[quote]cueball wrote:
[quote]BBriere wrote:
[quote]MikeTheBear wrote:
[quote]BBriere wrote:
[quote]MikeTheBear wrote:
[quote]BBriere wrote:
The problem is that the idea of good and bad has to come from somewhere. Otherwise it’s just all relative.[/quote]
As I and others have explained, certain personality traits that favor a strong group/society/community get passed on by our DNA.
I can argue that religion makes ideas of right and wrong relative. To a Muslim who strictly follows the Koran, killing an infidel, defined as anyone who is not Muslim, is perfectly acceptable. And no, I’m not being a bigot - it says this in the Koran, or words to that affect. So, ideas of right and wrong are relative based on your particular religion. Sure, we can argue about which religion is the true religion, but ALL religions claim to be the one, true religion. So, which one should I believe?
I agree that the idea that humans evolved from non-living elements is hard to imagine. The universe is hard to imagine. But just because something is hard to understand doesn’t prove the existence of a god. This idea of “it’s hard to understand” is the basis of just about all religions. That combined with the fact that we want to think that we’re special creatures watched over by a benevolent being, and we want there to be a universal moral code. Well guess what - I too want these things. But we don’t always get what we want, and I refuse to go running to the nonsense of religion just so I can feel special and loved.
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So your claim is that no only do physical traits evolve (which I concede in micro-evolution) but that spiritual traits evolve as well. That would point towards some sort of spiritual being inside of us then. Where does that come from? There is nothing in our DNA that is anything but physical. And still that would leave morals subjective. It’s only dependent on what we perceive as right or wrong. Yet usually you don’t have to tell someone it’s terrible to hurt another living thing. Where could the information of morals be stored?[/quote]
This is in response to both you and Pat, since Pat asked a similar question: whether morality is somehow encoded onto our DNA. Well, sort of. I’m no expert on neuroscience, but here’s what I can tell based on my limited knowledge. Our sense of morality is linked to our emotions. We protect those we care about because we love them. When we do good things for others we feel “good.” Bad things produce feelings of guilt, sadness, fear. Our emotions are controlled primarily by chemicals in the brain - neurotransmitters - and to some extent by other hormones and chemicals. Fear, for example, involves production of adrenaline and epinephrine. Love involves a more complex mix of chemicals: oxytocin, serotonin testosterone, dopamine, probably a little epinephrine tossed in. Although love is complex, it is still essentially chemical-based. During our evolution, it made sense that we sought those situations that produced feel-good chemicals and avoided those that produced feel-bad chemicals.
The idea that “killing is wrong” probably came out because way back one tribesman probably saw a fellow tribesman mauled and killed by an animal. This produced feelings of fear, anger, probably sadness. This reaction, although it produced bad feelings, ultimately helped this human to survive. Witnessing this frightening act taught this early human to avoid this animal, or at least taught him to not walked around without a weapon. Now, it’s possible that some humans didn’t get this response - they may have even found the situation amusing to watch. Not many of them lasted, however, because they never learned to avoid this animal. Eventually, a majority of early humans had the same chemical response when witnessing death. This same response was produced when a human killed a fellow human without any justification. Thus was born the notion that killing another human with justification was wrong.
The bottom line is that our emotions have a physical basis - there is nothing “spiritual” about it. And this is not limited to humans. For instance, scientists have discovered that elephants exhibit a kind of sadness when they witness the death of another elephant.[/quote]
True, emotions don’t have to be taught. If morals became ingrained over time in our DNA, however, why not other learning? You say that people learned killing was wrong so they think about it as wrong. Wouldn’t people have leanred other things that they would pass on? How about speaking a language, cooking food, and other things people have needed to learn to survive? Those seem important enough to have also become part of the DNA if concious learning can be passed down from generation to generation.[/quote]
I agree with this. Having morality as a part of our genetic make-up gives us other issues too. If it’s how we’re made, then someone who commits atrocities then has a physical, medical, reason for doing it. A defect in or lack of the moral gene. It’s not that they knew better, or could choose one way or the other, that’s just “how they were made”. At that point is it really their fault? Should they be punished for not having the same genetic make-up as most others? [/quote]
Well, you also have to look at the idea of universal right and wrong anyway. If morality is just based on what we have perceived as wrong due to years of evolution, then you can’t really have right and wrong. I could justify rape by saying it was used to populate the world. I could justify murder by saying I was unhappy with a person. I could justify stealing by saying I was in need of what someone else had. Afterall, if it’s survival of the fittest, which is what Darwinian evolution proclaims, then the strongest win out. Strong animals kill weak for what they need. Humans are animals so we are no different other than we have a more complex brain.