Christian ethics and human evolution

It is not a question of belief but a question of logic. In order to argue that morality is eternally constant, e.g. an absolute you have to propose it to originate from outside the system under investigation. Thus a denial of the supernatural, or as I prefer to call it, the metaphysical, to avoid people thinking of magic and woo, does not allow you to propose absolute morality as its expression is system dependent. This makes morality a matter of current opinion instead of an absolute law.
" Free of supernaturalism, it recognizes human beings as a part of nature and holds that values-be they religious, ethical, social, or political-have their source in human experience and culture." whilst a theist would propose that they have their source outside of it in God, but are perceived by human experience.

Thus, as far as I am aware humanists tend to deny the supernatural. As the expression “tend to” implies I find that most do, but feel free to argue that as a humanist you do not reject the supernatural. You may even be part of the church of metaphysical humanism in which case it would be interesting to discuss your concept of the origins of ethics.

Nope. You can just argue that morality is eternally constant, or that it arises itself the way that imaginary gods do. This “logic” is a garden path. I’m not even addressing the painfully obvious fact that designating your source of “eternally constant” anything to be “god” doesn’t say anything useful, since “god” means, you know, whatever you want it to mean.

But you didn’t answer my question, which wasn’t about how humans arrive at their assumptions/assertions about ethics or morality. It was about why you claim that “Atheists tend to argue the idea that morality arose from evolution.” I asked you what you’ve been reading. I think the answer is probably “nothing.”

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[quote=“marvin, post:138, topic:35331, full:true”]
Good that we agree that evolution is anything but random, but does that mean that you agree with me that evolution is an ethical judgement call?[/quote]
No.

[quote]It teaches you cooperation and life support. However, is the basic of ethics absolute or does it “evolve” in itself. Atheists tend to argue the idea that morality arose from evolution as to allow to argue ethics to be current opinion and not absolute as proposed by the theological worldview.
[/quote]I’ll join Steve in requesting that you explicitly support or retract your claim about what, and particularly why, atheists tend to argue.

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@marvin

Evolution can still teach ethics without being “an ethical judgement call”. Not sure what that phrase even means.

I obviously spend to much time with youtube atheists :slight_smile: who think that morality evolves.
I invite you to argue differently and Stephen claims that morality existed eternally so he might explain how he proposed this information to be embedded in a universe that was void of life - unless he wants to claim life also existed eternally in which case I would be interested what form it would be in.
I have not yet had any atheist arguing that morality is an eternal feature, so i am interested for you to explain how it can be according to your perception of reality

Actually, no I didn’t.

Don’t know, and don’t care. You are freighting the conversation with your own assumptions. You are making assumptions about what I believe, and about what is required of anyone to make arguments or assertions about ethics and morality. It is you, not me, who needs to defend assumptions and assertions on the topic.

After all extinction can be perceived as evolutionary gene pool deletion, thus one can look at it as a consequence of fate if one takes offence in the term judgement that would imply that it was governed by a law. One can even refer to the role of a dice as judgement call but it probably depends on ones perception to be subject to reality being based on laws or if one thinks to be the origin of reality and its laws oneself.

I think someone talked about the two books of God above which I thought to be a nice metaphor for the bible and the book of nature, so yes, observed reality should teach us what ethics is about as well, but I guess for reading either of them it needs the presence of the holy spirit to understand.

okay so you would say that you cannot argue that morality is eternally constant but they arise with human imagination that reality is comprehensive. Do you believe that an absolute truth of right and wrong exists from which ethics could be derived?

Of course you can. You can argue that morality is eternally constant by saying, “morality is eternally constant.” And you can then argue that “butterscotch is the best flavor” and “happiness is a warm gun.” This is the realm of naked assertion.

What you can’t do is assemble a coherent argument for why morality is “eternally constant,” and much more importantly, you cannot assemble an even respectable argument for why its unprovable eternal constancy has anything to do with a deity.

Not really. The problem isn’t that I don’t believe in moral absolutes. The problem is that the questions and assertions (at least in your posts) are so contaminated with loaded terms like “exists” that there’s no way to just have an interesting conversation.

I understand that you find it difficult to follow my questions but I wanted not just to have an “interesting conversation” but I hoped for an answer. As you say you are a leader in a humanist community I would hope that you can explain to me how you derive morals from an evolutionary standpoint. I just would find it difficult to argue to derive rules for morality from evolution if evolution was not determined by morality. It is to me just a logical dilemma and if you believe humanism to have an answer to it you should feel happy to explain how you can do it and how it would compare to Christian ethics.

@marvin

Remember that I myself am a Unitarian Universalist… so I’m probably doomed.

But if you assert that Yahweh is eternal, and the author of morality, it becomes a metaphysical truth that morality is eternal.

The biologists’ views of morality evolving is certainly interesting for those who don’t think God is the author of morality.

No one in this conversation has said that they “derive rules for morality from evolution.” This strange projection of yours has been called out more than once. Good day.

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I think Marvin shares what seems to be a common misunderstanding among internet theists about morality not derived from God.

Christians, as I understand it, believe God gave man moral capacity and set the rules for what the morals are. Humans discover the content of the rules by studying God’s revelations.

Christians see that the alternative view is that man’s moral capacity evolved, and they expect that the rules therefore are discovered by studying evolution.

However, from an atheistic perspective, the granting of moral capacity is not necessarily tied to the content of the rules. Although the capacity has arisen through evolution, atheists do not therefore say “survival of the fittest” or any other “rule” of evolution is good. Instead we think that humans study their parents’ behavior and our shared history and society to determine what is moral behavior.

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So does that mean that racism and slavery are okay then so long as you are in a culture and time where your parents and culture are all okay with it?

Perhaps you are confusing humanism with the bible.

Classic diversion from answering the question … so does that mean you’ve got … nothing?

It might have escaped your attention that the original question in this thread was about

which is showing a coherent strategy in survival fitness to be the ability to support the life of others as a prerequisite to our own life.

Now the strange projection of yours that the way by which we and all other life arrived in this reality has no impact on how we interact with the reality we perceive should leave you with a cognitive dissonance regarding your own existence. It definitively leaves you in conflict with those who justify their behaviour from observations in “nature”
Anyhow I accept that you do not want to debate this any further so I wish you good luck with your endeavours.

To me, raised by my parents in my society, racial discrimination and slavery are not okay. To many or most of the people who were raised in societies where those things that I dislike were ordinary, they apparently were okay. I don’t believe there is an objective okay or not okay out there to be discovered. And that is okay. If we all do our best, things will probably work out all right.

I like your confidence, and that is a good answer – probably about the best any will come up with under your accepted circumstances. Another approach those for those who can’t abide anything overtly religious is to appeal to a wider or “meta” culture forming over the years to try to appeal to some general rule that most cultures through history appear to have developed a certain core set of norms roughly like the golden rule or other similar things. The weakness in that is that it fails to speak truth to power --or ends up being no more than “cultural might” makes right. Religions have often done no better as I’m sure you are happy to point out, (being human as we are who like to co-opt anything religious or secular in order to “justify” ourselves.) But at least with religions the tools are in place for us to be challenged on it. Christians get called hypocrites (and rightly so – even by all of you who don’t even believe in any objective morality), but I have no grounds to ever challenge you on anything – you can never be a hypocrite except perhaps in that you claim one thing but then do or live by another. But even the whole concept of ‘hypocrite’ or ‘dishonesty’ must first beg from some (according to you) non-existent objective moral standard to even be recognized as wrong. There is nothing from within science that can even get those concepts off the ground much less use them. And to me that is one of the fatal flaws of the humanist system. But meanwhile I am happy that you are here on this forum calling us on things where we don’t live up to our own professed standards. On behalf of all religions everywhere, you’re welcome --we’re happy to lend you those much needed standards for frequent use. As a friend of science I’m happy that modern science has that kind of context to help give it direction. Without them, civilization (and many other things including science as we know it) will dissolve.

Added in edits: when I say “objective morality” above I meant that interchangeably with absolute morality – though I realize those terms might be teased apart. Also --further note; I don’t mean to imply that all humanists are secular humanists. I’ve heard Christian pastors claim the label for themselves too. Please excuse (or challenge!) as necessary my hasty use of labels.

to appeal to a wider or “meta” culture forming over the years to try to appeal to some general rule that most cultures through history appear to have developed a certain core set of norms roughly like the golden rule or other similar things. The weakness in that is that it fails to speak truth to power --or ends up being no more than “cultural might” makes right.

My apologies, I haven’t figured out how to quote; the above was from Merv.

My response is that that is a weakness in the usefulness of the view that there is no absolute/objective morality, but it is not a weakness in its accuracy.

Merv again:
But at least with religions the tools are in place for us to be challenged on it. Christians get called hypocrites (and rightly so – even by all of you who don’t even believe in any objective morality), but I have no grounds to ever challenge you on anything – you can never be a hypocrite except perhaps in that you claim one thing but then do or live by another.

You can challenge me on the grounds that my moral choice has net bad results. That strategy has worked quite well in changing the balance of moral opinion about gayness in many societies, even if opposed to a commonly understood religiously-based moral belief. And we can all see in the discussions here between YECs and ECs that there are disagreements even among those who agree as to the source of the objective moral code.

Merv: There is nothing from within science that can even get those concepts off the ground much less use them. And to me that is one of the fatal flaws of the humanist system.

Me: A flaw in humanism is that it’s not based in science? Whereas religion is what, completely based on science? I think your objection is really that humanism is not based on science or God? Well you are correct. Perhaps we just have to settle for the messy moral sense that most humans share.

Merv again:
On behalf of all religions everywhere, you’re welcome --we’re happy to lend you those much needed standards for frequent use.

I’m not convinced that “do unto others” is the sort of esoteric wisdom that only an religion could have the wisdom to come up with, but I appreciate your willingness to share.