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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tunica Albuginea who wrote (907)	9/21/1999 10:11:00 AM
From: TigerPaw	Respond to of 69300

Well first of all because we cannot define morality with a single/unified definition. It would be pointless of me to provide examples of animal behavior in such a situation. It reminds me of a long ago conversation (not with you) on the subject of "Can animals Speak". Every example was greeting with a "Not's not speech, or that's not language" response, and since I occasionally learn from past experience I will avoid that type of dialog in this case. freedom of choice ... freedom to do something against our best interests It think we would all agree that humans are much much smarter than the other surviving species on this planet. The geniuses of the gorilla and bonobo clans would appear as candidates for special education in worst performing of our schools. It comes as no surprise than that human behavior is more complex. It's also harder to study the history of ideas, because there is such a spotty fossil record. Some ideas get written down, others are develop aurally for a long time. Still, whatever you think morals are, imagine a culture which either ignored them or acted opposite to those morals. Would it be a happy productive culture? When I do that thought experiment I conclude that morals have a survival advantage. I got an interesting perspective on free will when I listened to a group interview of people with Touretts Syndrome. These people had no power to stop them from saying whatever came into their mind, whether the utterance would cause them harm or not. Some had milder forms and could actually answer questions while some of the others just cursed. They had complete control of their actions (free will) but not of their speech (no free will). Next Topic -with only milliseconds in evolutionary time ( 1999 years ) it spreads like fire to become ( Judeo-Christianity ) the largest religion in the world? This is a good example of Punctuated Equilibrium where it overlaps with the theory of memes. Largest? Do you place Islam in that continum also? At that time the Roman Empire was in turmoil and there was a great deal of pressure to change the government from republican to central rule. A many God philosophy supported a check in powers through specialization of the Gods. A one God philosophy supported a single branch (Emporer and his staff). The Emporer(s) won that survival test. TP