I revisited the question with the honest intention to act as a dialogist (a human being valuing dialogue above all) who I consider myself to be. That approach requires to presume that whatever your opponent says makes sense. You are to understand what the sense is and then relate to it.
That is not the same as idea of “tolerance.” Not at all. As a dialogist I am not obliged to agree, to OK everyone’s right to one’s position, point of view, idea, opinion, etc. No, I am obliged to tell what I think about it. The hard aspect of it is “to think.”
Well, it is hard. I am not up to the task yet but there are several questions I would like to ask my opponents and myself. The questions I am sharing and this is it, for now.
- A “scientific” claim in question is that human morality in some its main features, such as altruism, sympathy, empathy, etc. can be observed in the behaviour of humans’ closest relatives – Chimpanzees and others. That behaviour is interpreted as tools for adaptation. Hence, human morality is interpreted as adaptation too. That reasoning is, in the first place, to deny God as the source of the human morality.
- What does it give us if we have discovered similarities between two phenomena? Say, sea mammals look very similar to fish – what comes out of it?
- Even if we prove that human morality is rooted in the animal aspect of human life how does this refutes God? Couldn’t He be the source in both cases?
- If human morality is rooted in the animal aspect of human life doesn’t this mean that we deny humans authorship or ownership of their morality and transfer those to animals, “animals in humans” – to be accurate. That is, such an approach is hardly “humanism” but something like “animalism,” isn’t it?
- Suppose humans inherited their morality from animals. Are there any specifics in “animal morality” and “human morality?” What are they? Or these are not important? If so, why?
- There are some animal behavioural patterns interpreted as “animal altruism” or “animal consolation.” Obviously, we term those patterns this way for we understand them as such in our own, human life. That is, human morality is rather a key to understand some of animal behaviour but not the other way around.
- Furthermore, I suspect we will not find animal altruism going down to one-cell animals, or even higher up from amoebas, not even in all mammals. That means this feature just pops up once in behaviour of certain species. Why don’t we ask what is the source in that case? If some scientists deny us humans the ability to develop morality on our own, what then about those animals being the first to perform patterns of “moral behaviour”?
- There is a tradition (It is mostly Kant) to distinguish between morality and ethics (=conscience). Morality is interpreted as a set of rules of conduct to follow. Ethics (maybe morals, am not sure) pertain to something like “pure humanity” which is not a rule or code or anything formalized but deployed in situations where no rule can be applied. Say, you have to kill in order to prevent a murder. Whatever is done in this case, a killing will happen. So, you need to decide all by yourself what to do and take the entire responsibility upon yourself. These kind of actions we term human in full meaning of the word. In fact, they, by pure logic, run against “adaptive behaviour,” that is, against any biological interpretation… So, what about the nature of so understood ethics?