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Original post by ChaosEngine In short, good people will do good, bad people will do evil and very occasionally bad people do good. But for good people to do evil? for that, you need religion.

Don't paint with such a broad brush. Good people can do evil acts in a moment of passion of lost control, or by being slowly pushed into something. You don't need religion for that, although it can certainly help in some situations.

I just finished reading a book by a defense attorney who describes the strangest cases he had been involved with. Many of the cases involve good people being pushed to do evil things by desperation (in which case you might argue that they aren't *that* evil, but still, people are getting hurt) or by an environment that slowly drove them crazy.

There was a story of a museum guard who, by some negligence of the administration and his own failure to speak up, guarded the same room of the museum for 23 years. The room contained a copy of a statue of a boy who tried to remove a thorn from his foot. Eventually, the man started placing thumbtacks in people's shoes and taking photographs from them how they removed the thumbtacks because in his mind, that relieved him from having to wonder whether the boy removed his thorn successfully. I'm sure that guy was fundamentally a good person, but he was driven completely insane causing him to harass and hurt people. No religion involved, just incompetence and psychological problems.

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Original post by Prefect Quote: Original post by ChaosEngine In short, good people will do good, bad people will do evil and very occasionally bad people do good. But for good people to do evil? for that, you need religion. Don't paint with such a broad brush.

Actually it's a quote from Steven Weinberg, a relatively well known one, I would have thought. I'm aware that there are plenty of other factors that motivate good people to do bad things (patriotism springs to mind), religion is just particularly good at it.

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Original post by Hypnotron You can attempt to justify these actions and in doing so, you justify anything a lion could ever conceivably do. What does that say?

It says that lions aren't capable of feeling compassion, and therefore aren't responsible for acting morally. We are.

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Original post by CadetUmfer Quote: Original post by Hypnotron You can attempt to justify these actions and in doing so, you justify anything a lion could ever conceivably do. What does that say? It says that lions aren't capable of feeling compassion, and therefore aren't responsible for acting morally. We are.

Morality is only defined within a social structure; if there is no social structure, there is no morality. The fact that we apply our own morals, based on our own social structure, to animals is a sign of our arrogance. Just like the romans thought the Gauls were barbarians because they wore trousers, and the Gauls thought the Romans were barbarians because they had prisons.

Lions have a social structure, and within that social structure, there are checks and balances. Lions as well as other mammals have a well developed pre frontal cortex of the brain, and can make complicated social decisions. The lion's environment is far harsher, and death can come at any time, so it is morally acceptable among lions to kill another lion; this does not increase the number of lions which died, because otherwise, the lion doing the killing would die instead.

This is not to say that lions do not have their own share of issues; its common for a male lion to kill the offspring of another male when he successfully takes the previous lion's mate; we are no better with our abortion clinics, or our ability to ignore the fact that our privileged lives come at the expense of a couple of hundred thousand children per year who die from preventable diseases. The female lion and her previous mate if he is still around no doubt disagree; but its always the victims who complain when somebody else commits a crime. Likewise, plenty of africans complain about the situation we in the richer parts of the world cause, and we largely ignore them.

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Original post by speciesUnknown Lions have a social structure, and within that social structure, there are checks and balances. Lions as well as other mammals have a well developed pre frontal cortex of the brain, and can make complicated social decisions. The lion's environment is far harsher, and death can come at any time, so it is morally acceptable among lions to kill another lion.

If the situation for wild lions ever changed such that resources were abundant, a male lion would still kill cubs of his mate that don't share his genes. The only way this behavior would adapt to the new situation is through natural selection.

Humans have the ability to recognize the change in our situation, put ourselves in the place of others to understand their feelings, and change what is socially acceptable.

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Original post by CadetUmfer Quote: Original post by speciesUnknown Lions have a social structure, and within that social structure, there are checks and balances. Lions as well as other mammals have a well developed pre frontal cortex of the brain, and can make complicated social decisions. The lion's environment is far harsher, and death can come at any time, so it is morally acceptable among lions to kill another lion. If the situation for wild lions ever changed such that resources were abundant, a male lion would still kill cubs of his mate that don't share his genes. The only way this behavior would adapt to the new situation is through natural selection.

Just as some parents abort a child even in the absence of any economic pressure; often, a woman will do this out of humiliation at becoming pregnant, and some families do this because they do not want the inconvenience of a child.
And many people still find justifications for it. I now expect a slew of people finding justifications for abortion, thus demonstrating that infanticide is alive and "well".

Full blown infanticide was also common not so long ago, when society in general was a lot more violent, but this practice was largely wiped out by Islam and Christianity.
However, even im modern times, Infanticide remains an issue to some degree (according to wikipedia) Mostly due to either economic pressure, or misogyny.

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Humans have the ability to recognize the change in our situation, put ourselves in the place of others to understand their feelings, and change what is socially acceptable.

So do dogs, aside from changing what is socially acceptable; I have witnessed my parents dogs correcting each others behaviour, and voluntarily comforting a crying sibling.

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Original post by CadetUmfer If the situation for wild lions ever changed such that resources were abundant, a male lion would still kill cubs of his mate that don't share his genes. The only way this behavior would adapt to the new situation is through natural selection.

CadetUmfer,exactly. In other words: Lions(as with most animals) live in a complex system, and their brain has evolved in such a way that equip them with pretty sophisticated behaviour in order to increase both the chances of each individual's survival and the general balance of the system. However, the lions don't have knowledge of the rules that govern the ecosystem; just like they(or we) don't have knowledge of the complex mechanics of walking, yet we do it easily. For small changes, they're able to adapt; but if radicals ones happen, they will most probably either evolve(through high-pressure natural selection) or extinct.

Now, humans(or more correctly their ancestors) were at some time in such state. However, at some point they evolved through natural selection and gained the 'ability' for abstract thought and taxonimizing the natural world into categories, and eventually pondering about the laws that govern their surroundings, and how they can be used for their advantage. Unfortunately, so far this hasn't really turned out well, even if our models are correct: We already know about entropy, and how it means that, in order to achieve something, the optimal way would be small incremental changes with the goal to spend as less energy as possible for as most benefit as possible(which OBVIOUSLY means that we do strive for maxium progress, just by minimum losses: "less energy" does not mean we just give up and do nothing), yet we don't do it: We blow stupendous amounts of resources for completely valid goals but with insane deadlines: Have we developed a radical social view that would allow society to evolve into something better, socialism for instance? Our way to proceed is through a VIOLENT REVOLUTION with the goal for the transformation to begin NOW(and preferably, during our lifetime). Did we discover chemical rockets? We have to go to the MOON, and we have to go NOW, even if it's in the form of 2-3 poor guys cramped in a phonebooth(again, preferably during our lifetime). Nowadays, our goal is to COLONIZE MARS in 30 YEARS(curiously enough, AGAIN during our lifetime: this starts to get creepy).

Of course, engineers keep telling that it's more beneficial to spend our resources in order to develop better propulsion techniques instead of organizing a project with our currrent crude ones, but who listens to them anyway. Thankfully, there is the idea of compassion, as you said, and morality, as a way to bring a sentient species back into balance. Basically, it's the same thing to say that they'll instill reason and rationality into the horribly confused human race, which means that blindly following some moral rules because of fear of divine punishment or the the expectation of reward means nothing if you don't understand what they're about.

Does this strike some creepy similarity with this story of the garden of Eden and the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge? You decide :P