As for the universality of ethical codes, the single best book I can recommend is by Pascal Boyer, called “Religion Explained.” It’s an anthropological/evolutionary based examination of religious beliefs – what the common characteristics of religious beliefs are, where they come from, and why.

Matthew Alper’s “God Part of the Brain” was also interesting. And my husband recommends work by Scott Atran, though he is sleeping and I can’t ask him for titles, so maybe just google him? I know he writes articles on Edge.org semi-regularly.

If you’re making a deep dive into these kinds of anth/evo works, you really must make sure you have a good background in evolutionary theory, which is assumed by all of the preceeding titles. I’m not sure how versed you are in it, so maybe you don’t need any advice here at all, but a really tidy and good book to get started is called “Evolution for Everyone” by David Sloan Wilson. A clean presentation of the tenets of evolution.

As for the contributions of psychology on the development of morality, if you’re really serious about learning that, the best thing you can do is get yourself access to an academic journal search engine online (such as Ebsco) and search the psychology databases (PsychINFO is probably the best) for published articles on morality, moral development, etc. There may be single volume explorations of this topic, actually they almost certainly are, but I’m not familiar with any. My reading has all been done piecemeal via articles. But actually even most undergrad psych texts, particularly developmental psych (aka child psych), will have a section on moral development that will explain the basics of the more well known models and some of the data they are based on (i.e, children’s morals develop along predictable lines across cultures and religious upbringings).

I hope that was helpful. I don’t mean to dodge you but seriously, the field is enormous and I find most attempts at summary lose too much of the good material, risking us sliding into platitudes and over-simplifications. Also, having gone through my own years of reading on the topic, I don’t have much interest in arguing atheism vs theism. One, been there done that… and two, it makes me a little nervous because people often have a lot of emotional stuff associated with their belief status, and arguing about ideas so easily becomes arguing against people. I know you and I have not had that problem but still – I prefer not to go there.

But happy reading anyway.

Firstly, if you could recommend any good representative books on ethical development and overarching moral codes in humanity as tied to evolutionary advantages, I’d be much obliged.

I should ask what particular stripe of Atheist you claim to be, because if you mean it in the most straight forward sense, I would be somewhat surprised. By the “straight forward” sense I mean, asserting that God does not exist.

This to me seems indefensible.

I mean, are you suggesting that in all the universe (assuming there is just the one) you can confidently assert that God exists in no form, no where in it? One would need almost a God-like familiarity of the entire universe to make that claim.

I akin the existence of God to the existence of dragons. I’ve read books about dragons, seen artists conceptions of dragons, and even read some purportedly true accounts of historical figures who fought with dragons. I’ve never seen a dragon myself, but I certainly couldn’t state with any certainty that “Dragons do not exist” I mean, maybe they are invisible, maybe they moved to a far off galaxy, maybe they have magical dragon powers that make them able to sleep for milennia in alternate dimensions beyond mortal ken.

The point is, the best I could do is agnosticism, i.e. “I don’t know if dragons exist.”

I’ll even accept “practical atheism” which is agnosticism tied to sort of a “and if I don’t have any strong evidence God exists, I’ll live as though he doesn’t” because I don’t carry a magic sword around to fend off dragon attacks for similar reasons.

But I digress. Assuming God exists and did create life in some fashion, could not an evolutionary morality be all part of the divine architecture?

And in a tie in with an earlier conversation, do you think perhaps the reason so many people are adamant 1st type atheists despite it being such an extreme and unverifiable position is because in the perversity of modern society, people denounce God so vehemently because they reeeeeallly hope there isn’t some sort of divine agent waiting around to punish the wicked in the hereafter?

~ I.

““I eat plants (at least in part) because eating meat is unethical” and “You eat meat” –> You are less ethical. ”

Yes, the ugly truth rears its head: I consider not eating animals or their products a higher ethical standard. There’s no way around it and you’ve called me out…! I think meat eating is unethical for everyone, but accept that this is not the only position/opinion to have. You may feel differently, and that’s valid. Meat eating is not among my list of moral absolutes. But maybe one day it will end up there, who knows? (Note you do not *need* a cow to be made full. A bowl of lentils would do, and is cheaper!)

It’s not ethically neutral, it’s just not something I would be willing to force on others. There are shades of ethicality (is that a word?). Murdering people or enslaving them are ones I consider atop the pyramid of ethical importance. Meat eating is somewhat lower down – how far I can’t say, haven’t thought that far along. It’s not an imperative. In my opinion. But that doesn’t make it entirely right. But for all the reasons I explain, I am trying to take a nuanced view of the issue.

“Killing a particular man under a particular set of circumstances is either “not unethical” or “unethical” ” It’s the paricular circumstances that I think we can examine in the case of meat eating. Again, this is because I don’t consider it a moral absolute. But you know, the more often I type that the less comfortable I become with it. This discussion may be changing my mind… good lord, and after all that effort to defend the opposite position!

“You believe in moral absolutes to a degree. Slavery, Rape, Murder… So then how do these things exist as moral absolutes when there is no outside force (like God) to set these rules? Obviously it can’t be an absolute if it’s definined by a society… Unless you have a sentient Universe or something. But something outside us must set the absolute, right?”
No! God is without question and absolutely NOT necessary for morality to exist. Generations of anthropologists and psychologists have studied this to death and to summarize very briefly: humans develop morals along a certain developmental timeline regardless of how they are raised, and across religions certain things (the absolutes, usually) are always present. Somehow us humans have figured out which rules we must not break, and they are probably related to a survival advantage. God doesn’t set the rules. Evolution probably did. As for how I personally decide which things are absolute, I pretty much just picked the ones that seemed most important. I think most humans would agree, in general, with my picks, and thats not an accident. There is a shared genetic heritage across all peoples. Societies are not separate – well, geographically and culturally they are to a great degree totally separate, but again, the core morals virtually never change. Not a coincedence. The mark of enlightened folks might be (I think out loud here) how they extrapolate from the core absolutes to a system of society. Which suggests a more enlightened society would not eat animals. I undermine my own position yet again.

And yes, people do not like weird! Quite!

Yeah, corn, that’s a major problem waiting to happen. People clearly cannot be trusted to manage anything without fucking it up!

Starting to feel more judgmental…
BV

~ I.

I am honoured that you took such care and time with your response. I also understand if you’d like to like to leave this horse, which we’ve now beaten to death (in spite of your love for animals) and move on to other blog topics. If not, allow me to continue the conversation.

I understand your desire to nuance the discussion by broadening the premises of my syllogism. To be clear, it is the “why’s” of the syllogism that pose the problem. We can’t rightly get from “I eat plants” to “you’re bad”, but we arrive there neccesarily from “I eat plants (at least in part) because eating meat is unethical” and “You eat meat” –> You are less ethical. (at least in relation to that one small asspect of human morality.)

Now admittedly, things get more complicated with questions of dietary need, and considering the whole impact of our ecological footprints vis a vis vegetarianism, or a sustainable rural lifestyle. This is why I tried to ask the question in as specific a set of circumstances as I could… “Average Westerner”.

What I got back, suprised me somewhat. Correct me if I’ve misunderstood or mis-state your position, but it seems to be the case that you are uncertain whether or not eating meat is unethical, even for the person with other options in a position of relative wealth and privilage. This is tied to in part it seems to the idea that a cow isn’t worth as much as me in a abstract sense of valuation, and so, if I need some cow to make me full, and strong with relative ease, so be it, because I’m 100 hunekers, and Ol’ Betsy is only 10 hunekers.

I assume you will judge me harshly if you discover that Ol’ Betsy, was in fact, my human slave.

If you have no dogmatic assertions re: the morality of eating meat, then we can move on. I assumed you were of the mind that it was less ethical to eat meat, than to not eat meat.

However I will make the point that I do believe every action in the world is either unethical, or not unethical, and I think logic again stands by me on this one.

You might call certain actions “ethically neutral” but of course, anything “ethically neutral” is by definition “not unethical”

Killing a particular man under a particular set of circumstances is either “not unethical” or “unethical” just as eating toast is either “unethical” or not unethical” and just as something is “a book” or “not a book” or “circular” or “not circular”

The only way we get around this is with some sort of community or personally defined right and wrong, such as in the case of a society (A) deciding slavery is ok, and it’s ok, and society (B) deciding it’s not ok. Then it could be unethical and not unethical at the same time, although not in the same place. But I digress.

You believe in moral absolutes to a degree. Slavery, Rape, Murder… So then how do these things exist as moral absolutes when there is no outside force (like God) to set these rules? Obviously it can’t be an absolute if it’s definined by a society… Unless you have a sentient Universe or something. But something outside us must set the absolute, right?

Oh, and to offer a comment on why meaties get defensive. Some may feel guilt deep down, but I think the majority of people probably just don’t like abnormal things. I mean, we like the norm, I’m sure there is a nice psych term for that. “Different” ideas are often possessed by “wierd” people. And we like our world normal. And wierd people try to change things. So when we hear different things, we suspect you might be a person who’s looking to wierd “our world” up.

We get antsy. Then defensive.

I personally see no value in animals or the world except in relation to how it sustains humanity. Coal, Trees, Air, Cattle… they are all resources for humanity to utilize, for heat, shelter, entertainment, and food. It has value because it can sustain life, and provide for humans, who are worth something. I wouldn’t even be angry at a man who tortured dogs for fun on the grounds that it was unethical to torture an animal (I don’t think it is) I’d be disgusted because it’s wasteful, and even if we have a surplus, it points to a profoundly disturbed psyche which might prompt him to do distructive things to humans. If they need to infect 10000 gorillas with AIDS and have them die horrifying prolonged deaths to test medications to help humans, so be it. Animals are simply a resource, in my opinion.

But I do appreciate you trying to be a good steward of the Earth, because in doing so, you care for humanity. I am in suuport of finding less ecologically negative ways to eat meat. I think a more balanced diet would be healthier as well as more sustainable.

Although, have you looked into the teetering megalith that is the corn production industry? If there was ever a worldwide corn blight, North America would be in for a famine. Talk about bad sustainability when we shoots ourselves in our formerly biodiverse foot, all for the sake of high fructose corn syrup, which is in basically everything.

Thank you again for your post,

~ I