Howdy, this is just a logical debunking of “secular ethics”, specifically the notion that the physical world is all that exists and that “morality” is therefore only reducible to naturalistic survival instincts.
I’m going to avoid getting into “atheism vs theism, etc” to avoid overcomplicating this, this is just a logical debunking of secular ethical arguments, not an argument for a specific creed. So here goes…
***The correct meaning of “survival of the fittest”
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First we’re just going to clarify what survival of the fittest actually means in a Darwinian or natural selection context. It simply means that some members of a species are better able to adapt to their environment and go on to reproduce more than others, that’s about it.
Unfortunately Darwin’s concept gets constantly distorted and misquoted, so I’ll attempt to rectify this as well as debunk the ethical theories which claim to be based on “evolution” as not actually scientific, just pseudo-scientific philosophy:
***“Social Darwinism”
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Social Darwinism in a nutshell is that there are some members of a species who possess innately ‘better’ traits such as strength, intelligence, productivity, etc, and that society should therefore favor them.
…but this actually contradicts natural selection, because according to Darwin’s theory there’s no such thing as an “innately” better trait; traits are only as “good or bad” as they allow one to adapt to the environment, with reproduction as the end-game.
A dumb person who is able to raise a family of 10 kids, is therefore more ‘fit’ from a biological perspective than a post-graduate professor who only has 1 kid. There’s no virtue in evolution in being ‘intelligent’ if it doesn’t aid one’s adaptation and reproduction.
Likewise, a welfare recipient who doesn’t work and contribute financially to the economy but who has 10 kids on the dole is more “fit” than a full-time worker who only has 1 kid. The Octomom is therefore more “evolutionarily fit” than Donald Trump from a scientific perspective.
The above of course renders the ‘capitalist’ notions of social Darwinism null and void. Sure, the welfare recipient might be parasitic if it’s others who are having to support their children financially, but again from a Darwinian POV, being a ‘parasite’ isn’t “good” or “bad”.
And if being a parasite allows for better reproductive odds than being ‘productive’, then that just means the welfare recipient beat out the ‘hard worker’ in the fitness contest. Telling them they’re “wrong” to be a parasite would be as meanings from a scientific POV as telling a mosquito that drinking people’s blood is “evil”.
Hence again while social Darwinist views are not scientific, just moral philosophies that use “evolution” sounding jargon to pass as more credible.
Pleasure vs pain argument
Another secular argument which is easy to debunk is that morality in the natural world is related to whether things cause “harm” or “pain”, such as the utilitarian theories of guys like Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.
Problem is this is easy to debunk just with common sense examples. Getting a woman pregnant causes her to experience pain during childbirth, but you won’t here many arguing that pregnancy is therefore wrong and that the entire human race should die out.
So again this actually contradicts natural selection, because if we take for granted that reproduction and survival of a species are end-games, then again you can’t say that causing pain is “inherently” wrong; it’d only be as “good or bad” as it relates the the survival of a species, and plenty of species in nature cause pain to other members of the species in the name of survival, so this argument is also debunked as nonscientific.
***“People are naturally good or altruistic”
You hear this weak argument come up a lot, often in response to claims such as that without a God or higher source of morality than men, then crimes like rape and murder wouldn’t necessarily be wrong.
The rebuttal is usually that people instinctively know these things are wrong with or without ‘religion’, and attempts to back this up by pointing out that species such as chimpanzees have altruistic instincts.
While it’s true that species have altruistic instincts, again this argument still fails the litmus test, and also doesn’t show much of an understanding of biology. Because again its declaring that altruistic behavior is innately good regardless of it’s role in natural selection, when from a purely scientific perspective, again, there is no trait or behavior which is “automatically good” without exception; only the consequences and how the relate to survival matter.
Likewise species are not ‘entirely’ altruistic’ or competitive, but from my understanding are a mix of the two. Chimps for example do work together for the good of the group, but on the other hand male chimps do fight and harm each other in competition for mates, and sometimes kill the offspring of their new mate’s former partners.
So from a scientific POV you can’t say the altruistic behavior is always better than the competitive behavior, it would only depend on the circumstances, unless you’re going to tell a chimpanzee he’s “immoral”.
And for real, just turning on the news immediately debunks the “people are always good claim” as a fairy tale, since plenty of examples of people committing heinous acts like murder and rape can easily be found. So even if humans as a whole have an altruistic instinct, it obviously isn’t something which is always in effect without exception.
In my humble opinion, this argument is just an appeal to emotion, and closer to a fairy tale you’d tell the kiddos when they’re 5 years old, since not only is it just philosophy claiming to be science like the others, but it also contradicts biology and shows a weak understanding of the altruistic and competitive natures of species.
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*Morality is decided by societies or people
This is another generic secular argument you’ll often here, tying in with moral relativism. And possibly the dumbest of the ones I’ve mentioned.
The gist here is that morality is more or less reducible to a list of rules or codes created by societies or individuals. And often a premise is that all ‘morals’ or moral behavior in humans is learned rationally or intellectually, such as from parents or from schools or society in general.
But this is so full of holes, it’s hard to decide where to start:
*Well first off, this completely contradicts the argument about species naturally having altruistic instincts, and seems to be based off of outdated psychological theories of “tabula rasa” which proceeded Darwin and our modern knowledge of the roles that genes play in the instincts and behaviors of humans and animals, such as evolutionary psychology.
So make up your mind? Are humans naturally good because primates have altruistic instincts in their genes? Or if a person didn’t hear a teacher or a pastor say “killing is bad”, they wouldn’t know not to do it? You can’t have it both ways.
*Second, well again this idea of “morals” still makes no sense from a Darwinian perspective or a common sense perspective, since it defines “morals” as a list of rules, but doesn’t even attempt to define what the end-goal should be.
But we can take for granted that survival is the only ‘end-goal’ of a species or group that can be defined scientifically, so defining it as anything else that ‘society decides’ therefore is just more philosophizing and has no basis in science. (e.x. silly example, hypothetically if society made it illegal for anyone to have children, this would be in contradiction to our biological drive to procreate).
I won’t even delve into the other flaws of this argument, such how societies or individuals can somehow “create morals” in their mind is basically believing in magic, or that one can just create something out of nothing. (As opposed to how in the scientific method, facts aren’t “invented”, just discovered"), but shredding it thoroughly would be beside the point, since I’ve already explained above how again it’s rooted in philosophy and science, on top of being anti-intellectual and contradicting what evolutionary biology reveals about altruistic instincts in people.
Conclusion
Well I think I’ve done a good job tearing down most ‘secular ethical’ arguments you regularly hear, and showing how anti-intellectual and logically flawed they are.
In summary, I believe this shows the only ‘ethical theory’ one could take from a purely naturalistic perspective while being logically consistent would be a form of nihilism, or the belief that no action or thing is automatically ‘bad or good’ beyond how they relate to survival and adaption, even rape and murder wouldn’t be ‘bad’ if they situationally aided those things in a group or species, and of course non-human primates sometimes do them too.
Therefore believing that any thing or principle has some type of ‘innate’ worth or goodness, whether it’s intelligence, altruism, economic productivity, etc is more or less logically admitting that morality comes from a higher objective source than mere natural selection.
As this would of course be arguing that certain things are still good even if the run in conflict with natural selection, and vice versa. (e.x. If a man’s only ability to reproduce was to rape a nun who was going against biological interest by being abstinent, then one couldn’t say this is automatically wrong to do unless they’re admitting to a higher objective source of moral truth).
Now this argument isn’t one for “what” the objective source is, whether it’s God, Jesus, Budda, the formal laws of the universe such as logic and mathematics, et cetera. That’s a whole different ballpark.
This is simply pointing out that unless one is a moral nihilist there’s no way to deny that one does exist without just being intellectually dishonest. Even if I couldn’t provide the best explanation for what that source is, I can still point out that denying one exists is silly and anti-intellectual.
Much as even if I don’t know… who committed the Black Dahlia murderer, if someone was suggesting it was committed by Mr. Spock I could still thoroughly debunk that notion as nonsense, whether or not I could articulate a ‘better idea’ or not.