What came first? Morals or religion? [long]

[OWC Jamie]

davester wrote:
[quote=billb]
morals
and we would probably all be quite shocked at early tribal moralities

What do you mean by that. Most aboriginal people's have had complex social systems with inherent moral value systems, as do the primates with close to human intelligence (e.g. bonobos),.
exactly


and Rgr, you are a moron.


but I never mean what I say

[Ted King]

It's a fairly well written article. The author makes a good case for the notion that the impulse to morality has ancient genetic roots but that morality itself is unique to humans because morality is about the abstract assessment of actions in terms of absolute metaphysical truths and other animals don't do that.

The only issue I have with the article is in the very last sentence, "Any framework we develop [from science] to advocate a certain moral outlook is bound to produce its own list of principles, its own prophets, and attract its own devoted followers, so that it will soon look like any old religion. As others have pointed out, science has nothing to say about what value judgements are the correct value judgements. But it is also sloppy to say that a humanistic morality would "look like any old religion". Religions have a supernatural aspect to them that is central to the belief system. Since a humanistic morality (which could not be a "scientific" morality) would by definition not include a supernatural aspect, it doesn't really make sense to claim that a humanistic morality would look like any old religion. What he should have said is that in terms of moral principles and practice, it would be similar to a morality based on religion.