Susan wrote:
> let's assume for a moment that an Aribter (cap "a") exists and morals are
> objective. How do we tell what is moral? Genocide was perfectly ok in
> Biblical times (in fact the Biblical god orders it done in a couple of
> places) and is NOT ok in modern America. Which is correct? And how do we
> tell? Our hearts? The Nazi's hearts told them it was ok to commit
genocide.
> We evaluate the situation with our history, our intelligence, and our
> "hearts" and we make our moral choices. That's how Hitler did it, it's how
> St. Augustine did it, it's how my next door neighbor does it and it's how
> *you* do it. That's because all of the above are humans who evolved a
> capacity for morality just as we have evolved a capacity to argue about
it.
> :-)
>
> Susan
Jeremy wrote:
>But you are assuming that all peoples are equally evolved. You give Hitler
>the quality of morality and a heart also ?
yes. By his own evaluation of his situation, he was doing the right thing.
The reason a lot of Europeans and Americans didn't move against him sooner
was because they agreed with his opinion of Jews. But fortunately, by
almost anybody else's (including a lot of Germans) he was doing the deeply
immoral thing. The problem with morality and a lot of other human
qualities is that humans--for good or ill--have enormous behavioral
flexibility. We can do almost any thing and convince ourselves that it is
the *right* thing to do.
But to drift back in the direction of the topic of this list:
Religionists are threatened by evolution--not, I think, because it turns
Genesis into a metaphor--but because that means that we didn't have our
morality handed to us from on high. It evolved. They have a fantasy of a
pristine, perfect morality somewhere that we mere humans are to try to
emulate. Also, if you catch someone not emulating that perfect morality,
you can cheerfully smash them, knowing that you are doing the right thing.
Just helping God out a bit. The problem is, as I pointed out at the
beginning of this post, if such a perfect morality existed there would be
no way to figure out what it is.
In reality evolution doesn't have anything at all to do with morality any
more than electrical engineering does. The Pope (a famous atheist!)
believes evolution to be true and has no conflict because he believes that
God created the human soul and handed out the perfect, pristine morality at
that time (and free will so we can either choose to be bad or to be saved
by Christ if we want to). Only our bodies evolved.
Susan
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