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dormant_dragonSo what really constitutes right and wrong?
Some things are pretty obvious - I mean, I'm not just going to go ahead and try to kill someone. Well, unless they are trying to harm me or someone close to me, in which case I will do my damnedest to hurt them. But there are significant grey areas in the struggle to live what each of us would consider 'good' lives.
Was reading some interesting stuff online today that was essentially about the nature of morality and whether it is necessary to have religion in order to understand the distinction between right and wrong. It was posted in William Dembski's Intelligent Design blog, in response to an article in some prominent American newspaper (can you tell how much I care?!) about a freelance researcher who has found a correlation between adherence to organised religion and moral decay. Apparently, of the major western democracies, the US has both the highest rates of things like abortion, murder, other crime, teenage pregnancy, etc. and also the highest rate of devotion to organised (and usually evangelistic and fundamentalist) Christianity. So says this particular manipulation of statistics. Coincidence? The researcher thinks not.
Anyway, there followed a string of comments generally opposed to the conclusions espoused in the article, and insistent on the notion that evolution could not have produced morality - it had to have been planted by an 'intelligent designer', generally supposed by ID proponents to be the Christian god. To be fair, the article did pretty clearly reveal an anti-creationist/ID agenda, but even so, the debate over whether morality could have evolved in the human race purely as a biological function made for some interesting reading. More interesting stuff about the efforts of scientists to counter the influence of ID can be found here.
For people like me, who have abandoned faith in organised religion, sifting one's personal morals from those of the church responsible for one's childhood indoctrination is a liberating though sometimes confusing exercise. Much as it might be tempting and indeed enjoyable to adopt the hedonist's creed of 'if it feels good, do it', eventually experience tells us that there have to be limits.
More than that, morality makes demands - that we actively do things that are 'right', rather than simply avoiding things that are 'wrong'. This point doesn't seem to be emphasised enough in organised religion - or at least, not in the eyes of its critics. They tend to focus on the restrictions.
I am coming to learn that action is always preferable to inaction. For most of my life, I have only regretted the things I haven't done...
Some things are pretty obvious - I mean, I'm not just going to go ahead and try to kill someone. Well, unless they are trying to harm me or someone close to me, in which case I will do my damnedest to hurt them. But there are significant grey areas in the struggle to live what each of us would consider 'good' lives.
Was reading some interesting stuff online today that was essentially about the nature of morality and whether it is necessary to have religion in order to understand the distinction between right and wrong. It was posted in William Dembski's Intelligent Design blog, in response to an article in some prominent American newspaper (can you tell how much I care?!) about a freelance researcher who has found a correlation between adherence to organised religion and moral decay. Apparently, of the major western democracies, the US has both the highest rates of things like abortion, murder, other crime, teenage pregnancy, etc. and also the highest rate of devotion to organised (and usually evangelistic and fundamentalist) Christianity. So says this particular manipulation of statistics. Coincidence? The researcher thinks not.
Anyway, there followed a string of comments generally opposed to the conclusions espoused in the article, and insistent on the notion that evolution could not have produced morality - it had to have been planted by an 'intelligent designer', generally supposed by ID proponents to be the Christian god. To be fair, the article did pretty clearly reveal an anti-creationist/ID agenda, but even so, the debate over whether morality could have evolved in the human race purely as a biological function made for some interesting reading. More interesting stuff about the efforts of scientists to counter the influence of ID can be found here.
For people like me, who have abandoned faith in organised religion, sifting one's personal morals from those of the church responsible for one's childhood indoctrination is a liberating though sometimes confusing exercise. Much as it might be tempting and indeed enjoyable to adopt the hedonist's creed of 'if it feels good, do it', eventually experience tells us that there have to be limits.
More than that, morality makes demands - that we actively do things that are 'right', rather than simply avoiding things that are 'wrong'. This point doesn't seem to be emphasised enough in organised religion - or at least, not in the eyes of its critics. They tend to focus on the restrictions.
I am coming to learn that action is always preferable to inaction. For most of my life, I have only regretted the things I haven't done...
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-03 11:09 pm (UTC)Originally, "evil" meant "bad for you". Not "it is evil, therefore god has made it bad for you", but "it is bad for you, therefore it is evil"
Anyways, morality can't be explained by evolution. I totally agree. Then again, neither could wearing dresses. We are humans, more or less. We are not goverened by genes alone, but by memes as well. We think about actions, and create concepts to use as tools to interpret the world. Morality quite obviously could be the product of memes.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-04 12:07 am (UTC)There was another theory that came out of this, was that natural disasters were God's way of punishing indoctrinating Christians. Most of the US' natural disasters happen in the states where there are a significantly higher percentage (of population) of of Christianity.
Now, if only I could find the references for that.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-04 01:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-04 01:37 pm (UTC)In an evolutionary sense, I find it quite satisfactory to explain the development of morality as a necessary part of the functioning of a successful human society. As human intelligence developed to the point that we were able to think beyond the merely physical world, perhaps the rules of survival and social cohesion began to take on a more spiritual significance, hence the development of religion and what we understand as morality. Then, I suppose, it boils down to a chicken-and-egg question...