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Originally posted by Spanky
Many people believe - I am not one of them - that morality comes down to selfishness. That there really is no morality. When someone says that something is moral - what they are really saying is that something is in my self interest. Morality developed because it helps us survive. When people act morally they cooperate well with other people and they are able to dominate people (take their resources). So humans developed morality because it helps them survive (it is a mutation that helped us procreate and carry on our genetic line). In politics this translates to when someone tries to impose their will on someone else it is always for selfish reasons. Many Atheists, like my Caltech friends, think that all moral arguments really come down to selfishness. That if you propose that slavery should be ended in Sudan the only way to truly justify it is if you can demonstrate that ending slavery in Sudan will benefit the citizens of teh United States. If you send money to help starving children in Bangaladesh, they only way to support that idea is if you can show how it helps you personally. So really there is no such thing as morality. So when you are disussing US formal policy, the term the right thing to do is a stupid idea - you should just talk bout what is in the United States national interest.
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It seems to me that you are saying different things, some of which are nonsensical and some of which are tautological.
When you say, there really is no morality, that is nonsensical. Many people have strong moral beliefs. If you believe that the only end is your own self-interest, that is itself a moral viewpoint.
When you say that calling something moral really means you're saying that it's in your self-interest, that's either false or tautological. False, if you consider simple acts of charity; tautological, if you call those acts of charity self-interested.
If your athiest pals have no objection to slavery in the Sudan so long as it does not affect them, that -- in my book -- is a moral view that exalts their own individual self-interest above everything else. What seems odd to me, in the context of this ongoing conversation, is that you seem to think the moral value of this self-interest can be taking for granted -- i.e., that it needs not be explained -- even as you ask again and again for other people to explain why, e.g., killing people is bad.
So far, you've been making normative assertions, about what morality should be. Then you turn to a positive assertion, about where it came from -- that morality developed because it helps us survive. I think this vein of argument is potentially interesting, but I don't understand what it has to do with your normative arguments. You keep switching back and forth from positive and normative.
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Nietza took this a step further and said that our moral instincts are there because it helps the society we live in survive. But a truly rational man will understand that his moral instincts are really just instincts, and if one is smart, they can move beyond their instincts and find even better ways to survive. Like our instincts tell us not to stick needles in ourselves. But a smart man will stick in a needle, even if our instincts tell us that is bad, so we can innoculate ourselves. Similarly we have instincts that tell us not to take advantage of other people because that instinct makes societies more congenial. But if you understand that you can figure out ways of taking advantage of weaker people and not lose the benefits that your instincts. So this new "Superman" can move beyond Good and Evil and not be constrained by morality. The S.S. twisted this idea and used it as a rationalization to kill millions of people. The truly moral man will strive beyond his petty moral constraints and realize that killing innocent people is good for the Volk. So a true moral man will move beyond his irrational moral instincts.
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I might bother to engage with this view of the world if I thought that you actually share it.
