OK, so maybe very few people really believe in moral relativism. After all, you can get to some pretty crazy conclusions from it. So what do the majority of people believe about morals? Besides those that adopt an absolute moral system (ie, from Christianity and other possibly transcendent sources), many people nowadays will adopt something I call evolutionary morals (for lack of a better term).
Those that claim this point of view will often say that this belief system is different from complete moral relativism, in that their morals are grounded in an objective system: the greater good of humanity.
The belief system goes like this (I think). Humans evolved as a societal species. We make relationships with each other, and we make social contracts, etc. These things were selected for as we evolved. Therefore, evolution has preserved in us a natural tendency to do things that promote the good of the human race as a whole.
In this way, morals develop. There are things that are definitely bad for the human race, as a whole, such as killing another human without justification. That's why murder is wrong in almost all societies. In fact, any moral can be defined this way: as long as it's good for society as a whole, then it's morally right. Anything that's bad for society is morally wrong. Thus, an absolute standard exists.
If anyone out there can explain this point of view better, or if you have one that's similar to this but there are important differences, please speak up.
Showing posts with label human evolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label human evolution. Show all posts
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Humans and neanderthals interbreeding
Recently the report of possible interbreeding between humans and neanderthals has been a hot topic. As I understand it, a research team has compared their draft sequence of the neanderthal nuclear genome with the genomes of five modern (contemporary) humans. They found that there was more sequence similarity between neanderthals and three of the humans than with neanderthals and the other two. They concluded that this meant there was interbreeding.
This raised a host of questions, such as, are we all part neanderthal? If so, then is the image of God tarnished? This fits nicely into an old-earth creation model because (1) it shows that even though there may have been a small amount of interbreeding, humans and neanderthals are distinct species, thereby refuting the young-earth creationist model (that neanderthals were descendants of Adam and Eve), and (2) it shows humans did not evolve from neanderthals, further eroding the multi-regional hypothesis of human evolution (that ancient hominid species such as Homo erectus and neanderthals evolved together into the different races of modern humanity).
In fact, I have heard speculation that the humans and neanderthals interbreeding may be one way in which God could have used as a form of imposing racial diversity at the time of the Tower of Babel.
But there's one hypothesis that I haven't heard talked about: What if the interbreeding was only one-way? What if sinful human males had offspring with neanderthal females, but not the other way around? It would seem to fit the data just as well as the alternative, and perhaps even better. This scenario would definitively explain, for example, why there is no mitochondrial DNA evidence of humans and neanderthals interbreeding.
It also makes "social" sense. What I mean is, if we are all part neanderthal, that means at some time in the past, a half-human : half- neanderthal must have been raised by a human woman/family, and must have integrated into society somehow, and then passed on its genes via
a human partner. Then a 3/4-human : 1/4-neanderthal must have done the same thing, etc. Of course, as the neanderthal part gets diluted out, it becomes more imaginable. But even if a neanderthal male has offspring with a human female, and the mother does not want to "give
up" her baby, and raises it like a fully human child, what are the chances that the child would find a willing human partner to pass on the part-neanderthal genes? Just speculating here, of course. (In this day and age of political correctness, I almost feel like I'm being racist, but my arguments are actually speciesist...)
This raised a host of questions, such as, are we all part neanderthal? If so, then is the image of God tarnished? This fits nicely into an old-earth creation model because (1) it shows that even though there may have been a small amount of interbreeding, humans and neanderthals are distinct species, thereby refuting the young-earth creationist model (that neanderthals were descendants of Adam and Eve), and (2) it shows humans did not evolve from neanderthals, further eroding the multi-regional hypothesis of human evolution (that ancient hominid species such as Homo erectus and neanderthals evolved together into the different races of modern humanity).
In fact, I have heard speculation that the humans and neanderthals interbreeding may be one way in which God could have used as a form of imposing racial diversity at the time of the Tower of Babel.
But there's one hypothesis that I haven't heard talked about: What if the interbreeding was only one-way? What if sinful human males had offspring with neanderthal females, but not the other way around? It would seem to fit the data just as well as the alternative, and perhaps even better. This scenario would definitively explain, for example, why there is no mitochondrial DNA evidence of humans and neanderthals interbreeding.
It also makes "social" sense. What I mean is, if we are all part neanderthal, that means at some time in the past, a half-human : half- neanderthal must have been raised by a human woman/family, and must have integrated into society somehow, and then passed on its genes via
a human partner. Then a 3/4-human : 1/4-neanderthal must have done the same thing, etc. Of course, as the neanderthal part gets diluted out, it becomes more imaginable. But even if a neanderthal male has offspring with a human female, and the mother does not want to "give
up" her baby, and raises it like a fully human child, what are the chances that the child would find a willing human partner to pass on the part-neanderthal genes? Just speculating here, of course. (In this day and age of political correctness, I almost feel like I'm being racist, but my arguments are actually speciesist...)
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