lgot wrote:
You people make much confusion with personal morals and society moral. My, your , everyone else, personal moral is not the same thing as the Catholic Moral, Indians morals, Army moral or any other moral that belongs to a group or period.
OK I'll try with more words, instead of personal morals and indian morals:
Morals that I possess VS morals that indians possess.
Can you give me an example of both a personal moral and a social moral? And how the social moral doesn't require a personal moral that we must follow?
And please, the social structure and militar power of Europe is not Moral.
I'm refering to the collective morals of imperial Europe that condoned the invasion, massacre, and conquest of North America. This is part of the social structure that gave rise to their military power.
"Is it moral to kill humans? (I say No) "
Very relative. I found not. But the cops that shot to defend themselves are not doing something seem as immoral among their group and mostly societies. Or the places where Death Sentence is allowed is because the morality of those places accept as valid under the moral point of view the capital punishment.
Yes its relative. I'm keeping the example purposefully simple by exluding the exceptions. The purpose of the example is to show two seperate positions where killing living beings is OK and not OK, where we decide which is moral by the benefit it gives. I could contrast killing for pleasure vs killing in self-defense to give the same effect.
"-Is it moral to kill animals for food? (I say yes)"
A vegetarian of course disagree with you. And he is not immoral in any way.
You missed the point, I'm not trying to say wether killing animals if moral or not. Simply that a meat eating society will label animal killing as OK and moral because of the obvious benefits to that society, with no apparant harm done to any member.
If it is later shown that killing animals will lead to our own destruction, then the former meat-eating society would label it immoral.
"So in part, I would say that evolution has determined what actions we define as moral. "
Evolution have very little to do with that. All humans societies developed a code of moral they followed. Each basead in how the solved their conflicts and needs.
And thus the moral attitudes that bettered their society, that improved their society's ability to grow, expand, and overtake other societies survived, while ones that lead to self-destruction or a lesser ability to compete became extinct.
Which is the evolution of society being determined by survival of the fittest in a non-biological sense. Evolution means descent with change with natural selection choosing the most successfull.
You think the celibate
Are your refering to celibacy? Biologically, there is a great deal of variation within the species. Some people are really tall/short, fat/skinny etc, etc. Not all of these variations are as helpfull in reproduction as others, yet they exist non-the-less. In fact they are *required*, because if situations change, the species needs a collection of varying abilities and traits in order for natural selection to drive change.
For example, our biological evolution has produced a species that is capable of producing individuals who prefer same-sex relationships. This doesn't disprove evolution... in fact you could argue that evolution demands it.
Likewise, in our society there are varying ideas and morals, it is not impossible that the evolution of our society has produces the idea that its OK to be celibate. It hasn't been shown that a small group of religious fanatics being celibate is harmfull to society (perhaps its a benefit).
Both are not particularly usefull to reproduction, but they exist none-the-less.
. Although then you can get into ethical calculus, which I don't like, figuring whether a lot of pain to one person is balanced by the good done to a large number (like the "kill one to save 10 million" thread earlier). I just feel people should try to do good to all, and never intentionally do harm (accidental harm will always happen).
