[quote]kaaleppi wrote:
[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:
…Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, . . . and any deeper meaning is illusory. (Michael Ruse, “Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics,” in The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 262-269).[/quote]
When it comes to evolution, any deeper meaning beyond survival or reproduction is illusory, or at least I understand it that way. Therefore also morality has to be a product of adaptation if one frames the question in evolutionary terms.
The basis for morality is supposedly in normal group behaviour. There are people that lack moral consepts in the way people normally have them, they know what is right and what is wrong, but it’s purely cerebral infromation without any emotional counterpart. Upbringing plays a big role, too. Who are you loyal to: your family, clan, neighbours, countrymen? Who deserves to be treated in a moral way.
When one answers the question of morality in philosphical terms we get a more distilled conception of morality and the morality of an individual act is measured with the concept and its rules. Morality as a concept is now in focus in a way it never can be in an evolutionary context. Therefore sharper distinctions and morality gets an objective existence.
I haven’t really thought much about these things, but that’s a start, eh?[/quote]
Wait, so you believe objective morality is nothing more than the illusion of right and wrong, a concept born of the circumstances of our nature, and NOT a metaphysical entity?
Or are you saying something else? I would like to get you to clarify this before I ask my next question, but in the interest of saving time: If the above IS an accurate paraphrasing of your statement, are you prepared to follow that statement to its logical conclusion? It’s not a pretty place, and there are very few atheists who are comfortable going where that line of thinking leads.
Eph and TigerTime are the only guys here that I can recall fully owning it and not trying to weasle around the problem with a pseudo-metaphysical solution.
Even Forlife was not willing to admit to this (hear that, Tirib?). I seem to recall he said something like “love” was, in an of itself, justification enough to adhere to a set of moral rules. Whatever that means.
Now, if I read you wrong, and you DO believe that, for instance, raping infants is a necessarily immoral act, then you’ve got a bit more explaining to do.