I received a comment on my previous post (I love drawn out debates… 
) stating that I didn’t really debunk any of the arguments in the video I was critiquing (I won’t link it again). Well… that argument was, essentially, that if you believe that you were the product of natural evolution, the conclusion to which rational examination of the evidence points us, you won’t see a difference between smashing a DVD and walking around smashing people’s heads in with a sledgehammer, because, apparently, neither of them have moral worth. I merely pointed out the utter ridiculousness of the argument, point out that there are many people who believe in Evolution and do think that there is more inherent worth to a human life than there is to a DVD. Apparently, the person who was the impetus for my writing the last post didn’t think that that was sufficient and would like me to explain the “why” of why, without being intelligently designed, is human life valuable. Well, psychology and evolution are not my forte (I do prefer economics, afterall), I do think that have a sufficient answer…The answer to why there is value to human life (or why we believe there to be value to human life) is in our nature as social creatures. Millions of years ago, our ancestors discovered that forming into groups was conducive to their survival. It started as a family unit, with a man acting as guardian of woman and child (yep… all because we walk upright and women carry infants on their hips). Behavior that was good for the group was easy to replicate, because it was all that was necessary for the promotion of their genes, but as families joined into tribes, tribes joined into villages, and villages joined into states and nations, the behavior that kept communities together became more complex and more abstract. Instead of simply providing for and not killing one’s family, an early person suddenly found themselves having to interact with other families and essentially refrain from doing dickish things to them, lest they be cast out of the protection of the group and into the dangers of solitude. Eventually, it came to be that promoting the good of one’s community through cooperation became the best way to ensure the safety of that individual and its children and therefore became the best survival strategy for men. This attitude of cooperate traditionally only extends to members of one’s own group (e.g., Christians, Americans, etc.), but the scale of what group an individual identifies with has expanded over the years as we become more enlightened as people and realize that people are people, where ever they live.
There are shades of the “in-group” mentality in religion, which, in my opinion, strengthens my arguments (given the last major religious text was written while the US still had slaves). In the Old Testament, Leviticus states that you can take slaves from surrounding nations, and that you should kill those who worship other gods with rocks–all prescriptions aimed at strengthening the relative situation of the community as opposed to other communities–and at least the former (I’m not sure about the latter) prescription is written again in the New Testament (Romans). Hindus have a rigid cast system, where the lowest members are regarded as an “out-group” and Mormons believe that Native Americans are a lost tribe of Israel that has been punished by God with red skin. Muslims also don’t have to abide by contracts made by non-Muslims, along with a myriad of other xenophobic views. Since then, popular opinion has moved towards a more universal view of community and rights, but the faithful still cling to outdated views on society.
Why? Because of the idea of god and divine providence. By saying that there is a “chosen people,” you are, in effect, relegating the other “non-chosen” people to some kind of second-class status, where the chosen are on the top, superior to all others for some arbitrary reason. This is definitely detrimental to any increase in mutual understanding between groups. Regardless of this, people still cling to their chosen status, not knowing or wanting to know that they were just chosen by their forefathers and nothing more.
I actually prefer the nontheistic, naturalistic view of morality, and I do so because it implies progress. To say that we were perfect, lost it, and now have to wait for someone to give it back to us (you know, being saved and such) is much more depressing than saying that we were more primitive in the beginning, then moved forward, constantly progressing to new heights. An atheistic view of morality shows me that my forefathers worked to make my life better than theirs, and it gives me meaning in that my task is to make the lives of those who come after me better than my own. It’s by means an immoral and hopeless view… it’s the most moral and most hopeful view you can have.
Have a nice day
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So let me see if I understand your reason that an atheist has morals, because it benefits them?
Ok, you have just given me an explanation of how the illusion of objective, absolute morality might have developed through evolution as a beneficial trait.
What you have not done is shown why any rational person should care about that and actually follow “morality” even when it isn’t in their best interest to do so.
See my response on the other blog post as well.
The problem with morality is that there is no such thing as absolute morality. Morality is generally defined by whatever group one is a part of, as Matt so elegantly put it above. Most things that we do here in the west would be considered horribly immoral in Muslim or Jewish communities. Take for example cheeseburgers. Mixing cow meat and cow cheese is not kosher by Old Testament standards or allowed by the Koran. In fact, it is described as an abomination on to the lord, and anyone committing such an atrocity should be put to death. If you ask any American if the eating of cheeseburgers is wrong, the vast majority of rational people would tell you no (although a minority of rational people would also tell you yes, hence the dilemma.)
As far as core morality is concerned, abstract ideas such as, “thou shall not kill,” are again not absolute. While most of us abhor the idea of killing, many folks around the world can and do kill people while being lauded as perfectly moral, rational people. For example, no one would claim that a decorated WWII vet was immoral for killing Germans or Japanese during the war. In fact many people would praise him or her for serving his or her country. But, we know and are taught that killing is immoral. So how is one form of killing considered good and moral and another form considered bad and immoral? Could it be that morality is as a society of rational people define it and not some hard set rules handed down by a divine creator?