The short answer is that humans are social animals, and we have evolved to act/feel that way. Because of the long time that child-rearing takes, humans – like many other mammals – care for their offspring.

We care about others outside our immediate families because it is advantageous for us to do so – our survival is more likely in that sort of environment.

The long answer is to do a search on “evolution of morality” – there you will find lots of books and articles that show you how morality evolved and how human behavior is very similar to that of many animals, especially primates.

Posted: September 28th 2009

See all questions answered by Eric_PK

Your caveats are pretty silly. The naturalistic study of human emotions is called “psychology”. How are we supposed to argue that guilt isn’t caused by a higher power without resorting to naturalistic explanations? You’re asking a question even as you deny that there is an answer.

Well, there is an answer, and it’s not very complicated.

As kids, we do things that perceived authorities (parents, neighbors, etc) teach us are “bad”, they get angry at us, and we feel rotten. This happens often enough that even when the authorities are absent we feel rotten anyway, et voila: guilt!

Posted: September 28th 2009

See all questions answered by George Locke

You ask us not to tell you 'It’s because we can get caught’, but that’s precisely the reasoning behind your idea that it’s just because there’s a higher power that’s watching us and will hold us to account for our actions. So why is it an ok argument when you’re using it, but not when we do?

I was at a conference earlier this year in which the question of human morality was explored quite deeply from an evolutionary perspective. There has been a lot of research into this aspect of human existence, and what is emerging is a pretty clear rule-of-thumb, which is that, in any community – of whatever race, social class or religious belief (or none) – 4 out of 5 people will pretty much obey society’s rules and behave in ways we consider to be 'moral’, and 1 out of 5 won’t.

There’s an evolutionary explanation for this: most of us survive best when we are working co-operatively with the people around us (i.e. not stealing, not killing, not harming them avoidably). The fact that we may get caught does play a major role in this, for getting caught has negative consequences: loss of freedom, loss of life in some societies, loss of respect and people’s good opinion in all societies. And most of us survive best when the people around us respect and like us, because they are then more willing to help us when we need it.

However, if someone is sufficiently devious, they will survive best by breaking, rather than obeying, the rules, because they may be less likely to get caught and therefore face the negative consequences of their actions.

This has been tested in a host of different situations and environments and has been found to be universally consistent. It is the same whether people are religious or not: there is NO correlation between better behaviour and belief in an afterlife.

There was an interesting corollary of these studies: the 4 in 5 people who are generally perfectly happy to obey society’s rules stop being happy to do so if they see that the 1 in 5 get away with it. At that point, they resent the fact that some people are getting away scot-free with breaking the rules and, importantly, become less inclined to follow the rules themselves. So the negative consequences of being caught are clearly a major factor in influencing people’s behaviour: it’s why most prison sentences carry an element of retribution and not just protecting society from an offender’s potentially harmful actions; it is also why justice not only has to be done, but has to be seen to be done.

From here it is not difficult to see where ideas about post-death retribution sprang from, is it? 4 out of 5 of us feel the need to see wrong-doers punished for their actions. In the early days of Judaism, there was no belief in life after death, heaven or hell: they believed what it said in Deuteronomy about God rewarding the righteous and punishing the wicked in their lifetimes. It was only later, when it became patently obvious that this wasn’t true, that they started to think that the retribution or reward must come after death, then. And so the Abrahamic tradition of heaven and hell got going. And was tremendously handy to those trying to govern the masses, because it gave out the message that 'Even if we don’t get you, God will.’

Belief in a higher power comes in handy if you’re not confident that goodness and evil bring their own rewards on Earth (and, clearly, they don’t always). But that doesn’t make the belief true! And the simple fact is, atheists as well as Christians (as well as any other religion) all conform to the basic 4:1 ratio of compliant vs non-compliant. This shows that it is perfectly sufficient for the upholding of law and order and basic human morality that infringements are punished now, in our lifetimes. Belief in post-mortem punishment is not just silly in itself, but totally unnecessary in terms of upholding society’s values.

EDIT: PS: It’s not just about consequences, of course. We have evolved as social animals and the basic social values are ingrained very firmly in us, hard-wired, you might say. Again, the 4:1 ratio applies. The very fact that we don’t, in fact, shoot people we dislike even when there couldn’t be any negative consequences for us, and that this applies just as much to people who don’t believe in an afterlife as to people who do, should on its own be enough to demonstrate to you that fear of hell is not necessary in order to constrain our behaviour.

Posted: September 28th 2009

See all questions answered by Paula Kirby

I’ll have to split the difference between psychology and “human nature”, because the two are closely linked.

Selfish, vindictive and/or destructive acts conflict with the instinct that encourages altruism, and thus we feel on an almost unfathomable level that we’ve done something wrong. We call this feeling guilt.

This instinct developed very early on in our ancestry, back when humans lived as small groups of hunters and gatherers (actually, it was probably before they were even human). You can see why it would be reinforced once it appeared in any form; those around you were very likely to be your own kin, so if you instinctively helped everyone when you could you were always supporting your own genes.

It’s only in the last few thousand years that human communities have grown and merged to the point where the majority of people with whom we interact are not closely related. Our instincts (loosely defined as the things we think without being taught to) haven’t adapted to this lifestyle shift, so they still compel us (some more strongly than others) to be good to everyone we meet. In this way, our tendency towards altruism and our aversion to malevolence can be thought of as a glorious side-effect of our evolution.

There is another element, however. Being nice to people isn’t only beneficial to you and your genes if those people are related to you. If people know you are honourable and generous, they are more likely to trust you and help you back. Vice versa; if you’re selfish and nasty, you find yourself ostracised by anyone adversely affected. In other words, our altruistic instincts receive reinforcement even in modern times through the consequences of our actions.

If you simply substitute “other people” for “God” in the Christian concept of morality, you come very close to the apparent reality. We made the rules based on gradual consensus, we keep to them because other people have rewarded us for countless generations, and it’s so ingrained that even when no one’s around we tend to behave as if someone is.

Posted: September 27th 2009

See all questions answered by SmartLX