Quote:
Originally Posted by David E
Still wondering what is wrong about murdering.
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I'm glad I don't live near you, then.
I wish I had time to participate in this chat, but I'm extra busy for the next few days. Very quickly, I'd mention that Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot are always brought up by religious apologists to rub in the faces of the secular. But they were hardly bastions of rational secular philosophy. They essentially created godless pseudo-religions with themselves as supreme entities - kind of like the Caesars of yore. In other words, nothing new at all. Political ideology elevated to the status of unquestionable truth can be just as devastating as religion, no doubt about it. But this is irrelevant to the question of whether we derive our morality from a supernatural source. These abusive regimes are a long way away from secular liberal democracies, which currently seem to be exterminating hardly anyone in Scandinavian countries, for instance.
Altruism has been observed in other animal species. Does this mean that our own sense of altruism evolved, or is some supernatural agency granting an awakening morality to a few other primates? I'd say more likely the former.
Altruism aside, self-interest is still a perfectly reasonable place from which to say murder is wrong, or at least extremely inconvenient. And getting from "I don't want to be killed" to "I shouldn't kill others" is perfectly logical. If you live in any kind of in-group at all, and you engage in murder, you can jolly well expect the group to want you out of the picture, and you can easily understand why. ("They don't want to die, just like me.") From here, it isn't that far a jump to say, "Okay, there are other beings with self-interest, just like me. We can work together for our mutual protection." It isn't necessarily the complete picture, but I fail to see any inherent flaws in this explanation. In even the smallest tribe, proscribing murder is a no-brainer. (Of course, the same protecting of self-interest will likely mean that killing folks in the other tribes will be allowed or even encouraged if and when they become a threat. That hasn't changed, alas.)
That's all I have time for. I'm always interested in this topic, so y'all have a ball with it. I'll check back later. <swims away>