Evolution Brought About Morality ?

Originally posted by sonship
If it wasn't "objectively wrong" then why do you say it was evil ?

'Evil' is a concept, a human made concept. Something can be evil - even objectively evil in the sense that it matches the human made concept 'evil', but still not be objectively wrong. The word 'wrong' is subjective by definition. There really is no way to get around that.

It is impossible to really condemn any evil act in your world-view.
False.

But youy judge that the Holocaust was evil BUT ... not objectively wrong.

Very wishy washy, Don't you think ?

Nor can you really praise love, brotherhood, self-control.
False.

So if the Holocaust was not objectively wrong then the self control of mercy or sparring the Jews OR of counting them as brothers in a humanitarian sense, is neither "objectively right" ?

You weaken moral ground. You end up with a milktoast morality.
I think my point stands then.

All things are permitted in your religion, in your "Spirituality" which you constantly preach on this Forum.
False.

Okay, not all things are permitted. However, some evil things are not really objectively wrong.

Doesn't that make them a little more permissible ?
After all, they are not REALLY wrong.
Their wrongness is only a matter of herd opinion.

You don't think that opens a wide door to permissiveness ?
We're back to everything is relative of the 1960s.

So we know that for twhitehead there is really nothing wrong with raping someone.
False.

False. You said there are things which are "evil" BUT NOT OBJECTIVELY WRONG.

According to your own words then there is nothing objectively wrong with raping someone.

Don't blame me for following your reasoning to its conclusions.

Why such behavior goes on all the time in the animal kingdom, so humans are justified.

False.

Why did you volunteer that rape of younger offspring goes on much in the animal kingdom? WHY .. was that an important point to you ?

Originally posted by sonship
Why did you volunteer that rape of younger offspring goes on much in the animal kingdom? WHY .. was that an important point to you ?

Go back and read it in context.

Originally posted by sonship
Don't blame me for following your reasoning to its conclusions.

I will blame you if you attribute your poor reasoning to me.
Instead of falsely claiming that I believe something when I don't try saying that you think certain premises lead to certain conclusions. Then I may explain why your reasoning is wrong. If you instead use faulty reasoning then attribute stuff to me I never said, we end up having pages and pages of useless argument over it. Or is that what you really want?

Originally posted by twhitehead

'Evil' is a concept, a human made concept. Something can be evil - even objectively evil in the sense that it matches the human made concept 'evil', but still not be objectively wrong. The word 'wrong' is subjective by definition. There really is no way to get around that.

There are things which are Objectively TRUE and Subjectively TRUE at the same time.

I think you are trying to establish a false dichotomy - if it is subjective it is not really true.

This is humanism to the max. This is man is the measure of all things.

WHICH MAN twhitehead ? Stalin, Pol Pot, Jefferson, Donald, which man ?

You say I argue with myself. But I take your implications to what I think they mean. Now if MAN is the measure of all things then WHICH MAN should we measure all things by ?

WHICH MEN [collectively] then should we establish as the standard ? The Swedes, the Rwandans, the Americans, the Germans?

Originally posted by twhitehead

I will blame you if you attribute your poor reasoning to me.
Instead of falsely claiming that I believe something when I don't try saying that you think certain premises lead to certain conclusions. Then I may explain why your reasoning is wrong. If you instead use faulty reasoning then attribute stuff to me I never said, we end up having pages and pages of useless argument over it. Or is that what you really want?

Maybe its time for you to take some responsibility that you don't explain yourself well all the time.

You have things which are evil yet they are not objectively wrong. And we are not talking about the IE. "evil" of a tsunami or an earthquake.

Then its " Please don't let me be misunderstood ! "

No, I think we understand you. It just doesn't make good sense.

Originally posted by sonship
There are things which are Objectively TRUE and Subjectively TRUE at the same time.

I think you are trying to establish a false dichotomy - if it is subjective it is not really true.

No, I think you are doing your very best to misunderstand me.

This is humanism to the max. This is man is the measure of all things.
And this is sonship deliberate strawman to the max.

But I take your implications to what I think they mean.
Fine, just don't attribute it to me. That is dishonest. Own your bad reasoning.

Originally posted by sonship
Maybe its time for you to take some responsibility that you don't explain yourself well all the time.

I fully accept that this forum, and words in general are imperfect at getting a point across. I fully accept that I cannot always put my point across clearly.
What I do not accept is that what you read into my writing is in my writing - or even a reasonable interpretation of my writing. It is a messed up caricature of what you think atheists are.

No, I think we understand you.
No, you clearly do not, and you clearly do not want to.

Let us take this slowly.
1. Morality is all about cooperation. Morality may say something is 'morally right' or 'morally wrong' depending on whether or not it aids mutual cooperation. Morality is basically the claim that we should help other people if doing so does not come at too great a cost to ourselves or our relatives.
2. The question of what we 'ought' to do is not morality. Whether we 'ought' to behave morally is not a moral question. It is a personal choice. It is not objective.
3. As people and as society we typically choose to behave largely morally and try our best to encourage others to do so to. But it is notable that we do not, in general behave completely morally, especially when we think we can get away with it. We make judgements about what others 'ought' to do, but again, this is really subjective, either to us as individual or to society as a whole.

In summary, I can say it was wrong of you to lie a few posts ago, and then pretend to have forgotten about it. That is, in reality, purely my subjective opinion. But I can still speak of it like it is objective. I know it is confusing, but you seem to want to be confused so that you can deliberately misconstrue what I say. That is dishonest of you.

Originally posted by twhitehead

Let us take this slowly.

Okay. If you think going over your errors "slowly" makes any difference.

And what you do espouse is Humanism. And it was not a strawman.

1. Morality is all about cooperation. Morality may say something is 'morally right' or 'morally wrong' depending on whether or not it aids mutual cooperation. Morality is basically the claim that we should help other people if doing so does not come at too great a cost to ourselves or our relatives.

Okay,[I] NICE AND SLOW [/i].

I object to you saying it is "ALL" about cooperation if you mean ALL is needed is cooperation without a grounding of moral duties in something transcending man.

Your patience to SLOWLY reiterate your opinion is nice. But you leave us with some problems.

2. The question of what we 'ought' to do is not morality. Whether we 'ought' to behave morally is not a moral question. It is a personal choice. It is not objective.

Something or someone imposes a sense of moral duty. And duty is about what we ought to do. And it is about to WHOM we are discharging this responsibility.

I assume you are saying it is only to the collective. I assume you are saying that beyond the cooperative collective there is nothing else and no one else to whom we are accountable.

You may go over this slowly but I don't agree. You may not believe in God. And you may sense a duty to make good moral choices.

I believe that the reason is that the law of God is written in your heart as His created being. It does not require you to believe in Him. It only requires that you came forth from His creating action.

" For when the nations [Gentlies], who have no law, do by nature the things of the law, these, though they have no law, are a law unto themselves,

Who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness with it and their reasonings, one with the other, accusing or even excusing them ... (Rom. 2:14,15)

The Creator God has "written" something into the created inner being of humanity. Being a theist or an atheist makes not difference to this matter.

This explanation makes more sense then a groping of a blind process, a purposeless process, a process without a prime directive somehow arriving by lucky "selections" into a immaterial moral sense in mankind.

If my characterization of Evolution is not exact enough for some, it is close enough. I know a Herculean effort is made these days to distance Evolution from words like "chance" and "luck" but I think descriptions like this are going to stick.

So saying that it is ALL and ONLY about the cooperative of the collective, I refuse. Of course I do not deny social norms, social customs, social cooperation definitely play a part in the formation of expectations of societal behavior.

That that is ALL that is involved ? No, only to the humanist is that the only factor.

3. As people and as society we typically choose to behave largely morally and try our best to encourage others to do so to.

There is a difference in saying we "largly" do something and that it is "all about" that one factor. You are over stretching sociological aspects. As a dedicated Atheist, you have to because you presuppose Naturalism up front.

Tell me. You spoke of things which are Evil but not objectively wrong.
Is then the abuse of Catholic priests of little boys NOT objectively wrong ?
is a group of religious bigots grabbing a gay man to mob beat him NOT objectively wrong ?

If you are consistent here, I expect you to say that neither is OBJECTIVELY WRONG. They may be EVIL but they are not OBJECTIVELY WRONG.

I say they are not only evil but objectively wrong too.

But it is notable that we do not, in general behave completely morally,

We are sinners. We are constituted with a kind of God rebelling infestation called SIN.
That is what I believe. That is the revelation of the Bible.
Aside from revelation, I am not sure we could ever figure it out.
Maybe we could come close. But I doubt.

Man is something very good that has been damaged.
Man is something created very good originally which has been negatively affected by some kind of foreign element of infestation.

especially when we think we can get away with it. We make judgements about what others 'ought' to do, but again, this is really subjective, either to us as individual or to society as a whole.

The fact that some do not feel comfortable even when they are the ONLY ones who know, should clue you that something transcendent is going on.

Some only care about what others know. Occasionally we cannot live with ourselves knowing. Even though we could get away, we choose to have the peace of settling the matter with our own conscience.
I think this should hint to you that something transcendent is going on in man's heart.
He is obligated to something higher. He has to make peace with something higher.

No more time this morning ... Mr. Humanist.

Originally posted by sonship
I object to you saying it is "ALL" about cooperation if you mean ALL is needed is cooperation without a grounding of moral duties in something transcending man.

And I say that 'moral duties' confuses different concepts. I admit that the word 'morality' has historically been used in many different ways, but I do not think that duty to a higher power comes under 'morality' at all. One may feel that it is ones duty to obey the king or serve your country, but I would not typically call that moral duty. If you do do so then it would be, again, a case of cooperating with society.

Something or someone imposes a sense of moral duty. And duty is about what we ought to do. And it is about to WHOM we are discharging this responsibility.
And I say that 'duty' and 'morality' should be distinguished.

I assume you are saying that beyond the cooperative collective there is nothing else and no one else to whom we are accountable.
As usual, you assume wrong. I have said no such thing, nor implied any such thing. What I am saying is that any such accountability is not morality, but something else. I am also saying that any such accountability is not objective but subjective.

And you may sense a duty to make good moral choices.
But that would not be morality. Doing something because God wants you to do it is not 'morally good'. Helping your fellow man is not morally good if you do it for the non-moral reasons. Morality is all about motivation.

This explanation makes more sense then a groping of a blind process, a purposeless process, a process without a prime directive somehow arriving by lucky "selections" into a immaterial moral sense in mankind.
Except for the little problem that it doesn't match the evidence. One would not expect a prime directive to result in what we actually see. Even I could design a better prime directive.

I know a Herculean effort is made these days to distance Evolution from words like "chance" and "luck" but I think descriptions like this are going to stick.
The fact that you want them to stick doesn't make them correct. The fact that you desperately don't want to understand evolution and desperately want to mischaracterise it at every turn doesn't make you right.

So saying that it is ALL and ONLY about the cooperative of the collective, I refuse.
You refuse because you are not understanding, not because you disagree.

That that is ALL that is involved ?
It is what I mean by 'morality'. It is not all that is involved in human behaviour. You need to realise that we are talking definitions here.

Tell me. You spoke of things which are Evil but not objectively wrong.
Is then the abuse of Catholic priests of little boys NOT objectively wrong ?
is a group of religious bigots grabbing a gay man to mob beat him NOT objectively wrong ?
Nothing is objectively wrong.

If you are consistent here, I expect you to say that neither is OBJECTIVELY WRONG. They may be EVIL but they are not OBJECTIVELY WRONG.
Correct. But don't make the error of then assuming that I do not think they are wrong. Don't read into it what isn't there.

No more time this morning ... Mr. Humanist.
I suspect you have a different definition of 'humanist' than me. What is your definition? I learnt the term from our former President Kaunda who was very much Christian.

If a soldier follows the commands of his commanding officer, he is doing his duty. We may believe he is 'right' to do so, but we do not typically say he is 'morally good' when he does so. Morality and duty are not really the same thing.
Although it is common to lump behavioural norms like 'obey your parent's' or 'brush your teeth' with 'help your neighbour', I would prefer to separate them. I prefer to use the word 'morality' for 'help your neighbour' but not for 'brush your teeth' and 'obey your parents' even though I would say the latter two are things you should usually do.

Originally posted by twhitehead

One may feel that it is ones duty to obey the king or serve your country, but I would not typically call that moral duty. If you do do so then it would be, again, a case of cooperating with society.

I do not take "cooperation with society" to necessarily have to indicate there is no divine design of ethical living.

God's command (which I indicated was also written on men's heart even without the law of Moses) has a horizontal aspect towards our fellow humans as well as a vertical one to our Creator.

I think you are simply drawing attention to the horizontal aspect, IE. "love your neighbor as yourself" as the only important aspect and indicating cooperating with society.

I assume you are saying that beyond the cooperative collective there is nothing else and no one else to whom we are accountable.

As usual, you assume wrong. I have said no such thing, nor implied any such thing.

What I am saying is that any such accountability is not morality, but something else. I am also saying that any such accountability is not objective but subjective.

So, I am not objectively accountable for meeting you in a dark alley, hitting you in the head, and taking your wallet ?

That that is wrong is merely, shall we say, a subjective matter of someone's opinion ?

And you may sense a duty to make good moral choices.

But that would not be morality.

The whole realm of making moral choices should not be considered "morality" ?
That seems an unnecessary parsing of word definitions.

Doing something because God wants you to do it is not 'morally good'.

I agree that sometimes doing what you think God wants you to do can be not morally good. it can be morally bad.

I said that God 's 'was is written on the hearts of created people. To do the good they feel they should do is not dependent on them believing in God or not or believing God wants this or does not want it.

So an atheist can choose to do the good because the good he should do is something written on his atheistic heart. God created him and he did not create himself. And therefore choosing to act morally good is simply written on his heart by God's design.

His motivation maybe to simply feel good about doing what is ethically dignified. It enhances his sense of doing things comfortably along with his nature.

The motivation for doing good may not be related to belief in God or in God's command.

And I would count the whole realm of choosing to do good or evil to be roughly the sphere of morality. Further parsing of definition here, may be done. I don't think it is all that significant.

And that God has designed both Atheist and Theist to want to do good is more believable to me than an Evolutionary accidental arriving at this.

Why should it be "good" that species survive in the first place?
Why should it not be "good" that none survive and only rocks are left on earth ?

continued. latter.

Originally posted by sonship
I do not take "cooperation with society" to necessarily have to indicate there is no divine design of ethical living.

Neither do I. But you appear to be trying very hard to ignore what I am saying or talk over me. Why?

Are you able to acknowledge that there is a distinction to be made between cooperative behaviour and behaviour due to some standard one chooses to live by or a standard given by someone else?
I call the former 'morality' but not the latter.

I think you are simply drawing attention to the horizontal aspect, IE. "love your neighbor as yourself" as the only important aspect and indicating cooperating with society.
Not so. I am not saying that is the only important thing. I am saying that not everything is morality.

So, I am not objectively accountable for meeting you in a dark alley, hitting you in the head, and taking your wallet ?
Correct. But you are subjectively accountable.

That that is wrong is merely, shall we say, a subjective matter of someone's opinion ?
It is subjective, but not necessarily just one persons opinion. It should be most peoples opinion and is definitely the opinion of the law in most countries.

And I challenge you to provide any reason to think otherwise. I bet you will try and find a way to claim that Gods opinion is not a subjective one.

The whole realm of making moral choices should not be considered "morality" ?
That seems an unnecessary parsing of word definitions.
I do not think all choices are 'moral' ones.

And that God has designed both Atheist and Theist to want to do good is more believable to me than an Evolutionary accidental arriving at this.
But only because of your prior religious beliefs.

Why should it be "good" that species survive in the first place.
It isn't.

Why should it not be "good" that none survive and only rocks are left on earth ?
It isn't.

Neither falls under what I call 'morality' and neither is a 'choice'. When we do have a choice humans have often chosen to wipe out life forms that bother us and try and save life forms that we think are cute and cuddly. But morality is typically not involved.

Originally posted by twhitehead

This explanation makes more sense then a groping of a blind process, a purposeless process, a process without a prime directive somehow arriving by lucky "selections" into a immaterial moral sense in mankind.

Except for the little problem that it doesn't match the evidence. One would not expect a prime directive to result in what we actually see. Even I could design a better prime directive.

I am not sure I understand this comment. I am not trying to misunderstand the comment.

But one problem you have is an assumption of Uniformity. In God's revelation of the Bible we see that things HAVE NOT continued on in a perfectly uniform way since the beginning of creation.

We have an enigma of a man created very good who nonetheless became damaged. So you have a complicated matter here.

Yes, human beings were designed to be good, choose goodness, reject badness.
But all things have not continued uniformly since this man was made.
Man has become damaged.

So there is something very good in the design yet which has also become corrupted, damaged, infected ruinously. There has been a Fall.

So when you speak of evidence (and I am not sure which mean - evidence for theistic creation or evidence of naturalistic evolution) you are speaking of a humanity created upright and subsequently damaged. There has not been total uniformity as Blind watchmaker Evolutionist assumes.

As Solomon said -

" See, this alone have I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes." Eccesiastes 7:29)

So, looking over human history, we see evidence of a rather complicated situation with human nature. We KNOW the good to do. We do not always have the power to DO it. We KNOW the evil not to do. We do not always have the power to resist it.

But God originally made man , innocent, upright, neutral between God and his enemy, and "very good". From that design man fell.

I know a Herculean effort is made these days to distance Evolution from words like "chance" and "luck" but I think descriptions like this are going to stick.

The fact that you want them to stick doesn't make them correct.

Nice try. But Evolution STILL involves much LUCK.
That you, as I predicted, wish to distance Evolution from chance, does not make the effort correct.

The fact that you desperately don't want to understand evolution and desperately want to mischaracterise it at every turn doesn't make you right.

You're funny. There is no "desperation" to plainly see what is implied by a Blind Watchmaker thesis of macro Evolution.

Tell me some more about how "desperate" I am.

And watch how quickly you will distance yourself from this quote from a champion of your Blind Watchmaker Evolution -

" Biology is the study of complicated things that have the appearance of having been designed with a purpose. " Richard Dawkins
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/r/richarddaw626696.html

Why do they have "the appearance of having been designed" ?
In one word - LUCK.
When all the fluff is brushed aside, why do living things APPEAR as having been DESIGNED ??? Luck is basically the explanation.

Tell me. You spoke of things which are Evil but not objectively wrong.

Is then the abuse of Catholic priests of little boys NOT objectively wrong ?
is a group of religious bigots grabbing a gay man to mob beat him NOT objectively wrong ? Nothing is objectively wrong.

If you are consistent here, I expect you to say that neither is OBJECTIVELY WRONG. They may be EVIL but they are not OBJECTIVELY WRONG.


Correct. But don't make the error of then assuming that I do not think they are wrong. Don't read into it what isn't there.

So then for the priest to act as a pedophile upon young defenseless boys is wrong.

But this wrongness is not really anything more than someone's personal feeling.
It is like the preference of decaf coffee to caffeine or the other way around.
I take it to mean that the pedophilia here is not a matter of fact but of subjective bias and prejudice.

I take it to mean that the act is not WRONG is there is no one there to have an opinion about it as WRONG. It is not wrong in an objective sense apart from the thoughts and feelings of someone offended by the action.

I don't believe this is so. I rather think that the OFFENSE is ultimately against the Source of righteous living - God. And God said that HE ... will repay.

I'm sorry. You're just going to have to bear with a Bible quotation.

Deuteronomy 32:35

" Vengeance is Mine and so is retribution ..."

Compare Romans 12:19

Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, but give place to the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord."

Did you ever consider that the evil things done to you, TO YOU twhitehead, God says that He took note and that He will repay ?

Conversely, the evil you have done to someone else. He is impartial and perfectly just. Likewise God says, "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay." .

There is no partiality. This righteous sword will cut both ways.

But your Humanism only holds that IF, faulty man happens to know, MAYBE he will call to account. And he makes mistakes. And he can be bribed. And he can be totally ignorant so that the perpetrator (seemingly) gets away scott free.

Am I unfair to assume that IF the Evolutionary process worked it all out again, maybe it would not coincidentally be the same. The religious priest might actually be furthering the survival of the species by being a pedophile preying upon youngsters.

Objective right or wrong are not then involved. But only the socio-pressure arrived at from Evolution selects pedophilia as advantages to the collective. What is to stop Evolution from causing some other society of beings to emerge with pedophilia as the noble cause to the furthering of the species?

But if you say Evolution must arrive at a society frowning upon pedophilia, this to me indicates there is something objectively true about its wrongness. Without God, it is a kind of Platonic abstraction floating somewhere - ie. the badness of pedophilia.

I say it is designed by God in man's being that he should have a breaking system of self control. His conscience informs him of the wrongness of securing sexual deviation
beyond all limits such that a child may be abused.

A sin has been committed.
A real sin with real guilt that requires real forgiveness from God.

"Not objectively wrong" means to me a wrongness which really has not solid substance other than personal opinion, personal taste, personal bias, not independent of some society member's thought and not wrongness as a part of reality.

No more time this morning ... Mr. Humanist.
I suspect you have a different definition of 'humanist' than me. What is your definition?

What I said already will do for this discussion - "Man as the measure of all things."
Good enough.

I learnt the term from our former President Kaunda who was very much Christian.

From Wiki (though some changes over the years in precise definition) -

"... today humanism typically refers to a non-theistic life stance centered on human agency and looking to science rather than revelation from a supernatural source to understand the world."

I know you hate to have labels on you. But basically that describes very much of your thinking.