Sorry, typo. I meant to type “can’t rebut”.
It gets worse when you have a sticky keyboard… 
I’m always dropping words or typing them in a jumbo with all the right letters when I make mistakes.
Thank you.
Oh yeah. Not sure if I typed that with my old keyboard or this new one.
This thread had a good start. I should read that blog again
This got long enough, so I decided to put it in a blog post, or series thereof.
Here’s a summary:
We can determine what’s moral by measuring society, humans, and our satisfaction with the world we create.
Our moral statements must be scientifically accurate.
A slight tangent on world history.
Moral statements can be stated as hypothetical imperatives.
(Did a proofread in the evening and cleared up some grammatical typos. It shouldn’t have changed the meaning.)
Part 2. Gets into where we can look for what’s missing in our moral systems.
Religions that have been at war with each other for as long as they have existed now gesture and speak in platitudes of how we are all praying to the same God or that their God points to the same beliefs as the others. There is even recognition lately of moral systems that have nothing to do with Gods at all. Is it possible to bring all this together and at least talk about the common ground?
And you don’t see a place in any of this for a need to get a grip on what we human actually are. I say you don’t, because it is never mentioned - and you get offended whenever I try to bring this bedrock reality of our existence back into the discussion.
Not a mention of our human nature*, which is fundamentally self-absorbed and self-serving - and how that trickled down into how we think and behave on a grand scale? … * (nor any acknowledgement of Evolution as key to understanding ourselves)
Why is that?
Why do humans feel so entitled to the “ultimate truth” ?
Especially when it blinds us to so, so, many pragmatic truths.
All though I don’t think asking an evangelical - who fundamentally believes they are in direct contact with the God Almighty of the universe - will help anyone arrive at any clarity besides the entitlement of humans, above all else.
There is a part 3 to come
It comes down to natural selection of survival skills. It is part of the evolutionary process of ever more effective hunting skills as well as defensive skills.
Morality is learned. It is respect for the consequences when trying to take another’s food or offspring. This was later codified in social law. In religion, punishment for immoral behavior is eternity in hell. The type of immoral behavior strictly depends on how the action affects the target and how the target responds.
In nature those who are most able to defend themselves, by any means, command respect. One never knows how lethal the smallest organism may become when defending its life, home, or energy source.
I don’t think we are fundamentally self-serving. That goes against Darwin’s thoughts of us as a cooperative species, and many other ideas and studies, and just history. So, here it is.
I’m running out of rainy days to work on this. This one was a little rushed, but I think the references give you plenty to dig into. There are still some straggling notes. I need to let this simmer for a while and review it later.
There is a Cherokee story of two wolves that live within a person. First, they should get that checked out, that is way too many wolves living in you. One wolf is evil, anger, envy, regret, the other is good, joy, peace, humility, compassion. They fight, and this fight is going on within every person on earth. The question of which will win is answered with, “The one you feed.” Unlike Hollywood movies, the story doesn’t end with one wolf winning. The wolves are always there and always wanting to be fed.
Another version of the story ends with, “If you feed them right, they both win.” If you are familiar with the Star Trek character Captain Kirk, . . .
All we have is our story telling.
That’s what makes me different from the “we” out there.
I don’t have two lions in me. I fully understand that I am a biological animal who was created by this Earth. Okay a singularly superb amazing animal - with the most amazing body and brain this Earth has ever produced - along with a body capable of behaviors and experiences no other creature before, has ever had.
Still it is that Body, Brain, interacting with life (exterior and interior) that creates my body through with I feel and experience everything. ( How people can so glibly ignore it, is beyond me. So I struggle and ask questions trying to make sense of the mind trap people have so completely climbed into these days.)
Only after I fully absorbed that lesson could I fully appreciate the storms that unfold within my body and that impact my mind, my behavior and interactions with others. It also helped me realize it’s not a battle between the bad me and the good me.
It comes down to appreciating that your body has its own agenda, with an imbedded knowledge that goes back hundreds of millions of years, literally. That mind-set opens one up to listening to their biological body with a more attuned ear, which has a way of nullifying the melodrama, moralizing and self-flagellation we have been conditioned to engage in.
It’s a battle to live and learn to appreciate why I have the emotions that I have, and how they are embedded into my body, then to learn to understand how those emotions are interwoven into other emotions.
Truly understanding that you are an Earthly animal clarifies the balancing act in a realist manner - so that once one realized how their worst emotions enable some of your best emotions to come forth - offer strategies. Behavior and living with oneself, becomes a dance, a question of balance - no need to condemn yourself, just keep working at that balance. Falling down doesn’t have to become melodramatic failure, get back up on that pony and ride on.
This internal attitude also makes one’s own faults easer to recognize and own - meaning easier to face, early to grapple with, and easier to tame, as we move forward in our life.
Finding beauty in old traditions is one thing, ignoring what modern science has made crystal clear for us, is something else altogether.
It’s also a spit in the face to all those curious ancestors who were wondered at the world, and wanted to grasp the answers to those mysteries, by learning about themselves and their planet Earth, striving to pass on their learning to younger generations and so on.
Now we have those serious scientific answers and turn our back on them, because, well,
A - we love our storytelling
B - consumerism, bigger and faster and more is all we seem interested in anymore.
but that every human can cultivate one potential more than another well beyond their biological tendencies (provided they actually do so, and by a method that actually works: and there are methods that work, and methods that don’t–and working methods include the active, i.e. self-development, and passive, i.e. parental and societal influence and upbringing).”
Our biology is not our enemy, something evil to be overcome. It’s something one needs to learn about. Simply because it’s difficult, or boring, is an excuse - but no justification.
I think a big part of why this system for creating a moral system is not taught is the way we teach history, and this includes Sunday School.
For me this teaching history you allude to, would require includes the past half billion years which explains how the body you inhabit was developed.
Then it would, of course, touch on the most fundamental “truth” or observation we can make about our human condition - appreciating the difference between the material/biological physical world and the thoughts and talk that comes out of our mind, and our mouth.
This isn’t about trolling you - what you’re sharing here is the same same that has failed to enlighten people over and over again, centuries worth. It is not healthy.
You even seem to acknowledge as much,
The belief that there is an end, a singularity we are all moving toward, a cosmic truth that will one day be revealed, keeps us fighting over who has the best version of it. We spend more time fighting over the latest list rather than reflecting on how to improve the lists. The list gives us something to rally around and distracts us from keeping our minds open to what others are saying or doing.
“Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say.”
And I believe to get past that impasse requires a solid personal awareness that by necessity requires a deeper understanding of ourselves via biology & evolutionary understanding.
Lip service simply isn’t enough - the “truth” is simply too multifaceted for human imagination, soundbites and easy listening, it does require serious homework.
Still it is within reach via the rich foundation of knowledge that biology and evolution has accumulated. But like you point out that depends on the individual.
Robert Sapolsky is literally alive. He just published.
Morality implies choice. Nature isn’t moral. It is neither good nor bad. It is amoral.
Natural selection selects for survival skills in virulent bacteria that kill us as well as for probiotic bacteria that keep us alive.
It’s there a point here? If we can imply choice, then it must be a thing. Unless you are implying that the lack of free will implies everything is absolutely determined from the beginning of time.
No, nature is only concerned with survival, regardless of moral orientation.
Morality is an emergent quality where symbiotic cooperation betweeen a flower and a pollinator of different species offers greater survivability to both.
OTOH, the Venus flytrap is a carnivorous predatory plant that lures pollinator insects with sweet nectar and devours them.
Brained animals are capable of both behaviors and have the luxury of choice.
Note that even ants practice animal husbandry . Nature allows all types of existence that results in procreation and continuation of a species.
When a species dominates its environment to the point of extinction of other species it also tends to go extinct. Invasive species eat themselves out of resources.
It is always natural selection that sets the limits of survivability of a species.
And natural selection doesn’t care what survives as long as it survives.
And morality is the topic. Emergent or not. If I’m taking about morality, why would I need to talk about what it isn’t? Maybe some side point, or as an introduction, but plant behavior or non-human carnivorous predators are not the topic.
Should I go over to the music thread and discuss how crows sometimes imitate the calls of other birds?
You cut off the first part of the Carrier quote where he says the opposite of us being evil, “I would claim some are born with less or more of an innate tendency either way (probably matching a bell curve pattern within the population as a whole)”
In fact the whole post is about us containing good and evil potentials. We aren’t “evil with the potential to be good” and we aren’t inherently self-serving either.
The OP read “morality is natural”, not “morality is human”.
Ever watched a cat play with a mouse until it dies and then decapitates it?
Did the Inquisition use torture from moral conviction or from pure evil intent?
If both morality and immorality are found in nature aside from humans you cannot dismiss it as “isn’t natural”, because it is and it is emergent .
But Nature itself has no moral or immoral restraints. It functions purely mathematical.
What are you talking about?
I’m talking down woo talk such as cosmic origins to our consciousness, or Planck scale origins, or using philosophizing a la Chalmers to decipher what our consciousness is all about.
Sapolsky is one of scientists I point to (Solms, Damasio, Sapolsky, etc) that explain best how consciousness has biological origins - and that biology through an evolutionary lens is the way towards better understanding our consciousness.
Perhaps to help get oriented . . .
No, but walking in the woods I’ve found it endlessly fascinating how a human being instinctively imitates bird sounds, and other animals sounds they hear—seems to me from an evolutionary perspective it shines some light how we humans evolved sounds, from instinctive emotional ejaculations, and diverged to complex personally creativity in sound, percussion and drums, reeds and flutes, then strings of ever more complexity.
It’s the sort of thing that helps me literally touch the Pageant of Evolution on a personal level. (and much as it might annoy you that,) Gives my life inner and external stability I don’t see in others. (which is why I will continue to defend the notion that getting a grip on physical reality - human mind divide is First Base prerequisite to any actual next level enlightenment - including getting a grip on what morality is all out, or isn’t about as the case may be.)
I’m talking how I use Sapolsky as one of my references in the blog. I use other science too. You pick something you don’t like and claim that as my theme. You are talking to yourself.