William Shakespeare is considered the greatest playwright of all time, someone whose works are quoted more than nearly any other. Yet there is much doubt whether “Shakespeare” actually existed, at least in the sense of a single person who wrote each of the plays and poems attributed to him.
There is a historically recorded Shakespeare considered to be the great bard — whose signature is found on a couple of documents — but there is much speculation of whether that person would have been capable of writing the works.

Now. Proving Jesus’ existence, considering the considerably longer period of time, is an even tougher nut to crack. And even if it could be established without a shadow of doubt, there’s still the matter that his significance and the words attributed to him were written well after those who knew him were no longer on the stage. And those who ultimitaly did the writing had their own agendas; hell, they were, after all starting a new religion, and that is an endeavor that always requires a lot of bullshit … to make it sound good so stupid people will actually buy it.
Just saying

I also admit my theory on the development of law and morality is personal, but regardless of how it arose along side us, it still doesn’t necessitate a god.

Just because a delusion is popular doesn’t make it true. I think the basis for fatalism/determinism is pretty sound even without a divine cog.

I’ll have to defer to the great majority of behavioral experts who agree that humans do indeed display pure altruism. Negative attestation from naturalistic philosophers alone should provide pause to anyone who would deny this. Also, discounting pure altruism because it can provide a pleasing mental state in the altruist is indefensible; we can surmise that all human actions are, at a fundamental level, chosen because the actor feels a pleasing mental state will result.

Regarding the rest of your post, I don’t know that much good would come from my analyzing it to death, but suffice to say I recommend that you be wary of unjustified leaps in reasoning.

Best to you.

I admit that was a poor phrase, when i think of fair and even justice operated under a general oral tradition, I romanticise small communities of hunter gatherers. In this system, screwing someone else can be directly linked to your own standing within the group and as a result your survival or quality of life. After adding law and a considerable number of people, no doubt the focus of equal justice shifts. Aristocrats, Royalty, but rarely the commoner was the center of the system for centuries. These were systems of might makes right, justice wasn’t for all but but again failures of this nature aren’t as ancient as we’d like to suppose. Generally speaking the death of repressive law comes with an education of the masses (in rebellion before hand its usually only a change of the head, not the majority of the system). Certainly the idea of altruism has roots at least 2 millenia old, but I don’t know that any system has really managed to deliver upon the idea. It does seem as though we are continuing to move in a direction to best support the idea, but it could be its appeal to the majority of people, rather than a divine cog. In the same sense as the social contract.. you give up your right to kill, in hopes of not being slain by another. Achieving a high quality of life for everyone else hopefully means that at some point you or your offspring will also have a high quality of life.

I’ll start from free will and work down to determinism. Its logical that one does not contemplate every possible action they can take at any one time (ie Free Will). Two roads diverge at a yellow wood.. you don’t HAVE to go anywhere, you could go backwards or wander off into the woods themselves. Free will is more akin to the Norse sense of Wyrd. You’ll decide how to act based on your past decisions, knowledge, experience and your goals for the future. You’ve now taken a limitless fractal of options and limited it to those you would actually consider. Determinism is a stricter sense of Wyrd; It says no matter how much you debate an option, you were inevitably going to choose it based on the factors you account for. The debate creates the illusion of active choice. Your goals for the future also rest in your history, so that if it is possible to modify your outcome in determinism it rests with the knowledge, and experience you acquire before coming to choices. Freedom of choice seems completely logical when your staring at two movies, trying to decide what to rent because the results are so trivial you see no advantage to one over the other. You’ve still at some point decided there is a choice here, why not rent both? There are factors (money, time etc) that come in to play there as well but its besides the point. Regardless of which movie you pick you’ll feel the decision stands as proof of freedom to choose short of flipping a coin to decide. Now if the way to modify your choices rests in information gained before hand, is it that impossible that all your choices are some weird domino effect? I myself am not sure theres any wiggle room between determinism and fatalism, but no doubt the debate remains open.

I used to have much the same perspective on morality as you, until I came across several internal problems with my position. Here are some I see within what you wrote (if I misunderstood your position, or you see issues with my critique, please post back):

- Animals don’t display pure altruism, and humans do. Many behavioral researchers recognize this as a conundrum for naturalism. Accordingly, animals don’t offer a holistic comparison for exploring morality, and naturalism is wanting for an explanation of this behavior considered one of the most moral by most societies at most times in human history.

- The notion of imparting “fair and even justice to all” is at odds with “might makes right”, so your explanation conflicts with your view. Also, if morality evolved through social interactions growing in complexity, we would expect to see morality tightly wound with ruthless resource efficiency, which totally clashes with pure altruism and is therefore not explanatory.

Finally, regarding determinism: if it’s true, then the great majority of humans are in gross error that they can make free choices. How does one explain such utter misunderstanding about the subject one should know best (one’s own thoughts)?

I agree

Its not particularly shocking that thievery, murder and dishonesty within a culture are looked down upon (Loopholes spring up when dealing with neighbor or competing cultures of course). So yes, its rather absurd to assume that before moses came down from the mountain and dropped the tablets in shock, all was complete chaos and anarchy. However, it by no means necessitates a god. Communities of animals have a rough hierarchy, and it likely developed as a way to protect the group.

As communities got larger we probably found that one or two people would ignore the golden rule because they were now able to do so and still remain within the community even if they sever a tie or two. Thus law would arise out of the attempt to impart fair and even justice to all. Now certainly there are further complications such as corrupt leadership and other bugs but we still haven’t fixed those either. The way I see it, law is an answer to a community to large for unavoidable adherence to an oral generalization/tradition. If anything its quite naturalistic to suggest it grew up with communities.

Everyone has their own sense of morals and ethics, its likely a composite of many different areas we observe, learn and associate throughout life. Religion, culture, conversation, community, education, parental figures, etc

Determinism if there really is any separation from Fatalism, builds out of those same factors. And these days its getting more common to suggest that the factors that have the largest impact are those learned in youth, finding it hard to replace or update even when seeing something better.

twom, I just offered proofs. The fact that you haven’t recognized that, much less described any error in the arguments presented, makes me think were talking past each other, that we’re on very different wavelengths. You seem like a nice person, I don’t want to waste your time, so I’ll sign off. Thanks again for the convo.

So, tell me, when did you quit believing and become a nihilistic literary assassin?

Simple request…show me proofs…whatever you have. twom