The magnificent Shaze sends us yet another fine piece of literature compliments of the New York Times.
This is a great read that explores the origins of morality. Obviously this has a great impact on religion as many such as Christianity and Islam claim that morals come from God. But recent studies are starting to show that morals may have predated religion and are even observable in today’s primates.
Here’s a sample:
Religion can be seen as another special ingredient of human societies, though one that emerged thousands of years after morality, in Dr. de Waal’s view. There are clear precursors of morality in nonhuman primates, but no precursors of religion. So it seems reasonable to assume that as humans evolved away from chimps, morality emerged first, followed by religion. “I look at religions as recent additions,†he said. “Their function may have to do with social life, and enforcement of rules and giving a narrative to them, which is what religions really do.â€
Please read the entire article, as it would be foolish for me to summarize it appropriately here. But before you go and read it, ask yourself this… If scientists prove that morals can evolve naturally, what effect will this have on religion? Is this science just putting yet another nail in religion’s coffin?
Related posts:
- The Evolution Of Religion
- Evolution? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Evolution!
- Evolution Schmevolution!
- Evolution Is A Religious Deception
Well, it makes sense. If we didn’t evolve morality, we would have all cheated, lied and murdered ourselves into extinction. Not that we are all moral, but that we are sufficiently moral for our genes to propogate.
To summarise, good guys do win often enough. Otherwise all the bad-arses would have procreated and we would have a bad-arse society intent on (self-)destruction. Hang on, maybe that’s what went wrong with the USA and those pesky arab countries….Gotcha! just messing with you guys! smile :)
Religion claims all sorts of stuff. In fact if you read the holy books they’re full of amoral crap. Like Lot offering his virgin daughters to the somdomites instead of the angels, so that they could “know” them. This is an example of good morals? Like God using his asymetric power relation with that crusty old dude (name escapes me, probably Abraham) to have him kill his son. Talk about a sick God. And then the crusty old guy obeys and uses his asymetric power relationship with his son to all but kill him. That boy would’ve needed a lot of counselling. And we’re supposed to revere the crusty old guy and the sick god? Weird. Or Mohomad having wet dreams about a four year old daughter of his mate, betroving her at 6 and having his way with her at nine. The poor girl was still playing with dolls. And that’s the most “perfect” man to have lived? Sicko.
Anyway, that should upset a few chooks. Have a good one.
If scientists prove that morals evolved naturally, stupid religion will get stupider to cope, and sensible religion will go on as it was.
It won’t change a damn thing. Just look at what they came up with in retaliation to the theory of evolution…
cleasc: “Just look at what they came up with in retaliation to the theory of evolution…”
More rubbish? More dogma? You’re right of course. Reason isn’t related to belief. The believers will find a way to keep their precious dogma. Which is fine by me, so long as they leave me and mine the fuck alone.
@Skids: I am with you. Problem is, teaching faith as a virtue and blind belief as something to be sought after enables those whose blind faith directs them to kill us and ours. It makes the battle against religious idiocy worth fighting.
It seems the best that naturalistic evolution can account for in morality is some sort of pragmatic prudence. I wont kill you if you wont kill me. pretty rational. But what if I can get away with killing you and come off better for it? Nothing irrational about that. My species could do well on that one if it could be kept up. Conscience is a bit of a problem but it can be managed.
If religion is but a part of the overall evolutionary process, why oppose it as if it “ought” not to be there? Some branches of it have been quite effective in keeping the population down in various ways (as has irreligion in the 2oth Century).
Pehaps the really irrational religious morality is not the suicide bombing stuff (that works pretty well over all), but the self sacrificial stuff. Those people who believe they ought to love their neighbour to the point of helping the weak of the species to survive and give up their own lives for the cause. But then, maybe we are all better off without them anyway.
Hello Again Neando,
It seems I’m just following your posts around this afternoon (where I am at). Once again, your post is worth commenting on. Keep up the great work.
“But what if I can get away with killing you and come off better for it?”
The implicit assumption you are making here is that an explanation for morality is only valid if the morality can be perfectly enforced. Why should we make that assumption in the first place? There is nothing that guarantees that morality will be followed under any explanation.
Christians can get away with murder just as well as anyone else. Thus the Christian explanation for morality suffers from the same ‘flaw’.
I’m not sure I understand your second paragraph. Would you mind explaining it for me?
Neando: “It seems the best that naturalistic evolution can account for in morality is some sort of pragmatic prudence”
I think that’s a misunderstanding of morals as evolutionary behaviour. It assumes that the benefactor is the person. We are only vectors for our genes. They benefit by a generally moral population not wiping itself out. Each individual can choose to do moral or not moral acts. But for the genes to continue, there must be a general need among people not to self-destruct. It benefits the gene pool if it continues.
That’s probably full of holes, but I am not an evolutionary biologist. So, my familiarity with the finer points is poor.
“Is this science just putting yet another nail in religion’s coffin?”
No, because even without the exisitence of a scientific explanation of human morality, religions do not provide any tenacious explanations of the origin of morality.
Or in other words: If reason didn’t lead one to faith, it won’t lead one away from it.
Scusa the typos.
Religion is not special, it is an aspect of social structures. We join together for a common purpose in enjoyment of a common cause. Its the same as Star Trek, Evangelion and Monster trucks.
This article is undeniably interesting, but it’s hard for me to put it in any real context without a more fundamental discussion of the boundaries of human morality. It seems to me there are a lot of unanswered questions about how we define morality. For example, is there, as many deists argue, some universal moral code or are they culturally unique? If humans truly are moral animals, why is it they seem to inevitably revert to physical violence if not killing when they don’t agree with someone’s opinions or point of view? And why is that someone like Peter Pace, who’s job is essentially to ensure the military is an efficient killing machine, still somehow feels in a position to expostulate on others’ immorality.
I dunno, I’ve flipped through various bibles on occasion; and the morals that seem to stick are the one that have nothing to do with relgion.
But, if you read further in ANY bible; you’ll start coming across exceptions to the infutable laws of Moses. For example, it’s ok to stone or kill someone because they have violated some of the other commandments/laws or what-have-you.
Call this another gross generalization about Christians/Catholics; but anyone who actually beleives in the messages of any bible, has to be the dumbest, most hypocritical and hateful people, ever.
Hi Sid. In saying “But what if I can get away with killing you and come off better for it?†I was questioning the rationality of morality. It is a grphic way of saying something more common like, “If I can get away with this or that immoral act without adverse consequences for myself and come out better off, this would be a rational thing to do.”
This statement: “Christians can get away with murder just as well as anyone else. Thus the Christian explanation for morality suffers from the same ‘flaw’” needs a bit more teasing out for me to answer.
My second paragraph firstly questions that if religion is explicable under naturalism it must be a part of the naturalistic processes. How is it then that it can be (morally) condemned from a naturalistic POV? I lack space to elaborate on the second sentence.
BTW, pardon my delays in reply, my time zone (NZ) and short opportunities make ongoing conversation difficult–but it’s fun.
Skids, your comment is interesting. It is difficult to see how morals are adaptively advantagious. Morals tend to favour the weak and are self sacrificial to the strong. Eugenetics might favour a particular population if it can eliminate the weak in the gene pool, maximize its wealth and power and gain ascendency over competing populations.
Two further things: morals require freedom to choose against one’s self interest in order to benefit others, e.g., mercy, kindness, truth telling, honesty, generosity, etc. These things would make a population flourish if broadly practised. But these things do not seem to come naturally to mankind; they have to be inculcated and, if possible, enforced. Man is free to choose contrary to the good, so where does this freedom come from? If materialism is true, our actions and thoughts are determined by our neurophysiology and are not free. Morals then would be reduced to something like pragmatism and emotivism.
Also, biology cannot account for the existence of properties of good and evil (and a host of other immaterial entities). It is self evident that mercy and kindness are virtues and that torturing babies for fun is evil. I don’t have to prove that this is so, but a theist can better account for their existence and their moral status.
I think Devout Atheist is asking the right questions, but he would have more hope of resolving them were he not so devout ;-)
Neando: “It is difficult to see how morals are adaptively advantagious.”
It’s difficult to see how survival is adaptively advantageous? If those that kill or are amoral predominate, then the gene pool will wipe itself out. Eugenics is the opposite. Your comment seems like a plant from religeous types who deliberately misrepresent science.
“Morals tend to favour the weak and are self sacrificial to the strong.”
Morals tend to favour all in my opinion.
“morals require freedom to choose against one’s self interest in order to benefit others, e.g., mercy, kindness, truth telling, honesty, generosity, etc. These things would make a population flourish if broadly practised.”
That was my poorly put point. We flourish by being moral. If we weren’t moral, we’d be in dire straits. The evidence that this is so is we are here.
“But these things do not seem to come naturally to mankind; they have to be inculcated and, if possible, enforced. Man is free to choose contrary to the good, so where does this freedom come from?”
These things come very naturally to most of mankind. We all know it’s bad to smash babies against rocks, etc. People who have never had god rammed down their throats know this at least as much a believers. Freedom to choice comes from our brains being sufficiently evolved to be able to reason.
“biology cannot account for the existence of properties of good and evil”
What are good and evil? It’s not evil that an animal eats you, or a Tsunami kill you, or disease, etc. Evil to me is only when a person or people choose to cause suffering. Good is when you do an act benificial. It’s funny but atheists are statistically less violent than religeous types, much more moral. It may have something to do with not believing in a jealous god who permits them to do amoral acts in his name.
What I’ve offered about are my understanding of the science. They are only explanations, not beliefs. Science is reason, not faith. Science may not explain everything now, and may never be able to. It may be beyond our small mind’s capabilites. But even if science doesn’t offer an explanations that doesn’t mean a god exists. Especially not the amoral god of Abraham who instructed him to attemp to kill his son. The god who told moses it was ok to slaughter heaps of the local folk who were already living in the promised land that the isrealites wanted. Their are so many more examples of how the scriptures preach amoral things. that I’m not surprised the faithful are confused about moral behaviour.
@Shaze: It isn’t always that they are dumb for believing the Bible, but instead dumb for not really knowing what they claim to believe. The ones who have read the book and still believe are just in class 5 denial. There is no way to objectively read the Bible and not be horrified by its contents. I was one of the class 5 denial cases. I read the Bible cover to cover at least 10 times over the course of my life.
The only thing that kept me religious was the years of brainwashing and conditioning. Given the same level towards Nazi philosophy I would have told you Hitler had been inspired of God and the Holocaust was on his orders. Not only that, but I would have laid out reasoning that sounded logical to the untrained ear and even converted others. It finally took a problem that gave me true insight into the inner workings of the church to topple the house of cards that was my faith.
@Neando: You inadvertently hit the nail on the head. You imply that we have free will but science is actually proving your other statement, “our actions and thoughts are determined by our neurophysiology and are not free.”
Further, you fiat the existence of good and evil without defining them. That which is inherently good benefits the species. That which is inherently evil does not. As a pack species like wolves murder, torture, stealing, and the like are all inherently evil because the decrease the survival rate of the species. Benevolence, caring for the sick and weak, kindness, and the like are inherently good because they not only aid the continuance of the species but enhance the quality of life. Like wolves, we can’t live without the pack. To say there is no obvious evolutionary source for those things is just silly.
As to the things that religion defines as evil that do not have inherent evil, like sex, there is even an evolutionary explanation for that. Population control. Imagine if mankind had run around breeding willy nilly with no reason to stop. We would have flooded the earth like locusts. The sex hang ups of the Judeo-Christian sects prevented overpopulation. Now that birth control is available, look to see religion run its course over the next few hundred years.
Hey Neando,
Don’t worry about taking time to respond. The discussion is worth the wait. From which time zone do you hail from? Based on your previous posts, my guess is that you live in England, but correct me if I’m wrong.
If I understand you correctly, you are disputing any strictly rational based moral theory. I want to make sure I understand you correctly before I defend rational morality, so allow me to breakdown your argument into it’s fundamental premises:
1. If any rationally-derived moral theory is valid, then following rational thought will result in morally good behavior.
2. There are situations where rational thought can lead to theft (e.g. I can steal item X without being caught. I want item X. Therefore I should take item X.)
3. Theft is immoral.
———–
4. Therefore rational thought can result in immoral behavior
5. Thus no rationally-derived moral theory is valid.
Consequence-free theft is only one example, you can substitute in any “immoral act without adverse consequences” that benefits the perpetrator, such as your original example, murder. Am I understanding your objection to rational morality correctly? I have many thoughts on this, but I want to give you an opportunity to clear up any remaining misunderstands we may have.
Hi Skids. If morals are adaptively advantageous, and some could be, this still does not overcome my primary objection. All you have described about morals is what you perceive they do. Morals involve obligation and value. These “oughts” cannot be reduced to what is, to mere facts. If human persons are but a part of the essentially random processes of an evolving universe, then they do what they do. Nothing can escape nature. We are determined by it, including our very thought processes about it. Everything is ultimately accidental and there is nothing beyond that transcends it.
So everything of value is but an invention of the brain. If we consider certain actions as good or bad, accetptable or unacceptable, admireable or reprehensible, these valuations are facts about the subject and not of any real property in the object.
The rub of all this is that human persons can have no inherent value outside of our own emotions. We come from dirt and go back to it and are forgotten. So why *ought* we to help evolutionary “progress”? The other creatures just do what they do and survive or perhaps not. We can “invent right and wrong” (Mackie) but wwe can’t create human worth and dignity. It must come from outside; naturalism can’t hack it.
Translation: I wanna feel special. Only god can make me feel special. Therefor my idea of god it true.
First of all, you aren’t looking for the truth. You’re just stating that you wish the world was a way, so that’s the way you force yourself to believe it is.
Many atheists, myself included, find natural and man made (without lying to ourselves) sources of worth and dignity, and feeling special and all the other stuff people want gods for. So whether you can fathom it or not, naturalism CAN hack it.
When you realize morality is more complicated than, “my god loves me and he’s always right, so I do what he says,” you might start to see what I’m talking about.
Howz “Your father.” You seemed to have missed the translation. The idea of projecting a wannabe god from my wants and feelings is a long way from my thinking.
You mentioned truth and deception. Do we need truth to survive? Many of us seem to get away with a rather small grasp of truth and yet flourish (especially we religious types, eh?). Other species certainly don’t seem to need it. Just the right response to stimuli, i.e., adaptive behaviour.
If our minds are the blind product of matter, how can we be sure that our beliefs about matter are true and reliable. And even if they are, does it (or can it) really matter? Unguided evolution is pretty indifferent about matters of truth and value.
Sure, there are all kinds of sources that can give you a feeling of dignity and worth and they don’t need to be rational or based on truth. But the belief that all persons inherently possess inestimable dignity and worth is another thing altogether. This affects morality. If my neighbour possesses value objectively and independently of my estimation, I then am morally obligated to regard him accordingly–including my atheist neighbours. OTOH if we are but sophisticated bunches of chemicals, nothing really matters even if we want to think it does, religious or otherwise.
Hi Sids. I’m in New Zealand, a “Kiwi.” NZ is on the date line 12 hours ahead of England.
First, ethics, meta-ethics and moral theory are rationally systematised into some coherent form. But each moral proposition or injunction rests on another. None can be derived from statements of fact even though they supervene on statements of fact. So every moral conclusion has statements of value in its premises, and none are deriveable from statements of pure fact.
Second, your #2 reference is to my argument which is based on Kai Nielsen’s reasoning. I would add: many moral acts can be against reason, as when one sacrifices his life to save another, etc. But then these only hold if morality is ultimately incidental to the universe.
Hello Neando,
“So every moral conclusion has statements of value in its premises, and none are deriveable from statements of pure fact.”
I think we may have covered this before. I think you are right. There is no logically valid way of moving from a fact statement to a moral conclusion. They all suffer from the is-ought problem. Even the divine command ethic suffers from this problem: This is what God commands, so we ought to do it.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. I’ve been asking myself if this forces me into a moral-relativist position. Inevitably, I’d have to say, ‘yes’, but with a caveat. I think that morality may well be ultimately relative, but at the species level, some of it is universal. I believe this because cognitive science has revealed wide-spread agreement about moral truths. Here is a very interesting, but long article that discusses this issue. It’s worth the read. Furthermore, neuroscience is discovering that that our brains are hardwired to make moral certain moral judgments, even though we can choose to ignore our moral intuition.
These ideas are still in their infancy and somewhat controversial, but they do point out that a biology can explain morality. Since it seems our moral intuition is based in biology, it only makes sense that we use evolution to explain why we have certain moral beliefs.
Your core objection is that evolution cannot account for supererogatory moral acts, especially the sacrifice of one’s life for another’s. I’m no expert on behavioral evolution, but I’ve read a bit on this. As Skids pointed out, natural selection does not act on the level of the individual, but on the level of genes. Most of human evolution took place when we lived in tribes. Since tribes where small and largely inter-married, it is very likely that a vast majority of people anyone would come across would share many of the same genes. Thus, at worse, sacrificing ones one life to save another’s has close to a zero net effect on the gene pool. If more than one person is saved, the is a net savings in the gene pool.
The real driver for this sort of morality may be born out of external threats. If a tribe is facing genocide from without, then it would be hugely advantageous for people to view sacrificing one’s life (in a battle, for instance) to protect the tribe as a whole as a morally great act. Thus a self-sacrifice morality could be selected for.
This may not be the correct explanation, but it should point out that we should not be so quick to rule out an evolutionary explanation for a self-sacrifice moral.
Hello sidfaiwu,
Thanks for your patience. The articles you referenced are interesting. Saxe’s article importantly makes the distinction between descriptive accounts of human behaviour and what is normative: “One thing these cutting-edge studies certainly cannot tell us is the right answer to a moral dilemma. Cognitive science can offer a descriptive theory of moral reasoning, but not a normative one. That is, by studying infants or brains or people around the world, we may be able to offer an account of how people actually make moral decisions . . . but we will not be able to say how people should make moral decisions.†Likewise, if scientific enquiry can give us a descriptive account of how humans came to have moral capacity, it is outside its jurisdiction for it to tell us how we ought to behave. Darwinian evolution, in particular, can give us no guidance and direction on how we should live since it is itself unguided and undirected.
You mentioned that accepting the is/ought distinction forces you into a moral relativist position. Why would it force you into moral relativism any more than epistemic relativism? As I argued in posts #20 & #22, if our cognitive faculties (like our moral faculties) are the product of natural forces, how can we be sure they are reliable in the process of truth gathering? I don’t think scepticism about morals is a rational way to live. One doesn’t have to account for how one knows everything before belief. Some things are just basic. I know that logic and maths apply to reality without proof, just as I know that theft and murder are morally wrong and are part of the furniture of the universe also. None of these are material entities. If we live as if they are real for pragmatic or prudential reasons yet are sceptical of their reality, is this rational? However, an important difference is that moral truths are more hotly contested in that they have inherent authority and restrict our behaviour.
I agree with your comment about the Divine Command Ethic (aka Voluntarism). A mere command by an authority cannot create a moral obligation. It appears to founder on the euthyphro dilemma. However, we are familiar with commands or laws that cause obligation. Our law states that we are to drive on the left of the road and yours on the right. The morality of the laws is not in the left or right per se, but in the underlying value that, if there is not agreement on order in a society, then harm will come through conflict. This in turn is based on the value we place on human life.
God’s commands, however, have their base in His essential being. God, by definition, holds all His attributes essentially and necessarily, and as designer-creator-owner of the universe, whatever He commands and does are in accord with His essential goodness.
Wittgenstien said: “If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental.†I argue that there is Value upon which all other true value is founded and that we are not an accident. Thus meaning and purpose are not feelings to be invented but rather objective truths to be discovered.
Thanks for the discussion.
Hello Neando,
That quote from Saxe’s article stood out to me as well. It’s a great quote. While science cannot be used to inform us how we ought to behave, we still can use it to inform our moral theories, even if they all have the is-ought conundrum.
Please don’t misunderstand my moral relativism. I’m a moral relativist in the sense that no morals exist outside of self-reflecting agents. In other words, if there were no thinking things capable of reflecting on their own actions in the universe, then morality would be meaningless. Thus morality is not a universal truth which we discover, but one which is created (this appears to be our fundamental disagreement). Why our moral beliefs are as there are, and not some other set of moral beliefs depends on the process that created the thinking, self-reflecting creatures. Many of those moral beliefs will be universal among each sentient being created by the same process. From this point of view, the rational thing to do is act on our collectively held moral intuition, even if we are uncertain of the source.
By contrast, natural laws are universal truths which we discover (or at least approximate). Gravity is not the result of a process that could have created a different set of gravitational laws if the process were modified. Light does not travel at different speeds depending on what source created the light. The speed of light is constant, despite the creative process that resulted in the light. This is why I am not forced into a epistemic relativist position.
“I argue that there is Value upon which all other true value is founded and that we are not an accident.”
I actually think that we are not an accident as well, but for a different reason. I am a hard determinist and thus believe that there is no such thing as ‘accidents’ or random events, only apparent accidents and apparent random events.
“God’s commands, however, have their base in His essential being. God, by definition, holds all His attributes essentially and necessarily, and as designer-creator-owner of the universe, whatever He commands and does are in accord with His essential goodness.”
You clearly don’t lack the ability to sensibly scrutinize ideas, but when it comes to the idea of God, it’s like you’ve just switch off that part of your brain. The quoted statement not only assumes that god is real, but that he is perfect and has our best interest in mind. Even if i did believe in some sort of god, I’d hardly jump to such conclusions myself.
I’ll break this down to a few simple points before I go off on all kinds of tangents.
-Even if some kind of god existed, and he seriously did give us arbitrary rules to follow for reasons he never reveals, what reason would we have to follow them? Especially when they are downright harmful. (Think teaching abstinence and nothing else, banning sodemy etc..)
-Would a perfect god give us rules that make no sense today? If he knew they would no longer apply someday, would he not mention it? Maybe update the list at some point?
-If some sort of god did exist, and there is no reason to believe he has our best interest in mind, that he loves everyone, that he knows we exist, etc… Bad things happen to god ass-kissers and genuinely good people (I hear he likes that stuff), prayer has no non-psychological effect, and babies are born with terrible genetic disorders. All of this makes sense from a naturalistic point of view, and not much from a world-view involving a personal god.
Hello Your father,
On your first point, I think I have been careful not to argue for God’s existence from the premise that He exists. I was answering what sid said about the internal logic of a theistic theory: “There is no logically valid way of moving from a fact statement to a moral conclusion. They all suffer from the is-ought problem. Even the divine command ethic suffers from this problem: This is what God commands, so we ought to do it.â€
If I were arguing for the existence of unicorns, it would be legitimate for me to offer a coherent account of what I conceive a unicorn to be like (single horn, 4 hoofs, wings, mane, etc. and no beak, or dorsal fins, etc.), so we know what we are talking about. Polytheists, pantheists, panentheists, deists, Mormons and Muslims have vastly different conceptions of deity or deities, so if I am to talk about the Judeo-Christian God in a forum of this nature, it would be foolish of me to merely assume that you all know what I mean.
Concerning your three main points: First, I did argue against God’s commands being arbitrary, but that rather they are founded on His nature. I think sufficient reasons are given for the biblical commands though they are not always obvious. The broader context often provides the rationale.
Second: the rules and commands given in the Bible are not always universal moral commands. Commands for religious ceremony and those for civil order (esp. for national Israel) can often be separated out from those of a moral and universal nature. The former may be useful (civil laws) or prophetic, etc., but moral laws are universal; for all people for all time. They would only need “updating†in their application for various cultures. “Don’t bear false witness†and “don’t steal†hardly need updating even if unwelcome.
Your third point says too much for me to answer it all. Generally it fits under the argument from evil. How is the existence of an all good all powerful God compatible with the existence of evil in the world.
I was going to answer skids (#16) on this one. He said “What are good and evil? It’s not evil that an animal eats you, or a Tsunami kill you, or disease, etc. Evil to me is only when a person or people choose to cause suffering. Good is when you do an act beneficial.†Distinction is often made between natural evil (tsunami) and moral evil (people causing suffering), and I think this is helpful.
The classic concept of evil is that it is a parasite of the good; that it is a corruption of the good rather than an entity in itself. (Every lie is a lie about the truth, etc.). Thus the God of theism cannot have both good and evil co-exist in His nature. The question then becomes, how could an essentially good God cause the existence of a world full of evil? Atheist Mackie reckoned there is 10 to the 14th power turps of evil in the world. Here I would appeal to the “free will argument†but later when I get to sid’s stuff. Thanks.