Morals and traffic lights
Once people discover that I don't believe in God they often ask if I believe in Morals or being "good". I tell them I do but not for the normal reasons.
Morals and ideals of "good "behaviour are often thought of as coming from a religion of some kind be it Christian, Buddhism or Islam etc; I challenge this. I think "good" behaviour is inherent in us as a species and I will try and explain why.
I will start with a basic tenet. A universal truth in my opinion. That is the desire to procreate and for our offspring to procreate. I call it a universal truth because it transcends all the species, genera, families, and even kingdoms of life. Plants, animals, bacteria, blue-green algae and the rest all strive for one thing and that is to make more of themselves. Humans are no different.
Every lifeform adopts its own strategy to achieve this goal. Some are asexual, some sexual, some are loners, some live in groups, some have shells, some have teeth, some can run fast and some can fly. (You may argue that these are to survive, yes of course but to survive to procreate!). So humans what strategy do we employ? Clearly we have our brains for tool making and the like but we also have society. It is generally believed that the cognitive demands of living in complex and bonded social groups is what led to our increased brain size.
But why? Brains are enormously energy hungry organs so there has to be a very good reason to have a large one. Clearly these complex social groups afforded us some advantage when it came to our survival and more importantly the survival of our offspring.
How? A complex bonded social group affords many advantages. If you are hurt someone will feed you, if you are away someone will look after your children, if someone is dangerous the group will act collectively against them to make the group safe.Â
I have described the benefits of social groups but one far removed from the complexity of human society. Ours has become so involved that sometimes it takes a bit of thought to remove the layers to perceive the advantages to the group of a given set of behaviours.
So what are morals and "good" behaviour. They are rules. Not rules from god but rules from society. Society ignorant of creating them has formulated rules which make the society work. Murder is forbidden because you and offspring are endangered, adultery (stealing a wife) is forbidden to ensure that it is yours and not another's offspring that you nuture (hence the term cuckolding) etc etc.Â
A simple analogy to bring me back to the title are traffic lights. I was watching this morning people (even in this country of crazy driving) obeying the traffic signals perfectly. Now clearly there are police rules against running a red light but the chances of being caught (especially here) are pretty slim so why do people obey them? It's easy....because it works better. If anarchy prevailed and no one obeyed the lights then it would take far longer to get through the junction. So people obey the rules and wait patiently because if they do and everyone else does then it helps them. I personally benefit (from a quicker journey time) by people obeying the traffic light rules.
So what do you all think? Try not to get too involved with finding evidence to refute evolution and support creationism. Try and debate the logic of my argument.
It was a nice read and it pretty much boils down to what I believe in - myself and my ability to create and run my own life, which ultimately comes with taking full responsibility for my decisions, unlike those people who believe in God and have a luxury of saying that whatever they do is a God's will.
:D
Everyone likes nice analogies
Sorry, I've been looking for an opportunity to post this. :) I like it for some strange reason.
DG you've hijacked me
Interesting. In that vein, here is one of my blog entries. I hope nobody takes offence.
Ah religion, what can I say. I live in the heart of the Muslim world, religion is a loudspeaker and a black clad lady away. For most of my life I've been able to ignore religion and pretend that it, and its rules, don't exist, how I miss Canada. But here I am, unable to hold my boyfriends hand or wear a short sleeved shirt in public, with religion staring me right in my agnostic, unbeliving face. And I've started questioning God and all his wonders, not in the I don't beleive he exists way, but in the what if he does way. After all, there are a lot of religions that center around the one God theroy. Maybe they've got a point. Look at Christianity, Islam and Judaism, they all follow the same God. And there are points of their beleif, that given the time they were created make a lot of sense.
Christians are allowed to drink, in fact it's promoted in the Christian church (water into wine and all that). A good thing to, because if early Christian's hadn't turned their water into alcohol they would have all died from the bacteria in their horribly polluted river water (the Tiber, the Siene, the Thames).
Muslims don't drink. Good thing cause alcohol is a dieretic and they all would have died from dehydration.
The whole no sex before marriage and no protection things made sense when the world population was at 100 million. Women weren't capable of taking care of children on their own back then (neither were men) and 2 in every 3 children died in childbirth. We had to keep the population going.
So a thousand years ago religion had a good point. But does it now?
I look at the human race as a child...actually a couple of children, Just imagine each country was a child. When we we first came into being we were babies, the sun is a big gold disk, thunder is an angry voice from above. Everything was bright colours and loud voices, nothing made much sense and we weren't smart enough to understand anyway. Hence the creation of multiple Gods, crazy myths and bizzare stories.
Then we became toddlers, we were old enough to understand basic rules, and along comes the Torah, the Bible and the Quran (amongst others, but this is a very widespread analogy and I don't want to write a book). These were our parents rules and guidelines. Do this, don't do that, eat this, don't eat that. Basic and easy for our developing minds to understand, even if it doesn't cover all the spectrums of black and white, right and wrong. When you are a child you aren't smart enough to understand shades of grey, you just want the basics. Sorry to say it, but a thousand years ago, we were kids, living in huts, living day by day. All we had time to think about was right and wrong.
Like any good parent God gave us rules to suit each child. After all, every child is different. The Jews are the oldest, they broke the way. Had a rough time of it. God was testing this whole rules thing with them, so they don't make as much sense. Sometimes it came down to hard on them. Gave stupid rules. But any elder child can relate. Christians came second, we had strict rules too, but we were the onery middle child and we broke out a lot more, got away with a lot more. Questioned and fussed a lot more (Protestants). Typical Middle child syndrom. Than came the Muslims, the babies of the family. God pretty much had the rules thing down by than, had a tough time with the two older children so the rules are a little stricter, they were grounded a lot more, but the baby gets everything, the oil the money, etc. They get away with a lot more too. No one else would have gotten away with treating women like the Muslims do.
But we aren't children anymore. We've entered Junior High school. We have our own ideas and identitys. We are no londer simply Jews, Christians and Muslims, we are Canadians, Americans, Germans, British, Qatari's, Iraqis, Koreans, Chinese, etc. The rules set for us by our parents are beginning to fall away and our own particular personalities are shining through. These rules still help us form our morals and values, but nationalism is becoming more important. We are not simply Catholic, we are Irish-Catholic, or American-Catholic.
Like any Junior high we have our school yard bully (America), we have the weak kids who aren't quite ready to be in junior high (Africa, South-East Aisa), we have our goody-two shoes (Canada, Europe) and we have the crazy kid in the corner, who the bully makes fun of, but is secretely afraid will pull a knife on him (Iran, North Korea, China). Our individual values and morals are still guiding us, and are acting as our biggest dividers.
" The Middle East doesn't think the way I do, they dress funny and talk funny." says the USA, therefore instead of having the maturity to try to understand the Middle East, the USA prefers to beat them up.
In Junior High we are all still immature and naive enough to believe that our way is the right way. It won't be till High school, or College that we start looking at our similarites and not our differences,
And God? Like any good parent God is sitting back and watching. It's given us the basic rules to live by, hopefully taught us enough values and morals, but now its time for us to start teaching ourselves, learning for ourselves. We're in Junior High, no self-respecting Junior High school student listens to their parent. We know everything now. We've got it all figured out. (shhhh, don't tell us we don't!) Even if Jesus or Mohammed or Moses did come strolling across the Atlantic Ocean with a new set of rules, we aren't going to listen to them. Rules! We don't need no stinking rules!
So that's where we are. I don't think religion was pointless, I just think that now it's obsolete. If God is truly a good parent it hasn't told us all we need to know, but instead left us a lot to figure out for ourselves. Left us to make our own way through the jungle of Junior High, and to make our own decisions about whats right and wrong. Hopefully the rules God gave us as children will be enough to guide us down the right path, if not, we're going to have one hell of a parent-teacher meeting.
I can´t argue with you because I agree with what you said...boring, I know.
I believe in evolution :^)
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