Sure, many people don’t but how much of that is simply due to cultural norms?
It is probably entirely the evolution of cultural norms, but why dismiss that? The important question is whether there is a predetermined direction to the evolution of cultural norms, and it seems we agree that a general trend is towards more empathy and caring (with some reservations) but that this isn’t necessarily reliable.
I often think about whether or not humanity is ‘good’ and whether the cultural development of our empathy will outpace other factors, and I’ve settled on the conclusion that if our universe is not designed, it will probably not work out well but if it was designed by benevolent, caring entities it will somehow work out no matter how small the probability.
In other words, without a designer, we’re doomed anyway to a universe of random and arbitrary entities that won’t conform to our (also) random and arbitrary moral preferences. With a designer, there is finally the possibility of a plan (and an imposed external set of moral preferences) and there is some probability (that I count as high) that we are part of the plan and thus we could trust that we would be happy with the outcome of that plan. Where ‘we’ doesn’t necessarily mean us specifically, but future humans or another self-aware lineage or at least the designers themselves. Some set of conscious entities being happy with the universe seems like a good thing to me, better than a random flux of dissatisfied ones.
So to answer your question a couple comments up, at the moment I don’t believe that our universe looks like it was designed by a caring entity, or that humanity is necessarily good. In my mind the problem is that there is no designer. A designer after all would terrifically increase the chances of moral success (for someone’s point of view) compared to a random universe.
It is probably entirely the evolution of cultural norms, but why dismiss that? The important question is whether there is a predetermined direction to the evolution of cultural norms, and it seems we agree that a general trend is towards more empathy and caring (with some reservations) but that this isn’t necessarily reliable.
I often think about whether or not humanity is ‘good’ and whether the cultural development of our empathy will outpace other factors, and I’ve settled on the conclusion that if our universe is not designed, it will probably not work out well but if it was designed by benevolent, caring entities it will somehow work out no matter how small the probability.
In other words, without a designer, we’re doomed anyway to a universe of random and arbitrary entities that won’t conform to our (also) random and arbitrary moral preferences. With a designer, there is finally the possibility of a plan (and an imposed external set of moral preferences) and there is some probability (that I count as high) that we are part of the plan and thus we could trust that we would be happy with the outcome of that plan. Where ‘we’ doesn’t necessarily mean us specifically, but future humans or another self-aware lineage or at least the designers themselves. Some set of conscious entities being happy with the universe seems like a good thing to me, better than a random flux of dissatisfied ones.
So to answer your question a couple comments up, at the moment I don’t believe that our universe looks like it was designed by a caring entity, or that humanity is necessarily good. In my mind the problem is that there is no designer. A designer after all would terrifically increase the chances of moral success (for someone’s point of view) compared to a random universe.