This is a throughly naive idea based on the naive romanticism of Rousseau.

Rousseau had some excellent criticisms of the inevitable abuses of the suffocating institutional power structures of his time but, like it not, everyone really does have to be educated to live a truly moral life by the Wise Elders via a real process of testing and initiation.

Unfortunately our "culture" does not have any Wise Elders. Nor (with rare exception) does it have any institutional forms within which such a testing process can be accomplished.

All that we have is the one-dimensional youth "culture" as per the face-book phenomena wherein every adolescent (and sub-adolscent) idiot/fool is now an expert on everything.

Or the Barnum & Bailley cultic circus with its archaic urban legend myths--the "resurrection of christ", which never, and could not have happened, now being dramatised and SOLD via vast advertising/propaganda apparatus in Sydney.
Which is just an extension of the consumer "culture" altogether---the man in the clown costume being the star attraction.

A supposedly "infallible" star attraction who has to vet questions before they are asked. No embarassment allowed.

Show us your tits. Or in this case a tortured pain racked body nailed to a cross and celebrated as "good news".
Mortify the body to be "good".

You can even buy tacky souveneirs that go with the event. Be enthusiastic and buy the product. It is all so one dimensional and fake/phoney.

All the suckers being fleeced of their dollars for a hyped fairy-floss product---PT Barnum would have loved it.

If we are all so naturally good then how come so many children of all ages are such thorough-going bullies and that such bullying is such a huge problem in schools.

William Golding's novel The Lord of the Flies provides the necessary anti-dote to the myth of inherent goodnes. We are going to kill you.

The author left the best point right at the end -

"The transition period from a society that largely accepts religion as the source of morals to one that understands the true nature of moral behaviour will be slow and difficult but it is one that offers the possibility to a much more moral future."

Ho Hum

Children need guidance no matter which type of society they grow up in. Lord of the Flies and bullying at school all pertain to children and adolescents who, as jpw put it so well in another thread, "require calibration of their naturally inbuilt moral compass".

Basically, even children know right from wrong, but empathy and self-awareness, vital ingredients for ethical behaviour, is still developing in young people. That is why it is important to protect and guide our children.

Possibly with the odd biologically exception, no-one is born naturally evil or without empathy. Evil is borne of a particular set of conditions and conditioning or lack of care and guidance. This moral guidance should not be judgemental but gentle. I have found that the best 'morality' is by example not from preaching.

But wait...I thought atheists didn't believe this? Could it be there is no real agreement between atheists on morals because there is no real logical foundation for morals within the atheistic worldview....

I find the argument that forms of behaviour and response to the world is laid down in our genes convincing. The evolutionary psychologists have explained that the mind is like a Swiss army knife with different components doing dedicated jobs. This is why we recognise faces so easily and even see them in the clouds, why we are instinctively afraid of spiders and snakes but not of guns, why women automatically speak in a high pitched voice to infants or baby animals. It is also probably why we feel good when we do a good turn. And yes we are social animals and that is laid down in our genes as well.

However, all of these responses and actions are unconscious unless they are pointed out to us. That means that facial recognition etc. and responses to animals or children are automatic, the latter being affective. We know that some of them are working in a particular situation because we feel something.

So morals derived from genetics is not an intellectual system and requires an immediate stimulus to be triggered. This kind of response will not tell you how to vote or to care for a million starving people that you do not see. They may attract you to a handsome man or a pretty girl but they will not establish the firm basis for a lifelong partnership and the job of raising the next generation. For that we need intellectual, conscious, reasons to stay during the bad times.

Genetic modules in the mind are intrinsic to being human, we would never fall in love and have children, but if this were all there is then we would remain children, reacting to stimulus, acting automatically.

Peter Sellick

Peter,

Para One: Other cognitive science would agree with the evolutionary psychologists. Even someone like Freud felt his model of the Super Ego - Ego - Id, a metaphor which neurology would one day actually explain. Freud, did, his being right & wrong in Science, in a big way.

Para Three: In professional Marketing pertaining to Branding and Retailing, there is a distinction between "brand recognition" [prompted by senses]& "brand recall" [unprompted]. There are explanatory neurological bases here too.

You, more than most people, given your job, would be aware the brain is a layered system and the communications between the systems usuall work well, but sometimes fail or are tricked/confabulate.

Broca's lobe in the Limbic System is stimulated by survival extincts [religion,after-life] and also "significant olfactory connections" [Gardner]: Have the ancient temples and contemporary Catholic church stumbled upon that special reinforcing enducement, "incense"? Just speculation, I admit.

Cheers,

Oly.