I do find it interesting that the existence of altruistic instincts is being used as evidence against religion. If there is a Creator God, is it so surprising that he would create human beings with some kind of natural inclination to moral behavior? It seems to me the heart of this argument is a chicken-and-egg type question: Did God provide revelation to clarify the morals he had already written into our biological make-up?
Or did humans somehow evolve conscience-like instincts and then invent religion as a means of justifying it? I feel that how we answer such questions will go a ways toward deciding how seriously we should take morality. The conclusion we end up with often depends upon where in the continuum of the story of life we start and stop.
The question may not simply be answered because conscious but not self-conscious animals exhibit traits which self conscious human mind defines as displaying a kind of morality that religion claims is rooted in God. That kind of choice would not seem destined to insure the survival of the best among us.
It would be hard to argue that animalistic behavior which might seem to us as rudimentary morality would seem to the animal as such. They just do what their conscious but not self-conscious brains direct them to do. Self-conscious human beings, not God, created their religions.
But what makes an animal self-conscious rather than just conscious? To me it is a reality question not a religious question. And is it also possible that it is unique personality which God bestows on humans during the evolutionary process which forever separates personal human beings as self-conscious from their animal forbears whose growth apparently stopped at least so far at the level of consciousness.
Why do we care what others do? Without disagreeing with this latter point, must religion come in to explain the uniquely human rules of engagement? As another evolutionary psychologist, I wonder how evolution supports the considerable amounts of energy and time that go into monitoring and punishing others, not to mention the mental gymnastics required to justify our behavior.
Surely evolutionary pressures run counter to this extreme level of investment in matters that do not affect us. Or do these matters affect us? Are we missing some sort of profound benefit to our genes that justifies these top-down, conscious and unconscious mental gymnastics that are time consuming, and result in compulsive monitoring of ourselves and others? To address this question requires that the analysis consider selection pressures on qualities that are uniquely human.
Many scientists agree that humans are unique in the extent to which they must give prolonged care to helpless infants.
My work suggests that this uniquely human condition shaped a human capacity for suppressing self-interest, at high cost, over long periods of time, and even in the absence of reciprocity. This process would create increasingly intricate and subtle neuroanalytic capabilities for attempting to solve the unsolvable. Because these mechanisms, iterated over time, equip us with rather large computational devices, we are able to anticipate the inherent tragedies that result from this war between self and other, and among different others.
Whether it is a jealous lover who cannot reconcile his hatred and love for his wife or a single mother who cannot reconcile her cocaine addiction with her need to work for a living, on some level we know that motivational conflicts can and do result in tragedy.
As we are interdependent with individuals in our social world, perhaps it is in our evolutionary interest to use our reason to create and follow rules, to reduce even slightly the prevalence and incidence of harm to all.
In this way, the uniquely human part of morality—our allegiance to creating, following, and enforcing rules—may amount to a desperate act of altruism, so compelling that we give up our own freedom, wants, and needs to try to prevent the horrific inevitable consequences of being endowed with competing and contradictory social instincts.
As for God and religion, perhaps it takes faith in a higher power to live with the irresistible conclusion that the war between self and other cannot be won. But then this means that faith also excuses us from following the moral systems that are distinctly human, permitting arguably the most heinous types of tragedy.
In the final paragraphs of the essay, Prof de Waal expresses concern about the moral status of a prospective religion-free society although in a pluralistic society, the question seems better addressed at the level of community, defined broadly.
Surely no one in this forum considers the moral status of contemporary religion-infused societies including, sadly, the US even acceptable, never mind admirably high or can have failed to note that the moral status of the US seems steadily to decline as the degree of religious infusion increases.
Commenter Paul makes a point that I think warrants elaboration. This is because Buddhism is not based on any God Buddha was just a man to make sure that you are moral, but stresses the importance of practicing selfless behavior as guided by your conscience. Furthermore, Buddhist practice and beliefs are scientifically-based. Many of the things that Siddhartha predicted when he was here on earth are just starting to be confirmed scientifically.
This includes the size of atom and dark matter. Maybe what religion is good for is practicing what we intuitively know. We cannot always count on science to prove something before we believe it because there are limitations on how fast science can improve and how fast it can generate information. What is striking about the hundreds of reactions to my blog here and elsewhere such as opinionator. To have a productive debate, religion needs to recognize the power of the scientific method and the truths it has revealed, but its opponents need to recognize that one cannot simply dismiss a social phenomenon found in every major society.
If humans are inherently religious, or at least show rituals related to the supernatural, there is a big question to be answered. The question is not whether God exists, or not — which I find a monumentally uninteresting question defined by the narrow parameters of monotheism — but why humans universally feel the need for supernatural entities.
Is this just to stay socially connected or does it also underpin morality? And if so, what will happen to morality in its absence? Just posing such an obvious question has become controversial in an atmosphere in which one has to be either pro science or pro religion. How did we get maneuvered into this polarization, this small-mindedness, as if we are taking part in the Oxford Debating Society, where all that matters is winning or losing?
Remember, we are talking about how to lead our lives and why try to be good — very personal questions — and all we get is a shouting match. There are in fact no answers to these questions, only approximations, and while science may be an excellent source of information it is simply not designed to offer any inspiration. Ironically, even atheism is a product of this desire, as explained by the philosopher John Gray:. In claiming that there is only one true faith, it gave truth a supreme value it had not had before.
It also made disbelief in the divine possible for the first time. The long-delayed consequence of the Christian faith was an idolatry of truth that found its most complete expression in atheism. Skinner, who thought that humans could achieve greater happiness and productivity if they just followed reward and punishment schemes.
Apart from the question how moral these societies turned out to be, I find it intriguing that Communism began to look more and more like a religion itself. The singing, marching, reciting of poems and pledges and waving in the air of Little Red Books smacked of holy fervor, hence my remark that any movement that tries to promote a certain moral agenda — even while denying God — will soon look like a religion.
Since people look up to those perceived as more knowledgeable, anyone who wants to promote a certain agenda, even one inspired by science, will inevitably come face to face with the human tendency to follow leaders and let them do the thinking.
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant saw as little value in human kindness as former U. Vice President Dick Cheney did in energy conservation. Who needs tender feelings if duty is all that matters? The opposite view was voiced by Joel Marks, who prefers someone with the spontaneous impulse to help over someone who helps based on the calculation that it will be good to do so.
It is an interesting dilemma, comparable to the question whom you want to be married to, someone who loves you or someone who is equally nice but acts out of duty? Human morality is sturdier and more reliable if supported by genuine prosocial tendencies, which is why it is so important to demonstrate, as I have done in my primate research, that many of these tendencies are older than our species. Morality is a system of behavioral rules that transcends the individual.
Self-interest is of course recognized, but it is weighed against the interests of the larger community. It is designed to reduce strife and promote social cohesion. Concern about the community is to some degree recognizable in chimpanzees, but humans are masters at it and have turned it into a set of social norms that everyone is supposed to obey.
Smith meant that we judge situations as moral or immoral even if we are not directly involved, but this is not to deny our interest in the moral level of society as a whole. Morality promotes cooperation, as Darwin already speculated, so it is important for us to monitor it at every level, whether we are directly affected or not. As soon as morality begins to crumble around us, our own well-being as a member of society is at risk.
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The Meat Eaters ». Morals without God? October 17th, Categories: Animals, Humans, Participants Tags: altruism , empathy , primates , science. Christina Forbes. October 17, at pm. Joe Clarkson. Richard Guha. October 18, at am. Mark Sloan. Joel Marks. Gretchen Icenogle. October 18, at pm. Jerry Landis. James H. Andrew Jehan. October 19, at am. Edward Hackett. Nick Healey. Tom Givon. Beth Deuble. October 19, at pm. Israel Dalven.
John C. William N. October 20, at am. Michele Briere. October 21, at pm. Sally Haslanger. October 22, at am. Tsvetoslav Shalev. October 22, at pm. October 24, at pm. Dave Elders. October 25, at pm. Stephanie L Brown. Charles Wolverton.
October 27, at pm. William Hong. October 28, at pm. Frans de Waal. October 29, at pm. Jason King. November 1, at am. The Meat Eaters » Morals without God? Bottom-Up Morality A few years ago Sarah Brosnan and I demonstrated that primates will happily perform a task for cucumber slices until they see others getting grapes, which taste so much better. The Atheist Dilemma Over the past few years, we have gotten used to a strident atheism arguing that God is not great Christopher Hitchens or a delusion Richard Dawkins.
What precept might we adopt? Let us examine this principle. Suppose you lived a totally selfish life of immediate gratification of every desire. Suppose that whenever someone else had something you wanted, you took it for yourself.
Depending upon how outrageous your activity had been, you might very well lose your life in an orgy of neighborly revenge. The life of total but unenlightened self-interest might be exciting and pleasant as long as it lasts — but it is not likely to last long.
An enlightened strategy will be one which, when practiced over a long span of time, will generate ever greater amounts and varieties of pleasures and satisfactions. It is obvious that more is to be gained by cooperating with others than by acts of isolated egoism. One man with a rock cannot kill a buffalo for dinner. But a group of men or women, with lots of rocks, can drive the beast off a cliff and — even after dividing the meat up among them — will still have more to eat than they would have had without cooperation.
But cooperation is a two-way street. If you cooperate with several others to kill buffaloes, and each time they drive you away from the kill and eat it themselves, you will quickly take your services elsewhere, and you will leave the ingrates to stumble along without the Paleolithic equivalent of a fourth-for-bridge.
Cooperation implies reciprocity. Justice has its roots in the problem of determining fairness and reciprocity in cooperation. If I cooperate with you in tilling your field of corn, how much of the corn is due me at harvest time? When there is justice, cooperation operates at maximal efficiency, and the fruits of cooperation become ever more desirable. Thus, enlightened self-interest entails a desire for justice.
With justice and with cooperation, we can have symphonies. Let us bring this essay back to the point of our departure. Because we have the nervous systems of social animals, we are generally happier in the company of our fellow creatures than alone. Because we are emotionally suggestible, as we practice enlightened self-interest we usually will be wise to choose behaviors which will make others happy and willing to cooperate and accept us — for their happiness will reflect back upon us and intensify our own happiness.
On the other hand, actions which harm others and make them unhappy — even if they do not trigger overt retaliation which decreases our happiness — will create an emotional milieu which, because of our suggestibility, will make us less happy. Because our nervous systems are imprintable, we are able not only to fall in love at first sight, we are able to love objects and ideals as well as people, and we are able to love with variable intensities. Like the gosling attracted to the toy train, we are pulled forward by the desire for love.
A major aim of enlightened self-interest, surely, is to give and receive love, both sexual and nonsexual. As a general — though not absolute — rule, we must choose those behaviors which will be likely to bring us love and acceptance, and we must eschew those behaviors which will not.
Another aim of enlightened self-interest is to seek beauty in all its forms, to preserve and prolong its resonance between the world outside and that within. Beauty and love are but different facets of the same jewel: love is beautiful, and we love beauty.
The experience of love and beauty, however, is a passive function of the mind. How much greater is the joy which comes from creating beauty. Moreover, if one is sufficiently powerful, like a Ferdinand Marcos or a Papa Doc Duvalier or even a Donald Trump, then one can pretty much ignore the dictates of conscience and safely live in self-indulgence.
Historian Stewart C. Acts of self-sacrifice become particularly inept on a naturalistic world view. Why should you sacrifice your self-interest and especially your life for the sake of someone else? There can be no good reason for adopting such a self-negating course of action on the naturalistic world view.
Considered from the socio-biological point of view, such altruistic behavior is merely the result of evolutionary conditioning which helps to perpetuate the species. A mother rushing into a burning house to rescue her children or a soldier throwing his body over a hand grenade to save his comrades does nothing more significant or praiseworthy, morally speaking, than a fighter ant which sacrifices itself for the sake of the ant hill.
Common sense dictates that we should resist, if we can, the socio-biological pressures to such self-destructive activity and choose instead to act in our best self-interest. The philosopher of religion John Hick invites us to imagine an ant suddenly endowed with the insights of socio-biology and the freedom to make personal decisions.
He writes:. Suppose him to be called upon to immolate himself for the sake of the ant-hill. He feels the powerful pressure of instinct pushing him towards this self-destruction. But he asks himself why he should voluntarily.
Why should he regard the future existence of a million million other ants as more important to him than his own continued existence? Since all that he is and has or ever can have is his own present existence, surely in so far as he is free from the domination of the blind force of instinct he will opt for life—his own life.
Now why should we choose any differently? Life is too short to jeopardize it by acting out of anything but pure self-interest. Sacrifice for another person is just stupid.
Thus the absence of moral accountability from the philosophy of naturalism makes an ethic of compassion and self-sacrifice a hollow abstraction. The principle of respect for persons and the principle of the survival of the fittest are mutually exclusive. We thus come to radically different perspectives on morality depending upon whether or not God exists. If God exists, there is a sound foundation for morality. If God does not exist, then, as Nietzsche saw, we are ultimately landed in nihilism.
But the choice between the two need not be arbitrarily made. On the contrary, the very considerations we have been discussing can constitute moral justification for the existence of God.
For example, if we do think that objective moral values exist, then we shall be led logically to the conclusion that God exists. And could anything be more obvious than that objective moral values do exist? There is no more reason to deny the objective reality of moral values than the objective reality of the physical world. The reasoning of Ruse is at worst a text-book example of the genetic fallacy and at best only proves that our subjective perception of objective moral values has evolved.
But if moral values are gradually discovered, not invented, then such a gradual and fallible apprehension of the moral realm no more undermines the objective reality of that realm than our gradual, fallible perception of the physical world undermines the objectivity of that realm.
The fact is that we do apprehend objective values, and we all know it. Actions like rape, torture, child abuse, and brutality are not just socially unacceptable behavior—they are moral abominations. People who fail to see this are just morally handicapped, and there is no reason to allow their impaired vision to call into question what we see clearly. Thus, the existence of objective moral values serves to demonstrate the existence of God. Or consider the nature of moral obligation.
What makes certain actions right or wrong for us? What or who imposes moral duties upon us? Why is it that we ought to do certain things and ought not to do other things? A duty is something that is owed. But something can be owed only to some person or persons. There can be no such thing as duty in isolation. The idea of political or legal obligation is clear enough.
Similarly, the idea of an obligation higher than this, and referred to as moral obligation, is clear enough, provided reference to some lawmaker higher. In other words, our moral obligations can. This does give a clear sense to the claim that our moral obligations are more binding upon us than our political obligations. It is no abuse of the term to describe this agency as a kind of god. Thus, the commands of morality and the commands of reason more generally require a god because they are, and can only be, the commands of one.
Well, if that is the case all moral and rational appearances constitute illusions and all our moral beliefs are false. Happily, however, there seems no rational way to reach this conclusion.
If the commands of reason really do require a god, then that god exists beyond reasonable doubt. For any argument that sought to show that a god does not exist would have to appeal to some commands of reason, and thus would have to presuppose the existence of the very thing it is denying.
The same applies to any argument that seeks to show that the commands of reason do not exist in reality. All such arguments undermine themselves. Thus, if the commands of reason are — and can only be — the commands of a god, then that god exists indubitably.
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Moral commands are the commands of a unique, external, eternal agent.
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