How can some animals, without God & religion, exhibit moral behaviour that put humans to shame?

Question

Canadian wild geese are monogamous for life
Dogs are faithful to the owners for life
Great apes do not engage in war.
Dolphins rescue drowning humans.

Answer 1

Well, I've heard bad things about dolphins, and I'm pretty sure a dog or two has turned on its owner.

But in any case, the animals don't have a sense of morality. They may understand right and wrong to some extent, but there's no judgement applied to it.

Answer 2

Actually geese are not monogamous for life, if anything happens to their mate, they will re-mate.

Not all dogs are faithful to their owners.

Most species don't engage in war; although territorial disputes do happen both between species and or groups of the same species.

I'd ask the question the other way, why would a god create a majority of his creation to not exemplify the "morals" that he seems to demand from his image or why would that image be created with common behavior with the rest of creation, but be told it is is wrong?

Answer 3

Without freedom, behavior has no moral content. To call animal behavior moral is to anthropomorphize it.
___And that's the problem in judging human behavior. We have the burden of freedom.
___Adn of course, there are a great many humans who are monogamous for life, who are faithful to their friends for life, and who rescue others, even at the risk of their own lives (which cannot be said about the dolphins in the example given.) Great Apes are not immune to territoriality, and they do sometmes gang up on some individuals of their own species and kill them.
___In an age of cultural decline, populations often experience a declining faith in the worth of human enterprises. We are in such an age, and these comparisons between human morality and animal "morality" crop up as a result. But animals don't have anything like human freedom, so they can't be credited with moral behavior, at least not in anything like the human sense.
___Wehn faith in human enterprises diminishes, it makes sense that humans take morality less seriously, and invest less trust in human moral codes. Human callousness toward animals fits in with this, and makes the comparisons seem all the more relevant. But the circumstances of human and animal cognition are just too dissimilar to support comparisons like this.

Answer 4

its funny you based your theory on the positive things about some animals but they do have a bad side
Canadian wild geese i have no idea and i am not really informed about them so i move on
Dogs are so faithful because they consider the owner its alpha male
apes do go to war it was believed that only humans killed for the sake of killing but apes do it to
they invade another groups territory and beat the first member of the other group they encounter they beat him until he dies so you could consider this a local battle not for food just to eliminate the competition
and Dolphins sure they rescue people but they also attack there is case where a group of dolphins attacked children and old people who were swimming with them for no apparent reason
so don't worry we are more similar with animals then u think

Answer 5

i'm no longer Atheist, yet i'm able to inform you that in the process my experience, animals have extra effectual character than somebody i've got ever come into touch with. they're unswerving, sort, and forgiving. and how do you already know that they only "latch directly to their proprietors for basically egocentric motives"? Are you a canines? No. Did a canines in basic terms magically start up speaking english and inform you that? No. do no longer talk approximately issues you do no longer understand because of the fact it in basic terms makes you seem stupid. and whether animals DID latch directly to human beings fullyyt for his or her very own egocentric earnings, it may be no diverse than somebody, might it? human beings use one yet another each and all of the time in lots worse tactics and are not a million/2 as grateful for the failings that others do for them as a canines may be. So do no longer sit down there and attempt to act like human beings are so severe above the different existence sort. 'reason geuss what? human beings are animals too.

Answer 6

Animals are not without God. There are so many verses about them in both testaments that I could not begin to list them here. I'll give you a link that has quite a few of them.

And leave you with Revelation, since it's the last book of the Bible:

"And then I heard every creature in heaven, on earth, in the world below, and in the sea - all living beings in the universe - and they were singing..." Revelation 5:13
†

Answer 7

You're applying human morals to non-humans. You really don't see the problem with that argument? Besides, plenty of dogs turn on their owners, and injure or even kill them. Other animals don't engage in war because they're not organized enough to do so. Unless, of course, you might consider "war" to be one group of animals killing another and taking their territory, in which case it certainly does happen, all the time, great apes included. Dolphins are naturally curious creatures, if you're in the water, they're going to come see what's going on. They also breathe air. If you grab onto one, and are lucky enough that it's one that's ok with that, yes it's going to take you to the surface. It has to go there to breathe, too.

Answer 8

Because they follow the laws of nature. They don't know anything else. They do not have an impossible set of rules to live by that ignore the natural balance of things, or tries to make anything that is natural a "sin". Only man can screw-up a good thing so well. We have all the reasoning power in the universe and use it against ourselves.

Answer 9

Natural Law
I. ITS ESSENCE
In English this term is frequently employed as equivalent to the laws of nature, meaning the order which governs the activities of the material universe. Among the Roman jurists natural law designated those instincts and emotions common to man and the lower animals, such as the instinct of self-preservation and love of offspring. In its strictly ethical application–the sense in which this article treats it–the natural law is the rule of conduct which is prescribed to us by the Creator in the constitution of the nature with which He has endowed us.

Answer 10

Animals cannot exhibit moral behavior. Or immoral behavior. They just do what their instincts make them do. If a dolphin rescues a man there is nothing moral about that act. If a tiger kills a man there is nothing immoral about that act.
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