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chegitz guevara
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Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:31
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Originally posted by Sirotnikov
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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? |
I'm arguing it's always been reproductively unsuccessful. There are only a few days a month a woman can conceive, so it often takes a sustained effort to get her pregnant (although this could be an argument for serial rapists, but how many of those do you think there were in small bands of humans).
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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.
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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. |
Agricutlure refers to both plant and animal farming. Animal husbandry begins at nearly the same time as the agricutural revolution. You can't tame animals until you have something to tame them with, i.e., extra food.
While the two lifestyles are not mutually exclusive, people living on marginal land had to be nomadic since the animals would eat up all their food. Plus, Bushman and Beduin didn't exist 25,000 years ago.
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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. |
In the age of women as property, men were unwilling to spend resources and energy raising another man's child. Another hunter is also another mouth to feed and a competitor with your children for your property. The whole point of making women into property was to control reproduction. If you arent going to control it, then you have no reason for marriage or harems.
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Ramo
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Austin, Texas, USA
Oct 1999
time: 23:31
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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?" |
Suppose there is an omniscient, omnipotent diety. How is his morality based on any firmer ground than mine? 'Cuz it's not.
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Elok
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Land of Ramen Dragons
Mar 2003
time: 00:31
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Originally posted by Berzerker
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... |
Well, duh. We're a complacent majority, and since religion has been continuously devalued the average Christian isn't taught any more than the very basics of what he/she believes in. Most of our exposure to religious doctrine is in the form of garbage like Dante's Inferno that gets read in school. No real theology is presented to the average joe, possibly because that would be understandable and might actually arouse a reader out of spiritual torpor. In that kind of environment, all you really can do is make it up as you go along, no matter how good your intentions are.
And MtG, I don't mean that constructed reality doesn't happen, I'm just saying that the idea that we should encourage subjectivity as an ideal is ridiculous, and I can't imagine that somebody actually said as much without getting laughed out of his job. It sounds like a low-budget, watered-down Timothy Leary.
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Lincoln
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quote:
Originally posted by Japher
m'kay, now I'm really confussed. What does morality have to do with evolution?
Morality is a subset of mentality and thought, something which is not passed from generation to generation through subtle genetic changes, rather it is taught/brainwashed/imparted onto subsiquent spawn.
Evolution is physical changes in accoradance with environmental conditions that are reflected in genic make-up.
Are you trying to say that morals are genetic? That's absurd!
Materialism can produce morals just as much as anything else, and who is to say that religion is not materialistic?
Even Confusous ideals can be confused with religion. |
Morality has to do with what is good and what is evil. It is true that animals probably do not think much about these things but some (like a dog I had once) certainly know when they have done wrong. The point though is that if we evolved from animals has that quality passed down to us? Elephants mourn their dead and some animals show contrition. So I guess I agree that materialism can produce morals if it is true that there is no God (which I am assuming for the sake of argument).
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Lincoln
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Originally posted by Agathon
What you can't do is say, "Rape is a viable evolutionary strategy, therefore rape is morally justifiable."
To make that work you need the additional moral claim "Viable evolutionary strategies are morally justifiable" and that is an open question rather than a physical fact, since goodness does not appear to be a natural property of things.
This is basically what the authors of the rape book said, and what none of their critics could grasp. |
People say it anyway. Which is my point. What does one resort to as a foundational argument when someone justifies their actions because of evolution? If someone does not believe in a supreme moral being of some sort then what factual basis is there for refuting their claims?
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Agathon
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Leafs 4TW!! - CPA
Dec 2002
time: 00:31
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quote:
Originally posted by Lincoln
People say it anyway. Which is my point. What does one resort to as a foundational argument when someone justifies their actions because of evolution? If someone does not believe in a supreme moral being of some sort then what factual basis is there for refuting their claims? |
The difference is presumably that a Divine Being is the sort of thing that can create value. Just how this happens is opaque because it isn't clear whether bad things are bad because God says so, or God says so because they are bad.
Most divine command theorists choose the first, but it has its problems. Why, for example, couldn't God have chosen something else to be bad, which makes his decisions somehow arbitrary. Or if he couldn't help but choose the things he chose, doesn't that mean he is not omnipotent. After that it gets worse.
There doesn't have to be a factual basis for refuting someone else's moral claims. All you need to do is show that a person's principles are in conflict. Since human beings overwhelmingly have the same ultra-basic moral principles it's a surprisingly effective method. That is why secular moralists and theologians can have such fruitful debates about ethics.
Here's another way of putting the logical problem.
If I say that I ought to do something (and I am using ought in its moral sense) then I have to support that claim with at least another claim that contains an "ought".
Why?
Because you can't derive an ought claim from a statement of natural fact. E.g.
Free beer makes people happier,
Therefore, we ought to dispense free beer.
I need the moral premise "We ought to do what makes people happier" to make the inference valid.
I could say that "good" statements always imply "ought statements" but then I am stuck with the initial problem - it is an open question as to whether what accords with an evolutionary strategy is good.
One way of getting around this is to just define "good" as "what accords with evolutionary strategy", but then you can't argue with anyone who doesn't accept the definition, since you are essentially meaning different things when you use the word "good", so it isn't a real dispute.
The fact that people don't accept the definition shows that you need to provide some evidence that goodness is a natural property, but if it is a natural property it should be detectable by scientific means. But it isn't, so the claim is unsupported.
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Lincoln
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quote:
Originally posted by flipside
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. |
I am not smarter than you but I think that many do agree with your first sentence. My question is should we? And if not, what is the basis for another morality if there is no God?
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Lincoln
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Thanks Agathon and Asmodean. I'll say one thing that seems to be self evident from the discussions on this forum and that is this statement seems to be true:
"All you need to do is show that a person's principles are in conflict. Since human beings overwhelmingly have the same ultra-basic moral principles it's a surprisingly effective method."
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Dr Strangelove
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Morality could be a factor detemining which genes survive. The early hominids seem to have had a social structure similar to chimps, i.e., their social groups consisted of an alpha male attempting to monopolize a harum of several adult females. The rest of the group would consist of a few other adult male hangers on, and then the kids. This is inferred by the ratio of adult female to male bones found in diggings, there are usually a few more female then male skeletons. At some point during the existence of Homo ergaster though, the ratio shifts to a near equality of numbers between male and females. It is thought that this may represent a shift towards monogamous sexual relations. In these groups male and females paired off and if a dominant individual was present he/she probably did not attempt to monopolize the ladies. The result was a social group that allowed more adult males and which was able to shove aside the old harum style groups because the new style group had more fighters. Eventually the harum style disappeared. Certainly there probably were groups tha saw the light and converted, but then there may have been other harum groups which disintegrated when forced onto marginal land.
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Lincoln
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Yes, the morality has evolved and it is still mostly based on Christian morals. The problem is, as more people become atheists (and that seems to be the trend) what will replace that and what will be the basis? Richard Dawkins talks about "selfish genes." Will that idea take hold? Some governments have totally eliminated God and certainly did not improve morality much. Germany not too many years ago justified (at least the leadership) their morality partly because of evolution so it is not that far fetched of an idea that society in the future will take a form based in part on evolution without the Christian influence.
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25-09-2003 00:16
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