A Question Of Morality?
Due to recent discussions on my blog post Answering “ed”, I’ve felt it necessary to clarify a few of the points I made when responding to the comments made by ed. A lot of the things I wrote were not explained well enough since I hadn’t had the time to sit down and think out my words properly. Before I do this though, I should add this simple “disclaimer”:
I am not, in any way (academically or otherwise) a sociologist and I have never studied sociology. I am however, a freethinker, and as such have formed by ideas on the origins of morality merely on what I have read, combined with my own reasoned thinking. As a freethinker, I invite anyone to criticize and even disprove my points, as long as you have decent enough evidence to suggest otherwise.
Now I’ve got that out the way, I’ll begin.
Christians love to claim that the Bible brought morality into the world, and that without God, we would all be treacherous murdering bastards (to use the term lightly). This is simply not the case, and if it were, we simply wouldn’t be here today. Can you imagine a world without morality? People would kill people simply for the fun of it, we would steal, insult, rape, and torture. Not just certain individuals…but everyone. The outcome? Extinction.
Yet supposedly this world already existed, and not too long ago either. In fact, if we go back about 2000 years, we should find ourselves in the middle of a civil war between every member of the human race. What we do find however, is a relatively peaceful society, prone to the occasional conflict, but on the whole quite sophisticated both socially and technologically. The Bible will not be seen for at least another 200 years or so (in its current format), and yet we see murderers being executed along with thieves. Some form of morality is in place here, so where does it come from?
Let’s rewind even further, 2 million years, and pay a visit to the first ancestors of modern humans that lived in what can be described as a “society”. These creatures lived in small groups, hunting for food for the entire group, so already there is a moral value present, namely the protection of those who are closest to you. If the women and children didn’t get fed by the male hunters they would die, and the men must have had some impulse to fend for the tribe they belonged to. This is a “moral” that can be observed in almost every species of animal, and it is largely a result of evolutionary instinct.
Instinct, rather “Instinctual Morality” is the most basic form of morality in my hypothetical theory of “Democratic Morality” which I described in the comments section of the “Answering ed” article. It provides us with the reasoning to know that killing someone is wrong, just as theft and rape is wrong. Of course it is evidently a weak moral force in our lives, since there are murderers, thieves, and rapists at large. Having said that, the vast majority of people would never commit such atrocities, even in a society which didn’t punish them. There is some evolutionary trait that tells us what it right and wrong.
One step up the morality tree and we reach what I called “Close Social Morality”, the morality formed within a close group of people, usually a family or group of friends. This morality is formed from social agreements that interact and sometimes overrule your “Instinctual Morality”. An example I originally gave was the concept of theft, which on an instinctual level we know to be wrong, since the concept of ownership can also be said to be instinctual. However, the trust formed in the bonds between family and friends allows small acts of petty theft, i.e. the stealing of another person’s food or other consumables. If you want a live example, then you can consider my flat, a grouping of 8 people living together with one kitchen. If I run out of milk, I simply use someone else’s. I don’t need to tell them since there is an unwritten agreement between our social group that allows for such an act to be committed. I know that at some point, another will “steal” milk from me, but this also goes along with the idea of “Close Social Morality”.
The third step up the hierarchy is “Expanded Social Morality”, which as you can probably guess, is simply a larger version of “Close Social Morality”. It is the kind of morality that affects the entire world, and individual nations, even progressing down to smaller communities. In essence it is the defining morality that we live by in society; a true democratic morality, determined by the majority vote. “Close Social Morality” has no place in a world run by “Expanded Social Morality” because it depends on a certain level of trust that just doesn’t appear in larger social groups.
It makes sense to say that “Expanded Social Morality” has been the defining factor in the development of society, and can be seen in most modern societies. Most if not all religions simply latched onto the morals that were present in society at the time, and re-branded them as specific rules to live by. Morality didn’t come from the Bible, the Bible came from morality. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the so called “morals” in the Bible that condone slavery and rape are not morals that should be present in our modern society. Of course, they were not morally wrong in the context of the time, but we have outgrown them as a species, and in doing so have become better for it.
Of course, this is only my educated and rationalized hypothesis on how morality works. Nothing would make me happier than for someone with a degree in sociology to come and either support of disprove all my points! Of course, naturally if anyone has any objections to my article, I will most happily debate them in the comments.
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Great article and a good read. Richard Dawkins talks about something similar in The God Delusion in the chapter titled “The good book and the moral zeitgeist”
Mike
25 Mar 08 at 5:58 pm (GMT)
Monotheist morality stretches back beyond the New Testament (2000 years), the old testament and even beyond Abraham (1700 BC if I am correct). One bible story - Caine and Able, is seen by many as description of the conflict between the two types of farmer - early cultivators and herdsmen. So you will probably need to go back to the ‘hunter gatherer’ period before you can convincingly argue that the development of moral behaviour occurred before the period of the bible. Go back that far and many would argue that because behaviour leaves no fossils, then origins of behaviour are lost in the mists of time.
It is not an argument I would accept and there is little doubt for me that moral behaviour proceeded the Old Testament period.
There is no evidence that moral behaviour is in any way instinctive. There is substantial amount of evidence and logic against. It is not for me to rehearse the evidence here, I suggest you do look at the work of the behavioral science disciplines - anthropology, sociology, political science and psychology.
Dawkins is none of these. He is a geneticist. As physical science searches for the THE THEORY EVERYTHING, Dawkins would no doubt like to believe that ‘The Selfish Gene’ maybe the theory of everything in the biological and social science. It is not and never will be. Look closely and you will see Dawkins is not even a Darwinian evolutionist. Dawkins is an evolutionist but more in the mould of ethology and Konrad Lorenz. Lorenz’s theories were used by the Nazi’s to justify ethnic cleansing and the mass murder of millions of Jews, gypsies and other misfits to their perfect race. Lorenze recanted.
Its a very dangerous road you travel when you claim that any behaviour, let alone such a complex behaviour as morality, is genetically given in any way. It maybe very fashionable today but simple logic will tell you that there are not enough genes to account for the infinite variability of human behavior. To say that a gene is a weak or strong is a cop-out in face weak evidence.
If you knew about genes then you will know that no individual action or environmental influence has any impact of the genes we pass on. That is already determined. Yet behaviour, especially moral behaviour, changes not only between generations, but within a generation, even within a day. No gene will ever account for that rapid change.
The beauty of humans, the reason for human adaptability and survival across various environments is that humans, like rats have very few instinctive behaviours. Claim any more that you claim that Pavlov’s salivating dogs tell us all about human behaviour. Some do, you are not alone. The vast majority of human behaviour is learnt. I suggest you look at the behavioral sciences for the mechanisms by which simple, let alone complexity, behaviours are learnt. That will include superstitious behaviour - one of the more simple religious behaviours.
Dawkins gets close to the behavioral sciences wherein he talks about memes, but like so many Dawkins, reinvents the wheel. If a meme is a socially transmitted predisposition to respond, then what is an ‘attitude’? The definition is the same. Atitude theory has substantial body of knowledge gained from research undertaken for decades back into the last century. Should Dawkins bother to walk down the corridors to his colleagues then he would have been told that the theory of attitudes and therefore memes has a number of problems. Not least that attitudes cannot be seen or directly measured but thier existence has to be inferred.
The religious soul is another invention that cannot be seen or measured. Those who search for genetic determination of behaviour may be seeking to establish scientific evidence for a soul.
Which points to a curious fact in this debate. Why are the social sciences so silent on subject about which they know so much? Perhaps because they know this is not a logical debate but an emotionally debate between two sets of beliefs. Perhaps because social scientists know that reason will not prevail until the emotions have been exhausted.
just Jack
29 Mar 08 at 5:59 pm (GMT)
Jack, I’m no expert as you pretend to be, but:
“(1700 BC if I am correct)”
You do not believe the Earth to be 6000 years old, do you?
“There is no evidence that moral behaviour is in any way instinctive”
I doubt that. Like I said, I’m no expert, but I remember seeing some studies with very interesting results in that direction. Especially when it comes to reactions without thinking, one would not expect that the Bible’s teachings to be very effective! Rather, it is the instinct that drives such reactions. And most of them are morally “biased”.
“There is substantial amount of evidence and logic against.”
Which is? You make a lot of noise with your claims but without giving any example or evidence whatsoever. I can say that the teaching of a moral conduct does give the “subject” an upgrade of morality. That’s called “Education”. And it comes from “Culture”, which is, culturally biased towards the traditions of the countries we live in. It’s no wonder you equate so much the Bible with Morals, because it has been so for so many years. Still, it fails to recognize that the Bible DOES preach rape and homossexual discrimination, for example, when we already learnt that this should not be the case. It also preaches genocide. The core of what we say is that we KNOW these things to be bad DESPITE what the Bible says, which means that our values don’t come from the Bible, but rather from an empirical method.
“Lorenz’s theories were used by the Nazi’s to justify ethnic cleansing and the mass murder of millions of Jews, gypsies and other misfits to their perfect race.”
So was Democracy. So was the military. So were the people. So were the weapons. So what? If you use the Bible to beat someone to death, does that mean that the Bible is the devil, or you’re the devil? That’s a childish comment.
“If you knew about genes then you will know that no individual action or environmental influence has any impact of the genes we pass on. That is already determined. Yet behaviour, especially moral behaviour, changes not only between generations, but within a generation, even within a day. No gene will ever account for that rapid change.”
If YOU knew about genes you WOULD know that the individual actions of the parents of a child are DIRECTLY responsible for that child’s survival and success. If that parent decides to kill himself, there’s little hope for the child. If the parent decides to kill someone’s child, there’s a chance of a revenge. This is addressed in the theories of evolution: the better the society works as a whole, the better it is prepared to survive, and in the long term, people will choose better solutions and increase their morals. This happens in real History. Our morals today cannot compare to those a thousand years ago.
To the notion that someone can change “in a second”, well yes, but that is a totally different subject.
“The vast majority of human behaviour is learnt.”
Yes, but even culture and society’s behaviours do have evolutionary patterns and phenomenons. Culture evolution is like the gene’s one, but very faster. People not be naturally “sacked” by Natural Selection for the gene to evolve, because culture can be spread throughout the species.
“Should Dawkins bother to walk down the corridors to his colleagues then he would have been told that the theory of attitudes and therefore memes has a number of problems.”
Again, everything that a Evolutionist preaches is very complicated and has a lot of problems, while I’m sure that your solution is simple, straightforward and oh so very true! Bollocks. If they have problems, let them solve them, just like Evolution had its problems and they were eventually solved. That’s called “Science” btw, and not “Dogma”.
“The religious soul is another invention that cannot be seen or measured.”
Allelluiah to that.
“Perhaps because social scientists know that reason will not prevail until the emotions have been exhausted.”
If so, adamantly wrong about that. It’s very very bad for scientists to shut up when the discussion is about their thematics, what are they thinking? They should concern themselves to discuss these matters when they are hot, not when they are iced. If they “decided” to shut up, it is because a) they have nothing to note about this, or b) they agree generally with Dawkins. c) they don’t like Dawkins case but don’t care is not acceptable.
LuisDias
31 Mar 08 at 11:51 pm (GMT)