I’ve been accused of being amoral because I don’t believe in God many times. Finally, I decided to write down a theory of how people could be moral without being religious. Basically, I explained that we would have needed to evolve concern for members of our troop or tribe to survive and that empathy is a natural offshoot of this. I believe empathy is all that is needed for morality, not some system including a belief in the supernatural.

You can read my article about morality without religion at this web address – http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/480619/where_morality_comes_from_one_atheists.html?cat=47

Oh yes i agree 100% about the moral argument. I find it absolutely disataseful any religion purports to be more moralistic than a person who lives a moral life with no need for the so called moral controls of a deity.

Their god is a narcissistic mysogenistic genocidal bastard responsible for the annihilation of almost everyone on earth and later went after entire civilizations of survivors. The very same who killed more than dozen children for making fun of a bald man, ordered a man to kill his child, chose for his prophets incestuous rapists and murderers.

If that’s the deity guiding their morals, then we’re all at great risk. I suggest we work immediately to lock them all away.

Jason, you may be right, but you’ll never win a debate against religious based on that. They’ll shoot you with the no true scotman fallacy quicker than you can even blink your own eye, “but that’s not a true christian!”. One wonders what that even means…

By the christians version every atheist is the most immoral, untrustworthy person around. This just does’t stand up to scrutiny.

To give credence to their own lies they feel a need to degrade someone else.
Yet historically religions all are amongst the most perverse group within our society. One only has to watch them at work, view any of the various court cases against churches or their members for the most distasteful of crimes, or just watch how they prey upon the needy to recruit new members.

Of course, the fact they have no internal oil supply means they can’t fight :). Essentially, you can’t go to war because without trade you die. Similar to Germany in 18, but worse.

As it is, large scale world wars are unlikely, if only because the countries capable of doing them would take too much damage. Small scale wars on the other hand will continue.

But I don’t think it really challenges the original idea. Knowledge of the other person is crucial for co-operation – as we can’t trust someone we don’t know. Early social groups (as I recall) often knew so little about others that they didn’t even regard them as people. They had no way of predicting their behaviour, which would have made co-operation too risky. So defensiveness and exploitation would’ve ruled until the two groups got to know each other a little better. You can see this even up to the present day – in wars which had popular support it was common to see the enemy dehumanised.

Where the possibility of co-operation is realised, wars tend to be quite rare. You run the danger of severe losses, even if you win. And trade is often the cheaper route than occupation in the long-run.

Not to mention the fact that aggression makes you a less inviting partner for others to deal with.

Consequently, empires tend to be quite unstable – sure you get some benefits, but you end up making enemies both abroad and at home.

The world seems to be moving towards an “evolutionarily stable strategy” – no country wants to be taken advantage of, but most see the long-term benefits of co-operation (and remember what tends to happen to those that don’t play nice). Just like people.