How do we tell right from wrong?

Welcome to EvC Shekinah, First, I would bet that none of the answers we will give you will satisfy because you are coming into the discussion not with an open mind but to prove your point about right and wrong.So perhaps you can tell us where you feel right and wrong comes from so we can know how to argue our position.You said,

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If evolution is true...

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With that statement alone I can tell your angle is not to understand the true nature of right and wrong, you are going to try and show how we can't know right from wrong without spiritual guidance, so, just tell us that and don't load a statement with "If evolution is right...". It is right, period.Here's an article out of Science Daily that deals with morality,http://www.sciencedaily.com/...ases/2007/05/070517142545.htm

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In a review to be published in the May 18 issue of the journal Science, Jonathan Haidt, associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, discusses a new consensus scientists are reaching on the origins and mechanisms of morality. Haidt shows how evolutionary, neurological and social-psychological insights are being synthesized in support of three principles:

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Intuitive primacy, which says that human emotions and gut feelings generally drive our moral judgments.

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Moral thinking if for social doing, which says that we engage in moral reasoning not to figure out the truth, but to persuade other people of our virtue or to influence them to support us.
Morality binds and builds, which says that morality and gossip were crucial for the evolution of human ultrasociality, which allows humans -- but no other primates -- to live in large and highly cooperative groups.

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"Putting these three principles together forces us to re-evaluate many of our most cherished notions about ourselves," says Haidt, whose own research demonstrates that people generally follow their gut feelings and make up moral reasons afterwards. "Since the time of the Enlightenment," Haidt says, "many philosophers have celebrated the power and virtue of cool, dispassionate reasoning. Unfortunately, few people other than philosophers can engage in such cool, honest reasoning when moral issues are at stake. The rest of us behave more like lawyers, using any arguments we can find to make our case, rather than like judges or scientists searching for the truth. This doesn't mean we are doomed to be immoral; it just means that we should look for the roots of our considerable virtue elsewhere -- in the emotions and intuitions that make us so generally decent and cooperative, yet also sometimes willing to hurt or kill in defense of a principle, a person or a place."

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Haidt argues that human morality is a cultural construction built on top of -- and constrained by -- a small set of evolved psychological systems. He presents evidence that political liberals rely primarily on two of these systems, involving emotional sensitivities to harm and fairness. Conservatives, however, construct their moral understandings on those two systems plus three others, which involve emotional sensitivities to in-group boundaries, authority and spiritual purity. "We all start off with the same evolved moral capacities," says Haidt, "but then we each learn only a subset of the available human virtues and values. We often end up demonizing people with different political ideologies because of our inability to appreciate the moral motives operating on the other side of a conflict. We are surrounded by moral conflicts, on the personal level, the national level and the international level. The recent scientific advances in moral psychology can help explain why these conflicts are so passionate and so intractable. An understanding of moral psychology can also point to some new ways to bridge these divides, to appeal to hearts and minds on both sides of a conflict."

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Adapted from materials provided by University of Virginia, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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I hope you enjoy the article, perhaps you can focus more on what you feel is necessary for morality/knowing right from wrong/ good & bad etc, etc...Science has an extensive amount of research done on the subject so if one is taking a scientific stance then there are tons of papers to cite from, however, if you are presenting a spiritual angle then you'll have to show how the spiritual perspective is more plausable.--OniEdited by onifre, : No reason given.

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"All great truths begin as blasphemies""I smoke pot. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your mouth."--Bill Hicks"I never knew there was another option other than to question everything"--Noam Chomsky

Im right, you're wrong...try to argue against that sir.