Atheists, wondering about morality?

great questions...lets see how atheist answer. they will probably just talk reckless and be disrespectful

so we evolve to fit society? i guess all the innocent people dying and child molesters are a product of evolution?

1) It's all to do with cheating/lying and seeing through those lies. A baby bird will lie to it's parent by making out that it is more hungry than it really is, the mother birds has evolved to see through those lies and feed her chicks accordingly. Morals really are subjective and even the most moral person will commit an immoral act if the reward far outweighs the risk using their morals to justify the act. e.g. If you are walking down the road and you see a known drug-dealer drop several thousand [insert currency here] and you knew that you could pick that up without being seen at all, it is a rare person that would run after the dealer shouting "Excuse me, you appear to have dropped your drug money." Many would either keep it for themselves or donate all or part to a worthy cause. Thus morals are not binding in the sense that you feel bad when you commit an immoral act. There is no obligation to treat others fairly and many do not. If morals were bestowed by a God, there would be no need for police-officers and those morals would be universal around the planet. We treat others right (or at least should) because we are hopeful that others will do the same for us. This is why people who are not moral get punished by the society in which they live. A quick search on "doves and hawks evolutionary stable strategy" found this http://www.novelguide.com/a/discover/ansc_02/ansc_... and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_stable_s... but you may find other, better resources.

2) See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_stable_s... Suffice to say that those that are immoral have a slight advantage over those that are not however, at the point where the immoral people outnumber the moral people, there becomes no benefit to being immoral, the moral person gains an advantage and the population swings the other way instead.

1) Of course they carry true weight. If people totally ignore the moral teachings of their culture, the culture falls apart. That's a direct real-world moral consequence.

2) Man isn't perfect for the same reason no creature in nature is perfect. The pressures placed on us are strong and complex and ever-changing, whereas perfection is elusive and ultimately subjective. And some moral laws are contrary to individual survival; but they're never contrary to collective survival, which is the purpose of morality. They all are ultimately intended to serve the group in some way.

1) Depends on what you mean by "true weight". If morality is designed to maintain an ordered, safe society and prevent interference with our enjoyment of life, I'd say that's enough of a "weight" right there. If we don't treat each other morally, ordered society breaks down. Isn't that enough?

2) Morality always requires human thought and analysis in order to apply it. And we all know that the human mind, as powerful as it is, is susceptible to all kinds of influence. Human thought is often subjective. Also, what's "perfect" morality? There's always a subjective component, so how would we know we've reached "perfect" morality? Lastly, evolution is always an ongoing process...the human body isn't perfect, for example, despite thousands of years of evolution.

Morality isn't a result of biological evolution, it's a part of cultural evolution. What binds a member of a society to a set of "morals" is that those who refuse to follow those morals are removed from society. It's a behavior that's seen in all social animals.

Natural selection doesn't result in perfection, nor does it claim to. The species, society, etc that is the best fit for current conditions will survive. It doesn't need to be perfect.

i ask your self, how a philosophical instructor can consider this stupid theory! a million) If ethical in uncomplicated terms become the assumption of a god and not something, it may be dispensable. yet whilst ethical has a purpose, we don't desire a god for it! we will additionally discover our very own ethical regulations, in the comparable way, we come across mathematical regulations. ethical is a superpersonal theory, like maths. So it somewhat is via definition no longer the introduction of a guy or woman, or maybe no longer a god ones! 2) If we get ethical from the Bible, then the comparable problems with a million) are counting! And: We could no longer appraise the bible morally. I wager, your instructor won't spare ethical... yet i think, your instructor is an exceedingly stupid one: whilst he's a philosophical instructor, has he ever examine Kant? Buddha? Kungfutse? all of them have written and shown, that ethical does not come from a god. Buddhists and taoists are additionally atheists.

1) They carry weight because we give them value (just like US currency. Did you know that 90% of our paper money is based on credit and pure faith in the economy? Faith really is powerful :D) There is also a little something I like to call "empathy". It's the basic and common understanding of another human being. We all have experienced pain. Why would we want to inflict that hurt on another creature?

2) You misunderstand evolution. It is an ongoing process, that is never perfect and never finished. We become better (for example, weeding out the ridiculous concept of religion. That should save millions of lives) and better, but never perfect.

Sorry for taking so many jabs at faith :3

But society needs change to move forward. If we were all comfortable in our existence where would be the incentive to expand? If our distant ancestors in East Africa had been totally moral which of them would have rebelled, led a group of followers out to explore. They would have all lived comfortably in their moral village and died out when the first crops failed.

It appears that there may be a genetic component to schizophrenia. Why has this not been eliminated? Because people with that gene think outside the box. Live unconventionally. Reach conclusions normal people would not. As a race we need people who think outside the box, even immorally sometimes, in order to survive.

1. population rule is the weight. Shared genetics create shared neurochemical reactions because our brains are similarly developed and constructed. We are a social species that survives because we live in a group. If we want to stay in that group we need to remain moral.

2. there is no such thing as perfect, and evolution is based on variability, so our variability is just more evidence of evolution.

1) No, not really.

2) There is no such thing as perfect. We don't evolve to reach perfection, we evolve to fit our environment as best we can & nothing more.

"why are some laws of morality contrary to survival or evolution?"

Such as?

I don't know how to answer #1. Evolution isn't a person, it isn't a being, it's living organisms development through time. We humans have developed like every other animal. If we were "perfect" the other animals would be too.