Science of the Soul

Looking for a physical explanation of the human soul? Unfortunately, I've yet to find a plausible one. This article, however, chronicles various viewpoints and stakeholders in the debate:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/science/26soul.html

The Evolution of Right and Wrong

It seems that people observe and sometimes follow different "rule books" - written or unwritten - for morality. Let's assume for a moment that moral rules are inspired by these three major themes:

1. Individual liberty and freedom
   
2. Group sustainability
   
3. Benevolent sentiment and feeling

For example:

1.) Do what is "right" for your own existence
2.) Do what is "right" to maintain a group's survival
3.) Do unto others what yields a feeling of good

In applying the golden rule, each of the above has its corollary: Don't do what is "wrong" for...

These themes couldn't have been developed, however, if people couldn't apply an underlying sense of right vs. wrong. So how does our situational judgment of right and wrong function? Perhaps our moral apparatus is guided by base-level feelings of guilt, satisfaction, empathy and pain:

• If we feel guilty about something, it might be wrong.
• If we feel satisfied with something, it might be right.
• If we feel pain, and if we have empathy for others, we'll take actions so that they can avoid the same pain.

Questions:

• How is it that we're endowed with the mental ability to feel guilt, satisfaction, and pain? Where do these capacities come from? How and why were they selected?
• Why do some people act in a manner that suggests a preference toward one moral theme vs. another? What accounts for the magnitude of preference?
• What role does fear of hell/want of heaven play in motivating people to follow their inclinations of right instead of wrong and when did this motivation develop and become powerful?

Top 6 Psychologial Threats to Human Race Sustainability

1.) The fears related to death
2.) The torment of suffering
3.) The vulnerability of the weak
4.) The disposition of greediness
5.) The evil of malice
6.) The tragedy of ignorance

Moreover...

The fear of death (whereas death entails losing contact with loved ones forever, feeling isolated in an unknown region of space/time, being alone, etc.) leads most of us toward wanting an afterlife. The specter of hell as a possible afterlife destination leads us hoping for a better place - e.g., heaven - and requires us to invent rules for getting in. The need to understand and follow heaven's entrance requirements leads us to invent doctrinal moral rule books (which sometimes include funky or harmful rules and value statements). The process of getting into heaven requires that someone judge us when we reach the gates. We've created several moral rule books and judges so that we can choose the path to heaven that best suits our tendencies. Even if we screw up and fall off the moral wagon, we've made some rule books that allow us to get in anyway, so long as we vow to have faith in the judge and ask him to forgive us.

Consequences: The accept-God-and-ask-for-forgiveness loophole that we've created allows some people to commit malicious acts without fear of going to hell. Some of the funkier/more dangerous rules and value statements encourage violence or intolerance toward certain groups of people. An ignorance as individuals of our interconnectedness to each other and hence the importance of group sustainability further leads us to act as loners, less inclined toward empathy, less inclined to work and live together without fighting.

Finally, a narrow focus on the rules themselves- including a preference for specific, select rules- distracts some from any original sense of what it meant to be "good" to begin with. People - both greedy/powerful and weak/suffering - are capable of anything when they are bankrupt of actual goodness (and are not even held in check by fear of God's wrath).

Put another way, Rule books and religions - the catch all enforcers for the morally unsure and/or underdeveloped - also have the unintended effect of diminishing the high moral functioning of some of their followers by encouraging drone-like adherence and focus on the letter of the law.

Is there a better way to model the behavior of those who are less morally evolved (while sparing high moral functioning people) for the sake of protecting humanity from the 6 threats? Breaking free from the trappings of trivial moral legal code, what is the true core substance of "actual goodness" or good behavior that enables gene reproduction and species continuity? Not convinced that morality is an evolved faculty? Check out Hauser's "Moral Minds"

The Meaning of "Faith"

"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence." -Richard Dawkins

Amino Acid comes from Outer Space

http://www.mail-archive.com/meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com/msg76577.html

Deceit and Self-Deception

Robert Trivers suggests that some animals have a natural, evolved capacity to deceive themselves, i.e., that natural selection favored overconfident animals in particular:

"...I believe that self-deception has evolved in two situations at least in other creatures, and that it can be studied. I’ve suggested a way to do it, but so far nobody’s done it.

For example, when you make an evaluation of another animal in a combat situation—let’s say male/male conflict—the other organism’s sense of self-confidence is a relevant factor in your evaluation.

NC: And that’s shown by its behavior.

RT: Exactly—through its suppressing signs of fear and not giving anything away, and so forth. So you can imagine selection for overconfidence—

NC: —for showing overconfidence, even if it’s not real.

RT: Yes. Likewise in situations of courtship, where females are evaluating males. Again, the organism’s sense of self is relevant. We all know that low self-esteem is a sexual romantic turn-off.

So again, you can have selection—without language it seems to me—for biased kinds of information flow within the organism in order to keep up a false front..."

Read the complete article here:
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/noam_chomsky_robert_trivers/