Of the current figures who accept these premises, most espouse some form of secular humanism which argues that humans are genetically programed not to lie, murder or steal, therefore this is both the right morality & the one they practice.
This sounds wrong to me. It seems rather that humans are genetically programmed to lie, murder, and steal, and that, insofar as ethics help society function smoothly, they do so by constructing a system in which people feel inhibited about doing the “bad” things they are genetically programmed to do.
Not murdering is for the most part not an instrumental decision “to help society function smoothly”. People flat don’t like murdering. This dislike is also not uncaused, both drive to murder and to avoid murdering were put in human minds by evolution, but preference to not murder clearly wins (for now!).
That may or may not be so but I’m going by what leading atheists claim. The only reason I finally wrote this was because I just got back from a screening of Collapse where Hitchens was espousing some Brotherhood of Man nonsense while weaseling out of directly confronting the issue of why secular morality looks suspiciously like christian morality warmed over.
“I do not lie, I do not cheat and believe it or not, all because that is what I CHOOSE. I know right from wrong. It is in the best interests of Humankind to ‘get along’. If we all killed each other off then we wouldn’t be able to carry on generation after generation. Killing each other and doing harm goes against all of Evolution!”
The first item (Dawkins) is about causal explanation for why people are often nice, saying that religious upbringing has very little to do with the way people actually act, that the way people actually act got determined by evolution, and of course this common origin applies to atheists in the same way. See Human universal.
The item doesn’t argue that you should be nice because of evolution; that is a cached pattern for religion that argues along the lines of you having to be nice because a certain book says so.
The speaker personally chooses not to lie and cheat (or, one hopes, murder). He doesn’t claim that humans don’t have programming that encourages such behaviours at times, he claims that humans are programmed to have morality, which can involve suppressing other programming. We having names that we use to moralize and disapprove of lies, cheating and murder is somewhat of an indicator that humans do have impulses that push them in that direction.
Morals are also culturally dependent. In some cases it would be considered immoral not to commit what we would describe as ‘murder’. The closest male relative of a victim is considered morally obligated to avenge him. Our culture (or perhaps ‘cultures’ given that my culture doesn’t care about tips) calls this ‘murder’ and disapproves even though most people would have some degree of empathy for the motive. That is, *they expect the killer to be programmed to want to commit such a murder”.
As for cheating and stealing: the speaker allegedly personally does neither. But does he lock his car or leave his keys in the ignition?
Of the current figures who accept these premises, most espouse some form of secular humanism which argues that humans are genetically programed not to lie, murder or steal, therefore this is both the right morality & the one they practice.
This sounds wrong to me. It seems rather that humans are genetically programmed to lie, murder, and steal, and that, insofar as ethics help society function smoothly, they do so by constructing a system in which people feel inhibited about doing the “bad” things they are genetically programmed to do.
Not murdering is for the most part not an instrumental decision “to help society function smoothly”. People flat don’t like murdering. This dislike is also not uncaused, both drive to murder and to avoid murdering were put in human minds by evolution, but preference to not murder clearly wins (for now!).
That may or may not be so but I’m going by what leading atheists claim. The only reason I finally wrote this was because I just got back from a screening of Collapse where Hitchens was espousing some Brotherhood of Man nonsense while weaseling out of directly confronting the issue of why secular morality looks suspiciously like christian morality warmed over.
I don’t believe you. Leading atheists don’t say that. Perhaps they said something else similar and you oversimplified their meaning?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCL63d66frs
“I do not lie, I do not cheat and believe it or not, all because that is what I CHOOSE. I know right from wrong. It is in the best interests of Humankind to ‘get along’. If we all killed each other off then we wouldn’t be able to carry on generation after generation. Killing each other and doing harm goes against all of Evolution!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx1yXvcT2kw
As an aside, it’s much harder to find text references to this than video links.
The first item (Dawkins) is about causal explanation for why people are often nice, saying that religious upbringing has very little to do with the way people actually act, that the way people actually act got determined by evolution, and of course this common origin applies to atheists in the same way. See Human universal.
The item doesn’t argue that you should be nice because of evolution; that is a cached pattern for religion that argues along the lines of you having to be nice because a certain book says so.
Perhaps. Could you unsimplify it for me? I don’t really see where they are being less than clear in their descriptions.
The speaker personally chooses not to lie and cheat (or, one hopes, murder). He doesn’t claim that humans don’t have programming that encourages such behaviours at times, he claims that humans are programmed to have morality, which can involve suppressing other programming. We having names that we use to moralize and disapprove of lies, cheating and murder is somewhat of an indicator that humans do have impulses that push them in that direction.
Morals are also culturally dependent. In some cases it would be considered immoral not to commit what we would describe as ‘murder’. The closest male relative of a victim is considered morally obligated to avenge him. Our culture (or perhaps ‘cultures’ given that my culture doesn’t care about tips) calls this ‘murder’ and disapproves even though most people would have some degree of empathy for the motive. That is, *they expect the killer to be programmed to want to commit such a murder”.
As for cheating and stealing: the speaker allegedly personally does neither. But does he lock his car or leave his keys in the ignition?