Rational thinking = Ethics & Morality

Originally Posted by choSenfroZen

many people never can overcome that need to survive. I am saying that the group or tribe rules we gained during the dawn of man has nothing to do with religion, it is a learnt behaviour developed as a survival technique. We needed to work together to thrive, and what you call morals are these rules.

ChoSenfroZen,

I'm wondering why anyone would want to "overcome" the need to survive. Survival is basic and we don't need to overcome it. Learning to balance selfishness with cooperation is not easy. Humans haven't yet come up with a nice happy medium.

The supposition that our morals are the rules we developed together in tribes in order to thrive is really just a guess. A lot of psychologists and anthropologists are still trying to determine where "morality" originated.

Some tribes had rules that killing and eating members of one's own tribe is taboo, whereas killing and eating members of another tribe is perfectly okay. We wouldn't call that rule "moral" today. The rule helped that tribe survive and thrive, could even be why Homo sapiens survived Neanderthals.

Morals are very odd things that have little real connection with survival. Humans have been "immorally" killing other humans for as long as anyone can remember, yet the human race is thriving very well. Other animals aren't doing as great. Stealing from others, as in taking over territory, has been very useful to the survival of many tribes and the elimination of others. Most of us today would agree that stealing is "immoral" and we have laws against it in our society now, but usually it just applies to stealing amongst our own kind, not stealing from others. Thus we take over more and more territory from other animal species.

Recently in the news there was a story about a homeless man jumping into some pretty cold water to save a kid that had fallen or jumped off a bridge. What prompted his actions? To risk one's own life for a stranger is the most altruistic of acts. Perhaps this man had a religious reason for doing it. The morals of one person may come from quite a different place than the morals of another. It could be religion, which has shaped so much of culture around the world, has more to do with our present day morals than we atheists want to recognize.

Certain religious people cling to the thought that you MUST have religion to have morals.

Certain religious people vote for people like Sarah Palin too. So this tells us a lot about their ability to make wise associations.

I think Richard Dawkins has some good answers in The God Delusion for those who, as you say, believe "you must have religion to have morals". If "morals" are what many religious people seem to think they are, they are welcome to them. I'll remain "immoral". It seems that we allow religious people to decide what we need to defend. I'm not particularly interested in defending any morality. The universe or nature does not appear to have any sense of morality or ethics so I find it difficult to support the notion that humans require morals to survive. What does it matter whether we are "good" or not? If we are good enough to survive, this is "good" enough. If stealing or lying is required to survive, then it is "moral" and "ethical" as far as I can see.
I know this is not an acceptable answer to religious people so generally I don't try to engage them in discussions about morality. If they can't accept evolution as fact, they will never understand a scientific approach to morality/ethics.