religious people view morality as something that exists objectively independant of context, which is what you seem to be doing when you say altruism is necessarily immoral or use phrases like "code of conduct". morality is nothing more than a judgment of whether behavior is benefical or detrimental subject to whatever context you specify, and any "code" of moral conduct comes from the context and is meaningless without it. obviously altruism can be moral in the context of flourishing of social group or species.

prove it

by replying here you just did

Trolling as you may be you aren't doing too badly in this thread in terms of logical defense, despite the derision you face from multiple sides.

But this reply is just fail.

Your statement made an extraordinary claim, namely that "we are more than just bio-machines", and more important, "we do have something outside of the boundaries of physics".

You are going to have to try really-really hard to make a strong, plausible argument in regards to this nonsense.

Yeah I thought he was doing pretty well too, but I guess he just gave up.

put that aside for a second. about self interest:

if i have a car motor, is it acting in self interest when running the car? by working properly, and running, it is prolonging its existence and not being scrapped in a junk yard. so is it acting in self interest? or is it just acting in how it was intended?

are you going to apply the word self and interest to machines like you have to simple biological machines?

both 'self' and 'interest' presuppose consciousness, if you dont get that i dont know what to say.

you cannot be interested in that which you are not conscious of. you cannot be interested in anything at all if you are not conscious of anything at all. to have interest presupposes the ability to choose interests, to identify and evaluate (which presuppose consciousness). you cannot have a self without being self-conscious, by definition. the fact that they act in a way that continues their existence does not mean self interest is present. you cannot switch this around. you are taking concepts and using them completely outside of their intended general context, you are being sloppy with the word 'self' and 'interest' and this is why your logic is wrong.

you are about to help make my point:



even going by your incorrect application of self interest this is easy: humans (see kamikaze pilots). i should say some humans of course. the fact that we are able to choose our interests, in other words to have interest (see above) is why humans have ethics and morals. because we have evolved enough free will to require them, because we are not automatically going forward, we must choose to be self interested or otherwise.

in conclusion, as i first said, you need a self to be self interested, or to have interest at all. you cannot turn this around. any entity acting in a way that continues its unconscious existence does not necessarily imply the presence of self, interest, or self interest. this is an issue of you taking concepts out of their context. and like i said, its more than just semantics.

and note that we can split hairs about which animals have how much consciousness or whatever, but things like cells do not and thats clear.

now go back to Aristotle and let him take it from here and show you why kamikaze pilots are immoral.

by the way, your all the cells in my body = people in a community reasoning is flawed. as we now know, a bunch of machine like parts working together to make up my body cannot be equated to a group of volitional individuals with different interests.

we have a word for this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics

even if the world is deterministic, and everything in my brain is physical cause and effect as recent and future neuroscience evidence may suggest, the 'illusion' of free will is one we cannot escape. it is still our existing consciousness and outside of physics. thus if he exercises (even illusionary) free will to be conscious, think, act, and post here he proves what i said. a 'self' is outside of physics, even if illusionary.

to say there is no essential difference between us and the rest of the physical world is wrong, to say that we are the same as unconscious biomachines like cells is wrong. we are self conscious in a very different way and this IS the difference, even if illusionary.

overall, this is pretty self evident to me, which is why my response was limited. i would think this would be self evident to any human.

double post

In many ways, morality is the sum of behaviour of humankind since recorded history began divided by the synaptic deductive reflux of the individual perceiving this information. No individual will ever catalogue, within their own frame of knowledge, all possible aspects of morality, therefore all action based on the individuals perception of morality will be flawed, thereby introducing flawed data into the equation. Additionally, no action, as such, will be perceived the same way by participating and/or witnessing individuals, thereby further corrupting the data. Choices will rarely be black and white. Consequences will rarely be immediately evident and may have resoundingly different outcomes for affected inidividuals.

Morality is simply a choice we make, based on what we perceive as right or wrong. When we get to the end and the Infinite Being looks into our heart, perhaps we will be judged by our decisions, rather that the results.

No. Why would you think it is? How is it protecting its interests? Build a self-repairing engine, then you might have something.



I don't think self interest is logically restricted to biological machines, but I can't offhand think of a non-biological machine which exhibits self interest, with the exception of fictional ones like Data. I'm sure there are, though.



I strongly disagree, and I think you would be in the minority among philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists. If you make such a controversial claim without defending it, it is I who doesn't know what to say.



Nonsense. Example: I have a great interest in keeping my heart beating, but I have no consciousness of my brain and body performing that task. The vast majority of what our brain does we are not conscious of.



Identification and evaluation do not require consciousness (clearly a computer can do these things).



By which definition is that? The whole point is that we are discussing what self is, how can you just declare what the definition is?



That is exactly what self interest is. That's a very nice definition, actually.



I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here, but this is an excellent example of a human enacting a group-level interest at the expense of an individual-level interest. Its kind of like how many of the cells in your body are programmed to die for the benefit of the whole animal.



You are simply stating that you think I am wrong without any argument or explanation as to why.



See, you did the same thing here. "As we know" begs the question. You've just restated that you think I am wrong. There is no argument here at all, such as in "communities of people are not like groups of cells because they differ in meaningful way x".

You simply have a misunderstanding as to what free will entails.

What seems to have happened in your mind is the following:

1- the universe is deterministic
2- we have free will, which can't be had in a deterministic universe
3 - therefore, we have something outside of physics.

But premise #2 is false.

I recommend reading Daniel Dennet's Elbow Room: Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting for a good explanation of why #2 is false.

Also, the bolded is always the sign of an unquestioned assumption.

I've been reading the thread for a while and it's pretty good stuff. I had a ton of other quotes but I suppose these will do fine. BG has a view that sans a God morality would go to the shitter, and without God we wouldn't even have it since he started it in the first place. (The original theme of the thread.) This evolved into the questions above. Without God's moral authority would we kill the elderly and babies? And is happiness our highest value and driving force behind morality?

First, I'd profer that values are our driving force in decision making. What I value is likely to be different than what you would, liberal or conservative, east coast or west coast, vegan or steak lover, etc. (JW's happiness theory) So in essence, everything we do is to gain pleasure or avoid pain. (Chew on that for a minute.)

But what does morality and God have to do with this? Isn't morality a term that we deem to describe rightousness in OUR minds or as an excepted form of rightousness by the poplular masses? Let me give an example in story form.

In 11th century England a poor peasant field worker had taken in his brothers 3 children and raised them along with his own 3. After a few brutal summers and poor crops they were likely facing starvation, especially the baby. The peasant went to town on Sunday to the market and proceeded to find an 40ish year old gnarly merchant from from another town and was in the process of selling his 15 year old niece to him for a cow, when some towns people heard her screaming.

A merchant lady came up yelling and protesting obviously understanding that the young girl was likely to be raped and made into a slave. The commotion caused others to come up and join the argument. Alot of men took the side of the peasant who obviously was doing nothing wrong. The niece, by law, was his property. Wasn't she being ungrateful? He had taken her in and fed her and her brothers all these years?

The sheriff was called in and despite how unseemly the ordeal might appear, agreed that no law was being broken. The original merchant lady fetched the prior of the town. (The head priest). He naturally agreed with the sheriff that though on appearance it might be unseemly but the bible made no mention of this being wrong. In fact it probably had many arguments in favor of it.

The merchant lady went off and cursed the sheriff and prior and was arrested and flogged to death for sacrilidge. The sale went on and a few nights after being raped repeatedly by the gang of thieves that had purchased the niece she stabbed her owner with a knife and escaped.

We tend to think of morality in our current sense of time. What we might consider moral now might not have been so clear cut 8 centuries ago. In each instance above the underlying case of gaining pleasure or avoiding pain might not be so apparent. Was the peasant selling his niece avoiding the pain of watching his family starve? Was he gaining a selfish pleasure in getting an entire fortune (a cow) by selling the niece?

Did the niece gain pleasure or avoid pain in killing her rapist?

What was the merchant ladies motives?

In any case in our capacity to reason all societies have deemed or learned (or are learning) that a society based on an accepted common reasoning or code (morality) is more enjoyable both mentally and physically. No family enjoys a war torn country but alas we go to war to defend that right to have one. Civilized societies are much more profitable and enjoyable to live in benefitting everyone.

I do believe that the church has acted as a restraint for greedy kings that had a fear of hell. The masses of believing people would object and revolt if he made them all slaves as he probably wished (united by the church against him). Religon has served a purpose in that regard as well as providing moral code when many things were unexplained. However power and greed usurped those that used it far to often.

People learned that self-determination, hard work and respect generally led to a better life for all involved regardless of either church or state.

Many forms or rule have come and gone, religons today were vastly different in bygone eras. Morality has been a fleeting
concept over time depending on all these factors.

I would say that the merchant lady had developed what we like to think of as morality. She was probably driven to avoid the pain of living with the thought of a young girl be sold for a cow and raped and turned into a slave. Did she do it for happiness? I don't think so, after all she was flogged and killed. It is this point of reasoning that she determined she couldn't abhor living with and made a stand. Her moral code.

I think most civilized societies can agree with her. Most though much of the world currently would not.

Thus the dilemma. Did God make this morality like BG said? Which morality standard did he make? The one behind the merchant lady? The peasant selling his niece for a cow? The sheriff and prior for upholding god and state's laws?

Or was each case a separate individuals decision on thier own to gain pleasure or avoid pain in some way. Is morality making a reasonable assumption for the good of all (happiness of society) and ignoring those factors?

Oh yeah. So what I really think BG has been alluding to is that God created compassion. Or that without God we would lack it somehow. Is compassion a selfish motive though? Don't we gain pleasure and avoid pain by being compassionate?

first of all i wasnt trying to argue determinism, i was trying to preempt a determinism response, but that might have made it unclear.



nope. here is your problem, it is a linguistical, conceptual one: you are applying the word self to any organism, and then self interest. to have a self you must be self aware, by the definition of self. you still dont get this. i mean, what the hell definition of self are you going on?

from wikipedia: The self is the individual person, from his or her own perspective

also: ...referring to the cognitive representation of one's identity

that seems pretty good to me, could maybe be more effectively phrased, but obviously cells do not have this, thus they cannot be self interested.

this is more than just semantics because it leads to problems in the rest of your logic, in that you take away the major distinction between humans and every other thing on earth. by applying self to cells and the like you make 'self' meaningless, and you ignore the essential distinction of humans.

philosophy is concerned with that essential human distinction, the human experience that no other thing has, thats why its called a humanity. so stop taking humanistic concepts and applying them elsewhere.

ive had a big realization about you; you are completely concrete-bound.

you are anti abstract. you do not allow for anything that is not concretely existing as biological or physical, and you take human concepts and abstractions and break their context or ignore them. not only that, you nitpick little fragments of what i say and ignore the full meaning, you ignore the abstractions, the connections, many time just to point out irrelevant details, and then you build your case on that. you did this exact thing in the isreal debate.

in this thread we have the religious mystics with their heads stuck in the clouds, and we have the materialists like you with their feet stuck on the ground. im going to be the kite flying in the middle: always tied back to the ground, never lost up in the clouds, and free to get a good view of everything.

I'm happy to discuss what a self is, but it's really not important to this discussion. We're only talking about it because you got hung up on my use of the word self-interest. Do you really think that a lizard which eats to keep itself alive, protects itself from predators, cares for its offspring, is not acting to protect itself? That's all I mean by self-interest. The lizard has its own interests to protect -- it acts selfishly. It values its own life over and above the lives of others.

The essential distinction between humans and other animals does not come down to self-interest (nor is it self concept or self awareness for that matter, as these can be demonstrated in other animals -- see for example the work on the mirror test started by Gallup). The real differences between humans and other animals have to do with language and culture, but again, this is not really important for this discussion. (note also that humans are actually truly the same as everything else on earth -- and in the universe -- at an atomic level and below. we are the same matter and energy thats in a rock in a different configuration.)

A group of animals does protect its interests. A cell protects its interests as well. A human protects its interests too. You have yet to demonstrate why the interests of the individual human are any more important than the interests of the family of people, the city of people, or the population of people.

The notion that Christians are saying that without God we would devolve into beast is a strawman because the arguement requires that first morality exists, then goes away. It is the evolutionist posistion that at one time there was no morality, and that it evolved on it's own.
It's indicative of the parasitical need that athiest have to take the things God has given soceity and try to pretend it just showed up on its own and therefore it can be claimed to be more proof that God doesn't exist. Which is the original point that Hitchens was trying to make when he postulated this ridiculous claim.

Therefore the point I was trying to make was that the athiest position that there was once no morality, then it evolved on it's own along side darwinian evolution, survival of the fittest and natural selection is at best contridictory. But better described as faith based to believe morality evolved for no reason but the ones that caused everything else to evolve.



Actually your example represents better the belief that morality evolved on it's own. If this is the case, than your dilemma presents the problem of arguing that morality evolved. Darwinian evolution allows for each of your character's actions to have merit and validity, equally. Only a belief that there is a right and wrong outside of the society of this 11th century village results in any of their actions being subject to judgement. Only with a moral code above all human input allows us to determine that any of those actions are right or wrong.

Also you have a fundamental flaw in your understanding of what the Bible would say about selling a niece into slavery. I'm not saying that people claiming to be Christians haven't also perverted what the Bible says to do these types of actions, but your and their misunderstanding doesn't override what the Bible actually says.

Compassion is one of many traits of morality. It is however one that can often fly into the face of survival instincts, desire to procreate, and need to eat. Making it a difficult one to try to argue it's evolution. In fact until we evolved compassion, we couldn't gain from it's practise.

evoution is about what benefits the survival of a species, not of an isolated individual. those two things don't have to be the same. that is why parents have evolved
to have compassion for their children. that is why members of a species that requires a social structure for survival have evolved to have empathy for other members.

that's a basic concept of evolution that invalidates every argument you've made in this thread. stop ignoring it.

There is a lot of current evidence for the evolution of altruism.


Selfless Chimps Shed Light on Evolution of Altruism


Just one example of altruism outside our species.

To be picky, evolution is not aimed at the survival of a species, and doesn't really care much about species at all (species is not really a clear line anyways). But it happens to benefit the replication of individual genes to exist inside individuals that receive help from others and to give help to others, especially those close to them who happen to share the same genes.

BG continues to pit compassion against evolution , and at this point we've corrected it so many times that he must be doing it just to tilt us.

Compassion aids the communities in which social creatures live and thereby helps each individual in those communities. The mechanism for the evolution of altrusim is a settled issue in biology.

i meant genetic lineage, sorry. yeah "species" technically is a snapshot that evolution doesn't recognize.

Evolution is whatever changes a species, individual or group.
Evolution has no direction, motive or goal.

Earlier I pointed out that the existance of morality in animals doesn't prove or disprove anything unless you can first prove animals at one point did not have a semblance of morality.

Careful, the: 'You don't understand evolution' line is crow's favorite, if you point out areas that he 'doesn't get it' you will deprive him of his entire argument baseline.



I do other things to purposely tilt you guys, this isn't one of them.

And I am amazed that you think you have really 'corrected it' by saying it happened and then moving on.



I would argue that you guys are approaching the question with the answer already fully believed. Of course we see that value of morality to a community, a species, and a family unit. But just because it would be good doesn't mean that therefore it must have evolved. That's all I hear from your side of the argument. 'Oh, it would benefit us, and as we know humans do everything that benefits them, therefore it evolved'.


As of now, I think you guys have actually done more to hurt your argument than help it.

what animals? bacteria?

i used an incorrect term and corrected it. point still stands. by focusing only on what you intuitively think would benefit an isolated individual you're missing the big picture.






lame attempt to shift the burden of proof.

This is easily my favorite thing that you say to make your 'point'.

this is BG's thread, and HIS hypothesis (that morality could not have come from anywhere but god). the people responding to him are just explaining
why morality COULD have evolved without divine intervention, which is all that needs to be done to invalidate his hypothesis. they are not saying it "must"
have evolved, nor is it necessary for anyone to prove that it definitely did.

The bolded is all something needs to evolve. As long as it provides a benefit, it will proliferate compared with traits that do not provide benefit, because communities with the successful trait will have more offspring.

Since it would benefit us, it is therefore consistent with having evolved. That's all. You keep saying that compassion is inconsistent with evolution but have provided no argument to support this claim.

Really? Why can't altruism be written into the basic genetic code for all life? Why did it have to originate separately? It quite clearly doesn't. There is no problem with morality and the theory of evolution. None. Now there is lots of problems with the concept of a soul that lasts after death. Nothing but problems. So sick of otherwise rational human beings, who apparently have the ability to think logically and problem solve, throw it all out the window because their parents told them the bible was gods word. You are the ones making the extreme claims; extreme claims require extreme evidence, but you have none. Absolutely none.

Pseudo science like this is just ridiculous. You might as well travel to Sedona and try locating a vortex of power.

BG, do you find the evolution of social behaviors particularly implausible as compared to physical traits? If so, why?

If you want to pretend that at one time, in the millions and millions of lines of code, an accidental change up of the order resulted in people being nice to one another happened, then I got no problem. An infinite number of monkey's on an infinite number of typewriters is not the type of faith I would want to claim, but you are free to if you want.

Just don't act like it's proven science is all.

So anything that is beneficial will always evolve?

There is a direction to evolution?

I find that the notion that evolution is the catalyst for the creation of morality to be implausible because it is contrary to the very notion of evolution.

Take the evolutionary building block of survival of the fittest.

This one trait of evolution would prevent most morally based ideas from becoming fixed in our society. But the atheist making the case for morality evolving has failed to demonstrate any reasonable explanation, yet it is gospel to the atheist playbook.

This thread started in response to an athiest claiming that morality evovled.

The only argument presented so far is that it would be good if it did, therefore it did. That isn't an answer to me.

Actually this is BG's thread questioning your hypothesis that you claimed a while back.

So if you are going to make these foolish claims, than it is necessary for you to prove that it definately did.

Especially when you used it as a claim that supports your equally false idea that there is no God.

just stating that over and over doesn't make it true lol

flying spaghetti monster

flying spaghetti monster

flying spaghetti monster

flying spaghetti monster

i've never said there is no god, and the only hypothesis i hold about moral behavior is that evolution is the best explanation for it, and why it is
the best explanation has been explained to you over and over in this thread.

stop taking the lord's name in vain

Yea, the explanation that since it's here, it must have evolved because it would be good if it did.

Sorry if I find that explanation lacking, but keep pretending that it delves deeply into the issue.

I fixed my post.


We're suggesting that moral behavior makes a group more fit. Do you disagree?

no - the explanation that because it's beneficial in a social context, because we can SEE it evolving throughout human history, and because lower level but similar behavior exists elsewhere in the animal kingdom, moral behavior in humans could have evolved.

Simply put, yes. (im not even going to bother with the disclaimers because they are obvious)



There is a "direction" to the flow of the Nile; it goes downhill. That doesn't mean it is intentional or preconceived.

Oh good, you have examples of when man didn't have morality.

Well that really puts me at a disadvantage then doesn't it.

Man I am going to get it now....

Okay..let's see the proof...









waiting...

Of course, that's why God created it.

Well thanks for keeping it simple.

I usaully get blamed for being shallow when I keep it simple.



So once a trait that is better for a species is introduced, that trait will always continue? Simply because the change is beneficial?

Always? * with obvious disclaimers because they are obvious to us..but could you maybe explain it for those idiots who don't know what we mean?

There's no guarantee a trait will "always continue" because what works better can change over time.

Example: white was a pretty good color for peppered moths, but once the trees they live on turned black due to the industrial revolution, the ones who were black started to survive better (they camouflage better), and they evolved towards black. Of course now there are more white ones showing up since things cleared up a bit over there.

Let's not pretend micro evolution is a good example to explain macro evolution

This is an artificial distinction.

our tendency toward what you would describe as moral behavior has increased (gradually)
throughout human history. however that doesn't mean there has to be a time when we had none. there is
no reason to think our pre-human ancestors didn't have a more simple "proto"-morality that has expanded
with our increasing self-awareness and intelligence, and increasingly complex social structures
and interdependency.