This is a good discussion. I agree with a lot of what you say ant, but disagree with the above. To fully explain morality, you would need to explain cultural evolution, belief systems, and much more. These things tap into the moral mechanisms we've evolved. Science can illuminate the moral mechanisms, and can illuminate the free-floating rationale behind many of the more universal moral axioms we all have, but the complexity of culture and the evolution of information aren't really compressible for study(yet).This does not explain altruistic behavior that runs much deeper.
Someone sends money to feed starving children in Ethiopia.
What is the biological advantage for the person that wrote the check?
Does this keep his "selfish genes" alive?
Science can root out shallow explanations for morality, not deeper ones.
There is no biological advantage for much of what we do. The mechanisms within us, although they have served as excellent guides during millennia of tribal life, can be hijacked, suppressed, or faulty. If we are taught from a young age that throwing grass at a fence is evil, that belief, if instilled well enough, will elicit guilt in a person with normal moral mechanisms. If we see a picture of a child that sparks our empathy, even if the child is from an enemy tribe, there is a good chance that you'll act with altruism, opportunity depending.
Even seemingly unreasonable or contradictory actions can be explained from a naturalistic perspective.
Yeah, Nietzsche's work wasn't all that peachy.The Nazi's were guilty of taking an ubermensch complex to the extreme. They were overly critical to a murderous degree. Such an imbalance is deadly for believers and non-believers alike.
You're both correct as I see it. When looking at entire populations, religion does not stop immoral behavior, on average. Yet there are many individual anecdotes where it does precisely that. What we want from a moral system isn't one that works good for some people, or even most people. We want one that minimizes the anomalies. There will always be anomalies in any such system, the trick is the find the system with the least. Religion has a track record of producing much immoral behavior. Sometimes that immoral behavior is masqueraded as noble and good because it adheres precisely to doctrine.There are many that have converted from a life of crime, because of religion, that would dispute this claim. This is a good thing, yes?Being religious doesn’t cause immoral behavior, but it is no check on it.
Amen.This is all just finger pointing, with extremities provided as a source of "evidence."
But a note of caution. Individually, the exceptions aren't support for any worthwhile claim on either side. But collectively, the ratio of hits to misses can be used to judge the merit of a moral framework.
