I am not one who spends his working time listening to music. This is a habit that I lost when I was much younger. There was something enjoyable about listening to talk radio, sports radio, or podcasts in that it filled the dead space around with human conversation on matters of interest to me. It struck me when I was probably 16 when I was with my peers in a high school social studies class. My classmates had little interest in the world around them and possessed either indifference or fervent opinions on current events. How could they have such opinions while openly admitting they had little knowledge on the subject? The best way to remedy this was to dive into the opinions of others, listen carefully, hear objections, and place a reasonable assessment on the whole matter to distill one's own opinion on the issue. Talk radio and podcasts did well for me in this arena.
These practices remain today. Rather than listening to the next hot band or the overproduced music on large commercial radio (a dying beast), I utilize YouTube to listen to past debates, current news/satire shows, and individual content creators to hear opinions and facts which are used to support them. Today I was listening to another Hitchens debate, this time with Mark Roberts on the Hugh Hewitt show. Hitch is exceptional when it comes to this particular arena spectacle, but there are times I find he may have been better served being more explicit. Early into the conversation, there was two pressing points on human morality: how and why. Just prior to this debate I was listening to Dennis Prager, an annoying man whose lack of mental flexibility shows his the rigidity and frailty of his archaic beliefs. Prager, just as Hewitt, attempted to get Hitchens to explain why we have morality. It left me wanting to put my own thoughts down.
How is it humans have morality?
It certainly is not because of a god creating us with it, to start. It seems to me that proposition is, as it is in almost in case regarding the role or place of god, superfluous. Starting at the most basic assumptions about humans, we must first look to our origin. Humans have evolved over many millions of years, from lowly origins far down to the trunk of the tree of life. We are mammals, all of us. As such, we share a set of behaviours with other mammals which, far from making us unique, contribute to our shared place on this planet. An example of this is group cohesion. Without the protection of the group for many mammalian species, individuals would be exposed to grave threats. The protection provided by a group will directly aid in the viability and rate of propagation of that species. It follows then that certain social characteristics would develop concurrently to facilitate groups cooperation. This is seen in lower primates. Empathy, something many theists believe is not innate in humans, exists and can be fostered, especially in those who have the needs of survival already met.
The success of the group will continue as long as there are supportive behaviours to those ends. When individuals disrupt that order, there are often immediate consequences for their actions. Looking at spider monkeys, if a low ranking male assaults a preferred or high ranking female, that low ranking male will be ostracized from the group. This leaves him open to predation, limits his access to high yield foraging areas, leaves him exposed to the elements, and loses the much needed bonding and hygiene activity of grooming. This is not a permanent state, however, as the empathy of over like monkeys will eventually come around to aiding the pariah.
These behaviours displayed from monkeys also exist in humans and is explained by an evolutionary process. Without empathy, humans would have never been able to coordinate their efforts to hunt, to band together to build shelters, or to defend themselves from other groups of humans. Family or kin protection reigns supreme here, as we are quick to defend our families more so than we are to defend community members. An interesting quirk, as we then can act in a callous manner our of a cost-benefit analysis when it comes to protecting individuals not part of our family. If a god were to have given humans morality, why is this morality not always present? Why does it care more about our own kin over the innocent children of our enemies?
Why do humans have morality?
A similar but distinct question. I eluded to it above, though: we have morality, such as not killing, thieving, or assaulting individuals within our communities as such acts would erode community cooperation and cohesion. The conclusion to continual attacks on the community would destroy the community and likely all the individuals within it. Why we have morality is truly not some cosmic-level question, but one that is almost entirely answered when we answer how we, as a species, came about. The simple fact is that we would not be here if it were not for innate morality--a morality that can be explained without mention of a creator god. If we did not have morality we would not be here in the form we currently take.
The problem is a top-down vs. bottom-up, a common theme in my writing. Top-down suggest a creator who imbued humans with morality in order for humans to get along. Bottom-up, on the other hand, would suggest moral behaivour set the ground work for the success of our species. Occam's Razor employed here leaves us with the latter of statements; there is a near-infinite number of questions which would come from the top-down proposition, such as the nature of the creator, its interventative conditions, and who created the creator. Conversely, the bottom-up axiom presented has fewer additional questions, but questions which can be currently confidently answered, save the ultimate question of abiogenesis.
It would seem to me, then, that humans have morality and rational capacity to evaluate moral precepts. Religion or belief in a god intervene in these matters, often undermining the rational evaluation of morality and imposing strange or barbaric notions of human conduct. We have seen in our time on this rock we call home period of great adversity to scientific inquiry. When the church was challenged about the place of the Earth in relation to the rest of existence, the church decided it was best to burn people! Years later, we now know we are not the center of the universe or even our own solar system. This human effort in undoing revelation was not enough to shake belief in the supernatural to the ground.
The move now is to impose creation as the cornerstone example of human exceptionalism in a creator's universe. The argument is as follows: the Earth is placed in such a position away from the Sun, with the correct axis, the precise magnetic power, with just enough water, and the mix of oxygen to nitrogen in the air, all the mix of food to support ourselves, a day-night-cycle which is not too long or too short, seasons which are rarely unlivable, and the perceptive skills to survive that there must have been a creator to have life in such a delicate balance.
This is utter nonsense. It comes from the wrong position. If the Earth were closer to the Sun, it would be more like Venus; further, more like Mars. Life exists on this planet because of the conditions which are possible on it. We have seen conditions change on this globe which has driven evolution: at one time, when large trees existed but there was no biological means of decomposition in the form of fungi and bacteria, the Earth has widespread carbon sequestration, driving up the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere. Such a change facilitated, in a nightmarish manner, exceedingly large insects. Now, with the decomposition of trees and the burning of fossil fuels, the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere has decreased, along with the size of almost every land animal, insects included.
Morality and human understanding of goodness is not an attribute bestowed upon us. Humans have, through evolutionary forces, developed innate morality. Our reason has since fostered our morality to encompass a larger diversity of humans. Without innate morality, humans, as a species, would not exist, nor would any primate leading up to humans. To make the claim humans were created in a matter to possess empathy and morality requires that individuals to prove an endless list of assumptions: who is god, where is this god, why did this god wait, why didn't this god do a better job? So, no Mr. Prager or Mr. Hewitt, human morality is innate because without it there would be no humans. Just as should be expected in a universe which is wholly indifferent to each and every one of us.
This has been an unedited rant. @nrokchi
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