[edsheppa]

Is there an obligation for civilization and society to survive?

An obligation? No, and yet it has and does. I'm not sure what your point is though.

is it just a matter of psychological conditioning

Well, I thought I made clear that I think it's more than that. However, people obeying the moral rules of their particular culture is, in part, due to social conditioning.

then is morality something than can be changed at will, with the right scientific means?

Two points. First, even without changes in human nature, morality is pretty darn flexible. Just a couple of centuries ago slavery was widely accepted as moral. Today it's a moral abomination.

Second, I would say yes, if human nature were to fundamentally change, by whatever means, I think morality would change fundamentally also.

I don't see how a blind, impersonal Darwinian process produces a fixed human nature.

Why not? It produces dogs which have a definite doggy innate nature and whales that have a definite whale nature and ducks theirs, why not humans and their nature?

But fixed in what sense? I doubt that human nature has been unchanged over the last million years. I am sure, for example, that abstract thought had to have improved before people could speak.

Abnormal compared to what?

Um, compared to normal? Autistic people are not normal. Psychopaths are not normal. If you see a guy who's 8 feet tall, wouldn't you say he's abnormally tall? A woman who weighs 800 pounds is abnormally fat. There is also behavioral normality. Loving and protecting your children is normal, hating and killing them is not.

How In such a universe is there is any objective basis for assigning a value of "better off" to anything?

Do you think you're better off dead or alive? I assume you will prefer to be alive, I'd even call that a normal behavior. Don't you agree it's an objective fact that by far most people think in ordinary circumstances they're better off alive than dead?

Do you think people consider themselves better off well fed and housed or hungry and homeless? How about ignorant vs. educated? Loved vs. hated?

But probably you won't consider people's nearly unanimous answers to these question objective. Oh well.

[Diamond]

I am asking you what the materialist ontological foundation of good and evil is; iow, how a purely physical process of chance/necessity produces moral obligation. When we feel we ought to do some things and not other things, is that obligation real? Do I owe some real moral duty to the universe? Does the universe hold me accountable for disobedience to the moral commands it somehow came up with? But, how in the world is it even possible for me to disobey the universe in the first place?

First, even without changes in human nature, morality is pretty darn flexible. Just a couple of centuries ago slavery was widely accepted as moral. Today it's a moral abomination.

Nehru jackets were once fashionable, too. If morality is just convention then if acting morally conflicts with self-interest why should we act morally? How is a nonconformist who chooses to flout the herd morality doing anything other than acting un-stylishly? What rational justification can be made in such a case that flouting current convention is doing something "good" or "evil"?

Cordially,