Stupid Quote of the Day: Internet Superidiot on the morality (or lack thereof) of Natural Selection

I really should stop perusing Vox Day’s blog. It’s bad for my mental health to continually subject my poor neurons to such brain-melting willful ignorance and moronity. Once again, the Internet Superintelligenceidiot (think I should call him that from now on?) talks about morality and Natural Selection and makes some world-class dumbass claims:

[T]he inability of biologists to recognize the obvious logical implications of the freedom from the limits of traditional morality that they celebrate only serves to demonstrate their complete incompetence as philosophers. If it's no longer evil to freely fornicate or worship idols, it's no longer evil to freely rape or murder either. And a description of a theorized process of historical moral development is no rational basis for subsequent cherry-picking between those developments you happen to believe are positive and those you happen to believe are negative.

There is so much wrong with that single paragraph … I think I wanna cry.

First (and foremost), he shows a complete and utter incomprehension concerning the importance of morality’s role in Natural Selection, and more importantly, it’s role in our modern-day lives. Yes, morality evolved as part of evolution/Natural Selection, as with anything else. It was a crucial evolutionary tool, one that allowed us to make the right choices and decisions when it came to the species’ survival and well-being. It was rather more helpful to help each other out than to harm each other, especially in the dangerous world our planet used to be.

What people like Vox fail to comprehend, is that morality is still a crucial tool in our modern lives, and that the fact that we are now knowledgeable enough to be able to explain and understand where it comes from and how it helped (and helps) us, is no reason at all to suddenly cast it away and live by means of selfishness, antipathy and heartlessness. To think along such lines is pure idiocy. For one thing, morality is ingrained within us all (even “evil” people, though they follow a moral path decidedly different from others’). One cannot simply become amoral at a mere whim, or because they suddenly learned how morality came to be.

To people like Vox, merely knowing where morality comes from can apparently lead someone to figuring, “Okay, so morality comes from millions of years of evolution and helped our species stay strong? All right, then, I guess I wanna go kill and rape, then,”. Can someone tell me how that makes any sense at all? The reason people do no kill is because it’s wrong; or, more specifically, because it feels bad to hurt others for no good reason. We don’t kill for the same reason we don’t walk up to a random stranger and punch them in the face, or firebomb a school. Such actions are wrong, and for most people (ie. normal people), the mere thought of doing so seems wrong. It takes either insanity, or extreme psychological strain, to push someone into committing such acts. A knowledge of evolution’s role in the development of morality is, to say the least, an inadequate motive.

Perhaps Vox should enlighten us, then, as it is obviously the sort of silly crap he believes in. For, although biologists certainly never claim to be philosophers at heart, Vox is perhaps the single most pathetic philosopher on this side of the Dark Ages.

Finally, it truly takes an abject scoundrel like Vox to equate philandering and reverence, harmless quirks as they are, to the horrors and brutality of rape and murder. I don’t think I need to say any more on that matter; he harms himself enough with such vileness.

Anyone interested in learning about the evolution of morality and its implications in our history and present can start here.