Evolution and morals?

Question

If evolution is true and we are just a bunch of atoms, then why do many "believers" in evolution get so upset about all the wars caused by religion. After all, isn't survival of the fittest, or most well-armed, one of the teachings that they promote? Did morals evolve?

Answer 1

Whenever I see a question like this, I am appalled to be reminded that there exists people who are so out of touch with their basic humanity, and reality, that they would not have any idea how to conduct themselves in society, absent imaginary orders from an imaginary supernatural being, based on the myths, superstitions, fairy tales and fantastical delusions of an ignorant bunch of Bronze Age fishermen and wandering goat herders.

Cooperation and altruism are innate properties of human existence... a more sophisticated version of the social organization that you can see among pods of orcas, packs of wolves, lion prides and troops of chimpanzees. Moral consensus, moral conscience and mutual empathy are evolved survival traits. These are evolved social constructs... the social lubrication that allows people to exist together. People come away with the misconception that they don't exist, absent religion. People like you scare the sh*t out of me. Religious puppet masters (seems like you might be one of those) try to perpetuate that idea, in order to protect their conduits to wealth and power... but that is a canard. This has to do, entirely, with human nature.

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"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." ~ Steven Weinberg
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Answer 2

Ah, but you are missing the point.
1) Evolution does not really have anything to do with atoms.
2) In nature, organisms do not kill each other because the other believed in something else. Organisms fight for survival, not for ideology. If there were no religious wars, less people would have died and cultures would have lived on because the human habitat (much of Earth) could have accomodated them if righteous crusaders did not wipe them out. (Also, don't most religions condemn murder?)
3) Morals are a human creation. Organisms do not have morals. Also, morals are not organisms, so they cannot evolve in a biological sense.

Answer 3

I agree with DuckPhup. You guys scare me. "If evolution is true." I assume you are questioning whether natural selection and the other theories regarding the "origins of species" are true.

Evolution is not a belief. It is not a "teaching," per-se. Do you say that you "believe" that viruses cause a cold? Put another way, what other scientific theories do you have a problem with? Nobody seems concerned about proving the Theory of General Relativity, Quantum Theory, Germ Theory, or Electromagnetic Theory. They are all just theories, but still light travels at a constant speed, the moon revolves around the earth, viruses cause a cold, E equals mc2, and my electric razor does a fair job.

I am not educated about the theories regarding the evolution of thought, conciousness, and morality. But it doesn't take a lot of brain power to intuit how the evolution of such social necessities as morality and ethics (on a tribal scale) are necessary for the propogation of the species Homo-Sapien as we are currently configured.

Answer 4

You are moving into Social Darwinism. Darwinism in the scientific sense deals with a species as a whole, not species against the same species. Social Darwinism has been debunked.

Creationists rarely deny that we are made up of atoms. However, being made of smaller components is no reason to kill people or steal.

Morals evolve with the changing times. After all, nobody said during the stone age that identity theft was immoral.

Answer 5

It may well be possible to explain concepts of altruism, right & wrong through natural law.

Are you familiar with game theory? If you've watched the movie, "A Beautiful Mind", there's a scene where the main character comes up with a "game theory" on how he and his friends can hook up with some girls. Game theory is basically cost-benefit analysis on human interactions.

It explains that certain human interactions are INHERENTLY beneficial. Things like kindness, altruism, not lying, etc will help individuals to survive. Granted, there are times where the payout to lie, cheat, and steal are worth more than playing be the rules... but generally playing by the rules pays out.

What does this mean? We are descended from a long line of survivors. The odds of survival favor people who exhibit ethics/morals over those who lie, cheat, and steal all the time. i.e. YES, MORALS EVOLVED!!!!!!!

Answer 6

Yes, morality is a product of evolution.

It's unarguably true that society as we know it could not exist if we didn't have self-imposed codes of behaviour - i.e. we make value judgments about what is 'good' and 'bad' behaviour in any particular situation. This is just one of the things which has made us such an enormously successful species, but many other species have the same traits; They care for their young, they alert others to danger, they co-exist without conflict, they co-operate to hunt prey and so on.

It's hard to say exactly what goes on in the minds of other species but we know from experiments that they experience empathy - this can even be shown in mice - and empathy is one of the key aspects of morality. When you can recognise what another individual is experiencing then that is the basis of moral values which, broadly speaking, cause people to voluntarily limit harm to others and thereby enable us to live in closely-packed co-operative societies. Morality evolved as a very successful survival strategy.

Morality is of course subjective and has the same origin for all of us, theist and atheist alike, even if the theists believe that their morality consists of simply following orders of their deity (which would not be truly moral behaviour at all, but amoral behaviour).

Everyone has their own moral values, but there are common themes such as the prohibition against killing another person, or incest. The moral issues of lesser consequence will tend to have less of a consensus of opinion. Naturally everyone who accepts evolution as a fact will have their own set of moral values which will differ from each other, just as any group of people will, but there will be common themes because of the commonality of human nature.

Also, evolution doesn't in some way dictate or promote what we should think - Evolution is simply the explanation of why we are here.

Answer 7

Yes, morals evolved...suddenly every one who thinks evolution is a possibility (you know, people with IQ's higher than the show size) became sociopathic and thought; "brilliant a wars a-coming, time to enjoy the perks of our prevcious evolutionary doctrine and watching millions of people die"
that will teach them for not believing us...

Very precisely noted on your part as well that Darwin advocated that it is the most well armed animals that survive also...that was exactly what he said, your incite is staggering!

I am Amazed how you were the only one that spotted it really - very well done to you, your nobel prize is in the post, try not to eat it

Love

Ichi

Answer 8

Servival of the fittest is not part of evolution. You are confusing it with natural selection. Natural selection is simply creatures that cannot survive in its enviroment will die out.

Morals come from society. As people formed comunities they had to learn how to live together. I guess in a way they did evolve.

Answer 9

I agree with Arkangyle, we do not have the authority to decide who is fit or not. Doing so leads to war and genocide (see World War II for examples) and ultimately to a loss of diversity in the gene pool. Without diversity, a species loses the ability to adapt and becomes more likely to die out.

Answer 10

Just because I believe that we evolved from being the fittest of our ancestors doesn't mean I think only the fit should survive.

Believing isn't the same as supporting, I believe that George W. Bush is my president. That doesn't mean I believe he should be president, and it definitely doesn't mean I respect him. The end does not always justify the means.

In my opinion, it's people like you without morals, who, without God to punish them if they did something wrong, would go around killing and stealing and raping.