Morality! Thorn in Darwin's side or not?

Correct. But so what?

Yes, that's correct. That doesn't make sense as a sentence so I can only guess at what it means, but it's likely to be the usual confusion between a biological process and a religious dogma. Evolution like all discoveries of the natural world has no moral content - it's simply an observation of what happens.You think god makes morals, you're wrong, man makes its own moral codes which change over time, but that has absolutely nothing to do with evolution and I have no idea why you think Darwin would be bothered by that. yes, we both agree that evolution has no morality but I asked you why that mattered and I'm so far no clearer why you think it does.

You've made a bald, unsupported assertion - which is a logic error and in any case is empirically wrong. We find moral behaviour amongst other evolved creatures such as apes. There ARE morals and humans have defined the emotions that drive our ethical and unethical behaviour morality. This is just gibberish. btw - why do creationists obsess about Darwin as though the guy that discovered evolution is responsible for creating it? Wallace came up with the idea at the same time and if neither of them had it would be someone else - that's because it's a observation of the natural world like finding another planet, not an invention. With the exception of conflating evolution to morality and the nonsense about dispensing with morality - the rest is correct. Man defines morality and what we think is right and wrong changes over time. This is an obvious truism. Over time our societies become less punitive, less discriminatory and generally fairer. This is a secular, not religious, process. Why not? (and btw, yes it can - otherwise we'd still all have slaves and be stoning women for being raped) No it doesn't - else prove it. Nope. And if by this 'everlasting law giver of morals' you mean the Christian God, then you need to explain the appalling immoral acts he perpetrates in the bible. More or less correct - though it's hard to imagine a time when the destruction of all living things by deliberately flooding the earth would be regarded as a moral act. Well yes and that has happened in the past - the Aztecs believed the human sacrifice of their children was not just a moral act but a necessary one to please their gods. Luckily, as I said, man-made, secular laws based on fairness and the 'do no harm' principal is ridding the world of the nastier religious superstition and practices. Do you truly believe that people of other religions in other countries are immoral? Do you think that atheists can not behave morally?

Your thought processes are mess.I've no idea why you think that your god would intervene between man and cow but not to prevent, say, the holocaust, but that is not at issue. The question is how can a moral god perform an immoral act such as killing all life on the planet?I also want to have an answer to whether you think that those who have not heard in your god or don't believe in any god at all can be moral?

I am not confusing the two, I'm claiming that the two are the same. Morality and immorality are behaviours which we observe 'going on in the world' As we all wholeheartedly admit - this is correct. evolution has no intent so we agree that you can put that back in its box. Yes bad people can do bad things, that's why we label them BAD. Everybody living under a despot knows that he is bad. Killing is definitely part of our morality. We call some killings moral and some immoral depending on time, culture and circumstance. Your biblical god thought it was ok to kill neighbouring tribes, I'm guessing that the neighbouring tribes thought otherwise. Correct, but this is getting a bit tedious. Every time you say that evolution is amoral I'm going to agree with you - ok? The reason is that it lacks agency. It's no more moral/immoral than the car that kills a pedestrian or the cat that kills a mouse. Silly correct

As it happens I do have an answer why suffering happens (not is 'allowed' to happen - that implies agency again) but you have never asked that question. It is however, the hardest question to ask of a someone who believes in a loving god - so hard that no answer has ever satisfied anyone. Of course there's no god to blame it on - but that has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution just tells us how life on earth evolved; that's got zip to do with whether there's a god or not. I'm afraid I will never know what you mean unless you can start to string sentences together that have logical meaning. Why don't you stop posting for a while and think about how to make a rational case for the existence of an absolute morality that relies upon a god when we can easily observe that there is no such thing.

It looks like I'm going to have to slow down.Believing in evolution (which is, itself a nonsense - you don't 'believe' in evolution anymore than you believe in gravity, but let it go) does not mean that you can't believe in God. Hundreds of millions of people believe in both. All it means is that some of the stories in some of the books that some people believe aren't literally true aren't.I'm accusing the God that YOU believe in of supposedly doing immoral acts in order for YOU to understand that YOUR god is immoral and I'm asking you to explain how that is possible. Exactly how wrong do you want to be? I'm an atheist. God doesn't exist. There, I CAN do it. Weird statement - I'm not complaining about god, I'm complaining about the things that people say about what god says - like morals need gods and are absolute. I suggest you re-read what I say, put aside your preconceptions and just think.Evolutionist does not equal atheist - stop conflating the two. There is such a thing as good and bad and all people of all beliefs and none know these things instinctively. They are also taught in homes and schools - hence they can also be learnt.

You need to stop imposing your thoughts and beliefs on me. You can't see a moral - it's only a word to descibe an action. Well of course I don't because I'm an atheist, remember? Watch my lips - morality exists. Why are you so confused about this? Evolution isn't atheism, isn't moral or immoral and certainly isn't god. You're all tangled up aren't you? As I said earlier, you need to take some time out and start thinking. There's no hinderence by morality, without it we we destroy oursekves - morality is a handy survival mechanism that allows us to live together mostly contentedly. Neither have we developed evolution, we discovered it. Nor does the discovery that life evolved allow us to do whatever we feel like - this is easy to prove because we can't and we don't.

Complete twaddle. We behave in moral ways because it's the right thing to do. We know this because when people do bad things to us, it hurts us. We noticed that we need to protect ourselves from bad things happening to us so we invented laws and enforcement methods to help keep us safe. We are accountable to each other and have devised ways of making this work for society.You'll notice a couple of things here - when states fail and law breaks down a lot of very bad things happen. The second thing is that neither god nor evolution was involved No, it makes their actions wrong. Obviously. Well we don't like genocide, that's why we call it both a moral wrong and a crime. But we do like the fact that we know the difference between right and wrong without some Skydaddy having to tell us or some religious zealot making up nonsense.

You have almost as much lack of education about human history as you have about science. All societies, regardless of religious belief, have, throughout history, developed systems of punishing wrong doers. All people everywhere know the difference between right and wrong.None of this has prevented corrupt individuals creating tyrannical regimes from time to time - it's just a bigger form of what you would call sin. But gradually there is a pacification process that tames people through its institutions.You might ask your god why he created us this way - it's almost as if he enjoys watching dog eat dog. Of course this situation is totally explicable if you consider that we evolved from a animals that had to fight daily for their survival.

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.

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