If piranhas can develop morality without gods, can’t we?
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[...] This is a very good and thoughtful video: Where Do Piranhas Get Their Morality? | Unreasonable Faith http://bit.ly/GQYpt [...]
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good vid
thx
I <3 Thunderf00t
I’m a little wary about drawing moral conclusions from nature.
A pride of lions may act “morally” towards each other, but let another neighboring pride get too close and violence is quite often a result. A new male lion will kill all the cubs of a defeated foe. Bears, mainly solitary, can be very hostile to their conspecifics. Crows will attack and kill members of another flock/murder.
I pity the chimp from an adjacent troop who wanders into a neighbors territory and the neighbors are nearby. It is not a pretty sight.
Perhaps what we call “morals” mainly extends to one’s “local” family group (genetic and community in a sense). A pride of cats, a troop of chimps,a pack of hyenas, or a murder of crows. Humans are so interconnected by technology that perhaps it is easy for us (some of us) to feel compassion for someone else’s troubles a world away (i.e. our sense of community grew over the course of the 20th century due to travel and communication).
As the video remarked, for social species, there has to be some kind of coherence or there is no social structure. A sense of “do no harm to those near you” would be the required glue to hold this structure together.
Thinking more along the lines of how natural selection affects the individual, perhaps “morals” developed from a sense of selfishness? What I mean by that is could our sense of what is right and wrong have developed over time due to someone not wanting to have their food stolen, family killed, shelter destroyed? A sense of “Do NOT do unto others as you would not want them doing to you” (sadists not included).
I see no reason to postulate a supernatural zombie god as being the source of our sense of morality. Morals can be more easily be developed out of a sense of protecting what is yours. If I don’t steal your food and kill your family, perhaps you, as well, will not do the same to me. At first these “morals” may only extend to a relatively small social group (clan, tribe), then as the group grows larger (village, town, city, “global awareness”) so does the population to which your sense of morality extends.
(I hope that is not too disjointed. If it does then blame Mr. Hornsby and his hard cider)
Another random thought; Perhaps the immorality of war is a reality because a populations sense of community if temporarily reduced to a sense of nationalism? (i.e. Don’t kill your allies while the enemy is literally from another camp so our moral sense doesn’t extend to them).
“Anyways”…. Great video. I gave me something to think about on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
Of course, did anyone notice how the piranha literally didn’t bite the hand that was feeding them? (wanders off scratching his head)
well said – a sky god is not required for morality. Bats share their food with each other. They did a study where one bat didn’t share and eventually he was ostracized by the group and starved to death. Share or you die. It is part of nature. No god required.
From piranha Jesus, duh.
well god made piranhas right? so he just made them to be moral. that’s just as a good an argument as the one used by the creationist guy in the video.
It doesn’t quite fit in with the “Humans are more than just animals” worldview that Xtians like to foist on us, though.
Yeah don’t christians say that humans are higher than animals?
i never said it was a good argument, just that it’s as good as the one used by the creationist.
GOD JACKED IT
…and he saw that it was good.
I’m sorry to be so shallow, but after watching the first couple shots of the video, all I could think about was The Flintstones.