All discussions of morality should include evolution. There was a thread on here about where atheist morals come from, and surprisingly I only saw one comment mentioning evolution. If you’re going to be an atheist, then you should fully embrace that evolution is at the heart of all of our behavior. You can begin by reading pic related for deeper insight into how social species evolve moral codes. For example, there is a bird species in which it is common for the alpha male to give food to the other birds, or to refrain from eating while he is the lookout, but if a secondary male tries to do these same things to the alpha, the alpha will attack the beta for trying to gain too much status through his selflessness. Because giving is just another way to demonstrate status, your fitness, your willingness to maintain relationships, etc. Once you begin to study humans as animals, all of this becomes painfully obvious. There is no thing as a purely selfless action, it is all just desires that evolved because they were useful for survival and reproduction.
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>All discussions of morality should include evolution
Evolution isn't real, you're a homosexual, and all atheists are scum who are as far from moral as one can get.
Sure evolution is real. Everything is evolution. Your religion, for example. Once upon a time, ancient humans saw rainbows and lightning and thought “what the HECK is that??” and invented Gods to explain it. From there the rest is history. That’s why every culture has religion, because humans naturally invent religions. But some of those religions evolved to be more culturally dominant, more complex and profound, though they still preserve many of their flaws that will never be erased. For example, the Bible still claims that rainbows are the symbol of God’s covenant with us that he decides after the flood. However, this would mean that God re-created the physics of light just to place rainbows in the sky (inconsistently at that..), and also allow for rainbow effects even when it hasn’t rained, such as when light refracts through glass, or through a mist of water. If God wanted his symbol to be more meaningful, he would have made it clear that rainbows aren’t just a natural phenomenon. I don’t know how you can seriously blame people like me for believing that humans simply didn’t understand the world and invented religion to help them. It’s so obvious. You’re just convinced of it all because religion evolved to be convincing to people like you.
Cool thoughts but no where did you prove that evolution is true
Evolution meaning monkey into man evolution like I thought we are talking about
Please stay on topic good sir
And frick you for trying to tell me I am related to a FRICKING FISH !!!1
>humans didn’t invent iPhones, airplanes, skyscrapers, not even pyramids. They are too complex to be made from nothing. It must be aliens.
Some thoughts that are not 100% organized:
In regards to the morality we can glean from evolution, I want to say argue this: the main thing is to avoid "behavioral sinks" ensuing from either over surplus of resources + overcrowding and genetic bottleneck events such as habitat fragmentation, famine, and other disasters.
Before proceeding, I want to argue evolution can be deemed as spiritual and not fully explicable by natural selection. Mechanistic Neo-Darwinism is not the last word on evolution. Other theories can lead more towards symbiosis as being the main driver of speciation and evolution having an inherent creativity, which could also lead to the argument the Earth is a superorganism.
In regards to what evolution shows us: it reveals that modernity and industrializations were mistakes. The overcrowding, excess surplus, and loss of self-reliant ways of life in human beings has led to the pervasiveness of "behavioral sinks".
As an example, if you put a bunch of mice in a cramped up space, feed them all the food they need, and so on, eventually they start engaging in orgies and cannibalism. This form of behavioral sink is due to a lack of fulfillment in overcoming obstacles and struggles, a necessary part of all organic existence.
Such deviant behavior, due to being in an 'unnatural' environment, can also be seen with elephants raping rhinos. As poaching increases (destabilizing familial units), habitats fragment, etc. for elephants and new stresses are introduced, we see unexpected deviant behavior. In other words, habitat fragmentation and lowering population to genetic bottleneck levels also lead to behavioral sinks.
The same is ultimately true for human beings in urban environments. Urban environments tend to be full of similar "behavioral sinks", but in this case due to an overabundance of resources and lack of fulfillment and overcoming obstacles. Many urbanites have "kinks", a superficial existence, have special clubs for orgies and even cannibalistic rites (such as "spirit cooking") and so on. Most of these urbanites would not have even survived childbirth without modern medical intervention, and with this lack of infant mortality, mankind increasingly moves towards such cretinization via the formation and perpetuation of a system that is against its very evolutionary nature.
This is ignoring the disastrous impact from mass miscegenation, but I shall ignore this for now since the board b***hes about it too much already.
The beginning of a lot of this can be traced back to the "logocentrism" of Abrahamic traditions. All of Abrahamism is ultimately aimed at mechanization of life, viewing the Earth and life as stained by sin and in need of "perfection for the world to come", hence why they are fundamentally incapable of accepting basic realities like evolution. Transhumanism likewise has a Messianic tone. Moreover, both Islam and Christianity both began with many priests chopping down sacred pagan trees for "idolatry".
Too fricking long didn't read
I'm not a fan of the line of thinking that alpha and beta are concepts that can or should be applied to humans. Humans are way more complex creatures, where over time, we evolved to become the primordial masters of all nature. Why should we still use the framework that some people are betas and others are just alpha based solely on physical prowess or any physical evolution? Many of the most powerful people in the world who, if they really wanted to, can kill all of us in a matter of days, are morons, dangerously egotistical, and similar to parasites based on their actions. With many not being able to fight their lowest unpaid worker in a 1 v 1 fight. A system that we have is human constructed is far beyond the concepts of alpha and beta in the animal kingdom, with all social constructs being this prevalent in pretty much everyones lives. So, OP, why do you think we must preserve alpha and beta line of thinking if someone is an atheist?
> So, OP, why do you think we must preserve alpha and beta line of thinking if someone is an atheist?
strawman. These terms just signify power relations, which we certainly care about, which is the reason given for why older men aren’t supposed to date young women
Evolition doesn't care for truth. What gets selected are traits that increase survival. So survival is the criteria.
Now please explain why your rational faculties that evolved for natural selection are capable of.distinguishing between truth and falsehood. No other species require that sort of capacity to survive. You either believe this is all an accident, which destroys your faith in your rational capa ities and undermine their potential, or you believe all of this is planned out, which would require a Planner.
>b-but
No butts.
Yes, so what? I’m also designed by nature to trust my intelligence to some extent. Being a full skeptic may be “logical” but it leads to death
>What gets selected are traits that increase survival. So survival is the criteria.
Reproduction is the criteria, It's a description of a process to explain why species change. Traits that increase the likelihood of reproduction get passed on.
As for intelligence, my understanding is that natural selection won't explain why we can distinguish truth v.s falsehood, but merely the process as to how we could have acquired those faculties that allow us to do so. You're conflating the cause with the thing itself.
I'm not entirely sure why I would need to explain how the natural cause behind those faculties explains those capacities in themselves. It merely explains how the capacity came to be.
Intelligence would've given us an obvious survival advantage.
Most other species haven't developed this high level of intelligence because evolution can only work with what it is given, and usually goes for the easiest path available.
As for some factors that facilitiated the evolution of intelligence, if I'm not mistaken there was a minor extinction event that caused hominids environment to change from forest to savannah.
In these grasslands hominids couldn't rely on foraging for food as they did in the jungle, and so began to work together more in groups hunting animals (consequently also are legs became longer & arms shorter).
It was in this more social environment, that increasing intelligence would've been selected.
I want to say the change in diet from largely fruit/vegetative to meat also had some kind of effect in relation to intelligence, but I don't remember
>consequently also are legs became longer & arms shorter).
**consequent from the environment being plains--where being able to run faster gives a better chance of survival
Natural selection and other selective pressures are not necessarily the primary mechanism that drives evolution or speciation. There are arguments that symbiosis is the primary driver, and evolution, in this sense, can have a mind-like processual aspect, such as what Predrag B. Slijepčević argues in Biocivilisations.
My argument was summed up in the first paragraph: "In regards to the morality we can glean from evolution, I want to argue this: the main thing is to avoid "behavioral sinks" ensuing from either over surplus of resources + overcrowding and genetic bottleneck events such as habitat fragmentation, famine, and other disasters."
E.O. Wilson covered this comprehensively in Sociobiology in like the 70's.
Hobbes had an atheistic account of morality around 150 years before Darwin popularized evolution.
Reading that one rn actually.
>around 150 years before Darwin
This destroys religious perspectives on morality:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inequity_aversion_in_animals