morality within evolution

[alexa]

Hello everybody and thank you very much for joining this thread.

From a simple question, I manage myself to complicate a lot the situation. But what do you want ? I'm a woman, so complicating things is in my nature!



I’ll re-write again the initial questions of Juantoo3, as I believe it is important:

Can morality be the result of natural evolution? Or, as Gould implies, is this a matter of human psycho-social development that cannot be adequately addressed by scientific scholarship? Can nature based religions rightfully claim scientific basis for their moralities? Or should the whole subject of moral development be held aside, restricted to the "magisterial" of religion?

So, let's talk a little about nature based religions. My fist concern was to establish which those religions were. I began with the religions on this forum, I got through the main religions of the world and finally I got through all of them in the past and nowadays.



I could identify in the past the most important earth based religions, which were: ancient Greek, ancient roman, ancient druidism and witchcraft. They had a high respect for the nature and the earth and they were polytheistic.



Greek religion was a predominant form of early Paganism. Greek had rituals, rites, ceremonies and animal (sheep, cows, goats, pigs, bulls) and human sacrifices. They were flexible in beliefs and they didn’t claim universality. They did not participate in regular clergies, any hierarchical system, any sacred texts or moral code. They also worshipped oracles, demy-gods and Heroes. They believed in afterlife, in contrast with the other pagan religions who believed in re-incarnation.



Romans borrowed a lot of their gods from Greek and they believed the rituals were necessary to please them. They believed everything had a spirit, who could influence for good or evil their life.



The druids worshipped some gods similar to those of the Greeks and Romans, but under different names. Their sacred place was a circle of stones and not temples like Greeks and Romans. They met in woods and glens because they believed the spirits emerged from the anture :the sea, the light, the wind, the sun and the oak tree. They performed animal and human sacrifices, but they didn’t have defined images to represent the object of their worship. Druids believed in re-incarnation.



Here you have a scene of worship:



http://library.thinkquest.org/28111/_borders/drawingdown.jpg



Witchcraft has its roots in ancient folk ways and beliefs, usually following the seasonal cycle. There are several forms of worship which may vary from elaborate rituals in ritual circles to simple meditation. A lot of witchcraft’s religion was lost in the middle age. Many witches were burned or hanged. They believed in one god and one goddess, but worshipped them as many gods. The Goddess is the mother of all things, of nature and the earth. She is represented by the Moon and her power is greater from May to October. The God is symbolised in the wood lands, in the sun and in the hunt with a greater power from October to May. Witches believe the divine is in all things which partially explains their deep respect and affinity with the nature.



Here you have a scene of drawing down the Moon:



http://library.thinkquest.org/28111/_borders/drawingdownthemoon.jpg





People disillusioned with the present religions had returned to the nature based religions, as these religions had sustained the world for centuries before the appearance of the Christianity.



There are several forms of Neo-paganism including Wicca, Neo-druidism and Astrau. Neo-pagans are usually polytheistic or duo theistic. As a lot of the ancient religions were lost, the new religions have new concepts, which had modified the ancient tradition.



The human is the only being that has realised his life has an end. The appearance of Gods and the spirits in the ancient world was the result of fear of death. Those who hunted had created hunting gods; those who till the earth had created crops gods and so on.



Alexa

[alexa]

Originally Posted by juantoo3

Can a person without morals (if such truly exists) be genuinely religious? Can a person without morals be genuinely scientific? Can a person without religion or science be moral?

Hi Juan,

I'm afraid people without moral exist. I don't like to watch the news as there are to many crimes reported. The answer is NO. You cannot be without moral and be religious in the same time. On the contrary, I belive somebody without moral can be a scientific.

Again, what do you understand by a moral person ?

Alexa

[juantoo3]

My sincere thanks to everybody who has contributed so far!

Kindest Regards, Alexa!

I only have a moment.

Originally Posted by alexa

I'm afraid people without moral exist. I don't like to watch the news as there are to many crimes reported. The answer is NO. You cannot be without moral and be religious in the same time. On the contrary, I belive somebody without moral can be a scientific.

Again, what do you understand by a moral person ?

My question you quoted for this was an attempt to provide a way of "falsifying" morality in the scientific sense. I agree that a religious person would have a difficult time being amoral, but I would think a truly logical person, represented by a scientist, would have an equally difficult time being amoral. Logic requires constancy, and while constancy by itself does not make morality, morality requires a form of constancy. I am probably not clear here, but for the moment it is the best I can do.

I wanted briefly to address the beginning of your comment.
"I'm afraid people without moral exist." Moral people commit crimes too. It could be called a "lapse" of their morality, or in Christian terms "sin." I haven't looked deeply into the subject, but according to my psych professor it is not uncommon for mass murderers to be moral people. Their morality may be twisted from what most people believe, but in their own minds they find some form of justification for their actions. I could even point to the terrorist suicide bombers, who believe they are fulfilling some moral justification for sending "non-believers" to their brand of "hell." Outside of their circle, we view them as immoral. Inside their circle, they view themselves as extremely moral. This is an extreme example of subjective morality. Other than people with severe mental disease, I don't think there are any real world examples of fully functional, rational humans walking the face of the planet that do not have some form of morality. It may seem that way, but close up and in context I don't believe it is so.

A moral person understands "right and wrong." How much of that understanding is subjective (individual interpretation) and how much is objective (universally true for all) is open to debate, but the moral person holds some form of understanding of right and wrong. A (hypothetical) person who does not hold some form of understanding of right and wrong can not truly be religious or logical. IMHO.

Does this help?

By the way, excellent job! Keep up the good work! I am learning a great deal from everyone's participation.

[alexa]

I agree moral people can commit crimes, too.

[juantoo3]

Kindest Regards, Brian!

Thank you for your post! My apologies for not answering sooner.

Originally Posted by I, Brian

Natural evolutionary mechanisms for morality could well be the processes of social co-operation, which in itself instill some form of "value system". You can clearly see this latter aspect in studies of social apes, and would certainly be a sound foundation to extrapolate a lot of issues of morality - which in itself, in its bare rationalist form, is about the sustainable preservation of the group.

I think what you say here is valid, but I am not familiar enough with it to integrate this into what we are looking at yet. Ordinarily, I would take the time to look deeper into it, but I am pressed for time at the moment. Do you have any suggestions about where to look?

Of course, human thought and creativty complicates the picture - but my personal suggestion would be that the foundations of morality already have a clear biological and evolutionary source. How much of a role Divinity plays a part in the process after is obviously a matter of faith.

On the one hand, I am in agreement with Abogado about "it doesn't really matter" (paraphrased). On the other, whether or not "divinity" plays a role, there is a process, and one would think that process could, at least in a general way, be uncovered. History shows us that humanity developed over a long period of time looking to nature for moral guidance. At some point humanity turned to itself. My original question had to do with whether or not it is in the interest of humanity as a whole to continue looking to ourselves to develop our moral code(s), or is it valid to return to looking at nature for moral examples to continue developing morality into the future.

I suppose it would be well to insert here, that I think modern morality often ignores nature, to its detriment. Nature is something to be valued and treasured. We kill ourselves when we destroy nature. So I can see some value in looking to nature, for some things. I am not sure morality is one of those things. "Survival of the fittest" is sometimes promoted by those who assume they rank among the fittest. I cannot help but wonder if their attitudes might not change once they are faced with the reality that someone they love and deeply care about, possibly themselves, may not rank among the "fittest."

It is also fair to insert, that civil morality is often vague, seems at times deliberately designed for the individual to fail to completely live up to, and can be in opposition to the moralities of other cultures. The whole puzzle is complex and difficult, and has long been a thorn in my academic side.

Or - did I miss the question completely?

Quite the contrary, I think you have included an important angle to consider, I just haven't the time right now. Perhaps when things settle down a bit around here.

Some other things I might want to look into include abnormal psych (such as what makes a person amoral, and what precisely that means), and morality among animals (probably the social apes as you mention being the better examples), and possibly philosophy (such as Kantian and Utilitarian ethics). The one thing I am trying to deliberately avoid is the political aspect, at least for this exercise, as a courtesy.

Thank you very much for you contribution!

[juantoo3]

Kindest Regards, Abogado!

Thank you for your posts!

Originally Posted by Abogado del Diablo

Have you ever read Erne Ness's writings on "Deep Ecology"?

Sorry for repeating an earlier quote, but it is much shorter than the follow up.

If I understood your summary, it sounds much like a program I watched a few months back by David Suzuki called "The Sacred Balance." While the program was only cursory, it was quite interesting. But it left me wanting, almost like a cliffhanger. I almost bought the book at one point, hoping for a better, deeper explanation, but as luck would have it they were out of stock. I haven't tried again, it just slips my mind with other things going on.

I guess what I see between the two moral paths, is shortcomings in each, and too many who only pay lip service while not seriously trying to hold to what they profess. This is not true of all people, but enough to make one question. And, of course, my own soul searching. Try as I might, and I do try very hard, I cannot fully live up to the formal code I have aligned myself with.

Morality is something we all require, in order to function in a social environment. That I see as a given. Can morality truthfully and really be modified for the greater good of all peoples as we move into a more unified world? And does that mean making a moral code stronger (meaning more difficult to live up to), or more lax (meaning more ambiguous and illdefined)? Or a reversion to the moral anarchy of nature?

Forgive my ramble.

It is not directed specifically to you, it is a general ramble to hopefully better show my quandary.

Thank you most sincerely for your contributions here!

[Vajradhara]

Namaste all,


to complicate this subject

is there a difference between morality and ethics?

[juantoo3]

Kindest Regards, Vajradhara!

Thank you for your thought provoking response!

Originally Posted by Vajradhara

to complicate this subject

is there a difference between morality and ethics?

Is not ethics applied morality? Or have I missed something? What is your take on the matter?

[Vajradhara]

Namaste Juan,


thank you for the post.

hmm.. perhaps you are correct, i'm not certain.

in my tradition, for instance, morality is rarely, if ever, mentioned. what is mentioned are ethical actions. it wouldn't be too far removed to say that Buddhism cares little for morality and cares greatly about ethics.. though, obviously, the tradition doesn't "care" in the traditional sense of the word.

the Buddhist tradition, by and large, is geared towards the skillful development of ethical behavior as it's foundational goal. once this has been perfected, you move along the path to other, less exoteric praxis.

in my naive view, i had rather considered morality to be ethical action couched in religious terms whereas ethical actions, themselves, were independent of a particular religion.

some of this comes out when we look at what the various religious traditions prohibit in their teachings.. we see that morality is relative to the paradigm from which it is viewed. ethics appears to be more widely consistent across cultures.

of course, i could be conflating the ideas quite a bit and totally missing the mark

[alexa]

Originally Posted by juantoo3

Is not ethics applied morality? Or have I missed something? What is your take on the matter?

Hi Juan,
Namaste Vajradhara,

I just want to give the definition for the morality and the ethic, as they are in Wikipedia encyclopedia :

Morality

is a complex of concepts and philosophical beliefs by which an individual determines whether his or her actions are right or wrong. Oftentimes, these concepts and beliefs are generalized and codified in a culture or group, and thus serve to regulate the behaviour of its members. Conformity to such codification may also be called morality, and the group may depend on widespread conformity to such codes for its continued existence. A "moral" may refer to a particular principle, usually as informal and general summary with respect to a moral principle, as it is applied in a given human situation.

see on : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality

You can also have an overview of morality; changes in morality; morality and Darwinism; morality in juridical systems; the moral in story.

Ethics

is a general term for what is often described as the "science of morality". In philosophy, ethical behavior is that which is "good". The Western tradition of ethics is sometimes called moral philosophy. This is one of the three major branches of philosophy, alongside metaphysics and logic.

see on : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics

You can also have the history of ethics; disputes of definition; the first social science; ethics vs politics vs science vs practise; divisions of ethics; metaethics; normative ethics; applied ethics; ethics by cases; the analytical view; is ethics futile ?; ethics in religion; psycology and politics and finally major doctrines of ethics.

Best regards,

Alexa

[lunamoth]

I've been re-reading The Moral Animal and put some quotes below that I found interesting, relevant and/or amusing. Toward the end of this it starts to get more relevant to the discussion at hand. What I am finding interesting so far is that even though the ideas about parental investment might expalin why we feel generosity and tenderness, it suggests to me even more clearly why we need "something more" to act honorably.

The Moral Animal [Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology] by Robert Wright (1994)

Part 1: Sex, Romance and Love.

Chapter 2. Male and Female.

Playing God: “So, while there are various reasons why it could make Darwinian sense for a woman to mate with more than one man (maybe the first man was infertile, for example), there comes a time when having more sex just isn’t worth the trouble. Better to get some rest or grab a bite to eat. For a man, unless he’s really on the brink of collapse or starvation, that times never comes.”
“Darwin’s failure, then, was a failure to see what a deeply precious commodity females are. He saw their coyness had made them precious, but he didn’t see that they were inherently precious--precious by virtue of their biological role in reproduction, and the resulting slow rate of female reproduction.”

Testing the Theory: “In species after species, females are coy and males are not. Indeed, males are so dim in their sexual discernment that they may pursue things other than females. Among some kinds of frogs, mistaken homosexual courtship is so common that a ‘release call’ is used by males who find themselves in the clutches of another male to notify him that they’re both wasting their time. Male snakes, for their part, have been known to spend a while with dead females before moving on to a live prospect. And male turkeys will avidly court a stuffed replica of a female turkey. In fact, a replica of a female turkey’s head suspended fifteen inches from the ground will generally do the trick. The male circles the head, does its ritual displays, and then (confident, presumable, that its performance has been impressive) rises into the air and comes down in the proximity of the female’s backside, which turns out not to exist. The more virile males will show such interest even when a wooden head is used, and a few can summon lust for a wooden head with no eyes or beak.”
“In a sense, dreaming up plausible stories is what evolutionary biologists do. But that’s not the damning indictment. (referring to criticism by non-Darwinians) The power of a theory, such as the theory of parental investment, is gauged by how much data it explains and how simply, regardless of when the data surfaced (i.e., before or after the predictive hypothesis has been made).”
Further discussion about the related prediction (to the parental investment hypothesis) that species where the male plays a larger role in rearing of offspring there will be a tendency toward role reversal in courtship and mating. A few examples where this is true are given (seahorses, some birds, the Panamanian poison-arrow frog, a water bug, and the Mormon cricket.
Apes and Us. “Amid the great variety of social structure in these species (orangutan, gorilla, chimps, pygmy chimps and bonobos), the basic theme of this chapter stands out, at least in minimal form: males seem very eager for sex and work hard to find it; females work less hard. This isn’t to say the females don’t like sex....And, intriguingly, the females of the species most closely related to humans--chimpanzees and bonobos--seem particularly amenable to a wild sex life, including a variety of partners. Still, female apes don’t do what male apes do: search high and low, risking life and limb, to find sex, and to find as much of it, with as many different partners, as possible;...”
Animals and the Unconscious. “A common reaction to the new Darwinian view of sex is that it makes perfect sense as an explanation for animal behavior--which is to say, for the behavior of nonhuman animals.” Then a bit about comparing the poor turkey mating with a wooden head and a man viewing pornography. “To a layperson, it may seem natural that the evolution of reflective, self-conscious brains would liberate us from the base dictates of our evolutionary past. To an evolutionary biologist, what seems natural is roughly the opposite: the human brains evolved not to insulate us from the mandate to survive and reproduce, but to follow it more effectively, if more pliably;...” “At some point in gibbon (a primate separated from humans by about 20 million years) evolution, circumstances began to encourage much male parental investment. The males regularly stick around and help provide for the kids. In one gibbon species the males actually carry the infants, something male apes aren’t exactly known for....Well, human males too have been known to carry around infants, and to stay with their families. Is it possible that at some time over the last few million years something happened to us rather like what happened to the gibbons? Have male and female sexual appetites converged at least enough to make monogamous marriage a reasonable goal?”

Chapter 3. Men and Women.

“Are human males and females born to form enduring bonds with one another: The answer is hardly an unqualified yes for either sex. Still, it is closer to a yes for both sexes that it is in the case of, say, chimpanzees. In every human culture on the anthropological record, marriage--whether monogamous or polygamous, permanent or temporary--is the norm, and the family is the atom of social organization.” “At some point, in other words, extensive male parental investment (MPI) entered our evolutionary lineage.” “In Robert Trivers’s 1972 paper on parental investment, her remarked, ‘One can, in effect, treat the sexes as if they were different species, the opposite sex being a resource relevant to producing maximum surviving offspring.’”...”But to a distressing extent--and an extent that was unclear before his paper--this metaphor does capture the overall situation; even with high MPI, and in some ways because of it, a basic underlying dynamic between men and women in mutual exploitation. They seem, at times, designed to make each other miserable.”

What Women Want. Starts with some discussion of women being attracted to wealthy and powerful men. Then “Of course, ambition and industriousness are things a female might look for even in a low-MPI species, as indices of genetic quality. Not so, however, for her assessment of the male’s willingness to invest. A female in a high-MPI species may seek signs of generosity, trustworthiness, and especially, an enduring commitment to her in particular.”
“Why should women be so suspicious of men? After all, aren’t males in a high-MPI species designed to settle down, buy a house, and mow the lawn every weekend? Here arises the first problem with terms like love and pair bonding. Males in high-MPI species are, paradoxically, capable of greater treachery than males in low-MPI species. For the ‘optimal male course...is a mixed strategy.’ Even if long-term investment is their main aim, seduction and abandonment can make genetic sense, provided it doesn’t take too much from the offspring in which the male does invest. The bastard youngsters may thrive even without parental investment; they may, for that matter, attract investment from some poor sap who is under the impression that they’re his. So males in a high-MPI species should, in theory, be ever alert for opportunistic sex.”

[alexa]

That's funny ! I prefer not to do any other comment in respect for our 'males' interlocuters.

[lunamoth]

Originally Posted by alexa

That's funny ! I prefer not to do any other comment in respect for our 'males' interlocuters.

Yes, but not so fast! Here's a bit more. Perhaps this book should have been named "The Amoral Animal."

“That male commitment is in limited supply--that each man has only so much time and energy to invest in offspring--is one reason females in our species defy stereotypes prevalent elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Females in low-MPI species--this is, in most sexual species--have no great rivalry with one another. Even if dozens of them have their hearts set on a single, genetically optimal make, he can, and gladly will, fulfill their dreams; copulation doesn’t take ong. But in a high-MPI species such as ours, where a female's ideal is to monoplolize her dream mate--competition with other females is inevitable.” “Females in a high-MPI species will hardly be passive and guileless. And they will sometimes be the natural enemies of one another.”

What do Men Want?
Youth, for the obvious relationship to fertility, and beauty, which is related to youth. Preference for youth by males found in 37 out of 37 cultures studied by David Buss, 1989. And “when is comes to assessing character--to figuring out if you can trust a mate--a male’s discernment may again differ from a female’s...Whereas the woman’s natural fear is the withdrawl of his investment, his natural fear is that the investment is misplaced. Not long for this world are the genes of a man who spends his time rearing children who aren’t his.” Martin Daly and Margo Wilson tested the idea that “anitcuckoldery technology” might be built into men. Proposed that male and female jealousy would differ: males would not stand for sexual infidelity while females would not stand for emotional infidelity. Born out by folk wisdom and considerable data. “David Buss placed electrodes on men and women and had them envision their mates doing various disturbing things. When men imagined sexual infidelity, their heart rates took leaps of a magnitude typically induced by three successful cups of coffee....For women, things were reversed: envisoining emotional infidelity--redirected love, not supplementary sex--brought the deeper physiological distress.”

What Else Do Women Want? Why would a woman cheat on a man? What reward justifies the gamble of incurring her mate’s wrath and withdrawl of resources? One idea: for gift/resource extraction. More mates, more gifts. Also related to the fact of concealed ovulation (men don’t know when women are fertile)--extends the period of gift extraction and also keeps men guessing whether a baby is theirs. In primate species with concealed ovulation males treat offspring that might be theirs more kindly. At the other end of the spectrum, male langur monkeys kill the offspring of a potential mate that were not sired by them.
“In a high-MPI speices, the female seeks two things: good genes and high ongoing investment. She may not find them in the same package. One solution would be to trick a devoted but not especially brawny or brainy mate into raising the offspring of another male. Again, cryptic ovulation would come in handy, as a treachery facilitator.”

[alexa]

It's difficult to believe all these things have been written by a male.

Unless, Robert Wright is in reality a woman determined for a revenge.

Even though, the author has a low opinion on women, too.

This is what I call a really cynic analyse of the human being.

[juantoo3]

Kindest Regards, Alexa and Lunamoth!

Wonderful post, Luna!

Originally Posted by alexa

This is what I call a really cynic analyse of the human being.

Yes, but at the same time, how brutally honest!

Is there greater spiritual value in brutal honesty, or in kindhearted subtlety? Is a lie, a lie? Is a "little white" lie as much an improper wrong as a deliberate deceit is?

Is there greater spiritual value in understanding this brutally honest nature of ourselves and "awakening" our inner animal, or in suppressing our animal nature (generally among the masses as well as individual self-delusion)? That is, on the social level as well as the individual level.

Is it better, or only easier, to comfort ourselves with the mental distraction of a corporate logo to ignore the fact that the hamburger we just ate was once a living breathing creature that was ritually slaughtered? (but that's ok, we didn't kill it, we just ate it)

Or maybe I just think too much?