Who Cares ? The Moral Instinct ( Darwinians Try to Find the Basis of Morality )

tothesource.org ^ | Jan 30,2008 | Dinesh D'Souza

[YHAOS]

This ought to start a pretty good brawl.

[microgood]

Darwinists do not believe free will exists, so they will never understand the basis for morality.

[Earthdweller]

Good luck jokers...you don’t even know what the basis is for the spirit yet.

[allmendream]

Anyone who thinks that naked aggression is the root of success for a highly social and cooperative species such as ourselves is highly deluded.

Cooperation is the name of the game. Look at the species we have co-opted into our sphere of influence and how much both we and they have gained from our alliance.

A man alone is nothing. A man with hunting hounds, a horse under him, and a falcon at his writs is the master of his environment.

A man alone is nothing. A man with a army of committed and obedient soldiers behind him can be the master of the world.

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[allmendream]

What is the evolutionary advantage of behavior like Kolbe’s?

Let me ask you.....

Which do you think would be more successful. A band of humans to whom Kolbe’s act was anathema, who all sought out any small advantage only for themselves and their kin; or a band of humans who had people of Kolbe’s moral caliber who were capable of great personal sacrifice and envisioned a higher ideal or principle than their own life and their own advantage?

The answer is obvious.

[SeekAndFind]

From an Evolutionary Point of view, how do we define what is higher ideal or principle ?

[allmendream]

They defined altruistic behavior as actions that benefited someone else without any reciprocity to themselves or their kin. The most altruistic species by that criteria is the Vampire Bat. They share, and absolutely no preference for sharing only among kin or giving more to those who were more closely related.

So I would say a higher ideal or principle would be any motivation that leads to altruistic behavior.

What was Kolbe’s ideal? The good of the tribe. He was old and would not be missed (he thought), while the man begging for his life was young and had dependents.

This ideal was motivated by his Christian faith and shows the greatness of the soul that God put into him, and the transcendent nature of our faith that extols God who sacrificed himself for man.

[NRPM]

I’ve read most of Pinker’s books. He’s always interesting and informative.

[YHAOS]

"Richard Dawkins concedes that Darwinism cannot even explain why people donate blood, an action he puts down to "pure disinterested altruism.""

John Donne, on the other hand, observes, "Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

[Coyoteman]

“Darwinist” seems to be a term used by creationists to include all of those scientists who disagree with them.

[VRWCer]

bump 4 later

[allmendream]

Indubitably.

[Hoplite]

you don’t even know what the basis is for the spirit yet

Seeing as it's Friday evening, and I'm holding a tumbler of Oban single malt, I'm going to have to go with "Barley".

[wintertime]

ping

[D-fendr]

You cannot get to an absolute moral value from a conditional statement.

I.e., you can’t say X is moral, because Y.

You’d then have to prove Y is moral, because..

and on forever.

Logic and science cannot “prove” absolute values. By definition.

[dr_lew]

Man is what he is, a wild animal with the will to survive, and ( so far ) the ability, against all competition. Unless one accepts that, anything one says about morals, war, politics - you name it - is nonsense. Correct morals arise from knowing what Man is - not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be.

... who said it?

[freespirited]

A man stands up to give his seat on the bus to an older woman. She is nothing to him, and he is certainly not thinking that there may be a future occasion when she will give him her seat. He does it because he's a nice guy. There's no Darwinian rationale that can account for his behavior.

Baloney. There is an obvious Darwinian rationale that can account for his behavior; by demonstrating that he is a "nice guy" to the older woman, he makes himself attractive to younger women who might mate with him.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Morality and all of those associated ideals are rooted entirely in the presupposition that some higher power defines what is correct for human behavior.

Plato’s Euthyphro is a great illustration. Socrates advances the argument to Euthyphro that, piety to the gods, who all want conflicting devotions and/or actions from humans, is impossible. (Socrates exposed the pagan esoteric sophistry.)

Likewise, morals are such a construction of idols used by the Left as a rationale for them to demand compliance to their wishes in politics, which most often are a skewed mess of fallacies in logic. Morals are a deceptive replacement for the 'avoidance of sin.'

There can be no morality without one singular source defining what it is.