Albert Cipriani

Dear PZ,
Not according to our dearly departed extinct Fiach. He wrote in the How Good is God thread: “behaviours became coded in our genes for brain behaviour circuits.”

But I am glad to hear you assert that our morality:
On this count you and I, for once, agree. How unorthodoxically TRADITIONAL of you – Albert the Traditional Catholic

pz

I cannot disagree more strongly. While broad capabilities may be a physical predisposition at birth (speech comes to mind as an example), it is too simplistic to reduce that potential to genes, and such hardwired behaviors are going to be relatively rare.

RufusAtticus

In my view, I think our capacity to be moral is in our genes as biases for certain social rules. However, the actual shape of our morality is cultural in nature.

Albert Cipriani

Dear NPM,
You ask, In the excellent docudrama "Hitler in the Bunker" Anthony Hopkins (Hitler) exclaims to Eva Bram right before they commit suicide: "I am cruel because Nature is cruel!"

A more succint expression of flawless logic I've yet to encounter.
1) If there is no God, there is only what we see.
2) What we see, we call Nature.
3) Nature is cruel.
4) Ergo, what logical basis do we have not to also be cruel?

What are you missing here? Perhaps you're not getting the concept of NOTHING, as in nothing other than Nature. If there is no other explaination (e.g., God) for things as we know them other than the things themselves, then we have no business acting in any way other than do things as we know them to act, and that is arbitrarily, egotisitically, and savagely.

Am I the only one who sees this truism? The more I learn of evolution (e.g., its 99.9% rate of extinction), the more obviously cruel a Godless world seems. -- Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Wounded King

That doesnt make nature cruel, merely indifferent and somewhat inefficient. The fact that natural history is a history of hecatombs and extinctions is a sad one but then human history isnt exactly robed in glory and smelling of roses, and it certainly doesnt suggest the existence of a loving God, the bubonic plague is some tough sort of love.

Non-praying Mantis

Albert, I keep wondering why you see Hitler as an "evolutionary role model":

Contrary to your belief, Hitler should not be used as an evolutionary role model.

NPM

Godless Dave

Because we can.
Because when we act in a way that is not cruel we are less likely to be killed by other humans.

Why not? Since we are capable of acting in ways that are not cruel, that too is part of nature.

Why do chimpanzees groom each other? Why do wolves hunt in packs? It's all part of nature.

Yes you are. Let me put it this way: You have a general understanding of the theory of gravitation, correct? So why aren't you jumping off cliffs?

Albert Cipriani

Dear NPM,
You assert:
Well, the same can be said of Mother Teresa. So how can the wildly contradictory moral standards of a Mother Teresa and an Adolph Hitler be conceived of as producing the same failed result? If evolutionary fitness is the moral standard, morality ceases to function as a semantic construct. What would pass as morality would be simply the brute fact, the might of numerical supremacy.

You assert:
Just because he failed? Imagine a smarter more sophisticated version of Hitler who succeeded. He could then personally impregnate his entire slave population while liquidating all other nationalities. In one generation, half the world (all the males) would be trimming their Hitler moustaches. By your own standards of evolutionary fitness, Hitler would be the world’s most successful creature, having single-handedly induced the single biggest mass migration of genes in the history of any species.

That’s how evolutionists, not creationists, must spell success. That’s why I’m failing this spelling bee. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Doubting Didymus

Albert, have you nothing to offer but assertions? The idea that natural 'is' should equal human 'ought' is so utterly illogical the it has an entire fallacy named after itself.

Please, offer up some sort of actual reason why we should take our morals from the force that brought us to be. All you are doing is making empty claims to that effect, and you provide absolutely no reason at all why I or anyone else should believe you.

Let me take the logic elsewhere:

If we are here because the fittest survive, we should say: only the fittest ought to survive. This is your claim.

It follows the form:

If A exists due to B, A should consider B as good and moral.

If I am here because my father married my mother, I should say: my father ought to have married my mother. Is this also universally true? Can you think of any exceptions to this? (I know I can!)

The mouse with the ear on its back is here because of genetic experimentation, therefore the mouse should consider genetic experimentation good and moral.

A freind of mine is here because of in-vitro fertilisation. Therefore, she has no right to dislike it, she must consider it good and moral.

Imagine that cloning becomes legal. A clone is born who, due to the primitive state of our research so far, is racked with physical defects and curses his lot. According to your logic, that man is illogical to campaign against human cloning, even if it disgusts him. As it is the force that created him, he must consider it good and moral.

Wake up and smell the fallacy, Albert. That evolution is the force that we owe our existence to does not have any impact at all on the moral system we should have.

Godless Dave

True. Now, who the hell is claiming that evolutionary fitness is or should be a moral standard?