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Do those who understand evolution believe that if the earth's history would be "rerun", humans would hold..?

.....to a different system of moral values? Or would evolution and human experience produce the same set of "universals" of morality?

[By "system of moral values", I'm referring to the "universals" of human morality, such as "The individual has no right to murder casually someone he dislikes and "torturing children is wrong" and "stealing food from a hungry person is wrong".]

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  • 10 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    It's impossible to say what would result if biological or environmental circumstances were different, but since humans are social organisms, I feel it's pretty safe to say that any society of humans would develop similar systems of moral values.

  • 10 years ago

    I suspect, if evolution was "rerun", you'd be unlikely to get humans again, per se... but if you got a reasonably social sapient species that had anything vaguely like our biology (helpless infants, relatively long life spans, individual minds, relatively few infants per mother, et cetera), I think you'd find some of the same basic social rules popping up--killing people not generally and casually permitted, an expectation that people care for/tend/appropriately treat infants, likely some concept of private property and rules against taking same without cause. That's because, to some extent, these are rules that any society of beings with vaguely similar biology would probably need to avoid self-destructing.

    Different biology might lead to different moral rules. For example, a species with non-helpless infants in great quantity might well consider cruel treatment of the young a necessity for the good of the species, weeding out weak or inferior specimens. A hive mind might view individuals the way we view, say, cells--not worthy of much concern except to the extent that their loss or damage will affect the whole. And so on.

  • Anonymous
    10 years ago

    Gee, I hate to break your bubble, but those aren't "universal" human morals. There have, at times, been human cultures that did not consider those to be "morals."

    What is instinctually "wrong" to us is that way because it was of benefit to our survival and reproduction as a "social species." What became "societal law" or "morals" on top of that may have come from some of our instincts, but not necessarily -- there are numerous examples of societal morals that run counter to instinctual ones.

    As for "rerunning history..." If every single thing that ever happened was exactly the same as the first time, we'd wind up with the same result. If anything varied, we wouldn't.

    Peace.

  • ?
    Lv 4
    10 years ago

    I'm not sure what you're trying to get at, but morality is not universal. It's subjective. We are social creatures, and we have learned throughout our evolution that treating each-other as we would want to be treated allows us to survive in groups. It's not a perfect system (just read the news), but it doesn't need to be. It just needs to be good enough to allow us to survive and reproduce.

    If earth's history was "rerun," it's very plausible that a very similar type of evolution would take place.

    Source(s): Just this atheist's opinion
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  • Anonymous
    10 years ago

    I think there would be a lot of differences if events and influential people were different. E.g if we remained an agricultural society, capitalism and patriarchy may not exist. However if we were still humans with reasoning capacity and lived in a society we would still have empathy and social responsibility which would give us the overriding moral value of treating other people as we would like to be treated.

  • 10 years ago

    if all environmental conditions unfold the way they were, then it would just be a direct replay so yes, humans would still hold same moral values.

    And btw, what you call "universal human morality" isn't universal. I can point out certain tribes in Africa where it is indeed ok to murder people that they don't like. I can point out ancient Sparta that tortured deformed kids.

  • ?
    Lv 5
    10 years ago

    Morality is relative, but throughout human history, such rules as "do not kill" and "care for the needy" are typical of large human settlements. It seems that once we discover how to care for ourselves, we learn to care for others, and we set it in stone in order to maintain society.

  • Anonymous
    10 years ago

    Is stealing food from a nation that consumes 25% of the world's foodstuffs despite only having 5% of the world's population wrong?

    Oh, sorry... my inner socialist...

    Uhhh... that's kind of impossible to know. I suppose we'll find out if the theory of parallel universes is true.

  • Anonymous
    10 years ago

    This question is impossible to answer.

    None of your so-called "universal morals" are actually universal, btw.

  • 10 years ago

    Morals have veered and pitched sharply over time. There's no reason to assume this wouldn't happen again if Earth's history were "re-run" as you put it.

    Source(s): The morals and ethics of distant future generations will probably be a lot different from the ones we have now. These things have changed over time and always will.
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