Divine Morality
Now boys and girls, don't do anything to your fellow classmates that you wouldn't want them to do to you!
There is no need for a divine moral standard. At the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center, Frans de Waal has observed the following behaviors in chimpanzees: sharing, reciprocity, consolation, special care for the handicapped, peacemaking, and punishment of rule breakers. Empathy and reciprocal altruism have been observed even in dolphins and bats.
Altruism, compassion, empathy, love, conscience, the sense of justice - all of these things, the things that hold society together, the things that allow our species to think so highly of itself, can now confidently be said to have a firm genetic basis.
-- Robert Wright, "The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Every Day Life," 1994
The Silver Rule
Reciprocal altruism (sometimes referred to as the "Silver Rule," which is a more broadly applicable negative version of the "Golden Rule") promotes what most people want -- a safe, creative, productive society. It has been articulated by thinkers throughout history:
- What you do not wish upon yourself, extend not to others.
[Confucius, 551-479 BCE, The Anelects, 15:23] - What thou dost not like, do thou not to thy neighbor. That is the whole law; all the rest is explanation.
[Hillel the Elder, 30 BCE-10 CE, The Jewish Talmud, Sabbath 31]
Yahweh was no paragon of morality
- He murdered all but eight of his creations, including animals, because he was dissatisfied with human behavior. [Gen 7:17-24]
- He commanded that women were unclean after giving birth -- twice as unclean after giving birth to a baby girl [14 days plus 66 days of "purification"] than after giving birth to a baby boy [7 days plus 33 days of "purification"]. [Lev 12:2-5]
- He forbade the blemished, blind, lame, diseased, deformed, or ugly to befoul his sanctuaries. [Lev 21:16-24]
- He mandated the death penalty for stubborn, rebellious sons [Deu 21:18-21], for children who cursed their parents [Lev 20:9], and for those who gathered firewood on the Sabbath [Num 15:32-36].
- He commanded the murder of Amalek women and their infants and suckling babies. [1Sa 15:2-3]