Can science answer moral questions?

[iNow]

trolling.

You are welcome to report my post and let the staff handle the matter if you feel your accusation is justified.

[pioneer]

If you examine basic moral laws, such as the ten commandments, one can infer how science could be used to measure good morality. For the most part, moral laws reflect human behavior that helps to maximize culture.

 

For example, thou shall not steal. If we decided it was OK for everyone to steal, culture could not advance (could go backwards), since it is much easier to steal than work. There would be less incentive to work hard in the field if others can sleep all summer and steal. Those who do decide to work, might then need to set up a defense and thereby waste precious resources, to retain a smaller fraction of their hard labor.

 

On the other other hand, if nobody was stealing; we all agree, the culture would become more productive, since there is reward for effort and even surplus to give to those who need help.

 

Relative to science, sound morality would be related to various measures of social optimization. Moral behaviors that require social social mops; extra loss of resources, are not optimized, and therefore less moral. They can still be moral, but but might be considered level B morality.

 

Thou shall not kill; Say we could all kill anyone on a whim. This would not optimize culture. Culture would regress and fall apart. On the other hand, say nobody killed within our advanced culture. It is below their brain power as an advanced human to even ponder this. There is no need to waste resource on killing machines, jails, lawyers; guns are turned into plowshares for further productivity. This is level A morality, currently beyond those who act more like animals.

 

The Catholic church may have added additional moral laws via sins, like "gluttony". If we allow gluttony for all, there will be a major social expense, related to extreme medical costs. If avoiding gluttony was considered moral, and followed by all, we get more social optimization by reducing the size of the social mop needed for B,C-morality.

 

In morality, like education, it is not always easy to get an A. Most people are B and C level students of morals and ethics and might actually function better with B and C level morality.

 

We might have to accept a certain level of social inefficiency, since the higher A grade is too hard for most. Maybe science can define what an A level morality is; ideal behavior for social optimization, what a B level, C level;add mops and buckets, and what a moral F is. They are many levels of morality, with culture maybe following a bell curve.