24-09-2003 19:54									#1
	Morality and Darwinism Tired of ads?

Hi. This thread is NOT about whether materialistic Darwinism is true or not. For the sake of argument here we will assume that it is entirely true. So please don't discuss the scientific proofs one way or the other. What morality are we left with and does the following article sum it up pretty well?

=========================

Sponsored by the Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture

Why Darwinism Matters

Washington DC Policy Briefing
May 10, 2000


By Nancy R. Pearcey


Tracing out the implications of Darwinism for just about every area of life has become a cottage industry. If you haven’t kept up with it, take a look at a new book series from Yale University Press called Darwinism Today. The books cover such topics as "an evolutionary view of women at work" and "a Darwinian view of parental love" and even a Darwinian approach to leftist political philosophy. There’s no part of life, it seems, where Darwinism is not being applied today. You might call the subject of my talk Applied Darwinism: not science per se, but its implications for other areas of life.

A few months ago, talk shows were boiling over with a controversial discussion of a new book on the subject of rape. It was titled The Natural History of Rape , and the two authors were university professors who made the rather inflammatory claim that rape is not a pathology, biologically speaking--rather it is an evolutionary adaptation, a strategy for maximizing reproductive success. In other words, if candy and flowers don't do the trick, some men may resort to coercion to fulfill the reproductive imperative. The book calls rape "a natural, biological phenomenon that is a product of the human evolutionary heritage," just like "the leopard's spots and the giraffe's elongated neck."

The authors were genuinely surprised by all the hoopla the book caused, because after all they were expounding a theory that has been debated in academic circles for several years. It’s called "evolutionary psychology," which a new form of sociobiology, a term that may be more familiar. It’s the theory that if natural selection produced the human body, then it must also have produced human behavior. Any behavior that survives today must have conferred some evolutionary advantage, otherwise it would not have been preserved by natural selection.

One of the authors, Randy Thornhill, appeared on NPR, where he was badgered repeatedly by critics until finally, in exasperation, he insisted that, look, the logic is inescapable: Since evolution is true, it must be true, he said, that "Every feature of every living thing, including human beings, has an underlying evolutionary background. That's not a debatable matter." In other words, proponents of evolutionary psychology are doing us the favor of spelling out the logical consequences of the Darwinian premises.

Other proponents of evolutionary psychology have claimed to discovered an evolutionary advantage in a such things as jealousy, depression, and even infanticide. A few years ago (November 1997) in the New York Times, Stephen Pinker of MIT claimed that "The emotional circuitry of mothers has evolved" by natural selection to leave their babies to die in certain circumstances.

What these examples remind us is that Darwinism is not only a scientific theory but also the basis of a worldview--and it has implications for the way we define human nature and morality and a host of other worldview questions. Of course, this is where the rubber hits the road for most of us who are not scientists. What we want to know is, what difference does Darwinism make, and what impact has it had, on questions like morality and the law, the family and education?

Let’s start with education. One of today's most popular pedagogical techniques is called "constructivist" education. It's based on the idea that knowledge is not objective but a social construction; therefore children should not be given the "right" answers but they should be taught to construct their own solutions within a group. As one proponent puts it, "Constructivism does not assume the presence of an outside objective reality . . but rather that learners actively construct their own reality." In order to teach children how to "construct their own reality," teachers encourage students to invent their own spelling systems, their own punctuation, even their own math rules.

Where do such ideas come from? The roots go back to John Dewey, often considered the "father" of American education, whose explicit goal was to work out what Darwinism means for the learning process. He argued that if human beings are nothing but a part of nature, then the mind is simply an organ that has evolved from lower forms in the struggle for existence, just like a bird’s wing or a tiger’s claw. Now, a wing or a claw is preserved by natural selection only if it functions well, if it does it job, if it enables the animal to adapt and survive. By the same token, Dewey said, the ideas in the mind are worthwhile if they work, if they help us survive. He called for a "new logic" that treats ideas merely as hypotheses about what action will get the results we want.

We see the results of this "new logic" especially at the higher levels of education, which today is awash in postmodernism. The core of postmodernism is the rejection of any objective or universal truth: There's only the feminist perspective or the homosexual perspective or the Hispanic perspective, and so on. The typical college curriculum today includes offerings like UCLA’s "Chicana Lesbian Literature." Or Brown University’s "Black Lavender: A Study of Black Gay/Lesbian Plays." Stanford has a course called "Eco-Feminism." Frederic Sommers of Brandeis says today most educators no longer even define education as a search for truth but as a way to "empower students in the struggle against patriarchy, racism, and classism."

This skepticism about truth is also a direct consequence of Darwinism--so says the well-known deconstructionist Richard Rorty. Rorty devised his own philosophy by asking, what are the intellectual consequences of Darwinism? His answer was that ideas must be treated problem-solving tools that help us get ahead in the struggle for existence. In a New Republic article, he wrote that "Keeping faith with Darwin" (notice the term there: "Keeping faith with Darwin"), means understanding that the human species is not oriented "toward Truth" but only "toward its own increased prosperity."

Rorty is not the only one who says this. Philosopher Patricia Churchland says the human mind has evolved because more complex cognitive faculties "enhance the organism's chances of survival. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost."

Interestingly enough, Darwin himself wrestled with the question of truth as well--not just once, but several times. In one typical example he wrote: "With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy." What's significant is that Darwin always expressed this "horrid doubt" in the context of admitting that he couldn’t quite shake an "inward conviction" that the universe cannot be the result of chance after all, but requires an intelligent Mind, a First cause. In other words, he applied his skepticism selectively: When his mind led to a theistic conclusion, he argued that after all the human mind cannot give us any real truth. But since his own theory was also a product of the human mind, he was cutting off the branch he himself was sitting on.

One of the most vexing questions since Darwin’s own day is what his theory means for religion. Not long ago, I picked up a nature book for my little five-year-old about the Bernstein Bears, the highly popular picture-book characters. In this book, the Bear family invites us on a nature walk, and as you read you suddenly come across a two-page spread with a startling slogan sprawled across both pages with capital letters: Nature is "all that IS, or WAS, or EVER WILL BE."

Have we heard that somewhere before? The words echo the well-known line from Carl Sagan’s PBS show "Cosmos": "The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be." Sagan was echoing the classic Christian liturgy ("as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever well be"), and what he was offering was nothing less than a religion of naturalism--where nature takes the place of God as the ultimate and eternal reality. What Sagan did for adults, the Bernstein Bears are doing for young kids.

Does Darwinism necessarily mean philosophical naturalism? Or can we fit the two together somehow? It’s a good idea to start with asking what Darwin himself hoped to do--and there’s no doubt that he crafted his theory specifically to supplant the God hypothesis. He proposed that chance and law--random variations and natural selection—could mimick the work of a mind. In which case, of course, you don’t need a mind to govern the process any more. You see, natural selection acts as a sieve, sifting out the harmful variations and letting only the good variations through. But Darwin argued that if God was guiding the process, then He would create only good variations in the first place--and there would be no need for any sifting, no need for natural selection. Putting God over the process would make natural selection unnecessary--"superfluous," as he put it. He clearly saw that you can’t have both, that either God or natural selection becomes superfluous.

If you follow Darwin and make natural selection the creator, then where does religion come from? It too must be explained as a product of evolution. God is merely an idea that appears in the human mind when the nervous system has evolved to a certain level of complexity. Harvard professor E.O. Wilson in his latest book Consilience, says that religion evolved because belief in God gave early humans an edge in the struggle for survival. And he says today we must abandon the traditional religions and develop a new unifying myth based squarely on evolution--a religion that deifies the process itself; one where no teaching, no doctrine, is true in any final sense because all ideas evolve over time. Some even say God Himself evolves--God is not an infinite being but a finite spirit, who is immanent within the universe and evolves along with it. This is the view of process theology, the fastest growing theology in seminaries today.

At a recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), participating scientists were startled to hear a clear, sweet voice rising above the group as they assembled on Sunday morning, singing a hymn called "The Handwriting of God." The singer was the wife of a well-known cosmologist, and her hymn celebrated the residual cosmic background radiation from the Big Bang. "God's secrets are written in the first light," announced the refrain.

The performance highlighted a session on the relationship between science and religion, with workshops on topics such as "The Religious Significance of Big Bang Cosmology" and "Scientific Resources for a Global Religious Myth." Most of the speakers argued that traditional faiths must give way to "a science-based myth," and they urged their listeners to elevate cosmic evolution into a "compelling 'religious' narrative" with "the power to bind humans together in a new world order." The end product of Darwinism may not be naturalism but a new paganism.

Since religion is often the grounding for morality, what does all this mean for morality? Ever since Darwin’s day, people have been concerned that his theory undercuts morality in the traditional sense--and they are right. If you listen to radio, you might have heard a song that’s climbing rapidly up the charts these days by a group called The Bloodhound Gang. The song has a refrain punched out over and over: "You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals; So let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel." A video for the song features band members dressed as monkeys simulating sexual relations with one another.

On a more sophisticated level, in a recent book called The Moral Animal, Robert Wright says that for the Darwinist, morality is merely an illusion produced by natural selection. As he writes, "There is definitely no reason to assume that existing moral codes reflect some higher truth apprehended via divine inspiration." Instead, the reason we believe certain moral ideas is that they make us adopt behaviors that help our genes survive--like taking care of our children. "What is in our genes' best interest is what seems 'right'--morally right, objectively right."

In other words, morality is nothing but a trick of the mind produced by natural selection. To quote Wilson again, it "is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes."

If this is so, what becomes of the moral basis of the law? A legal system is based on a set of normative propositions—a series of oughts. If "morality is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes," what happens to the moral grounding of the law?

Already a century ago, the implications were foreseen by Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was a committed Darwinist and who argued that there is no moral foundation for the law--that law is merely the science of state coercion: the ways government uses it coercive power most effectively. More recently, legal scholar Richard Posner says there can be no such thing as "natural law" in the moral sense because we now know that "nature is the amoral scene of Darwinian struggle."

But perhaps the best description of what all this means for the law is a much-quoted article by Arthur Leff, of the Yale Law School. Leff points out that the only way to have ultimate moral norms is if there exists an unquestioned final guarantee of those norms—"an unjudged judge, an uruled legislator, . . . an uncreated creator of values." "Now, what would you call such a thing if it existed?" Leff asks. "You would call it Him."

In other words, only if there is a God who is Himself ultimate Goodness and Justice is there any ultimate moral grounding for the law. And if there is no God, Leff argues, then nothing and no one can take His place. Nothing else can function as the grounding of morality--no person, no group, no document--because all of these can be challenged. All of these are susceptible to the defiant challenge you hear kids say to their parents or on the playground: "Sez who?" Everything except an infinite God is susceptible, he says, to "the grand sez who?"

Now, Leff himself does not believe such a God exists, and so he concludes that "we are all we’ve got"--and that therefore that there are no objective, universally binding moral norms, that "Everything is up for grabs."

And yet, and yet. He ends his piece by saying, "Napalming babies is [still] bad. Starving the poor is wicked. Buying and selling each other is depraved. This is such a thing as evil. All together now: Sez who? God help us."

This is the postmodernist impasse in the law. Americans want to feel that we are free to choose our own values, that no one can tell us what to do. And yet, at the same time, we want to be able to say that certain things are genuinely wrong, objectively evil. Harvard professor Michael Sandel, in Democracy’s Discontent, says the major political divide in America today lies precisely here--between those who believe that morality is indeed up for grabs, something we construct for ourselves and, on the other hand, those who believe morality is "given" in some way--grounded in divine relevation or human nature or in some other objective manner. Sandel traces this deep divide in several policy areas, such as the family, abortion, and economics, and you will find a more detailed policy discussion there.

And so I would suggest that the scientific issues we’ve heard about today have profound consequences for our understanding of a host of worldview questions--which in turn spill over into policy issues. If we want to understand the deep divides within the American polity today, we can do no better than to examine the view of science that each one is based upon.

Copyright 2000. Nancy Pearcey. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
File Date: 7.31.00

http://www.arn.org/docs/pearcey/np_dcpolicy0500.htm

---------------------------------------

Please stay on the topic. Where does materialism and materialistic evolution lead morally and what is the basis for your opinion? What is the foundation upon which your morality rests and what ensure that a materialistic moral foundation will endure as a viable standard for human decency?

	24-09-2003 20:25									#2
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

Just a semi-side-note. Virtually every use of the term "Darwinism" outside evolutionary biology related fields is a complete misuse of the term with no bearing on the original concept. "Evolution" is also similarly misapplied, and the further afield you get from the original issue, the more misapplied.

Ideas can't "reproduce" in an objective way, and there are no resources for which they have to compete to survive.

	24-09-2003 20:26									#3
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

MtG: True.

	24-09-2003 20:31									#4
	Get a bigger avatar today!

Looking up Nancy Pearcey on Google:

"Nancy Pearcey is co-author of The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy. She has contributed to numerous other books and journals, including Charles Colson's First Things. A fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, and managing editor of the journal Origins and Design, she is a longtime collaborator with Colson in BreakPoint, in a monthly column in Christianity Today, and in the Wilberforce Forum, for which she directs policy."

From an impartial observer.

	24-09-2003 20:44									#6
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

Strange article. I think she left out a very crucial aspect of science vs. religion as the definer's of law; the origion of religion as a creator of law.

She attacks Darwinism as a stater of moral law, and indicts Darwinism as a defining moment of separation of church and state. Yet, why not attack Guttenberg or the writers of the bible as iron fisted rulers that attempt to tame paganism and anarchy, since in a sense freedom was more obtainable prior to the extinguishing of such ideals.

Laws don't define morals and morals don't define laws. The only thing laws do is permit people to live within whatever morals they wish to possess.

This lady, Nancy Pearcy, is a religious zealot and a threat to a peaceful world. It is her morals that will cause more problems here than my supposed lack of morals for being a scientist who wishes not to live under the guise of fundamentalism...

May whatever god she believes in, have mercy on her soul...

	24-09-2003 21:15									#7
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

What MtG and Japher say.

There is little connection between things like constructivism, relativist morality and darwinism. Mixing them all together as an evil plot to resist religion is silly.

Also, I like to think that most people don't hold all the anti-religious theories together.

I am for instance a spiritual person, though at the same time I'm a darwinist. I object to relativist morality just as I object to any kind of "unified morality" whether the one presented by liberterians, or religious people.


I think this article does a bad job of defining constructivism. Connecting the existance or lack there of, of real "right answers" to relativist morality is not natural in my opinion.

	24-09-2003 21:20									#8
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Don't you know? Lincoln only gets his morality from republicans.com.

	24-09-2003 21:31									#9
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

monk - by making that remark you are not showing higher intellect.

	24-09-2003 21:35									#10
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

I think monk means that Lincoln gets his morality from the TheRepublicanChurchofAmerica.org

	24-09-2003 21:55									#11
	Re: Morality and Darwinism Full PM-box? Change here!

quote: Originally posted by Lincoln Since religion is often the grounding for morality, what does all this mean for morality?

To be correct - different religions are the grounding for different "moralities". If the article claims that that there´s only one morality (grounded eg in Christianity) - this is not the case, as a quick look around the globe shows.

If he would confirm that there are different moralities possible, the entire point of this article would be gone, because morality cannot be seen as a unique, God-given thing, when it comes in different "versions" (christian, muslim, atheist etc.)

To constructivism: it mostly doesn´t mean that we construct everything totally independent from the outside world. Only some constructivist approaches deny the existance of a reality. Every construct has to prove its value in life, not all constructs are equally right. The link from constructivism to pure relativism is not a must (although some favourize such views).

Finally to you question:

quote: What is the foundation upon which your morality rests and what ensure that a materialistic moral foundation will endure as a viable standard for human decency?

I´m an atheist, but don´t care about materialism, and I base my moral views on reason

	24-09-2003 22:03									#12
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Hi. This thread is NOT about whether materialistic Darwinism is true or not. For the sake of argument here we will assume that it is entirely true. So please don't discuss the scientific proofs one way or the other. What morality are we left with and does the following article sum it up pretty well?

Are you implying that Darwinism should be hushed up, even if true?

quote: The authors were genuinely surprised by all the hoopla the book caused, because after all they were expounding a theory that has been debated in academic circles for several years. It’s called "evolutionary psychology," which a new form of sociobiology, a term that may be more familiar. It’s the theory that if natural selection produced the human body, then it must also have produced human behavior. Any behavior that survives today must have conferred some evolutionary advantage, otherwise it would not have been preserved by natural selection.

This is actually an over-simplification. A behavior that survives could be a side-effect of other behaviors that are themselves advantageous, but this does not imply that the behavior under consideration is itself advantageous. The urge to rape can be an unfortunate side-effect of the sexual urge, hence preserved.

Similarly, homosexuality (if genetic) can be a side-effect of more "desirable" traits (from an evolutionary perspective) such as "male bonding" in tribal groups.

quote: A few years ago (November 1997) in the New York Times, Stephen Pinker of MIT claimed that "The emotional circuitry of mothers has evolved" by natural selection to leave their babies to die in certain circumstances.

This shouldn't be controversial, it's just a statement of fact. I've seen (non-human) mothers abandon, and even eat, their babies.

quote: Let’s start with education. One of today's most popular pedagogical techniques is called "constructivist" education. It's based on the idea that knowledge is not objective but a social construction; therefore children should not be given the "right" answers but they should be taught to construct their own solutions within a group. As one proponent puts it, "Constructivism does not assume the presence of an outside objective reality . . but rather that learners actively construct their own reality." In order to teach children how to "construct their own reality," teachers encourage students to invent their own spelling systems, their own punctuation, even their own math rules.

This seems to be the opposite of Darwinism! Darwinian evolution teaches that there is a "right way" and a "wrong way" (or several) to go about something, and creatures that do things the "wrong way" have a tendency to die (e.g. the "Darwin Awards").

quote: Rorty is not the only one who says this. Philosopher Patricia Churchland says the human mind has evolved because more complex cognitive faculties "enhance the organism's chances of survival. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost."

Isn't Churchland saying the exact opposite of what this author is claiming? This is from the expression "Devil takes the hindmost": from a medieval tale in which the Devil teaches a class of wizards and claims as payment the last kid to get out of the classroom. Again, the implication is that those who can handle the truth best will survive, and the most truth-impaired will die.

quote: This is the postmodernist impasse in the law. Americans want to feel that we are free to choose our own values, that no one can tell us what to do. And yet, at the same time, we want to be able to say that certain things are genuinely wrong, objectively evil.

"Evil" is a word. Like all words, it has whatever meaning we assign to it. If we define the concept of "evil" to include (for instance) genocide, then it is true by definition that genocide is evil.

Also, as we are evolved social animals, there is an objectively destructive aspect to antisocial behavior: it's bad for the species.

	24-09-2003 22:03									#13
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Japher and monky - that's enough of the personal swipes at Lincoln.

	24-09-2003 22:04									#14
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

Er, is there actually any proof that Dewey said, "children must construct their own reality"? Mind you, that strikes me as the general idea today, but it strikes me as a little too obviously silly to swallow at any point in time. Like a state religion of voluntary delusion. Source?
And just to stay more or less on-topic, looking to science for moral answers is like looking up a telephone number in the Bible. If people are using a theory like Evolution to explain the inner workings of the mind, all it really "proves" is that people can be pretty damned silly. Boo to them and this article which makes them sound good by its poor and murky refutation. Hmph.

	24-09-2003 22:05									#15
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

though moralit doesn't compete for limited resources, societies sharing similar or the same morality compete with other societies.

	24-09-2003 22:29									#16
	Support Apolyton

The whole "constructing reality" thing is overly pedantic.

Like it or not, we do "construct reality" rather than directly interact with objective reality.

In simple cases, our constructed reality corresponds closely with "objective" reality. The more complex, the more abstract, or the more emotionally loaded the issue, the less our constructed realities agree with each other and with objective reality.

Studies on everything from reliability of eyewitnesses to false memories to interpretation of events show that we selectively filter information and alter it's importance. That's reality, so deal with it.

	24-09-2003 22:44									#17
	Got spare money?

A side note on the book about rape. If rape is a "biological" urge, then why rape men, the elderly, and children? Why anal rape? Why use condoms during rape? Why use objects during rape? And what about the not insignificant number of rapists who fail to ejaculate during rape?

As an evolutionary adpation, it's severaly flawed. Furthermore, how did this adaptation come about? For what part of human evolution were large numbers of men only able to reproduce via rape? This wuold only be the case if significant numbers of women were reproductively unavailable, and from what we know of pre-historical societies, this wasn't true.

It only becomes true during the agricultural revolution, because at that point only was it possible or a single male to keep large number of reproductive females secluded (because fewer people working could now support more idle people). So we're looking at only a few thousand years of history, and even in this period, there's always been women who were available to more than one man. So where's the evolutionary adaptation?

If you start out basing your premise on junk science, your results will be junk.

	24-09-2003 22:57									#18
	Inflate your Upload Space

quote: A side note on the book about rape. If rape is a "biological" urge, then why rape men, the elderly, and children? Why anal rape? Why use condoms during rape? Why use objects during rape? And what about the not insignificant number of rapists who fail to ejaculate during rape?

It doesn't interefere. The actual success of fullfilling the urge is unrelated to the urge itself.

I'm sure you don't question sex and eating as obviously bioloical urges, even though many people only have sex for fun, or wear condoms, or undergo operations to stop themselves from having children.

In the same way about food - people often diet or fast.

quote: So we're looking at only a few thousand years of history, and even in this period, there's always been women who were available to more than one man. So where's the evolutionary adaptation?

hmm.. That is an interesting point.

However let me suggest the following solution: In the past, before and after the agricultural reovlution and settlement, women were traded for wealth.

To get a wife, a man would usually have to 'buy" her by selling flock or stock.

So people without this, migt have probably turned to raping women that they couldn't have.

	24-09-2003 23:00									#19
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

I found this too difficult for me.

Are we saying that Darwinism is that which is best for us and that we naturally follow it.

Or are we saying that Judeo-Christian morality is best and that which is best for our social group is the best course of action.

Can someone a LOT,LOT smarter than me explain the arguements as it sounds very interesting.

	24-09-2003 23:13									#20
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

Cant be bothered to read it, but I love Azazels avatar!

Someone want to provide a summary for one with tired eyes?

	24-09-2003 23:20									#21
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

It says relativism is bad

	24-09-2003 23:22									#22
	Put an end to popups!

quote: Originally posted by flipside Or are we saying that Judeo-Christian morality is best and that which is best for our social group is the best course of action.

The problem is that eg. muslims (or others) think that about their views as well - so who´s right?

I think the only answer is here to separate morality from religion. Noone will seriously say that our western moral values were not heavily influenced by Christianity, but that doesn´t make Christianity the only source of morality ever. Today logic and reason are (IMO) better indicators for what is moral or not. That doesn´t mean you can´t be religious anymore if you wish.

	24-09-2003 23:28									#23
	Increase Your PM Length

quote: It says relativism is bad

How can they call themselves human?

	24-09-2003 23:29									#24
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

Morality is such an ambiguous, subjective term that it is of little or no use in such a debate. I would rather that people either specify or assume a particular "moral" view, i.e. killing is wrong, when engaging in a debate.

	24-09-2003 23:30									#25
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Originally posted by Sirotnikov It doesn't interefere. The actual success of fullfilling the urge is unrelated to the urge itself.

However, an urge that is reproductively unsuccessful more often than not would tend to disappear.

quote: However let me suggest the following solution: In the past, before and after the agricultural reovlution and settlement, women were traded for wealth. To get a wife, a man would usually have to 'buy" her by selling flock or stock. So people without this, migt have probably turned to raping women that they couldn't have.

Before the agricultural revolution, there were no flocks (animal husbandry is agriculture), hence no wealth to be traded. As far as we can tell, there is no evidence of humans as property before the agricultural revolution.



Also consider that the children of rape were likely to be exposed or killed with the mother.

	24-09-2003 23:31									#26
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

quote: Originally posted by elijah How can they call themselves human?

Depends on how you describe human.

	24-09-2003 23:39									#27
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

Lincoln, if rape is a natural consequence of evolution, wouldn't the concept of morality also be a natural consequence of evolution? The author seems to argue that morality has no place under Darwinianism when it actually does just as any other behavior providing (arguably of course) an evolutionary advantage.

There is a downside to humans developing morality though, with the intelligence required for such a concept comes the intelligence to kill other humans for all sorts of reasons - we don't see mass murder within animal species except for rare cases involving certain primates involved in tribal warfare.

But let's be fair, Lincoln, religious folk who never believed in evolution have done their share of killing, so why is religion a moral concept? Is it because the positive side of religion is something worth striving for while the negative side should not be used to indict the positive? Then by that same token, wouldn't it be unfair to indict the positive side of evolution - the "evolved" concept of morality - by pointing to the negative aspects like rape?

	24-09-2003 23:41									#28
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

Azazel - you have a message of mine waiting for you in the Bush Picture thread.

Your PM box is full.

	24-09-2003 23:53									#29
	Get a bigger avatar today!

quote: However, an urge that is reproductively unsuccessful more often than not would tend to disappear.

It has only become reproductively unsuccessful in the 20th century, no?

quote: Before the agricultural revolution, there were no flocks (animal husbandry is agriculture), hence no wealth to be traded. As far as we can tell, there is no evidence of humans as property before the agricultural revolution.

Not true. You are tying agricultural revolution to animals and it's not true.

Vagabonds and wanderers have always kept stocks and flocks. Take for example the bushmans in north africa and the beduins in Israel.

quote: Also consider that the children of rape were likely to be exposed or killed with the mother.

Not always.
A child is another hunter. A mother wouldn't always complain. Heck, even now most women don't complain.

	25-09-2003 00:02									#30
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

quote: Harvard professor Michael Sandel, in Democracy’s Discontent, says the major political divide in America today lies precisely here--between those who believe that morality is indeed up for grabs, something we construct for ourselves and, on the other hand, those who believe morality is "given" in some way--grounded in divine relevation or human nature or in some other objective manner.

The problem with all this is that even those (most of course) who are religious and see morality based on divine revelation pay lip service to a set morality and practice a morality that is "up for grabs". For example, Jerry Falwell calls himself a Christian which identifies him with Jesus and his teachings. But what does Falwell teach? Punish sick people for using medicinal pot. Did Jesus teach this? Of course not. So where did Falwell get his "religion and morality"? He invented it! "Morality" is up for grabs and those with the most guns will win.

Lincoln, I think it's really strange that the people who are most likely to preach and practice an objective morality are atheists and agnostics - they're called "objectivists" and libertarians (except for those pro-choicers ). Not most of these religious folks...