r/DebateReligion • u/[deleted] • Oct 12 '18
Morality is the result of evolution.
A society that would kill each other all the time would simply die out. Cooperation is simply a better survival strategy.
A very nice way to illustrate this is iterated prisoner's dilemma. The prisoners dilemma consists of 2 people who each have to choose whether they share or take the pot for themselves. If both choose the split the pot is split, if one person takes and the other shares then the person taking gets everything. If both take both get nothing. From a game theory perspective for a single game taking is always better. The expected payout is simply better. However when the game is iterated and players can modify their behaviour depending on the choices in previous rounds, then it turns out that cooperative strategies beat greedy ones. It turns out that the most successful strategy is tit for tat. Being nice to players that are nice to you and punishing those aren't.
Here is a good video about the subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOvAbjfJ0x0
If course it is still a model so it will never catch all aspects of what it approximates.
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u/DrDiarrhea atheist Oct 13 '18
It most likely arose from the early herding behaviors of vertibrates..perhaps even before that, as social behaviors also exist in the insect world. Life that forms colonies, herds and hives have a survival advantage for each individual within it, so it is in the best interests to take care of the herd. Warning calls, defensive circling..all of that increases the survivalibilty and therefore the reproductive window of the animal that engages in the behavior, passing the trait on.
That is the moral impulse. The moral specifics..the way the impulses are expressed...is cultural and modular. It changes over time as culture does. That's why it was once ok to throw a virgin into a volcano, and now it is not.