Some Christian ammunition is the question, “How could we know right from wrong, if there is no governing presence, nothing to decide what’s right or wrong?” It’s an argument for the existence of God. There are certain rules and there is a certain moral order to everything going on, so somebody or something must’ve ordered everything to go on this way. “Our morals come from God,” they say.
And they’ve got it completely wrong.
Here’s how morals, and the implications of adhering to them could come to be, and how they did. Here’s an idea anybody can fit their head around, and how our ancestors did. Dig this…
Homo sapiens (and cousins of ours which no longer exist) were stomping around on this cooling and disgusting planet between 10,000 and 50,000 years ago. This is about the time that communities and cultures were first really getting started, and falling in-line with what we now understand them to be. Before then, people were using tools and fire, but nobody was really figuring much else out (a harmless combination). And not long after, people had already started painting each other’s faces and making calendars. 10,000 to 50,000 years ago is when we need. And picture this: nasty and primitive versions of us, biting and bashing each other around, taking sexually whatever dirty members of the other gender appeared to have the least lice bugs (or maybe more lice bugs was more appealing, and maybe nobody was picky about their mate’s gender); food was probably scarce and probably fought back (or at least our ancestors fought for it); weather wasn’t understood by anybody. It was fucking chaos. Madness, nonstop and all over the place.
Given this, it isn’t difficult at all to consider that somebody, at some point, realized or thought that there might be a better way to conduct one’s self, and deal with all the predator and lice bug and weather crap. That there’s a better way than fighting and struggling, and dying miserably anyway. You can conceive of a thousand different scenarios that this might’ve first happened inside the context of, all equally likely and possible.
Two cavemen, like usual, were murdering and beating the shit out of each other. Some kind of battle to decide who got to take home and enjoy the rotting mastodon or elephant corpse they both had stumbled into simultaneously enough. Then, an idea. Something was imagined. “Fuck, there is food here for both of us! And if we work together, we can relocate and prepare it more efficiently!” Maybe they didn’t have words like “efficiently” or “fuck,” or any speech other than grunts, but you can see my point without our language. Celestial intervening to the side, it was realized and communicated that there is a mutual benefit to combining goals. Things can get done faster, and with less effort. Something like teamwork. It isn’t hard to think that this realization went on, and was reaffirmed and repeated many times (and long before any alleged 10 Commandments delivery atop Mount Sinai; humans never would’ve made it that far had they been killing each other at every whim before then).
From the start, we’ve been working things out. And ideas like this one are absolutely the foundations for tribes and small societies, how ubiquitous and universal rules — call them morals if you’d like to — were realized and first passed into any kind of legislation. People noticed that they can get more done and generally have a better time doing so if they look out for one another, and they started spreading that message. I’m not finding any question that necessitates a miracle as an answer. It is all that simple, and we are all — still — that capable.
I think a lot of people are confused or get confused, and think they can’t pull apart morals and religion. Mostly (only) because they never have actually tried to think about it this way. And thus, some of the nonsense expressions and conventional wisdoms that get passed around amongst us: “He found God,” with the implications that whoever we’re talking about will correct their wrongs and live a better, more fulfilling life than they would’ve otherwise been capable. Fundamentalist parents that would shit and piss all over themselves (and each other), if they were to learn that their child is dating “an atheist!” Stuff like that.
There’s a fantastic conversation in our history, which begins with French scientist Pierre-Simon de Laplace being asked to come and present his work by the Emperor Napoleon. Laplace developed and wrote a model and book called Mécanique Céleste (Celestial Mechanics), which uses mathematical equations to demonstrate how our solar system operates. Laplace is cited as the first to show all of this. Overwhelmed and confused, Napoleon asks why there is no God portrayed in Laplace’s system, to which Laplace replies, “Je n’ai pas besoin de cette hypothèse.”
He says he doesn’t need it.
je t’adore, Matthew…
I think that we have covered the question of morality being a necessary part of any civilized social construct, even when such a society is devoid of beliefs in a Supreme Being, but of course, despite having been an atheist since I was about 10, I was indoctrinated in a monotheistic religion at a very early age & those Judeo-Christian values became a part of my psyche.
Would I have been as morally & ethically “responsible”, I’ll call it, had I grown up in a world free of any religious beliefs? Difficult to say, but here was my initial reaction when you first posted this piece you wrote 1/09:
Well, my fine young cannibal, as fine an exposition on the genesis of ethics as I have read in a long time; that you peppered it with expletives makes it even more compelling to me.
but I’m kinky like that!
I was born into Catholicism and after digesting it for the first 10 years of my life said, “Thanks, but no thanks!”
When you speak of the efficiency of a more civilized society, you hit the nail right on the head.
Now I happen to believe in Good & Evil, but neither of these concepts are attached to anything like divinity… They are instead, in my mind, a matter of Life or Death.
Putting it in the most simplistic terms I can for the purposes of this forum, I will say that “Good” is life-affirming, life-sustaining & life-giving and “Evil” is that which destroys life &/or society.
This is an insufficient definition but it falls in line with what you discuss here as that “aha” moment when two competing factions realize that by combining their forces rather than competing with each other, they could sustain both their lives…
Love you, my sweet child!
You ROCK, infinitely…
xoxoxo
Then as a response to a few critics:
Thereby proving Matthew’s point that such “morality” or, if you prefer, “cooperative behavior” is Nature’s own way of preserving the species or let’s just call it life since things like amoeba are not complex enough to be considered a species by any stretch of the definition. Faith in the Divine has nothing to do with such levels of cooperation though it can certainly help. Morality is an innate mechanism that we humans have to be able to survive.
we are higher functioning but our animal natures cannot be denied.
I am referring to our biology, Fran. Our limbic brains are exactly the same as a reptiles. We are higher functioning by virtue of our cerebral cortex which is much more highly developed than any other animal’s.
As to our “souls”, I have no opinion. Morality to me is an intellectual choice. Some people do choose “instant gratification” & they wind up many of them in our prisons & mental wards.
We who choose “unselfishness”, do do because in the end it benefits us to help each other.
Our brains release serotonins & endorphins when we something beneficial for ourselves & for others. it is the way our species preserves itself.
Just like fucking feels good & is mainly for propagation of the species, so does doing good deeds which mainly for sustaining & preserving the species…
my definition is selfish, yet it isn’t…
Selflessness may be ultimately motivated by selfish rationale yet the acts are still generous.
Like being religious, the religious often do the right things out of fear of God & his wrath.
Yet the deeds they do are still “good”…. so does it matter why?
I’m not sure it does…
Tell me the “simpler” ways you refer to.
I am simply explaining the motivating factor for the species: endorphin release provides a “reward” for a biological necessity: survival of the fittest.
Masturbation, while tons of fun, provides no real benefit to anyone, except the masturbator & no, if that’s what we did all day, the species would cease to exist.
Hence the taboos placed on maturbation by most civilized societies & religious groups.
hahaha
I think it’s hilarious that Seb didn’t remember you had written this article.