Looking in the rear view mirror three thousand years later makes it seem like common sense, but the reason the Decalouge was fairly radical at the time is because ritual child and adult sacrifice made perfect sense to many Bronze Age Near Eastern civilizations. Anyone who has actually read the Code of Hammurabi knows it is based on religion too.
Does Morality Do Us Any Good?
- Thread starter Hume
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Daylight63
Verified User
So before the Ten Commandments murder was considered OK and not a moral wrong?
So it was Moses who discovered that murder was wrong when God told him?
Daylight63
Verified User
Is morality "instinctual"? There's reason to believe at least the core of it is.
From O'Neil, K. L. (2018). The Biologicalization of Morality: Morality as Instinct. (Thesis USF)
O'Neill further states this in summary:
From O'Neil, K. L. (2018). The Biologicalization of Morality: Morality as Instinct. (Thesis USF)
"Hauser surveyed people across geographic, cultural, and religious barriers. (The trolley dilemmas were even translated to situations involving crocodiles and canoes so that an indigenous Central African tribe could be surveyed) (Dawkins, 2006a). For each variation of the dilemma, across these barriers, the people surveyed almost universally made the same judgements (Hauser, 2006). Even if their reasons differed or if they were unable to articulate their reasons, the vast majority of people still came to the same conclusions (Hauser, 2006).Thus, it seems that regardless of where you live, what you do, whether you practice a religion, whether you are educated, whether you have access to modern technology, whether you are a hunter-gatherer or a US citizen, etc., you have the same sense of morality as everyone else."
The fact that virtually no one has to stop to "reason" that murder is wrong or that lying is wrong is probably a solid indicator (at least in my humble opinion) that the instincts are already there. O'Neill further states this in summary:
"Moral behavior is an outcome of natural selection, and ultimately selfish in that it serves to promote the continued existence of the genes that give rise to it. Moral behavior exists because it is adaptive, with moral individuals earning benefits such as reciprocity, reputation, and status. These benefits are just as present for humans in modern society as they were for our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Many species have evolved social systems that incorporate the enforcement of moral rules, resulting in benefits for “good” deeds and punishments for “bad” deeds. These systems help make it possible for selfish organisms to coexist in cooperative societies. Studies have shown that human generosity, trust, and empathy are influenced by chemical substances in the body..."
"Morality is neither a social construct nor anO’Neil 41endeavor of rationality, but primarily an instinct. As creatures who are both highly intelligent andhighly social, humans are predisposed to believe in a higher moral realm, further complicatingour ability to biologicalize the topic. But despite our complex cognitive delusions, we are nodifferent from other animals in that we are wired to strive for the immortality of our genes. Weare not moral because we’re good; we are moral because we’re selfish."
Infant exposure
In ancient times, exposition (from the Latin expositus, "exposed") was a method of infanticide or child abandonment in which infants were left in a wild place either to die due to hypothermia, hunger, animal attack or to be collected by slavers or by those unable to produce children
Exposure was widely practiced in ancient Greece.[4][5][6] It was advocated by Aristotle in the case of deformity: "As to the exposure of children, let there be a law that no deformed child shall live."[7][8] Plato also defended infanticide as state policy.
Infant exposure - Wikipedia
The innate value of individual life is a moral value that gained a widespread foothold in Axial Age religions.
Daylight63
Verified User
Interesting. So any civilization earlier than the Israelites were OK with murder as a morally neutral thing?
May I ask why the Israelites and many other societies were reluctant to accept that murder was wrong after they were informed of it?
Daylight63
Verified User
This looks interesting but it's pretty dense and might take some time to wade through it.
So you didn't know ritual child sacrifice and infant exposure were widely practiced in the ancient world, until the innate value of individual human life was articulated as a religious moral goal.
Daylight63
Verified User
Oh no, I most assuredly knew that. I just didn't realize that was at a time when humanity didn't know murder was wrong.
I'm truly fascinated by your hypothesis. I would think it would be really cool if you could support it with a citation or something. You know: maybe point to the exact time in human history when we discovered that murder was wrong.
Daylight63
Verified User
Stephen Pinker on the Evolutionary Nature of Morality:
"Prof. PINKER: The first suspicion is that some kind of moral intuitions are universal, not the same intuitions, of course, because in some cultures, it's considered moral to, say, kill your sister if she's had sex with someone you don't approve of, and in other cultures, it isn't. But the idea that there is a moral coloring to acts, that there are some acts that deserve to be punished, that ought to be discouraged, seems to be found in all cultures together with proscriptions against rape and murder and theft. A sense of empathy not always directed at every other human being, sometimes only to members of one's own clan. So the universality of morality is a hint that it might have an evolutionary basis, and models of how social cooperation can evolve point a finger at certain emotions like guilt and sympathy and gratitude and righteous anger as mechanisms to get people to cooperate without being exploited. And so the combination of the universality and the availability of a plausible mechanism by which moral sentiments could evolve suggest that it might be part of our evolved nature as is color vision or fear." (Emphasis added)
Already told you. The belief in the innate value of an individual human life - whether aristocrat, slave, or child - began to be articulated clearly in the Axial Age.
Daylight63
Verified User
OK. Any evidence to support that claim? It's actually kind of stunning to think that humans had to REASON their way to knowing that murder was wrong. Especially given that SO MANY researchers find the moral inclinations against things like murder span all societies, even isolated tribes in the jungles. But I guess the isolated tribes in the jungles of the Amazon got ahold of a Bible so they knew murder was wrong.
Kind of puts the onus on more missionaries in the world, eh? If people REQUIRE that they be taught murder is wrong we need to ensure EVERYONE is taught that.
It does, however, make morality wholly arbitrary and subjective. I'm not entirely certain that's an improvement. If morality is merely decreed by fiat then it doesn't have much value, does it?
In antiquity it made perfect sense to people to ritually sacrifice children, discard weak babies, enslave rivals.
It's stunning to you because you are looking in the rear view mirror at ancient events, and you have been psychologically conditioned by culture, environment, and history to believe that the Decalogue, the Sermon on the Mount, the Five Vows are just basic common sense to everyone, everywhere, and throughout all time.
Daylight63
Verified User
No, it's stunning because somehow isolated tribes in jungles that have not had the benefit of Christian Missionaries coming to them still show an aversion to murder. So I don't know how they would know that murder was wrong.
Well, you've just established that the Decalogue was the first place murder was decreed to be wrong morally.
Do you think God might have implanted the Decalogue into people's hearts and minds after he gave it to Moses? Is that how uncontacted tribes still have a moral system?
Isolated tribes are codependent on every member. One has to be a danger to the tribe to be sent off on their own.
Daylight63
Verified User
It is not a mystery to me why isolated tribes still have much of the same moral inclinations we do but I am curious how they would know it if Cypress is correct that it took the learnings of the Axial Age for people to understand that murder is wrong.
My hypothesis is more in line with what evolutionary biologists think that moral instincts are naturally inborn to social animals so things like murder are considered wrong for social animals because it negatively impacts survival advantages from a safe stable social network.
But folks like Cypress think of that as preposterous.
IBDaMann
Well-known member
God kills people, yes? God vandalizes property, yes?
IBDaMann
Well-known member
Wouldn't it have been much easier to have just told him which word(s) you don't understand?
Cypress is husband to Dutch. They were married in the church of Google. JPP is the first site where hate continues after 5:00 pm and all through the holidays.
Before we get too carried away with the myth of the 'noble savage', some Amazonian tribes practiced cannibalism and human sacrifice was widely practiced by Mesoamerican indigenous tribes in pre-Columbian times.
Small Amazonian tribes are basically large extended families. It's never been a tenet of evolutionary biology to kill one's relatives and social peers of one's cooperative community.
I'm discussing universal values and categorical imperatives, not the utilitarian social cohesion practices of small extended families.
Daylight63
Verified User
You still haven't explained how isolated tribes know about these universal values. You have already established that these are arrived at by reason and thought and had to be established.