Vinterland

Are those morals objective?

__________________
And on we walked. Suddenly we heard a voice crying, "This is the sea. This is the deep sea. This is the vast and mighty sea." And when we reached the voice it was a man whose back was turned to the sea, and at his ear he held a shell, listening to its murmur.
And my soul said, "Let us pass on. He is the realist, who turns his back on the whole he cannot grasp, and busies himself with a fragment."
—Gibran Khalil Gibran, “The Greater Sea.”

SirArthur

No moral can be objective, morality is a subjective thing and will ever be. However it needs to create a moral pattern in order to create and sustain a society and as bigger the society as complex those codes gets.

SirArthur

Apes have interactivity, all right, but not morality. They live between a status of anarchy or under a dominant male who sets the boundaries. But to have "moral" they would need a conscience.

WilliamBlue

There objective is to keep a viable breeding population and area to live in and many of these are precursors to the 10 commandments* all of which help keep the peace so you can continue breeding. Religion appeared after we had the extra time to organize, if you are too busy trying to feed yourself then there is no time for such organizations. Unfortunately man grew up in (ape like)tribes, thus if you were not part of the tribe their morales did not apply to you, unless someone in the tribe saw some value in you and let you in, otherwise you would probably be run off or killed which still applies today.

*Most religions have a list of rules and most are pretty much the same, are you telling me they came up with the same lists even though they were isolated from each other?

__________________
When you dance with an elephant it's up to you to not get stepped on.
How can we be so arrogant and egotistical to believe that the whole Universe was created just for us?

SirArthur

Sorry, that only occur on three religions which at same time started to preach on behalf of the weak and the poor and for which yet no answer has been found.
It happened about 300 b.C. on Judaism by Isaiah, on Buddhism by Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) and on Taoism by Tao Te Ching (Laozi). Turns out how 3 preachers, one on Babylonia, other at India and other at China started to preach over the same morality at nearly the same time without any contact between them.

WilliamBlue

What is a conscience but a part of your brain telling you that you are doing the right thing or the wrong thing. You believe that it is impossible for apes to have this part of the brain? We still live with a dominate person as our leader but even as apes if the leader is not doing what is good for the tribe they will threw him out, morals are a part of our heredity and so is a conscience. It is a tribe mentality and it should be obvious (to me it is).

__________________
When you dance with an elephant it's up to you to not get stepped on.
How can we be so arrogant and egotistical to believe that the whole Universe was created just for us?

WilliamBlue

Don't buy it as these maybe the major ones, but if you look a tribes that exist as separate from the rest of the world they too have a set of moralities that closely follow these major ones, you can not have peace without rules, thus the rules came first otherwise we would only have had tribes of one.

__________________
When you dance with an elephant it's up to you to not get stepped on.
How can we be so arrogant and egotistical to believe that the whole Universe was created just for us?

SirArthur

No, not at all. Many tribes and even civilizations had different sets of morality. Eg. the Spartans kill all deficient and weak people. The Japanese can commit suicide under the order of the Xogum or other land lord.
Many other civilizations and tribes were totally merciless.

Despite clans and tribes were all family. Wasn't moral which unites them. Morality is needed when more than one family started to belong to the same tribe and in order to do so, moral rules have to move to the next level.

WilliamBlue

They are learning how to prove that morals evolved and eventually they will prove it. Unless you think that we are special animals and not part of the earth fauna, our millions of years of history has everything to do with the way we act, these things do not pop out of thin air.

http://discovermagazine.com/2000/feb/featmorals/

__________________
When you dance with an elephant it's up to you to not get stepped on.
How can we be so arrogant and egotistical to believe that the whole Universe was created just for us?

WilliamBlue

Because they did not see these people as part of their tribe and thus they were not subject to their moral code.

This is not true as inbreeding would of lead to a weaker tribe, apes do allow for new members from different tribes and I do not agree that you need two tribes to have morals, morals started in the tribe. I think we are going nowhere so I will agree to disagree.

__________________
When you dance with an elephant it's up to you to not get stepped on.
How can we be so arrogant and egotistical to believe that the whole Universe was created just for us?