[Preechr]

Originally Posted by Big Papa Goat

As long as the topic of motives for supporting different positions is there, I think it's worthwhile to point out that most, certainly many of the most important political theorists that work from an evolutionary or biological perspective are conservatives. The big book of biopolitics was actually written by a student of Strauss. James Wilson wrote a fairly prominent book The Moral Sense that was at least in part about the biological basis of moral sentiments, and it was explicitly about refuting amoral philosophy on the basis of evidence for natural human moral senses.

I have no more of a Moral Sense than I do a Fashion Sense. Not to make light of something I've never read, but based solely on your description, I'm just not digging that idea too much.

I'm not sure this is a right vs. left argument at all. There are plenty of religious leftists (almost the entire black voting base of the Democratic Party for a considerable example) as well as plenty of atheistic or agnostic conservatives. Of the science/math oriented professionals I've met, I'd be reluctant to say there's any clear pattern to their ideas about God.

Aside from that, I'd venture to say most people don't spend a whole lot of time investigating this argument or questioning common descent. My original impression of the debate wasn't probably too much different than any of yours.

Originally Posted by Big Papa Goat

Maybe I'm wrong, but it would seem the last time evolution was ever seriously used to undermine morality was with social darwinism, and that was something like a hundred years ago, and is explicitly rejected by modern theorists.

The reason I started looking at ID vs. evolution critically was because it fits a pattern of behavior that interests me. The common belief in extraterrestrial life fits this pattern, too. We find many different ways to think of ourselves and our actions as meaningless or immaterial. Doing so takes a lot of moral pressure off our every day decisions.

Were we to believe instead that we and our actions were important, that all of the universe was created entirely for the benefit of the few of us lucky enough to exist here on this planet, that our lives were important in a universal sense, that every decision we made carried the weight of universal consequence... Well, that's not the common conception of our existence is it?

Originally Posted by Big Papa Goat

Well, I guess we'll just have to get the philosopher kings in power to see that happen.

I'm a libertarian. I don't believe impostion of morality will ever work top down. Authoritarianism, the opposite ideal, only ever succeeds in dictating over disaster.

Originally Posted by Big Papa Goat

Didn't Plato conclude that such a government would never actually happen? Wasn't it pretty much entirely allegorical anyway? In any case, I guess the Republic would be too off tangent.

It will never work the way he conceptualized it. Rights, liberties, morality and consequences all originiate from the individual. Governments gain their power from their citizens. We give our rights to government in trade for peace among each other. There is a balance point, however. When we give too much of our responsibilities away to another entity, our citizens become responsible for nothing.

Originally Posted by Big Papa Goat

Without getting too much into what happiness is, a more pressing question regarding such a position in the context of this debate is how does the your own purpose of happiness explain the purpose of the entire biosphere, which is really what an intelligent design theory would have to state.

Again, if we are a creation, our creator had a purpose in mind. Had our creator been able to satisfy this need without us, we would not have been necessary. Happiness is liberty, peace and coexistence in perfect balance. Were we all to achieve this state simultaneously, maybe we would complete the design.

I choose happiness because it is the only thing over which we each have individual sovereignity. Happiness is a product of thought, and thought is all we have. As I said though: it's a big word.