TEDxPeachtree - Frans de Waal - Morality without Religion

Human morality is older than our current religions, and may go back to tendencies observable in other mammals. In a bottom-up view of morality, this talk is one man's road to discovering an array of positive tendencies in animals at a time when competition and aggression were the only themes.

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Category:

Education

Tags:

• USA
• Science
• education
• psychology
• morality
• darwin
• primatology
• Social
• Change

[TechnomancerMorhion]

Excellent talk.

[rkwakernaak]

V-E-R-Y interesting!!!

[TFletch161]

Life in general never ceases to amaze me. A very simple lesson, and yet, one that seems to be missed by the general public. I hope we as humans, will learn that cooperative behavior will allow humankind to grow and evolve into the higher beings we might become.

[Allie01010101]

Fascinating!

[mmarieden]

@Islandretreat one man's filth is another man's bible.

[bunkhabit]

@Islandretreat Paganism, bibles, the precepts of skygods - these are all constructs of an ancient and primitive bicameral mind. The leftovers of bicameral "thinking" can still be found today: religion, hypnosis, possession ("the darkness"), schizophrenia and the "need" for external authority (from a skygod) in decision-making. All your talk of treaties, bible verse, a skygod's law, etc., is moot. None of it addresses the point. Your inability to even grasp the point makes further comment futile.

[Islandretreat]

@bunkhabit Nihilist or not the spirit of ancient Paganism is in the air. The darkness. God's law is a perfect law of righteousness. Disobedience to God's law always results in man doing wickedly contrary to the precepts of God. The Bible gave us freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and birthed the modern era with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. That's when the pagan Dark Ages officially ended.

[bunkhabit]

@Islandretreat Although it guarantees irrational discriminatory judgment from the likes of you (disobey God=nihilism), the bible-believing, free, independent, and sovereign politics/class system you promote guarantees personal freedom to disbelieve in superstition-based subjectivist metaphysics on paper ONLY… Your argument does not follow. Disbelief in superstition-based subjectivist metaphysics does NOT lead necessarily to nihilism, filthy pleasures, amorality, etc. Ignorance insists it does.

[Islandretreat]

@bunkhabit If you don't believe there's a spirit world that's another argument but before the Protestant Reformation (IE, the Dark Ages) were two classes the elite and their slaves. Absolutism rather than a constititional monarchy or government. The Protestant Reformation birthed the middle-class and constitutional government. Bible-believing Christian [Protestant] nations gave us democracy and invented the modern world, therefore "all religion was designed to enslave us" is a false statement.

[Islandretreat]

@mmarieden So you disobey God and reject the Bible to have filthy pleasures on earth. Nihilism, the rejection of all religious and moral principles in the belief that life is meaningless? The Bible says "because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.-2 Thessalonians 2:10-12.

[ieftube]

In my view this is about "morality" and not about religion.

Christian religion is quite simple: in respect of God, love each other. And start loving the poor and weak, knowing you will not get anything in return.