I'm not sure you understand what I was getting at. We have a conscience because it helps us to survive, it's a part of Darwinism. If those bats didn't help each other, they could die out. The queen carries the genetic information of the whole hive, meaning her life is more important that the worker bees. The only reasons humans survive even though we kill each other on a regular basis is because there are so many of us.

I'm not saying our survival depends on our morals. It doesn't. I'm saying God gave animals innate knowledge of how to behave so that they could survive for our benefit. But to answer your previous question, yes, we are more important to God than the animals. That's why He gave them to us.

I'm saying our survival depends on our morals. If killing and maiming each other was considered good, if noone thought maybe we shouldn't eat our babies, the human race wouldn't have gotten very far, would it? Animals have the same reasons for having morals. You believe God gave us morals; I believe we gave ourselves morals in order to survive.

Okay then let me rescind my statement. I was looking at it from a different angle. So yes, morals are needed for survival. We can agree on that? So it's just a matter of how you define morals. Because there seems to be more than one definition. Based on your statement that we give ourselves morals, you must think morality means doing whatever you can to please everyone else only because it benefits you. Do you understand what I mean by that? Without God, the only purpose morals would serve is to satisfy your needs and help you survive. A monkey doesn't kill another monkey because doing so wouldn't serve its own needs, and would probably make an enemy of itself to the other monkeys. That's the only reason not to kill. But it wouldn't be out of love or pity or empathy. Those things can only come from God.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKtOXvA14X4 this.

Okay, all that video does is reinforce my point that natural altruism seems to only benefit the individual (or in the case of bees, the individual's relatives). That's not the same as morality.

protecting your genes is the purpose in life, essentially. Because we took that to an extreme and can communicate perfectly specifically and think and have morals, we can give it a different meaning, whether it's by creating religion or just helping others.

1. We (meaning Christians) do not believe that protecting one's genes is the purpose of life. In fact that's kind of a fruitless effort since ultimately it doesn't lead to any final goal.

2. Our ability to communicate and think actually inhibits our ability to reproduce, and here's why: If we were just animals who acted on instinct and nothing more, then all the males would go around fucking every female they could find, and our genes would spread a lot faster. But since we're more civilized than that, the reproductive act becomes much more exclusive and discriminant, which slows the process down significantly. So how exactly does that help "protect our genes"?

Our ability to communicate and think is an extension of natural altruism. If that scenario happened, the STD's would have a blast. And if that did happen, do you think any of the offspring would survive? If my father just left my mother right after fucking her, and then more males came, do you think I would have a good upbringing? If my mom was alone with as many babies as she could possibly have, would she be able to feed every one? no. ALL the babies would die because it's impossible to take care of them without that conciousness and ability to think and communicate, without the dedicatedness that humans and gorillas and lots of birds have.

Then why does it work so well for animals?

because they still have some ability to think and communicate, and (most of them) have morals and some form of dedicated family.

Ehh I still don't buy it. Even if that's the case, it only explains survival motivation and not actual emotional morality. Like why does anyone give a shit about the starving kids in Africa? They're weak and we don't depend on them for survival, so based on the whole survival of the fittest thing, they should just be allowed to die out. But we feel obligated to help them. Why?

because out of the whole family altruism thing, it just kept going, and it's part of being able to tell your child or you cousin "no don't eat that it'll kill you," it's part of being a conscious, (debatably) intelligent species.

Okay, well there's no point in arguing any further since we're not getting anywhere. We'll just have to agree to disagree.

sounds good to me dude. If your religion helps you figure out what's right, good for you :)

Thanks.

Okay, so aliens could come and wipe us out, hypothetically. So what? No, there isn't really any intention to the entire universe, except to find out more about the universe. Have you ever seen something that says, "you are the universe trying to understand itself?" I believe that.

I've heard the statement but I don't agree with it. I believe we are finite subjects created by an infinite being for the purpose of returning to Him.