--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "yifuxero" <yifux...@...> wrote: > > ""... When two tribes of primeval man, living in the same country, came into > competition, if (other circumstances being equal) the one tribe included a > great number of courageous, sympathetic and faithful members, who were always > ready to warn each other of danger, to aid and defend each other, this tribe > would succeed better and conquer the other." > ... > imo pretty straightforward...and the need for God? >
Could it be a little *too* straightforward? This account would presumably apply equally well to a pack of hyenas, as much as to a tribe of 'homo whatevers'? Wouldn't we predict, on the basis of this theory, that our ethics, our moral sense, would be the same as said pack of hyenas? (Perhaps you feel your/our ethics are no better than that? ;-) ) Or what about a colony of ants? Don't they have a highly successful *ethical* strategy? Perhaps "the need of the whole outweighs that of the individual" is more "evolutionarily correct" than the pathetic, *weak* doctrines of the dignity of human rights, the "meek shall inherit the earth", "turn the other cheek", and other soppy, sentimental claptrap? And, when you come to think about it, if the survival of the group (or of the genes) is paramount, what's actually *wrong* with, say, "the end justifies the means"? Or with a little judicious genocide here and there? Or say a little selective breeding to try and generate the master race? Very *evolutionary* and *scientific* that, no?
