Morality! Thorn in Darwin's side or not?

I touched on it in Message 306:

quote:

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Behaviour that "works" for our species - e.g. helping each other - is generally considered moral. Behaviour that endangers our species - e.g. killing each other - is generally considered immoral.
We have learned what morals work and what morals don't work - and as situations change, we have to change our morals to suit the situation, to keep them working for us.

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Even religionists who claim that their morals were "imparted" by some god keep changing their morals to fit the times. Morals are a natural offshoot of social behaviour, so they most likely go back at least as far as the early mammals.

I have a lot to think about, because I have never heard this approach on the development of morals before.What struck me about your earlier post was the application of Romans, which in essence speaks against exclusivity practiced by religions, and you had daringly and rightfully honored that text by saying it scoops up all of humanity.

You have a lot to learn. Ask questions.Added By Edit (ABE):Seriously, you are prone to making proclamations, and then you're seeing if they stick.. that only leads to confrontations.Try asking about stuff instead and see where that leads you.We can, in fact, help you. We're not all against you. This is not a "fight".end ABEYou can always reject our answers, but at least you will have seen them.That is learning. You do have fellow Christians here, including me.And even the atheists here are really well versed in Biblical passages, so there's a lot to "see" even if they're totally wrong.I've been here for almost 10 years. It has been fantastic. Despite all the knowledge I've acquired, I've at least wonderfully increased my written communication skills. And that has been invaluable to my working career.So stick around. And don't be a dick. Try to utilize us in a way that you can actually learn something.You will gain from it.Edited by Cat Sci, : see ABE

I'm glad the fuse is lit because I've told you about all I know. There are people on this board who can certainly tell you more.

Personally I think altruism is completely Darwinian.Consider 100% perfect selfishness. How well would that really work as a survival / procreation strategy? Not very well at all.We assume that a parent animal "just wouldn't" eat their own children. Because they don't so we assume they wouldn't do that. But what exactly is stopping them? Why not eat your own children? If you're 100% selfish and don't care, eating your own babies makes a lot of practical sense. They are a very nutritious source of protein, and are much easier to hunt than other prey. A PURELY selfish being would in fact not care at all, and would happily eat all of their children, their mate, their parents etc. But that being would die alone, and their genes would not get passed onto the next generation. Hence, being purely selfish isn't a good strategy to make a lot of offspring.If you have a gene that says "don't hurt those close to you", guess what? Your chance of your offspring surviving skyrockets compared to your "don't give a damn" neighbor. Also your close relatives have a high likelihood of also carry that gene, which means the "nice" gene has a runaway effect, where it helps other copies of itself to spread.So basically, it's logically impossible for any animal that raises it's own young to lack some form of aversion to harming other members of it's own species. Because otherwise they'd just see each other, including their own children, as a source of food.So the organism needs to have a built-in system to care about the children, to be willing to even sacrifice themselves for their children. Your genes will pass on if you sacrifice yourself for your children, but if you sacrifice your children for yourself, then that's basically permanent death in the evolution stakes, and you FAILED at life.So how could the brain code this mechanism which must logically exist in all mammals? The most likely way is through emotions. Protective feelings, love, happiness, guilt. Guilt is an interesting one. Guilt would have no purpose whatsoever without a social group. If you were really alone, guilt would be worse than useless. It acts to prevent us from causing harm, by making us feel bad if we cause harm.I'd argue that emotion is the original basis of human moral/ethical systems.Edited by jasonlang, : No reason given.

To all of the above posts,The conditions needed for life demand, altruism which is apparent on any level of life. Let's not call it altruism but mutuality, or mutually beneficial relationships.
Every relation in nature has pay offs and prices.So if morals were developed then, they would be derived or enhanced or refined, mutual benefits.We often see self sacrifice, not in a romantic sense, but placing oneself in between the danger and the endangered.Somehow the morals fully developed will not be based on pure self preservation but of self sacrifice.It seems that such a move would leave a population open to disaster, yet how many animal types practice this with great success?These concepts have always been the essence of true religion, because they are in harmony with nature to some degree. But in some ways they are different, in that they call for intelligent moves rather than rash and desperate moves.This is so different and contrary to earlier teachings on evolution and science, which hammered n the ideas of fight, flight reproduce only scenarios.
Every show on animals was interpreted like that, and still is.It's a turn around of philosophies...

Sounds correct to me.
I fully agree that our morals originally evolved from a basic sense of "mutual benefits" or altruism or whatever you'd like to call it.We can now use our intelligence on top of that system to move it even further. Actually, it has nothing to do with "true religion" or any kind of religion. Just intelligence, that's all.
Anything else is added on unnecessarily. Not really, just the addition and usage of intelligence on top of an already existing system.

Think about this.There are advantages for animals living in groups - they can protect each other, find food together, find mates easilyBut for animals to live together there must be community rules that benefit the group - such as not eating your neighbours children.The rules of behaviour in a group will necessitate self-sacrice inorder to gain greater benefit from the group. If, after a group kill, the strongest individual walked off with the kill leaving nothing for the group, the group would not hold together. This requires the development of a sense of fairness.The more group co-operation developes, the more successful the group is likely to be.At the extreme, eventually these group behaviours will look like moral behaviour,So we see 'moral' bevahiour in many animals - chimpanzees have a very well developed sense of fairness.There's been a lot of work in these areas, your understanding of evolution is - well, let's say, weak. Before you make sweeping statements about it, you really should try studying what it actually says so that you can discuss it intelligently.

They would evolve. This is well established within biology and by game theory for interactions between animals in a social group. Enough to know that your hypothesis is faulty. Perhaps it is based on a false premise ... Yep that would be a false (incomplete) premise -- that this was the only elements of evolution that should be considered.What evolution requires is that enough individuals survive to reproduce to carry the group through another generation. And "mutually beneficial relationships" would help ensure that happens. Because they evolved ... and because we are a social animal that learned to interact with other groups of humans as a larger social connection.Enjoy

Don't be absurd.Think about this for five seconds, will you. Darwin, and indeed every single other naturalist in the history of ever, was perfectly aware of the existence of social and eusocial species, such as humans, ants, bees, colonies of rooks, schools of fish, etc. The "earliest teachings of evolution" therefore ascribed these things to evolution, rather than denying that they existed.C'mon, it should be obvious even without you doing any research (which you didn't, did you?) that what you're saying must be untrue. Because it's as though someone claimed "The earliest teachings on astronomy denied the existence of the sun". Without spending one second researching the history of astronomy, you know for certain that that must be false.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

"Rising higher and higher on the moral pedestal, evolution carries mankind to a point of perfection, where he is god."- Satan
Note from "Deceived Captives"

"What, me worry?" - Alfred E. NeumanAbout an equally valuable quotation.Moose

"Evolution is great, stop talking rubbish Colbard" --- God.If we're playing Argument From Imaginary Quotation, I win.

I never dreamed that one day evolution would drink from the cup of morality and kill itself. I am so happy I'm dancing.

Well that made a lot of sense......