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For greater insight into this question I would recommend reading William Golding's Lord of the Flies, an allegorical novel about how culture created by man fails, using as an example a group of British school-boys stuck on a deserted island who try to govern themselves with disastrous results.

   

It is a great book, kinda funny how its their religion that breaks their society down.

   

I didn't see it that way myself. To me, it was man's baser instincts of superstition and self-preservation that led to all the troubles on the island.

   

Humans when they are born are essentially a tabula rasa, and must be taught things.


I'll try and find the article, but they did a study where they found that children exerted more moral and ethical behaviour when influenced by the answers and views of moral, upstanding adults.

Also, I highly doubt that children are born racist, and are instead racist due to the leanings and views of their parents or guardians.

Then we have the Islamo-fascists, who see nothing wrong with killing everyone(infidels) and oppressing women.


Do I need to give any more examples?

   

The only moral of tabula rasa is survival of the self. Good and evil, right and wrong, are human constructs.

   

There are no Islamo-fascists, but the people you are referring to were mostly brought up in religious fundamentalist schools in countries where war is a way of life and child soldiers are not necessarily uncommon. These people were no born wanting to kill lots of people, they were born into being taught to want to kill lots of people.

   

I am not really sure to be honest. I don't think we are born knowing what is right and wrong.

The example of the schoolyard is a great one and explains it well.

   

How odd. Do we have any facts to support any of these suppositions apart from the hypothetical situations and fictional writings? It is quite the intriguing subject.

   

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy!

I think the propensity to 'do right' is inate. Yet we need always be reminded not to do wrong! re; threat of punishment.

   

Yeah I have to say I agree with man of you. I think that we have right and wrong put into our brains as we grow up and however society acts is how we try to act. For example in Kabul in Afghanistan there is a tradition to cut there heads open and walk around for a while while they do that to do that to your own child in Canada is wrong or bad but there it's perfectly normal. But there has to be a basis of right and wrong to help us develop or own right and wrong with some kind of guidence!

   

Yes (There is an idea of "fairness" and "justice" that is inherent, in addition: Lying is an acquired habit. "Why would I say something that's not true?"), and No ("MINE!" is the first word many children learn, mostly to acquire what is NOT theirs).

The fact that bad eggs come from good homes, and good eggs come from bad homes indicates to me that a lot of what we call "common sense" is inborn. Through genetics, instincts or "ensoulment" we'll probably never know.

   

Some people become averse to certain groups due to personal experience. I'm sure there's more than a few Canadians who hate First Nations people due to the terrorism they've been subjected to by the FN and I'll also fathom that those people don't have a high opinion of law enforcement in Canada. In any case, most of those people likely did not grow up with a disdain for the FN, they acquired that disdain after being terrorized by them.

   

I don't think we are born with any innate sense of moral right and wrong. If so, where did it come from. To me, if you believe that we are born with a sense of right and wrong, you believe that right and wrong exist outside the human experience.

Looking back through history there is no virtue that was not once vice, and vice versa (pun intended). It's hard to justify any absolute morality based on hsitory. It's true that, in most civilizations, killing without authority from the state is one of the most serious crimes. However that edict can be argued from a Darwinian perspective as well as a moral one, i.e. civilizations that allow citiznes to kill anyone for no reason are not stable and do not last.

I think that good ideas become good habits become good tradiation become good morals. Morals themslevs are subject to Darwinian selection "bad" morals (morals that reduce the chance of a society surviving) are deselected over time.

   

Richard Dawkins disagrees. He sees an evolutionary advantage to racism. Since (Dawkins would have it) your body is just essentially a survival and propagation system for your genes, then it would be advantageious to recognize individuals who share the same genes as you (i.e. your kin). Skin colour was a readily identifiable way of recognizing that people of other colours did not share many of the same genes wiht you.

Also, categorization is an intellectual advantage. We categorize "all large cats" as predators. We wouldn't assess each cat on an individual basis to determine if it really was a maneater or not.

I'd say there is very much an evolutionary component to racism.

   

YES! Yes yes yes yes! You get it. This is, in my view, an extremely critical point of this debate.

   

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