[kennyguitar]

In a new paper entitled “The origins of religion: evolved adaptation or byproduct?”, Ilkka Pyysiäinen from the University of Helsinki and Marc Hauser from Harvard discuss the evolution of religion and morality. The paper discusses whether religion is a direct adaptation, that is, whether there are specific genes that favor belief in religion, God, the afterlife, the supernatural, and so on—or whether religion is a “byproduct,” that is, that religious beliefs grow naturally out of other evolved features of the human mind. Pyysiäinen and Hauser favor the latter. They seem to agree with Pascal Boyer (see his Religion Explained), that faith is an outgrowth of the natural human tendency to attribute intentionality to objects, forces of nature, and the like.

It makes sense, and it might have been just like they say. Same with morality, it might have been a side effect of some other evolutionary development of humans. Though once morality showed up in human brain and it turned to be very beneficial for group existence, it became like a sense of vision for our social lives. It’s hard to imagine that, if morality is with us for few millions of years, it wouldn’t have dedicated neuronal network in our brains, a special compartment in human brain where we measure good and bad.

Here I think we can approach an answer, at least in principle. If morality tends to be similar among people of different faiths, or if morality is similar in atheists and the faithful, or if children brought up without religion but exposed to different cultural teachings tend to converge on the same morality, then we have some evidence of an innate “moral grammar.”
Some parts of moral compass are encoded in our heads at time of birth no question about that. We are not sure how much yet.
The examples you mentioned might be attributed to evolution of morals outside of human body though. Group and its morality/ethics doesn’t die together with individuals (except genocides), therefore morality is an entity. In this understanding morality has time, lots of time, to evolve and try different options. I’m sure many options were tried and some weeded out by natural selection. It might be the case that there are limited successful forms morality can take to make group of humans strong or just survive. If this is right, all strongest human groups in existence today might have similar ethics in general principia.
Interesting is example of Aztecs and their ethics. For my liking they went too far with sacrifices of people. They killed too many of their finest to give gods the best offer for the rain. They also lost too many battles with Spaniards, trying to wound enemies instead of killing, so they could scarify live people for the gods.
From history we might conclude that Aztec morality found a dead end.
I know there were also different reasons too, that they lost. But how one can explain that empire of millions of people succumb to several hundreds Spaniards. Different morality or ethics might be the main culprit here.


Both altruistic and antisocial behavior is to a large extent learned behavior, via both social learning and modeling of others. Studies and authors however tend for the most part to view morality as an inherently positive force however it is neither good nor bad, it is a set of beliefs and should not be confused with the behavioral component.
To my understanding of natural selection, if something exists in such profound form as hearing, finger, fear, morality, etc, and for so long, it means that this something is highly beneficial to the owner, therefore it can only be deemed as good.
For example, suburban families and prison gangs share the same set of moral values regarding 'protecting one's family'. However, how this value is expressed is a different issue altogether and falls firmly within the realm of ethics, not morality.
If it comes to “protecting once family” they are not that different. Surely there are wars and killings between gangs in same prison, there are no wars and killings between families in same village or city. But members of same ordinary families are sent to war for the tribe or country and eagerly kill members of other ordinary families of different tribe, religion or country. The biggest difference, in my opinion, is that gang members are usually emotionally unstable, brain damaged or psychopathic, compared to members of ordinary family. They war more often and actually might experience pleasure derived from torturing and killing others.
That’s why they are in prison, with their dead end morality, locked by stronger group people of somewhat different sets of morals, ethics if you wish.
Humanity’s closest living relatives are common chimpanzees and bonobos. It is believed that these primates share a common ancestor with humans who lived four to six million years ago. These primates exhibit premoral sentiments used as methods of restraining individual selfishness and building more cooperative groups. Simply put, premoral sentiments have as their primary aim, behavioral control. Morality in a human sense differs from the premoral sentiments of our primate cousins in two primary ways: (1) Humans alter their moral code to suite their psycho-social needs (2) Humans are corrupt, seeking to bypass societal moral codes to further their own interests, to the detriment of society as a whole.
This sounds very homocentric, and it comes only from not enough observation of our closest relatives. I’m pretty sure you will find your, above mentioned, examples in primates or even other social mammals like pack of wolfs, or deer.
There is no such thing as pre-moral. If morality is understanding and election of right and wrong, what pre-moral is then? Recognition of pre-right and pre-wrong, or sort of right and maybe wrong?
Just because animals can’t vocalize right and wrong it doesn’t mean they don’t understand and feel them in similar manner than we do.
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Moral evolution in humans has incorporated various religious values as the church has sought to become more involved in politics and medical-legal issues. Religious institutions strive to make political institutions less secular in efforts to proselytize and increase their rank within high-ranking government and corporate sectors. Medically, religious institutions have begun to take part in the formulation of birth-control and pro-life policies that have as a consequence the swelling of their numbers, improving their position both politically and financially. What does all of this morality have in common, personal gain. Morality as an instrument for the controlling of individuals has as a direct result the extortion and corruption that feeds the moral code of each community. The more morality the less personal freedoms people enjoy and the more corrupt a society becomes.

I have to admit you lost me here.
Let’s have an example:
Least corrupt country is Denmark
Most corrupt is Somalia, by these standards:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
Are you saying that Somalia has more morality and less personal freedoms than Denmark?
By more morality, do you mean more moral person or more moral laws?

In general, individuals agree that moral principles should be upheld by other members of society. Asked whether they believe the same moral principles should apply to themselves, most reply tentatively, feeling that by answering in the affirmative they submit themselves to abuse by those authorities who utilize societal norms to intrude on and restrict the freedoms of others.
You are painting a very sad picture of human nature. I’m glad I’ve escaped “communism”, the dictator ship of proletariat. Another example of dead end morality.

Thanks for engaging in this subject. We don’t see eye to eye, but it is very interesting to hear others perspective.