<p>Regarding the biological origins of moral reasoning, ethics, and religion:</p>
<p>In past discussion, there has been deliberation over the essence and domanial constituency of morality. Through previous arguments, which I will not introduce again, it is readily obvious that religion or the dogmatism of scripture has little practical influence or guidance – and is in no way necessary – in conducting oneself virtuously. At its worst, religious foundation actually perverts moral enterprise and consistently opposes moral progression or virtuous proceedings. Regarding its followers, religious individuals selectively choose the pieces of scripture that concord with the current social consensus and selectively forget the rest (such as the stoning of adulterers, the promotion of slavery, and other biblical espousals). Moral guidelines are inherently natural contrivances of the human mind, endowed by an evolutionary past and refined through progressivist social tendencies and are, of course, not independent from human nature. Indeed, human nature is biological in origin, which is independent from religion. In the empiricist view, ethics is conduct that is so favorably viewed that society encodes it as a set of principles, reached only through historical circumstance and were ultimately necessitated for the survival of humanity. Moral codes originate from human sentiment, progress to law and are enforced through a common jurisprudence, and finally, to a canon that is considered inviolable due to a profound consensus for its precepts. A nation’s or culture’s ethical standards play an important role in determining which cultures flourish and which decline. </p>
<p>And, of course, an empiricist view inherently depends on the objective assimilation of knowledge. The success of an ethical code is naturally contingent on how wisely it interprets moral sentiments, and those who frame it should have knowledge of how the brain functions and how the mind develops. The success of a moral code ultimately relies on how authentically a culture can predict the ramifications of specific actions as opposed to others. In essence, it holds that by exploring the biological underpinnings of moral behavior and their material origins and partialities, we should mold an enlightened and unwavering moral solidarity. The growing expansion of scientific inquiry into the recesses of moral thought and behavior inserts a rigor into uncovering the precise origins of morality and what makes explaining the material origins of such a feasible venture. In the coming years, moral reasoning will either remain intertwined in the idioms of theology and philosophy or increasingly shift towards the realm of a biologically-based objective analysis. Considering the growing popularity of the objective inquiry associated with neuroscience, it is logical to believe that moral reasoning will stray from its more primitive form of analysis and speculated origin and towards one that is more materially based (as it already has with great clarity). </p>
<p>Even today, the idea of an intelligent designer that imbued humanity with animate quality and consciousness is increasingly contravened by the foundations of neuroscience, psychology, and evolutionary biology – not that the notion actually had a logical or factual foundation to begin with. The same evidence within the realm of biology favors an empirical explanation of moral behavior, since we indeed have causal explanations of brain activity and biological evolution. And in any contemporary discussion of ethics, insulating one’s thinking from the objective headway derived from neuroscience is patently unacceptable.</p>
<p>The empiricist view of moral reasoning necessarily changes the chain of causation. We are individually predisposed biologically to make specific choices. Strong innate feeling and historical circumstance causes certain actions to be preferred after experiencing them either individually or vicariously, weighing their ramifications, and abiding by the resulting precepts. It is well understood that not investing one’s personal honor into them and violating them will necessarily result in punishment. Moral codes are necessary for the sake of the collective benefit of humanity, to conform to some drives of human nature while suppressing others. The empiricist view recognizes that the strength of commitment to specific precepts can wane in the event of the collection of new knowledge or experience (such as in the case of slavery). Former rules may need to be desacralised, old laws abolished, and formerly prohibitive behavior set free. On the other hand, new moral codes may need to be devised.</p>
<p>The essential ingredient for the molding of moral instincts is the dynamic relation between cooperation and disloyalty. Hence, the permanency of moral actions is formulated through the outside judgment of their consequences. Imagine for instance, a group of five Paleolithic hunters who depended on the daily kill for their own survival. However, one could believe that breaking away from the tribe would potentially provide overwhelming benefits since one would have five times the meat and hide available in the event of a kill. But from basic experience, he knows his opportunity for success to be very low since a collective group is more alert, strategic, supportive, and responsive to any difficulties due to the cumulative power of experience and the diversity of talents within each hunter. Even in the event of success, the lone hunter knows that his self-satisfaction and self-selective behavior may contribute to an informal ostracism from the group and lead to an enduring exclusion without the indisputable benefits of the support from community. Such is the power of reciprocity. As would be expected, the hunter remains.</p>
<p>Naturally, dilemmas solvable by cooperation often leave a lasting positive impact whether it be economic or social status, power, acceptance, access, nourishment, comfort, health, or future reciprocity. Each of these virtually translate into the basic concept of Darwinian evolution: greater fitness and longevity. Such provides a strong illustration of the heritability of moral aptitude. Some are inherently more cooperative and altruistic, others less so. Historically, more cooperative and altruistic individuals naturally survive longer and leave more offspring to the future generation. Following that line of reasoning, those with a more cooperative (loosely parallelized term for morality) spirit eventually come to predominate the human population. It too rationally follows that acrophobia (fear of heights) is so common since it helped our ancestors avoid dangerous situations that potentially present near-death experiences. Given it has a neurological basis, and hence a clear heritability, it naturally follows. </p>
<p>The harrowing side to biased behavior in morality is jingoism (or belligerent, uncooperative patriotism) and xenophobia, even if on an individual level. Personal familiarity and common interest are vital in social proceedings, so morality is naturally skewed in favor of subjective experience. People endow trust in strangers with prolonged effort into spinning a web of trust that is exceedingly easy to unwind. Compassionate devotion is profoundly uncommon and one of the most difficult social interactions to maintain. Historically, human civilizations that are alien to each other have conducted interaction and coexistence through attentively entailed agreements and protocols. They are quick to envision themselves as easily prone to victimization through the schematic machinations of competing civilized factions. Hence, it is only natural to dehumanize and commit the most heinous atrocities in times of dire conflict, which naturally appears within our own macroscopic conception of our world and often in an ostensibly sugarcoated variety within ourselves. To achieve a liberation from the uncertainties of life, cultures often create their own ideologies, or cement loyalties through the means of consecrated symbols, talismans, incantations, and a menagerie of social formalities. </p>
<p>To draw on a perfectly valid analogy, religions are analogous to biological organisms in that they have their own life cycle. They are born, they develop, they compete for their own survival, they reproduce, and inevitably, in the natural course of events, they die. In each phase, they reflect the natural cycle of every biological being that supports their existence. It corroborates the basic principle of life that whatever is needed to survive is ultimately biological in origin. </p>
<p>Religions that are ultimately successful (exceedingly few) typically begin as cults with a particular passion or idolization, which, typically through the power of numbers, increase in authority and insularity until they are tolerated by external observers. Naturally, at the core of each religion is the creation myth, which provides some account for the basis of origin that is suppositional, unmethodical, almost always contradictory in relation to other faiths, and to the rational or those outside the faith, downright absurd. The process of winning converts and binding them to doctrine can be quintessentially modeled in the form of a classic logistic regression curve. The conversion is typically accomplished through a social or political basis, and often by tightening social control and limiting personal initiative. Centers of worship are naturally designated, where the gods or animisms are passionately importuned, and rituals performed. </p>
<p>Fear was inevitably the first emotion that created the gods. We all fear personal insufficiency and fear for our inability to permanently exist. Invoking the supernatural or inventing gods (or more precisely, falsely detecting a supreme presence) helps to absorb those mental insecurities and achieve an everlasting sense of invulnerability and immortality. And as I stated earlier, achieving an “understanding” of existence and the material world has been primarily drawn from religious explanations due to the limitations imposed in more primitive eras from achieving an objective or scientific intelligibility. Naturally, all supernaturally-based beliefs must rely on mythical elements to accomplish the task of satisfying the need to comprehend a material order.</p>
<p>If supernatural fallacies were not present in culture, they would quickly be conceived, as they have been thousands upon thousands of times throughout history. It is not merely an ordinary habit but rather an occurrence of emotionally-driven instinct that delves more penetratingly into humanity’s cognitive framework. That is, it is not mere happenstance that cultures everywhere create their own supernatural conceptions that inhabit the cosmos. Rather, religion is derived from biases within our own mental development that are indeed encoded within our very genetic makeup.</p>
<p>The predominance of supernatural belief among the human population is profoundly explainable in evolutionary terms. With religious affiliation comes some form of placement within a group united by unique common devotions, adherences, and activities. And as explained earlier, unity and cooperation is essential in group survival and are destined to propagate genetically over those who lack similar collective commitment.</p>
<p>Moreover, humans are profoundly seduced by confident, charismatic leaders, particularly males. Not ironically, this inherent partiality towards patriarchal power is profoundly evident in humans’ religious sentiments. Religious cults use such leaders as organizations focal points. Religion steams ahead by promoting a special access to some supernatural force and enforce the notion through emotive doses of myth and liturgy. Eventually, this is engraved in scripture and has been historically enforced through political ascension, indoctrination within the family unit, and by eradicating those with competing beliefs. </p>
<p>So to answer Baelor’s question from previous discussion of why murder, in particular, is a profound moral violation, such a fact can be accounted for in terms of a qualitative discussion of the corresponding traits. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say that violent tendencies are mediated by the trait of “cooperation.” Therefore, if a decrease in survival and reproduction of individuals owing to genes of cooperation is offset by a increase in survival and reproduction owing to genes of cooperation, then “cooperation genes" will increase in frequency and come to predominate the population. Hence, murderous tendencies will become increasingly sparse, but never wholly eliminated.</p>
<p>In order to better the objective coherency of ethics, and by extension, limit the corresponding contention in political science and ethical philosophy, it is necessary to properly define moral sentiments through experimental psychology and to assess the underlying neural and hormonal responses, investigate the heritability of moral aptitude, evaluate the mutual influence between genetics and their environment, and examine ethical development in terms of a historical narrative. Only then can moral behavior truly be understood on its true foundations and permanently delegitimize the false perception that it is fundamentally grounded within a religious and supernatural perspective. </p>
<p>Over the course of history, as aforementioned, humanity has produced over 100,000 separate systems of religious belief (and an existing infinite number of possibilities), each with their own distinct gods and spirits, creation myths, and unfounded assertions. Correspondingly, there have been over 100,000 separate religious groups with the staunch faith in transcendental superiority, arguing from the same false basis of all religious believers. Yet, there is only one unified science since all that is confirmed is objectively and evidentially determined. There isn’t one science that claims that force is the product of mass and acceleration and another that claims that force is twice the product of mass and acceleration because the former option has been impartially verified.</p>
<p>Indiscriminate faith, regardless of its passionate expression, cannot supersede the methodical and epistemologically superior foundations of scientific thought or any form of honest, objective deduction. But science will unflaggingly test every single assumption appointed to the human circumstance and overturn outdated beliefs and scripture when necessary, as it has regarding the evolution of biological species, the age of the Earth, the falsification of the geocentric model of the solar system, the early chemical and geological conditions of the planet, and so on. Yet, denialism, whether through the lack of unawareness, misunderstanding, or ideological rigidity, is a commodity in abundant supply and incorrect beliefs continue to be illogically asserted even when demonstrably false. And the only way to reconcile the contradictions between the supernatural and scientific world views is the secularization of religion and ethics themselves.</p>