Replies

non-moral actors such as lions

Actually some animals have morals, lions being one of them. All animals that hunt in packs have behavior rules they must follow to continue to belong to the group. If a lion participating in a group hunt attempts to hide a kill from the group, that lion would be ejected. As a lone hunter they would not make as many kills and would not as likely pass on their genes and moral culture. That is the origin of morality in man as well.

The important thing is what morals really are: required rules to belong to a tribe, rules that further the tribe's existence in exchange for the many benefits of cooperative hunting. Different tribes experiment with different morals at different times. If the morals work, the tribe expands. Otherwise the tribe and their culture are soon wiped out.

Yes, morals are very important. But they only apply within the tribe. You may be a kind, caring, moral person, but you must also be willing to kill outsiders with abandon that threaten your tribe.

There are many experiments in morality going on in America today. Some changes would end up destroying our tribe. Saying that America will never again nuke civilians is an dangerous experiment. What would keep another country from starting a war with America knowing that only their military would be at risk?

Your idea of where morals come from --- if it were true ---would certainly spell the ruin of America, since America is not a herd or pack or tribe. It is not even, in the European sense of the word, a traditional "nation": a society based on shared language, shared history, shared ancestors, and shared attachments to a particular piece of land. Americans are increasingly polyglot, famously rootless, and drawn from many different races and tribes.

The very fact that we human beings can organize ourselves into cities and states, congregations and churches, institutions with centuries or millennia of continuous history and global reach, tends to minimize the explanatory power of mere lupine or simian sociobiology.

There is every reason for us to require from each other such basic decencies as "Honor thy father and thy mother," "Thou shalt not commit adultery," "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not bear false witness," and --- in the lives of individuals, tribes and nations --- "Thou shalt not commit murder."

Since you are apparently arguing for a sociobiological origin for moral law, to the exclusion of a divine origin, you --- correct me if I'm wrong --- also deny that human beings have a spiritual dimension, going beyond instinct and impulse, beyond pack and tribe, even at privileged moments going beyond time and space.

It seems to me that a person who denies the existence of human spirit (and thus spiritual law) is not a very careful observer of human beings as we actually are. A person who entirely denies the spirit is obviously not a realist.