On 24/12/2015, at 12:19 PM, "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> You begin by assuming what is to be argued. "The Good" does not exist, nor does "The Evil." They have no foundation.
Both what is good and what is evil are cultural traditions, so they are presumably founded on long experience. For instance, I expect that the taboo against incest is founded on experience of unpleasant breeding outcomes when incest is practiced. So from very early on, most societies have learned not to encourage that sort of behaviour. In fact, complex marriage customs developed in ancient societies to ensure that incest would not happen.
(I'm from Tasmania. Incest is not unknown in our colonial history so foundations seem unnecessary. But consider this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tqxzWdKKu8)
Those cultures that did not see fit to proscribe incest might very well have been considerably weakened as a result. Thus putting them at a competitive disadvantage compared to those which did proscribe it. The former would likely be out-competed by the latter. Or simply destroyed or subsumed. Thus selecting for competitively advantageous cultural traditions.
When these customs are formalised, codified into law, that is what we call religion. Often these traditions are given the force of orders from the Gods, to make clear just how crucially important to society as a whole they are.
It seems to me that that Gods are merely ornamental to a religion. It doesn't pay to get all worked up about the decorative elements and overlook the vital working parts. So what are the important bits? I think that formalising the lessons that a society has learned into a set of rules that can (must) be passed from generation to generation dogmatically is the crucial thing to appreciate about religion. Although that might seem very backward to us, that is actually the very advantage of the scheme, from a social point of view.
Having a religious tradition means that a society can preserve the vital aspects of its culture and traditions, the things that have worked for it over the generations, with the minimum possible expenditure of effort. Just a few priests are needed to preserve all the learning of a society, everyone else just obeys the scriptures, or whatever. And otherwise gets on with raising enough food to survive.
So although we can't very often trace the specific foundations of religious tenets back to their source, it is probably safe to assume that they were founded on hard-earned (probably unpleasant) experience, that was accepted as a lesson important enough to be incorporated into the very religion, the basic law, of the society.
They do have a foundation. Even if we can only make an educated guess exactly what that is. Prohibitions on eating pork - well we know that its a tricky meat to deal with, it has to be prepared and cooked carefully. Little wonder some traditions simply decided it wasn't worth the risk. Murder? Again, it isn't exactly rocket science to figure out why many societies might have come to the conclusion that it might be good for the welfare of society to proscribe it.
So "good" does exist. It is something that benefits society. "Evil", conversely, is what is bad for society. They both exist, from a materialist perspective. The weakness of religion as a method of preserving and passing on these vital lessons is that its very strength, its dogmatic method of transmission, is also its weakness. It is tough to adapt to rapid change in material conditions. But rapid change in material conditions is a relatively modern phenomenon and the solution requires a dramatic change in material conditions to be feasible.
For everyone to be in a position to question and make up their individual mind which cultural traditions are valuable and which are no longer necessary would be a revolution in human society. The material conditions necessary for such a revolution include such things as universal access to sufficient information resources and the leisure to consider all the factors. We are close to being there I think, but not quite there yet.
Until we are there, religion will have an important, a legitimate, place in society. For our prehistoric ancestors, religion was plain and simple a terrific idea.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas