Evolution of morality
Main articles: Evolution of morality and Morality#Evolutionary_perspectives
Dr. Frans de Waal and Barbara King both view human morality as having grown out of primate sociality. Though morality is a unique human trait, many social animals, such as primates, dolphins and whales, have been known to exhibit pre-moral sentiments. According to Michael Shermer, the following characteristics are shared by humans and other social animals, particularly the great apes:

"attachment and bonding, cooperation and mutual aid, sympathy and empathy, direct and indirect reciprocity, altruism and reciprocal altruism, conflict resolution and peacemaking, deception and deception detection, community concern and caring about what others think about you, and awareness of and response to the social rules of the group".[4]
De Waal contends that all social animals have had to restrain or alter their behavior for group living to be worthwhile. Pre-moral sentiments evolved in primate societies as a method of restraining individual selfishness and building more cooperative groups. For any social species, the benefits of being part of an altruistic group should outweigh the benefits of individualism. For example, lack of group cohesion could make individuals more vulnerable to attack from outsiders. Being part of group may also improve the chances of finding food. This is evident among animals that hunt in packs to take down large or dangerous prey.

All social animals have hierarchical societies in which each member knows its own place. Social order is maintained by certain rules of expected behavior and dominant group members enforce order through punishment. However, higher order primates also have a sense of reciprocity and fairness. Chimpanzees remember who did them favors and who did them wrong. For example, chimpanzees are more likely to share food with individuals who have previously groomed them.[5]

Chimpanzees live in fission-fusion groups that average 50 individuals. It is likely that early ancestors of humans lived in groups of similar size. Based on the size of extant hunter-gatherer societies, recent Paleolithic hominids lived in bands of a few hundred individuals. As community size increased over the course of human evolution, greater enforcement to achieve group cohesion would have been required. Morality may have evolved in these bands of 100 to 200 people as a means of social control, conflict resolution and group solidarity. According to Dr. de Waal, human morality has two extra levels of sophistication that are not found in primate societies. Humans enforce their society’s moral codes much more rigorously with rewards, punishments and reputation building. People also apply a degree of judgment and reason, not seen in the animal kingdom.

Psychologist Matt J. Rossano argues that religion emerged after morality and built upon morality by expanding the social scrutiny of individual behavior to include supernatural agents. By including ever-watchful ancestors, spirits and gods in the social realm, humans discovered an effective strategy for restraining selfishness and building more cooperative groups.[6] The adaptive value of religion would have enhanced group survival.[7] [8]

Yea, I know I've been hard on you. You sometimes come across a little more abrasive than I think you realize, and maybe I am overly sensative to your ways...

As far as the original intent, I have repeated over and over that it was your statement that morality did evolve, that we danced lightly around back when the topic came up, coupled with running into vb in vegas and his work on the brain/emotions etc that evoked my decision to make this thread. Not a desire to prove that God invented morality. Since I would be hard pressed to speak for God's actions, and you guys don't accept my foundational belief in the Bible's accuracy, there isn't a common ground we can reach from my perspective.

Since we have both failed at giving decent examples to debate, how about we discuss instead of a single example, the action of acting on your morality.

In other words, if you believe X is wrong, then why do you act upon that opinion? The act could be good for you, which would be easy to explain, like share your food with your kids, or bad for you, like keep an elderly person in your home until they die a natural death even though you are imposed upon to do so.

But what drives a person to decide that obeying an internal belief that an action is moral, is the 'right' thing to do? Is it a gene? An instinctal drive? Why do we find it easy to ignore this impluse the more we do it? Is the genetic make up of our morality like a muscle, that can atrophy from lack of use? Do we change the internal impulse of morality after years of neglect and pass this corrupted morality forward? and likewise strengthen this gene from obeying it and pass on a stronger desire to act a certain way?

well you were seemingly trying to make some sort of argument on a purely logical basis (which would be common ground) that moral behavior couldn't have evolved. if you want to accept that based on faith no point debating really.



unlike most other animals human behavior is a matter of both evolved genetic instinct and our emergent ability to learn from peers and rationalize on our own. decisions we make can be driven my any of those things, or a mixture, or even by one in spite of the others. on an individual basis we can be more than a little unpredictable because of the many factors involved. the specific motivations of behavior for individual humans is a pretty complex subject.

unless you're trying to devise some "gotcha" i don't think this line of questioning is all that relevant to the argument that moral behavior could have evolved, though. whatever specifically motivates our behavior would all be part of the same evolved package. the evolutionary argument has more to do with adaptation to environment increasing chance of survival, and in the case of animals such as humans who rely on social groups for survival, behaving in a manner that strengthens the social group can effectively be a beneficial adaptation. beneficial adaptations would tend to propogate regardless of motivation.

Yea, I was kind of thinking that this subject would get away from the morality argument, I got kind of interested in the ideal of where our motivation comes from, which of course crosses over into thought and mind vs brain and neurons. Not sure I can say I am ready to explore that deep of an issue.



You don't see the idea of our 'reliance on a social group' for survival to be troublesome for a theory of evolution that is defined largely by individual changes being the method of change? In other words, aren't we becoming dependant on an outside source of survival, a dependancy even, that is as important to our survival as a species as our ability to survive the cold?
I think the presence of interdependant species creates a problem for the form of evolution that is taught as the source for all life. Take the bee and the flower..the flower created smells and colors to attract bees that feed off the flowers, while simultaneously pollinating them. I saw a IMAX movie short that had scientist pollinating flowers on the cliffs of Hawaii because whatever bug used to pollinate them no longer exists, so they were becoming extinct. This type of dependancy on an outside lifeform seems to be pretty poor method for a species to develope in it's quest for survivability.

To me you are pointing to what exists right now, our need for social group and our inherant belief in right and wrong, and trying to argue that this developed because thats the only way it could have evolved. So are you saying that from the very beginning of the species of man, we have been dependant on each other for survival?

Balloon Guy PM'ed his answers to the quiz, and I have scored it. Would anyone else be willing to take a stab?

if the changes are in individual behavior toward other members of a social group that strengthen the group in some way, those changes can be "selected" by the increased strength of the group increasing the survival chances of the individual's genetic lineage. there's nothing in the theory of evolution that blocks interdependent relationships of this sort. in fact nature is full of them. in a way it's one giant web of interdependence evolving together both within species and between different species.



evolution is not a "method" in the sense it sounds like you mean here. there is no advance planning involved. it is just a simple blind reactive mechanism of adaptation to *current* environmental conditions, with no ability to predict or adjust to radical environmental change before it happens. there are many examples in nature of evolutionary dead ends resulting from environmental change. most of the species that have ever existed are now extinct for that reason.

also if two or more species such as flowers/pollinators evolve simultaneously in interdependent symbiosis, one can certainly be vulnerable to change that affects the other species they rely on. yes, evolution as a survivability mechanism isn't "designed" very well in that sense (presumably because it's not designed at all).



yes!

IF the theory is correct (disclaimer so you can't accuse me of arguing from authority), individuals depending on extended family or social group for survival would have started evolving long ago - predating homo sapiens probably by quite a ways, and "moral" behavior would have evolved gradually *in symbiosis* with the evolution of social interdependency itself. this makes logical sense in just the same way flowers and pollinators evolving symbiotically makes sense.

RR, the religion forum kind of makes you mean. Maybe you should just ignore it and it might go away.

awwww.

I am kind of interested, but think I am outclassed so badly by you that it wouldn't be as much fun for me as I require for debate...

Maybe you could tie half your brain behind your back

Dang it, it's my best argument against you...



I was just pming vb, beggin him to give me the jeopardy answers beforehand, and thought something I brought up there might be interesting to you.

I see our argument as being destined to friction because of our starting points.

You look at man, with fully formed morality, and look back a bit in time to 'changes' and see how it would make perfect sense for these changes to occur. Extroplate this more and your viewpoint is rational. I don't hold that this thinking pattern is in anyway wrong..just that the starting point is different than mine.

I looked at this issue from the idea of a man having no morality, and having changes occur through evolution that resulted in the current condition and felt that this was an unreasonable expectation to make. A truly ammoral man wouldn't find life without morality lacking enough to argue that survivabilty is in danger without morality.

I will grant you that your perspective makes sense if you begin with the idea that evolution of species is in play. I don't think you have really made the case that there never was a time when there was a man with no morality, after all darwinian evolution does postulate that we started from the very simplest of beginnings. So in order for your progression of change to be granted the right to make a declarative statement that Morality Evolved...I would hold you must first show the absence of morality and explain the process that introduced it.

If this is unreasonable, than I am asking too much. So far you guys are asking me to see this from your persepective of a man starting with a base form of morality, and allowing for changes that of course make sense. I think giving you this gives you the whole debate before we start. That's why I have been so hard headed about granting you this.

If I suddenly told you that I was a crazed madman and kidnapped your children. I also have wired multiple nuclear devices that would blow up Californina killing a million people. I give you choice of which to save.

According to your statement that morality is a fixed concept pre-given to man then it should be an easy choice. Choose the right one. Unfortunately that isn't how it works. Why we choose what we deem as moral behaviour is based upon our own VALUES. What is important to us as a person.

Now there are plenty of those liberals you hate that would sacrifice their own children if it meant saving millions. There are probably alot more that would say they never cared for Califorinia in the first place. So internal belief that an action is moral or the "right" thing to do as you say is simply a value choice. So morality isn't gene, or a muscle or something physical as you infer. It is a conception of our personal values. It is a formation of internal ideas about what is important to us.





You're just trying to use me as proof that evolution doesn't exist, I see right through you and sugar cone tactics.

As I was grouchy this week for other reasons including pain meds but i'm okay now.

I still go back to what you consider morality. Is it a sense of right and wrong? If that's the case of course it was around before man evolved and since it is simply an idea that extends infinately that won't change. If you are asking that good and evil never existed prior to mankind I would only say look simply to the dinasaurs and the fact they obvously cared for their young. Goodness, empathy or survival of the species doesn't matter since it existed to answer your question. I know, I know, you don't believe in dinasaurs.

The creationist currently has the high score for the evolutionary science quiz.

BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE

fyp

bbyp

Oh snap!

Define:

gene- My uncle
allele- A girls middle name
chromosome- Where they paint bumpers in the body shop
homozygous- faggot
dominant gene- When my uncles mad
phenotype- Someone that took Phen phen
DNA- The guy who does the Neg O's
virus- It makes you puke
Describe the theory of evolution. - Everything came from water and started walking around.
What are the causes of genetic drift? Having sex with your cousin.
What is natural selection? Explain its interaction with habitat.- It's like when you get to pick
your own team in flag football and then have to live to together for some reason.

What are the advantages of sexual reproduction for a species? It's fun.
Explain in as much detail as you can the natural selection of the peppered moth.- They're better with salt.
How old do scientists believe the Earth is? Really old.
How long do scientists believe there has there been life on Earth? Since before the Chinese.
What methods do scientists use to find these dates? Books
What are sources of error in these methods and how do scientists attempt to mitigate them? Not all books
are right especially arab ones.
Name some early invertebrates. The girls who bend all funny in the circus but I don't know their names.
Of mammals and reptiles, which do scientists believe appeared first? Why do they believe this? Trick question,
it was the platypus.

Name the distinguishing characteristics of mammals. Big tits.
Use evolutionary theory to explain the presence of a hip bone in whales. It's connected to the thigh bone. The thigh bones connected to the knee bone..
Of the species that have been found in the fossil record, approximately what fraction of them have been found alive today?
Duh, they're dead if they're fossils.
How does the size of a population affect the rate of evolution? It makes the earth spin faster.

I just spent the last 2 hours reading this thread from the beginning.

It had it's moments.

Carry on.

It's hard for me to believe that you guys aren't sick of this discussion yet. Do you guys REALLY see this as anything but an exercise in trying to make the other guy look stupid for no other reason than to feel smarter/holier yourself? I mean...for a while it's fun, sure, but this has gotten ridiculous.

Either you believe your eyes or your ears. Apparently there's no middle ground. End of story.

Oh fuck off, you're just stupid.

It will all come out in final Jeopardy!

the thread was sidetracked by personal stuff for a long time obviously, but much of it was genuine attempt at instruction on positions and evidence, with some of the most focused posts coming in the last few pages. that part was not at all ridiculous.




both sides were debating their position on the basis of what they perceive as objective evidence (or at least trying to), so i don't understand that comment.

if you're saying there's no convincing BG of the truth of evolution you're probably right, but nobody arguing against him is trying to do that.

I want to ask a question and I don't want to make a new topic. This seems like the best place since after reading this entire thread yesterday it made me think of asking this question. I suspect this question has been asked before and if so please point me to a thread I would need to read but I will admit, I am lazy and don't feel like searching through the threads for this.


Also, I know people are touchy and think people are asking questions to set them up and so on and that is not the case. I admit I am not knowledgeable as all of you in God/Bible/Evolution/etc because it never interested me that much. I believe there is a God or Zombie Lord or whatever but I don't generally buy into the whole Bible and church scene. I also believe in science as it's a little more concrete that the other stuff.

Here we go, hold on to your hats people...

Can't God and Evolution co-exist? Is it impossible to believe that God created this universe and within his plans or blueprints of life, also created evolution?

It's not impossible to believe that ( but there is no reason to either), and many people claim to hold similar positions.

However, there is a direct conflict between the Bible taken literally and evolution, and several of the Christians here hold the Bible to be inerrant.

That is what I initially thought, since evolution and science in general seems to mess with the timeline Christians follow. But if God was that powerful to be the one who singlehandedly created this Utopia then he could create something so intricate as evolution. But let's be honest, I don't know much about either side so I should shut up. I have a BA in Pyschology, a culinary degree, and last night finished up my associates in Paralegal Studies. I know not what I speak of in this conversation. But I do find it interesting.

I have many Christian friends who believe that God used evolution.

I am of the 'universe was created ~6,000 years ago' camp.

The question is how old was it when God created it?

Was Adam a zygot or a fully formed man, was a tree a nut or a 60' tree?

Was the light from a star 200 million light years created at the same time as the star and the eye that sees it?

Or is God required to create a planet with the "do not remove' sticker on each and every boulder?


I know this is not really scientific as I have no proof of creation other than the Bible. I am okay with this as I do not think evolution is a provable fact when you look at things like the millions of lines of code on a DNA helix or the ability we have to make artifical vomit from plastic.

I do not think that people who do believe in evolution are doing it from a position of stupidity, it is a reasonable explanation for many things, just not for life in my opinion. But it does explain species adaptation which I agree with,. Just not interspecies dating and things like that.

at least atheists allow for the remote possiblity that a god exists in conjunction with scientific evidence. by saying god can only exist in conjunction with a literal interpretation of a few obscure lines in genesis you're limiting god much more than any atheist does. shame on you

I don't see your point, I hold the literal word written in the Bible, which clearly gives us a 6,000 year old universe, I am not pigeon holing God, it's His book, He's the one making the claim, not me. Asking me to believe in a god that is not the Biblical God in order for your statement to make sense is the only way you are making any sense, and that is just framing the question beforehand. I could equally ask you that snice you hold it's possible that aliens seeded the earth than which aliens should we be attempting to communicate with through SETI? And should we remember Mother's day and send them a card?

christian scholars have been arguing about whether genesis 1 was meant to be literal history or allegory/poetry for centuries, particularly those looking closely at the meaning and context of the original hebrew. christians are roughly split down the middle on this even today. obviously there's nothing "clear" about it. the only thing clear is that you are pigeonholing your god into your personal strict literal interpretation. shame on you

I am going to go out on a limb here and guess that my opinion about what Christians think is probably better than yours.

I know you can pretend that this is known stuff( you do like to argue from authority), but as far as I can see, you have done a good job of pretending that yours isn't the fringe, while doing your best to try to pretend that you have some studies to back up that half of all Christians in America think in a way that gives your side credibility for it's fringe way of thinking.

Yours is the tiny minority way of thinking, stop pretending that you guys are winning. it looks pathetic. Just be content to be the parasite on the Christian founded country that you have the privledge to be born in and enjoy your freedoms while pretending that religion is bad..all while you live in one of the most religious countries and would never in a million years consider moving to a nation founded on athiest principles.

Next comes the tin foil hats and the the FEMA death camp speeches...I'm trying to save you from yourself here.

wow back to a blindly flailing attack of irrelevant rhetoric to avoid dealing with an issue. i thought we were past that. come on.

every recent poll shows a very large percentage (approaching half in older polls, possibly over half now) of christians in the USA believe the earth is older than thousands of years, and genesis 1 is either meant as allegory or god's "days" are longer than 24 hours. it's the official position of the catholic church. the wide disagreement among scholars about the meaning of the original hebrew of genesis 1 is obvious if you start to read any of them, and has been going on as long as there have been published opinions. in fact there is some evidence the prominence of strict biblical literalism among christians is a relatively recent occurance.

your position is obviously one of subjective interpretation, not objective clarity.

See crow, you think you are doing some service.

It is exactly like a Christian who feels the need to tell everyone all the time they are going to go to hell if they don't accept Christ.

Someone asked a question, I answered it. You once again took upon yourself to explain to me why I was not only wrong, but that everyone who is smart knows I am wrong, and that I am doing something shameful by 'limiting God'

I happen to already know you don't agree with me. If I spent the next month following your posts around and telling you why you were not only wrong, but going to hell...would it get old?

Well you've been doing it here for 4 years. With a clearly arrogant tone.

Yea, we get it, you don't believe in God. And you can quote books written by athiest...we get that too.

How about how give it a rest?

Maybe for a day at least. Maybe then you won't tilt the crap out of me. Or I can put you on ignore

i am. i'm helping to point out that being a christian doesn't necessarily mean having to reject science.

An atheist or agnostic can have morals without any sort of religion, but they cannot have any reason to base those morals on, other than society. IE morality is subjectve, not absolute. Fine. But what do you do when you live in Nazi Germany during Hitler's reign? How in the world can you say he was absolutly wrong when you don't believe in moral absolutes? Even atheists and agnostics act as if morality is absolute despite what may come out of their mouth.

I guess you didn't read the thread.

and they never bothered to read his posts again.

did you think we were reading his posts because he was right about stuff?

I disagree with this.



It's not 'clear' how much time the Earth was formless and void. It was still the 'Earth', so the mass and matter could have existed. The word 'then' is very important. Either way, I think you're incorrect to imply that it's undebatably 'clear'.

BLASS FEMUR

I'll grant you this. I know a lot of gap theory Christians.
Truth is it is mostly a moot point. I have no doubt that when I get to heaven, I will find that I was wrong about a lot of stuff..mostly about women. But the important thing is that I'm right about trusting Christ to have paid for my sins and make the way for me to go to heaven.
Most everything else is just stuff that doesn't really matter.

Clearly, this is obviously true.

So the Islam faith has about a billion followers.

The USA has 300 million people in it.

Does that mean that the Islam morality is correct where it differs from the US feelings of right and wrong?

By what measure is the most popular idea the right one? If that were the case, there would be a god.

what actions/behavior specifically are you referring to? most muslims aren't extremists, and almost the entire civilized
world including most muslims agree that fundamentalist extremist actions that physically harm others are immoral as
a matter of common sense.

Clearly through out this thread your side of the argument has been that the collective expression of morality from the species is the benchmark from whence we judge right and wrong.

I'm just presenting the argument that there are conflicting ideas of morality that place your premise on shaky grounds

The treatment of women

Clearly that is not my side of the argument.

My side of the argument is that actual right and wrong are rooted in biology and can be discovered through careful analysis, not by simple popularity.

I'm not so sure this is true.

I think it's more like the way in any religion then there are those who more fully express the ideas than the general lay person does, those people are respected by the masses. So, BG is not a monk, but he may respect those guys as really doing their best to take the ideas of christianity to their full extent. My impression is that much of the muslim public respect groups like the Taliban for implementing sharia in a similar way. Because after all, they are the ones who are really taking the religion seriously.

All I'm saying is that I know what's right and wrong, and whoever disagrees with me about that is wrong.