@fullhamish
Orathiac - ''An understanding of natural selection and humanism leaves me
with no questions of compatibility.''
And yet you now seem to be saying the opposite; for example, '' I would say
our capacity to construct morals comes from evolution - but not the specifics''.
Have I got the wrong end of the stick?
What is the incompatibility you see? Evolution has left us with the tools to work in large groups, and also to be flexible, it doesn't care how we behave it just takes an amoral position. Individually these tools amoint to a sense of fairness - we know when we're not getting a fair deal at the supermarket (say if the person in front of you get a discount and you don't) and there are a number of behaviours we have available to respond, but it is not as individuals that we build our morals, it is as a group - so the 'appropriate' responce will vary by culture. In that sense, morality is a group concensus built on a sense of fairness (which was evolved, though the capacity to make group concensus is also evolved)
Humanism is not determined by evolution; but it is facilitated. How can two things be incompatible when one is completely amoral and the other moral. The amorality of evolutionary theory doesn't care if we use morality to guide our behaviour, it doesn't have any value system (other than valuing things which are good at propogating their own existance. No, valuing is wrong, it observes that some things are better at propogating their own existance, and says nothing about this being good or bad, just that it happens)
)
New Game
)
)
)
)
