Is Religion Completely At War With Science, Or Are They Complementing Each Other?

That's my whole point. If it's "culture-specific" it means nothing, just like "culture-specific science"--introduced by the Nazis.Morality has to be objective.

It means something to the members of those cultures. Why does it HAVE to be? and what do you mean by objective vs. subjective?lfen

Didn't you read my post? The fact that certain moral concepts are different from culture to culture proves that morality is subjective.But let us assume for a minute that morality is objective. Can you propose a methodology that we can use to determine certain "truths" of morality?For example, since science is objective, we can determine that the hydrogen atom always has a proton and an electron.If morality is objective, what methodology do we use to find out moral truths?

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There is no methodology.Except in your heart.Which is rather undependable.

The point is that without the Absolute there can be no morality, except as a whim.But we know in our heart that there is good and bad.

Even "good" and "bad" are subjective words. Would you say that female circumcision is a good or bad thing?

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Hate world.Revenge soon!

Hang on a second. Didn't you insist that morality is objective? If we derive moral truths from the heart, whose heart do we depend on? Yours? Mine?If it is undependable, then what is the point to classify it in the first place?I am a bit confused about your position. Care to explain with a little more detail?

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Hate world.Revenge soon!

Thank you kindly.

Although I agree with you that "morality" in an absolute sense IS meaningless, I have a feeling my reasons are different than yours. You apparently feel that absent a "universal morality" the only alternative is nihilism. Not only is this a false dichotomy - the one doesn't necessarily follow from the other - but nihilism is patently false on the face. There are quite good evolutionary and biologically derived reasons for non-nihilistic behaviors in social species. The more complex the societal interactions - for example among humans and other primates, possibly -some of the odontocetes species, etc - the more likely the evolutionary need for "ethical" adaptations that keep the societies functioning. Since gregariousness for these organisms is a net survival advantage, metaethical "rules" for normative behavior among members of these societies would be expected, including recriprocal sharing, punishment for cheaters, and altruism. Throw in human linguistic ability and the highly complex societies this has allowed our species to develop, and cultural norms that allow relatively smooth societal functioning, we can see both the cultural basis of "morality" and how such morals precepts are transmitted laterally and vertically throughout the society.Nihilism is maladaptive in this context and hence according to Hamilton's Rule the tendency would be eliminated from the population. Your premise is thus falsified.

Please forgive my ignorance. I'm not sure what Hamilton's rule is.It sounds to me like you're saying that behavior such as altruism has evolved among the higher animals due to the fact that those animals who happened to be altruistic survived and those that didn't got killed off (a highly simplified version of what you said, maybe).I doubt that this would apply beyond a given animal community. We have a community of monkeys that are unselfish with each other, but I doubt they practice the Golden Rule with the community of orangetans in the other valley.I had the idea that nature was red in tooth and claw--amoral.I suppose one could say that the Nazis were altruistic within their own community (soldiers giving up their lives for their country, or race). But that doesn't make their community as a whole moral.

Exactly!That is why we struggle against our "natures" to get beyond the rather small group that we consider to be "us" and extend our idea of our group to more people. That is where on xenophobia comes from.Only when the "tribe" of a few 10's of individuals that we evolved to identify with is expanded to be a few billion individuals well we have overcome some of what is wired into us for the better in a different environment.

I don't see, given the lack of an objective morality, why I, Mr. Monkey, should give a damn about the Orangetan one way or the other unless it helps me.I and my fellow monkeys had a town meeting, and we figured out that we have the means to destroy the Orangetans with our new technology of using clubs. If we destroy them, all that delicious fruit they had control of will belong to us. Why not do it? No reason why not.

W.D. Hamilton, working on the theoretical problem of how altruism could evolve in a population where it hadn't existed before, derived an elegantly simple mathematical statement showing how altruism enhances fitness (i.e., produces more offspring). It is the foundation for the concept of inclusive fitness. The formula is br-c>0.In the equation, "b" refers to the number of offspring that an individual who receives help from an altruist can have because of receiving the help. That is, it's the number of extra offspring that individual can have, beyond what it could have had without help."r" refers to the degree of relatedness between the altruist and the recipient of altruism. This indicates the chance that the allele for altruism, which we know is in the altruist, is also in the individual who receives altruism."c" refers to the number of offspring an altruist could have had (beyond any that it does have) if it had not been an altruist. So it indicates how much better a non-altruist reproduces than an altruist."br" indicates the number of extra offspring the recipient has who can inherit the allele for altruism if the recipient has it, multiplyed by the chance that the recipient actually does have the allele for altruism. To be passed from generation to generation, the allele for altruism must occur in the recipient and must be passed on. The higher the chance that the recipient has the allele, the more offspring will inherit the allele. The more offspring the recipient has, the more offspring there are who may have the allele.The term c in the formula tells us the degree to which an allele for non-altruism will be passed on, since it tells how much more a non-altruist reproduces than does an altruist.So if br is greater than c, it means that the allele for altruism is being passed on more than the allele for non-altruism, so altruism has higher inclusive fitness and will evolve. If br is greater than c, then br-c>0, so the formula br-c>0 tells us when altruism will evolve.In practice, if resources such as food or good nesting sites are scarce, for example, individuals may not be able to reproduce very much without help, so c would be low (non-altruists would not have many offspring because of scarce resources) and b would be high (individuals who receive help could have many more offspring than they could without help.)Nihilism requires therefore that c be high value - the selfish approach being the optimum strategy. IOW br-c < 0. By definition, altruism cannot evolve in that population. Since altruism patently exists, nihilism as a strategy is contraindicated. On the contrary, it applies to the entire species, beginning at the local population level. Remember, we're talking the absolute fitness of a cooperative organism among those species who are social being higher than a non-cooperative member. It doesn't apply cross-species. And it doesn't mean unselfishness within species/population is prohibited. Simply that the cost of extreme selfishness is high, and thus would tend to be weeded out by natural selection. Or if you prefer, those behaviors that tend to generate high cost/benefit asymmetries are selected against. Erm, "red in tooth and claw" isn't necessarily an accurate description. Amoral maybe. After all, we're talking about a strategy of cooperation or altruism actually deriving signficant benefit for the individual cooperator in terms of survival. Better chance in cooperating than in not. I hereby invoke Internet Discussion Rule #24: s/he who first mentions Nazism in a discussion loses. However, you're also confusing two seperate levels of hierarchy, and in fact two different kinds of selection. Your example of the soldiers giving up their lives for their society is one form of altruism not uncommon among social species, especially eusocial species. There are parallels with the Ecitoninae ants and of course many of the other Hymenoptera. It certainly doesn't refute what I said about cooperative behavior. However, the other level is a purely cultural affect: Nazism, to use your example, would be what I termed maladaptive. After all, it was quite effectively, if not entirely, wiped out. Cultural competition between humans has similarities to, but is not identical with, intraspecific competition.This message has been edited by Quetzal, 12-09-2004 11:59 AM

Well, yeah. That's the whole idea of interspecific competition. If two different species are competing for limited resources in a local habitat, the one who is better at obtaining resources is going to win. The other goes extinct (or moves). Unless your hypothetical orangutans discover some weapon system capable of retaining their hold on the resources, they're extinct.However, your analogy is attempting to make a connection between biological competition and social competition (just like with your Nazi analogy). There are significan differences, even though there are some superficial similarities.

I will not refer to Nazis anymore. Sorry.I guess you could say that we are evolved into creatures for which the idea of altruism is a concept that occurs to us as a possibility occasionally, and that's where the whole idea of morality comes from.And getting back to your point--I think it's your point--that religion is not necessary for morality as a concept to occur to us, I agree with that.But the fact that it is species-specific and not just culture-specific doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how big the group is if it doesn't include all. It's still subjective, unlike science.I suppose an individual, or a community, or even a species might say something like this: "I have certain moral rules, such as the Golden Rule, which I like to abide by. It's good for me. On the whole, it works to the continuation of my species. Of course, it's just something we made up or had wired into us. We might have said that the color Blue is good and the color Yellow is bad if that helped us in some way to prosper.
There's no particular reason why my species should survive and that other species should not, other than who's the most powerful. However, we are more powerful because we abide by the Golden Rule.
Therefore, they will die and I will live."Is this morality? It sounhds like power-politics to me.