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[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Spanky
Because then morality is just an instinct that helps one survive. Kind of like opposable thumbs. Our instincts tell us to care about the downtrodden, because a society that is full of people that care about the downtrodden survive better than the people in a society that do not. So morality is not really about right or wrong, but just what helps us survive better. In certain Cat societies, if a female cat takes on a new mate, the new male cat will kill all the offspring of the prior mate. He does that because the children from the other mate do not carry his genetic line, so he does not want to waste his resources on an alternate genetic line. Throughout history people have often treated step children less well than their own children. How can you blame them if morality is simply based on survival? How can you critisize a parent that mistreats their step children? Your instinct that such activity is wrong is just an instinct that helps you survive, just like the step parents instinct to mistreat their step child, is an instinct that helps them survive. Who is to say whose instinct is more valid? I think there is a morality that is beyond the logic of survival or just carrying on your genetic line. I know that throwing widows on their dead husbands funeral pyre is wrong. I don't think that my feelings on the subject are just some misplaced survival instinct. And even though such activity does not effect me in any way I feel a responsibility to do something about it.

The thing that separates humans from the lower species is our ability to rationalize and empathize. Your insistence that man is left with nothing but instinct without the existence of God is faulty for the simple reason that it leaves out this essential feature of what makes us human.