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[Andir]

...Which leads back to, you can't prove anything beyond your own emperical senses, and even those are subjective

... which says our reality is our senses and we may as well deal with it as truth.  Anything outside of that is pointless to concern ourselves with.

But we've already discussed this as well :p

[FelixtheCats]

As an atheist I can say: atheists are touchy.

[MrWiggles]

As an atheist I can say: atheists are touchy.

Fuck you, no were not!

[Siquo]

Yes, they are, Andir for instance is taking my point (which was an argument against a hypothetical civilisation without traces) and is then making the exact same point. Why? I do not know.

@chaoticag Kings do not make morals, they make laws. Laws can grow into morals, slowly, but it's more often the priests and the religion that sets the morals. That's why most leaders/dictators are so keen on having the monopoly on religion (since ancient egypt). Also, aside from Dagon, you are right I agree. We've moved beyond religious morals into an area where they can be discussed openly, taking into account human suffering at its value (eg: do you let the teenage girl suffer, or do you allow abortion of an embryo that's less than an animal), instead of taking words out of context (thou shalt not kill) and using them as some superhuman set of uebermorals.

[Micro102]

Regarding morals, they mostly come from instinct.

"Desire to protect one's self"
"Desire to protect one's species"
"When you see a child cry you feel sad and want to help them"

"When I see my neighbour has more stuff than me, I bash his head in and take it for myself" is also an instinct.

What you describe are not the only morals we have, only a very small and limited subset of them, the "natural morals". Most morals we have were "made up" by humans and agreed upon/forced on us. Religion had a large part in that.

That is not an instinct because I and many other people simply don't feel that. That is behavioral thinking, from too much greed or aggressiveness or spoiling as a child. Instinct is something that almost all humans have.

[chaoticag]

Correction Siquo, Ancient Egyptian kings were considered gods. They used religion as a tool, mostly in conjunction with the priests. It was a pretty co-operative relation most of the time.

[Earthquake Damage]

atheists are touchy.

More generally, people are touchy.

[Neruz]

Regarding morals, they mostly come from instinct.

"Desire to protect one's self"
"Desire to protect one's species"
"When you see a child cry you feel sad and want to help them"

"When I see my neighbour has more stuff than me, I bash his head in and take it for myself" is also an instinct.

Not always; Humans are social creatures evolved to live in small tribes of a few dozen individuals. "When i see my neighbour has more stuff than me, i give him something so that i can get a favour from him at a later date." is a much more likely instinct. Humans build up a network of close social contacts (friends) to stabilise themselves in, most Humans are neither antisocial, nor murderous.

[Bauglir]

Regarding morals, they mostly come from instinct.

"Desire to protect one's self"
"Desire to protect one's species"
"When you see a child cry you feel sad and want to help them"

"When I see my neighbour has more stuff than me, I bash his head in and take it for myself" is also an instinct.

Not always; Humans are social creatures evolved to live in small tribes of a few dozen individuals. "When i see my neighbour has more stuff than me, i give him something so that i can get a favour from him at a later date." is a much more likely instinct. Humans build up a network of close social contacts (friends) to stabilise themselves in, most Humans are neither antisocial, nor murderous.

A more accurate version of the "I bash his head in" response is, "That dude I've never met before and who just flipped me off has more stuff than I do! I bash his head in and take it for myself." Generally people aren't going to go out of their way to do nasty things to people, and are even less so inclined when they know the person, and that IS a result of social instincts.

[Neruz]

Regarding morals, they mostly come from instinct.

"Desire to protect one's self"
"Desire to protect one's species"
"When you see a child cry you feel sad and want to help them"

"When I see my neighbour has more stuff than me, I bash his head in and take it for myself" is also an instinct.

Not always; Humans are social creatures evolved to live in small tribes of a few dozen individuals. "When i see my neighbour has more stuff than me, i give him something so that i can get a favour from him at a later date." is a much more likely instinct. Humans build up a network of close social contacts (friends) to stabilise themselves in, most Humans are neither antisocial, nor murderous.

A more accurate version of the "I bash his head in" response is, "That dude I've never met before and who just flipped me off has more stuff than I do! I bash his head in and take it for myself." Generally people aren't going to go out of their way to do nasty things to people, and are even less so inclined when they know the person, and that IS a result of social instincts.

There's a very powerful instict that prevents the average man from killing another man; the ultimate example of this is just how much indoctrination is required by the Military to convince soldiers that yes, it is alright to kill people, under certain specific circumstances. And even then, despite all that, i believe it's estimated around one in three soldiers freeze up in combat and never fire their weapon.

This is ovbiously a social preservation instict, since it's hard to have a social system if the participants keep bashing each other over the head.

[chaoticag]

Depends on the setting really. Not so much that people find killing wrong instinctively, but can be molded from birth into thinking almost anything, which is a stronger indication of social evolution.

Also, thought to bring this up Phineas Gage

A man that had such a severe head injury, but managed to survive. Of course, he sufered from mental issues, such as a drastic change to his morals.

[Neruz]

Not so much that people find killing wrong instinctively, but can be molded from birth into thinking almost anything

That is a rather bold claim; got any evidence to back it up?

[chaoticag]

Nothing solid, but people had entire wars that were glorified to an insane degree in the Middle ages. Tribal warfare too, especially when a shamman accuses another neighboring shamman of psychic killing, the hunter tribe is expected to go to war, and they didn't have much training before that.
You can't expect them to desensitize from killing that fast, and seeing that they delt with death (hunting) on a daily basis, I don't see how it isn't possible.

Other than that, the fact that different societies have different moral ideal also supports my claim. It can't be tested due to a shakey moral grounding, little Albert et all.

[Neruz]

People have glorified wars today too; that does not in any way change the fact that many soldiers, despite years of training, cannot bring themselves to kill another human being in cold blood.

Now hot blood; hot blood is different. One of the most common causes of homicide are Crimes of Passion, the reason for that being that when one is sufficiently emotionally unstable or incensed, one's higher brain functions are either bypassed or overridden. At that point the really old part of our brains, the part that used to be a fish, takes over, and unlike the monkey parts of our brains, the fish part is not a social creature. It is incredibly primitive and has little more than basic reflex action and fight or flight decision making, which is why after most crimes of passion the person responsible usually ends up in shock going "How could i have done this?"


People desensitize from killing extremely quickly if it is forced upon them, and in the heat of an old battle, with screaming men charging towards you waving various sharp impliments and threatening your life, there's no room for rational thought. The fish brain kicks in. Of course if it doesn't kick in, you usually end up dead.

Afterwards of course, sometimes the monkey brain can't reconcile what it did, and then you get shellshock, or one of many similar conditions.

It's also worth noting that once a person is indoctrinated to killing, they usually stay that way. That's one of the reasons why soldiers often have difficulty reintigrating into society; and also why they're usually kept seperate from it.



This isn't to say that people are incapable of killing other people, merely that it is not easy to do so and that the vast majority of people are not inclined to do so. If pushed to the limit, anyone can and will kill, but killing in cold blood (which is what the military wants) is much, much harder.


By the way, you may want to read this article.

[chaoticag]

I'll take a look at it soonish. But just letting you know that people accepting beliefs that are told to them might be a better evidence than saying that killing is a psychologically difficult thing to do. The two do get along well though, nothing contradictory about them, and both show evidence (if they didn't, people would be killing left and right and/or not become religious or learn from others).