On 11 mei, 16:21, Bill Patterson
gmail.com> wrote:> On May 10, 3:06�pm, James A. Donald
echeque.com> wrote:
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>>> � � --
>> James A. Donald
>
>>>> We are a pack animal. �Our mode of survival requires
>>>> collaboration with others. �We therefore prefer to
>>>> collaborate with those that seem unlikely to cut our
>>>> throats, and need to persuade others we are unlikely
>>>> to cut their throats.
>
>>>> "Evil" is those characteristics that indicate a
>>>> willingness to harm friends, associates and random
>>>> innocents in the general vicinity, "evil acts" are
>>>> acts indicative of such propensity.
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>> veritas
>
>>> I still have a problem with that theory. �There is no
>>> group of people, no society in the world that does not
>>> have a religion. �That indicates that we are born with
>>> a certain set of genes that guides our morals.
>
>> No, it indicates that we are born with a propensity to
>> believe in conscious action and conscious causes even
>> when that consciousness is not there, for much the same
>> evolutionary reasons as we are born with a propensity to
>> see faces even in random shapes that do not look much
>> like faces.
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>> We are *also* and quite independently, born with genes
>> that guide our moral judgment (for the reasons I gave
>> above - people are potentially dangerous) but morality,
>> justice, and right conduct has nothing to do with
>> religion. �The spirits of most primitive religions are
>> amoral and for the most part actively hostile to humans.
>> Most primitive religions are a collection of
>> superstitions for avoiding things that might supposedly
>> draw the attention of the spirits. �The objective of
>> most primitive rituals is to persuade the spirits to
>> stay away.
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>> To the extent that religion addresses morality, it is
>> actively hostile to what is right and just.
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>> People who claim to represent the Gods and speak on
>> behalf of the Gods are usually wicked people, who do
>> wicked things, which they claim are virtuous things,
>> because their God supposedly made them do it. �Further,
>> they attribute to their God responsibility for anything
>> that impresses and frightens people, so their God
>> supposedly does wicked things, which they need to claim
>> are virtuous things.
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>> This is particularly apparent in religions that require
>> human sacrifice - for example the Aztec religion,
>> environmentalism, and Allah worship. �Christianity is
>> considerably less dreadful, having originated in an
>> effort to rehabilitate the disturbingly racist,
>> wrathful, and genocidal god of the old testament, but it
>> is merely a more innocuous form of the disease, as
>> vaccina is a comparatively harmless form of smallpox.
>
>>> As for "evil", there is no evil, as there is no "good". �
>
>> To make such an assertion after the events of the twentieth
>> century is ludicrous.
>> --
>> � ----------------------
>> We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
>> of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
>> right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.
>
>
> "Genes that guide our moral judgment" is just silly, except in the
> limited sense that we have individual predispositions to find some
> things pleasurable or not.- Tekst uit oorspronkelijk bericht niet weergeven -
>
> - Tekst uit oorspronkelijk bericht weergeven -
Why would it be silly?
Much animal behaviout seems to be gentically predetermened.
Why wouldn't surivival of the fittest, benefit, genes that make
"moral" behviour more likely within social animals?
"Moral" is only the kind of behaviour that benefits others inside the
social group instead of the individual only.
Without "moral" behaviour there wouldn't be any social animals,
and humanity would have become extinct before it ever came into
being :-)
Peter van Velzen
May 2008
Amstelveen
The Netherlands
