by patches70 on Sat Mar 29, 2014 2:55 pm
Extrapolate as one wishes-
Moral Behavior is any behavior that ensures the continuation of one's species. Any action that contributes to the species so that the species doesn't go extinct, is moral.
For if a species is extinct it cannot be moral or otherwise because the individuals of that species no longer exist!
There is no point arguing with theologians or philosophers on this because they all have different answers, so it helps to define moral behavior and then go from there.
Continuing the species is an obvious choice because if any individual creature isn't even bothered enough to survive, the best thing it could do is to go crawl off and die so that it doesn't spread it's genes through the population.
Now we can apply this to all kinds of things. Nuclear weapons, the use of them would be considered immoral would they not? At least that's what I hear all the time when people go off about how the US nuked Japan all so long ago. But full scale nuclear war would quite probably lead to the extinction of our race.
Who would argue that such a war could ever be moral?
And if we no longer exist then the whole case of morality is a moot point anyway. Is it not?
On the individual level, if a car is sinking into the river and inside is a child, it is moral for the mother to dive into the waters in an attempt to save her child. Even if the mother fails and the child drowns (along with the mother even), the action itself is still moral.
On the other hand, who would argue that a mother who purposely drowns her children by bailing from her car as she drives it into the river with her child strapped to the back seat?
Morality is summed up simply by "Women and Children first". That is that the women and children in a species are the most important. The human race could lose tomorrow 90% of the male population and we as a species would still be able to battle back from the brink because our females and children survive.
One absolute thing we should all be able to agree about is that if the human race becomes extinct then the human race no longer can be moral, act moral or even ponder about morality because the human race would no longer exist.
Thus, the most moral thing we can do as a species and as individuals is to contribute to the continued existence of our species. There are many ways to do this, on the individual and the societal levels.
Who would argue that an individual spending his/her life in a drug induced stupor would be living a moral life?
Who would argue that the cold blooded murder of a human being by another human being as moral? Not talking about self defense, or accident, but simple cold blooded murder. Few would argue that it was moral.
Science has given us not only the tools and the knowledge needed to assist keeping the species surviving, it's also provided all the tools and knowledge necessary that we actually destroy ourselves as well.
But it's individuals who apply these tools and knowledge. With this in mind, if science can define morality, then why in the world would science have ever developed the very things that will eventually kill every last man, woman and child on the planet?
Science is just the pursuit of knowledge, and that can lead to all sorts of bad roads as well as benefits. The morality of what science accomplishes is not considered until long after. I doubt seriously that science can best determine what is actually moral or not.
