bad" effect on group survival.
  ​
• The behavior of the group to execute the killer provides a net benefit "good" effect on group survival.
  ​
• An individual (or another social group), from the same species but from outside the social group, killing members of a social group is providing a net detrimental "bad" effect on survival for that group.
  ​
• An individual that kills the killer/s causes a net benefit to the group, and thus this "hero" behavior is "good" for the group.
  ​
• A group of individuals that hunt down and kill the killer/s cause a net benefit to the group, and thus this behavior is "good" for the group.

Thus sharing is moral, murder is immoral, execution is moral, defense of the social group is moral, defensive war is moral.But the equations change for different species with different social groupings, and as social groups grow and evolve. This also gets into concepts of "US" and "THEM" and the relative morality of behavior to members of "US" being different for members of "THEM" even though the specific behavior is the same.Note that for a non-social species, or an antisocial individual that rejects belonging to a social group, that everyone else is outside their social group.Thus the concept of morality only applies is social group settings. From an evolutionary viewpoint there are just gradations of "bad" behavior, such as the difference between defensive war and genocide. It is my understanding, based on my admittedly limited knowledge of the bible, torah, koran, etc that the above examples of evolved im/moral behaviors are all provided with the predicted results in confusion over seeming contradictions when they are attempted to be portrayed universally. Except that we have not derived what should be moral behavior according to an authoritarian source. It is entirely possible that the god/s set up the evolved behavior and then just record it.That should be a good start.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : add

---

The whole issue is with the definition of 'good' and 'bad'. You equate them with 'beneficial' and 'harmful'. However, you will probably acknowledge that this is not how both terms are defined in a christian worldview. We can already see that, right from the beginning, the starting point is different and so any discussion of if morality is a logical consequence of creation/christianity is impossible.This was the second part of your OP, in which you set out to prove that morality, as you envisioned, could not be a logical consequence of christianity. (Note that I narrowed the topic on the christian worldview, since other theistic views such as Islam for example would not have the same morality etc.) Of course, the result you arrived at (not a logical deduction) was pretty straightforward from the beginning, because the real issue is if first christian morality is a logical deduction of it's theology, and second if it is compatible and appliable with the real world.I am however very intrigued by your definition of good and bad as 'beneficial' and 'harmful' (which is simply the evolutionnary view on morality) and so I will also bring up some examples as RAZD did. However, I will take situations where the two moral systems come to different conclusions, because these are the situations that tell us something. It is futile, in my opinion, to come with situations where the conclusions are the same and then argue that one system is better then the other:- There are elderly people in modern society today that are now too old to help in production. Even worse, they consume production from younger people who have to take care of them. So they turn out to be a harmful effect on the population. Passing this situation in your morality filter, killing them would be 'good'. Do you agree that this is the case in reality ?- There are many children today that are born with genetic diseases but can be kept alive through medicine. The more affected ones will be in a similar spot as an old person: unable to socially produce and in fact consume ressources. The less affected ones will be able to have a social production and probaby pass down his genes. However, even in this case, it is harmful since his production will be less then a healthy individual and so letting his disease spread in the population is a risk. Once again passed through your morality filter, letting the first group to die would be good, and letting the second group to live but not reproduce would be good. Do you agree with this ?I could come up with a lot of examples, but I think you get the point. We can observe that in both cases, the moral system you defined and the christian moral system come up with opposite positions in both cases. Which reaffirms my previous statement about the two not being the same. Second, I think that in both cases we will agree that the human tendency will be to act opposite to the conclusion from your morality; we will keep the old people alive and let the sick babies live.I would even say that in the vast majority of situations where the two moral systems come in conflict, the christian position will be the one that human counsciousness has a natural tendency to go to as well. This situation is why someone like Dawkins claimed to be ''anti-Darwinian when it comes to morality''; because he recognizes that ''our best impulses have no basis in nature''.

Hi slevesqueThanks for your response. Of course, my OP approaches the subject from a very specific angle, but you raise some interesting points. I realise this may well be the case and the door is open to the religious to express any alternative understanding of morality. This point is very interesting. I don't think it is exclusively a Christian moral system to help the old and the sick. It happens in most societies and, as you say, even Richard Dawkins has such impulses. However, I'm not sure that he always agrees with himself on this issue! He has said on several occasions in his books and TV programs that our empathy towards others, even towards those we don't personally know (such as the people currently suffering in Haiti) can be attributed to our origins. For most of human history, we have lived in small family groups or tribes, where we would rarely see anyone who was not a fairly close relative. Therefore, it was beneficial to the survival of our genes to do everything we could to help each other. So beneficial was cooperation to our survival, and particularly to the survival of our genes, I suppose you could say that we have almost over-shot ourselves in this respect. A good example of this is the love and care that we show towards other animals, so strong is our empathy towards others.I think from an evolutionary point of view in our hunter-gatherer days it must have been such an advantage to do everything we possibly could to help the old and the sick. They must still have served a useful function or at least it was worth the effort if they had the potential to do so. The emotions we feel towards them, the overwhelming urge we have to help people, is a strong indication of that. I saw Richard Dawkins interviewing someone about the placebo effect (sorry I can't remember the name) but they made the point about how quickly the human body can heal itself when it knows it is being looked after. When a body knows it is relatively safe and being cared for, that it will be kept warm, hydrated and fed, it can afford to divert all its resources to help the healing process. (This is just one example, and what I mean by it is that it has long been a survival advantage not just to be cared for, but to know that we will be cared for.)I don't agree that my definition of "beneficial" would mean we would be better off killing the old and the sick. For a start, it would mean acting against our overwhelming instincts, which would not be good for our own emotions. But I don't think we will lose those instincts even in the future. Do the sick and the old want to die? No, they have the same survival instincts as everyone else. So who would want to live in a Logan's Run society? How successful would such a society be compared to a more humane one?Edited by Jumped Up Chimpanzee, : Clarifying sentence at end of penultimate paragraph.

Hello Chimp, just a quick point: Actually, depending on how seriously ill I was, I would consider dying as an option, same goes with age. I don't want to be a "vegetable"or complete cripple nor do I look forward to being a drooling old man pissing himself all the time. I'm sorry, but I'll pass up on that, thank you very much.Disclaimer: This is how I feel now, nothing prohibits this view from changing, of course.

Hello Slevesque,I've had some trouble lately in finding the time to get on evcforum, but I thought I might make some short comments on your post.You have given two examples of moral dilemmas where the two approaches to morality allegedly diverge. However, you are mistaking an evolved sense of morality for a 100% pragmatic one. Indeed, culling the weak from the herd may seem the most practical choice. However, there are two big reasons why we would not expect this to agree with our morals.- First off, it is almost universally detrimental for society that we kill members of our social group. It is not strange that we feel a strong aversion to killing other humans. Before modern medicine, people would not have lived as long and would not have burdened society as much in their elder years, so their not have been much selection for the kind of morality that culled the weak.- More importantly, we humans possess empathy to a much greater extent than most other other animals do. We are able to imagine ourselves in each other's shoes, and we understand that we might very well find ourselves in them one day. Social insects like bees may have no problem throwing the males out in the snow during winter (as the drones aren't needed and consume precious food), but they do not possess intelligence or empathy.As such I think your examples aren't as relevant as you intended. Let me provide a few examples where biblical morality and actual morality do diverge:- Killing witches. The Bible commands it, so it is good. Yet we do not feel compelled to burn witches today.- Abortion. Many evangelical Christians are pro-life and believe it is morally wrong to perform abortions. Yet many are performed every day. If we had as strong an aversion to this as killing a developed human being, it would probably not be happening. If God gave us an aversion for murder, why not the same for abortion?- Homosexuality. People throughout history have practiced it, and most people do not believe it is good to kill the homosexual, nor that is bad to be one. Once again, our inherent morality diverges from biblical morality.- Worshipping other gods/idols. There are billions of people in the world who do not worship the Biblical God, yet they do not feel immoral for this reason.So, while morals that benefit society or arise from empathy for other humans (don't lie, steal, kill etc.) are inherent in the human species, Bblical commands are not. Why is this?Respectfully,-Meldinoor

I agree. There comes a point where we are no use to anyone, including ourselves. I also share your disclaimer. I wonder if anyone thinks euthanasia is immoral.

I certainly don't.

---

I hunt for the truthI am the one Orgasmatron, the outstretched grasping hand
My image is of agony, my servants rape the land
Obsequious and arrogant, clandestine and vain
Two thousand years of misery, of torture in my name
Hypocrisy made paramount, paranoia the law
My name is called religion, sadistic, sacred whore.
-Lyrics by Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead

This is not the case as watching old people die or infact killing them would make people feel bad because they feel empathy. This is harmful to us so your point is moot. We react more strongly to what is right in front of us than to abstract concepts. When I see hungry children on TV dieing I don't really care as I've seen it a million times. If however, it that were to happen in front of me I would be driven to help.One of the side effects of having a culture that rewards altruism is that we don't let the sick die young. Having such a culture has a net beneficial result for the society even if some of it's side effect have a negative effect.So protecting the weak is out weighed in terms of benefit by having a generally caring society.

Seeing as only the issue of morality logically deduced from evolutionnary principles has brought up a couple replies, I'll let any other religious folk start a discussion on this. Of couse, I agree that a Darwinian explanation can be given to some extent of empathy, but I do not think to the extent we see in humans. You gave a very good example by referring to the empathy we have towards other species. The fact that we could have developped empathy towards our own scial group of the same species does not logically bring that therefore, we also developped empathy for other species. I find this to be a bit circular.-) Why do we feel empathy towards the old people amongst us ? Because they probably still serve a function that gives us a selective advantage, and therefore this emotional trait was favored-) How do we know they do have such advantage ? Well the strong emotions we have for them is a strong indication of thatThe trick is of course to start by finding if such an advantage exists, not by supporting it's existence with what it is supposed to explain.Let's take a scenario of two tribes of hunter/gatherers. They have both developped empathy for the other people amongst their group. However, in the first tribe, this empathy was transmitted to old people as well in the group while that in the second tribe, the old people are let to die when they are no longer useful. Which tribe will have a selective advantage ? I can already see that the second tribe will have more food and ressources for themselves, they will have more clothes to wear, they will be able to travel much faster. Put these two tribes in the same geographic locality in a competition for ressources and it seems pretty clear that tribe no2 has a head-on advantage.PS sorry I'm talking in terms of ressources and production terms, I've been playing a lot of CiV4 lately so I only have this terminology in my mind lol Of course, I agree, caring for each other has advantages. But it doesn't necessarily follow that, therefore, it is normal that we care for old people, or for animals of other species. The real question is why we would even have those instincts in the first place, if they bring a selective disadvantage ?

I'll cut down to the examples as the first part of your reply comes down to the same point as JUC; which is the last question of why we have such instincts to that extent ? (I understanding there is a Darwinian explanation for the basis of empathy, but nowhere near the extent we see in humans) I'm not a Bible pro, but I don't remember anywhere saying that killing witches was good A very good (but very inappropriate) psychological experiment would be to go to an african tribe and take one of their pregnant women and abort her. We could see if the rest of the tribe members would have any sort of aversion towards it. I think they wouldThe point being that our acceptance of abortion is just a social conditioning. A touchy subject, but are their a lot of homosexuals in african tribes ? If we would bring amongts them a homosexual couple, what kind of response would their 'inherent morality' give them ? (Btw I do not cliam to have the answers to these two questions)And the Bible does not say it good to kill homosexuals. But it says that act in itself is bad because it is against the natural order God established at creation I think that following the Biblical commands has greatly benefited our society, don't you think ? (Besides, I never claimed that we were born with the Bible in our sub-consciousness)

Thank you for your response slevesque,I'll be responding to your Message 12 as well in this post as both posts addressed similar issues. Empathy is a product of our intelligence. I have an understanding of what it's like to be my grandparents, because I can imagine myself in their shoes. When I break a fish's neck I feel a tinge of reluctance, because I can imagine the pain of being hooked in the mouth and having my neck twisted. When I see a playful dog, I understand that it's happy. When a dog whines and looks at me with sad puppy eyes, I might feel compelled to give it what it wants.This is because I am able to imagine myself in other situations, a trait that we share with only a few other creatures on this planet. And without exception, all other animals that share this trait are intelligent.Did our evolution favour intelligence? Undoubtedly, as a study of hominid brain capacity clearly indicates. I could go off on a tangent and discuss why we have become so darn intelligent (that is a better question IMO), but I think we should stick to the question of morality.Do you agree that empathy, as it exists in apes, dolphins, certain birds etc. is a product of intelligence? (Dolphins and Apes are also both excellent examples of cross-species empathy) Chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants are other species I can think of right off the bat that also care for their sick and injured. It turns out, if you have a gene that makes you care for your sick and injured relatives, you will be promoting the survival of that gene in your family, and eventually it may become prevalent in the population. Back when we evolved these traits, we didn't have a large retired population to support. Most of the sick and injured were probably young enough to reproduce and benefit the tribe. (According to wiki, life expectancy during the paleolithic was in the low 30's) Neither does it follow that, just because people salivate in the presence of a yummy steak, that we'd salivate at a picture of a nice rare barbecued steak. Yet we do. And we're wasting saliva... Stupid, stupid evolution. Why didn't we evolve a brain that didn't react to pictures of food?! And how silly of evolution to have us react positively to little chubby things with big eyes and big heads. Now we think puppies and baby chickens are cute too! What a waste of... adoration, or something.
And empathy, why didn't evolution make us understand each other perfectly, while making us completely unaware of the emotions and thoughts of other animals?! I mean, surely, there's no benefit in knowing what that hungry predator is thinking, is there?Just because we can think of ways that our evolution could have taken a different route, doesn't mean it had to have taken it. There is no reason for evolution to restrict our empathy to only our species. Once we had empathy enough to understand and feel for each other, it follows that we'd also have empathy for other, similar creatures. Exodus 22:18
"Do not allow a sorceress to live" The history of abortion stretches way back into prehistory, with many different cultures using various natural abortifacents and techniques to perform them. I think it would depend on the tribe, and the circumstances. Was the woman raped? Was she raped by a man from another tribe? *gasp!*Believe it or not. Your aversion to abortion also stems from social conditioning. The Baruya people of Papua New Guinea have made fellatio a central part of their culture. Young males perform fellatio and drink the semen of older males as a sort of rite of passage, and also (according to wiki) to "re-engender themselves prior to marriage". While this is not homosexuality per se, I think Moses would have blown his top if he had come across this behaviour.Apparently, inherent morality has not prevented such disgusting (by our standards) practices among the Baruya people. Hmm... it would seem that many other animals, including other apes, birds etc. do not consider it unnatural. How many biblical commands do you follow on a daily basis. Out of the grand total, that is And besides the obvious ones.Respectfully,-Meldinoor Civ 4 is an awesome game! Do you play any of the expansions as well, or just the original?---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ABE: By the way, this post does not take a personal stance on any of the moral issues discussed. The examples are merely to point out that certain morals are inherent, while others are not.Edited by Meldinoor, : Added a note

Hi slevesque The empathy we have towards sick humans is only a part of our ability to put ourselves in the mind of another person. We also put ourselves in other people’s minds to anticipate their purpose, their motives, their emotions, their intended actions, etc. We do this all the time without even thinking about it. And we do this with animals too. Is that animal trying to hunt me? Is it trying to escape from me? Is it frightened? Is it angry? What will it do if I stand over here? Can I tempt it and trap it? Etc. It is clearly to our advantage to be able to put ourselves in the minds of both other humans and animals. Our empathy towards animals is not purely and simply a by-product of our care-driven empathy towards sick humans.Other animals will often show caring behaviour towards other species. In particular, mothers will show care towards infants from another species. It’s clear that the hormones that drive behaviour of many species are often so strong as to override regular behaviour. Clearly it must be an overall advantage to have a hormonal system that is sometimes overactive. It just seems logical that it is more of an advantage to have a belt and braces system that is maybe sometimes too caring, and therefore virtually guarantees that we always care for those who really matter to us, than to have a weaker system that would more often lead to a failure to care for those who matter. The same principle applies to the way we have so many health and safety procedures and rules today. The health and safety rules often seem to go so far as to be ridiculous, but the purpose is to try and eradicate all possible risks — to keep all dangers to an absolute minimum. (The principle is the same but, of course, there was no conscious purpose behind the evolution of our instincts.)Young children have an imagination and natural inclination to play games that will prepare them for adulthood. This includes playing with pretend babies (i.e. dolls). It’s reasonable to suppose that a child’s desire to have pets and care for them is just an extension of its very useful anthropomorphic attitude to inanimate baby substitutes. And an adult’s desire to have pets is an extension of its parental instincts — look at how many people decide to get dogs when their kids have grown up and left home. Again, it’s a result of an apparently over-active instinct, but one that ensured that they took good care of their kids. I will go as far as to suggest that an adult that feels a stronger than average urge to continue caring for something after its kids leave home had a stronger than average urge to care for them before they left. I.E. it is an advantage to have a tendency to be (apparently) over-caring. I disagree because you're not looking at the big picture and the overall advantage of cooperation. As I said, who would want to live in a Logan’s Run society? If you had the choice between living in a society where you knew you’d be well looked after when you became sick and old, or one where you’d be thrown on the scrap heap the moment you passed your physical peak, which society would you choose to live in? Which society would be the most successful then? In modern society, would you bother to pay your taxes and be a good all-round citizen if you knew the moment you hit 60 or 70 you’d be shot in the head? Would you even make as much effort to care for your children and grandchildren if you knew they wouldn’t reciprocate when you needed their help? But I think the main factor here is that for most of our history — and in many societies even today — life expectancy was less than 30 or 40 years old. Once you became sick you’d either recover fairly quickly or you’d die fairly quickly. That’s why it was worth the effort to try to help the sick, because if you succeeded you had another fit and able body, and if you failed the burden would have been relatively brief.There must be a massive advantage to the individual, at many levels, to know (either consciously or instinctively) that it is living in a relatively safe and caring society, because it can devote its energies and resources to other things than constantly worrying about its immediate survival. Just think how difficult life would be if every person you saw had to be considered a serious threat to your life, and how much easier it is that we can be fairly certain they will help us if we are in any difficulty. We couldn't possibly live in anything like the society that we do, and have 6+ billion people on the planet, without this huge advantage of cooperation.