Psykologian professori Kevin MacDonald moraali-intuitiosta

Psykologian professori emeritus Kevin MacDonald väittää, että länsimaisilla ihmisillä ja erityisesti pohjoiseurooppalaisilla on geneettisesti muodostunut taipumus mieltää moraalisäännöt absoluuttisina normeina, joita pitää noudattaa objektiivisesti, niin että jokaista ihmistä arvioidaan yksilönä vain sen perusteella, mitä hän itse on tehnyt, eikä jokaista tietyn ihmisryhmän edustajaa leimata toisten saman ryhmän jäsenten tekemisten perusteella. Sen sijaan Lähi-idässä ihmisillä on tapana leimata kokonaiset etniset ryhmät vihollisiksi, mikä näkyy mm. israelilaisten ja palestiinalaisten välisistä konflikteista. 

Tämähän näkyy mm. siinä, että aina, kun Euroopassa tapahtuu muslimien tekemiä terrori-iskuja, monet eurooppalaiset poliitikot ja mediapersoonat sanovat, että muslimeja ei pidä yleisesti leimata yksittäisten islamilaisten terroristien perusteella.


Sen sijaan Lähi-idässä esim. monet israelilaiset katselivat muutama vuosi sitten näköalapaikoilta Gazan pommituksia naureskellen ja hurraten.

Israelissa on syytetty maanpettureiksi niitä juutalaisia ihmisoikeusaktivisteja, jotka ovat tuoneet esille, että Gazan pommituksissa kuoli siviilejä, kuten naisia ja lapsia. Tämä on juuri sitä sisäryhmämoraalia, josta professori Kevin MacDonald puhuu. Kyse on siitä, että asioiden oikeudenmukaisuutta arvioidaan sen perusteella, ovatko ne hyödyksi tai haitaksi OMALLE kansalle, ei sen perusteella, ovatko ne joidenkin universaalien ihmisoikeusperiaatteiden mukaisia.

Kevin MacDonaldin mukaan taipumus uskoa universaaleihin ihmisoikeusperiaatteisiin tms. objektiivisiin moraalinormeihin on nimenomaan eurooppalaisille ihmisille ja aivan erityisesti pohjoiseurooppalaisille evolutiivisesti muodostunut geneettinen taipumus.



Professor Kevin MacDonald
Department of Psychology
California State University
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European peoples are more prone to individualism. Individualist cultures show little emotional attachment to ingroups. Personal goals are paramount, and socialization emphasizes the importance of self-reliance, independence, individual responsibility, and 'finding yourself' (Triandis 1991, 82). Individualists have more positive attitudes toward strangers and outgroup members and are more likely to behave in a pro-social, altruistic manner to strangers. People in individualist cultures are less aware of ingroup/outgroup boundaries and thus do not have highly negative attitudes toward outgroup members. They often disagree with ingroup policy, show little emotional commitment or loyalty to ingroups, and do not have a sense of common fate with other ingroup members. Opposition to outgroups occurs in individualist societies, but the opposition is more 'rational' in the sense that there is less of a tendency to suppose that all of the outgroup members are culpable. Individualists form mild attachments to many groups, while collectivists have an intense attachment and identification to a few ingroups (Triandis 1990, 61).
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Nordic peoples evolved in small groups and have a tendency toward social isolation rather than cohesive groups. This perspective would not imply that Northern Europeans lack collectivist mechanisms for group competition, but only that these mechanisms are relatively less elaborated and/or require a higher level of group conflict to trigger their expression.

This perspective is consistent with ecological theory. Under ecologically adverse circumstances, adaptations are directed more at coping with the adverse physical environment than at competing with other groups (Southwood 1977, 1981), and in such an environment, there would be less pressure for selection for extended kinship networks and highly collectivist groups. Evolutionary conceptualizations of ethnocentrism emphasize the utility of ethnocentrism in group competition. Ethnocentrism would thus be of no importance at all in combating the physical environment, and such an environment would not support large groups.

European groups are part of what Burton et al. (1996) term the North Eurasian and Circumpolar culture area.9 This culture area derives from hunter-gatherers adapted to cold, ecologically adverse climates. In such climates there is pressure for male provisioning of the family and a tendency toward monogamy because the ecology did not support either polygyny or large groups for an evolutionarily significant period. These cultures are characterized by bilateral kinship relationships which recognize both the male and female lines, suggesting a more equal contribution for each sex as would be expected under conditions of monogamy. There is also less emphasis on extended kinship relationships and marriage tends to be exogamous (i.e., outside the kinship group). 
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The historical evidence shows that Europeans, and especially Northwest Europeans, were relatively quick to abandon extended kinship networks and collectivist social structures when their interests were protected with the rise of strong centralized governments. There is indeed a general tendency throughout the world for a decline in extended kinship networks with the rise of central authority (Alexander 1979; Goldschmidt & Kunkel 1971; Stone 1977). But in the case of Northwest Europe this tendency quickly gave rise long before the industrial revolution to the unique Western European 'simple household' type. The simple household type is based on a single married couple and their children. It contrasts with the joint family structure typical of the rest of Eurasia in which the household consists of two or more related couples, typically brothers and their wives and other members of the extended family (Hajnal 1983). (An example of the joint household would be the families of the patriarchs described in the Old Testament; see MacDonald 1994, Ch. 3)

Uniquely in Eurasia, age of first marriage for women was quite high, fluctuating around a mean of about 25 years of age. Age of marriage was flexible, rising in times of scarcity and declining in times of abundance, with the result that there was capital accumulation rather than a constant pressure of population on resources. During economically difficult times, women married late or not at all, whereas in the polygynous societies of the rest of Eurasia, women married early, often as concubines or secondary wives of wealthy men (MacDonald 1995b,c).

Before the industrial revolution, the simple household system was characterized by methods of keeping unmarried young people occupied as servants. It was not just the children of the poor and landless who became servants, but even large, successful farmers sent their children to be servants elsewhere. In the 17th and 18th centuries individuals often took in servants early in their marriage, before their own children could help out, and then passed their children to others when the children were older and there was more than enough help (Stone 1977).

This suggests a deeply ingrained cultural practice which resulted in a high level of non-kinship based reciprocity. The practice also bespeaks a relative lack of ethnocentrism because people are taking in non-relatives as household members whereas in the rest of Eurasia people tend to surround themselves with biological relatives. Simply put, genetic relatedness was less important in Europe and especially in the Nordic areas of Europe. The unique feature of the simple household system was the high percentage of non-relatives. Unlike the rest of Eurasia, the pre-industrial societies of northwestern Europe were not organized around extended kinship relationships, and it is easy to see that they are pre-adapted to the industrial revolution and modern world generally.10

This simple household system is a fundamental feature of individualist culture. The individualist family was able to pursue its interests freed from the obligations and constraints of extended kinship relationships and free of the suffocating collectivism of the social structures typical of so much of the rest of the world. Monogamous marriage based on individual consent and conjugal affection quickly replaced marriage based on kinship and family strategizing. (See Chs. 4 and 8 for a discussion of the greater proneness of Western Europeans to monogamy and to marriage based on companionship and affection rather than polygyny and collectivist mechanisms of social control and family strategizing.)

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These findings are compatible with the interpretation that ethnic differences are a contributing factor to the geographical variation in family forms within Europe. The findings suggest that the Germanic peoples had a greater biological tendency toward a suite of traits that predisposed them to individualism -- including a greater tendency toward the simple household because of natural selection occurring in a prolonged resource-limited period of their evolution in the north of Europe. Similar tendencies toward exogamy, monogamy, individualism, and relative de-emphasis on the extended family were also characteristic of Roman civilization (MacDonald 1990), again suggesting an ethnic tendency that pervades Western cultures generally. 
Current data indicate that around 80% of European genes are derived from people who settled in Europe 30-40,000 years ago and therefore persisted through the Ice Ages (Sykes 2001). This is sufficient time for the adverse ecology of the north to have had a powerful shaping influence on European psychological and cultural tendencies. These European groups were less attracted to extended kinship groups, so that when the context altered with the rise of powerful central governments able to guarantee individual interests, the simple household structure quickly became dominant. This simple family structure was adopted relatively easily because Europeans already had relatively powerful psychological predispositions toward the simple family resulting from its prolonged evolutionary history in the north of Europe. 
Although these differences within the Western European system are important, they do not belie the general difference between Western Europe and the rest of Eurasia. Although the trend toward simple households occurred first in the northwest of Europe, they spread relatively quickly among all the Western European countries. 
The establishment of the simple household freed from enmeshment in the wider kinship community was then followed in short order by all the other markers of Western modernization: limited governments in which individuals have rights against the state, capitalist economic enterprise based on individual economic rights, moral universalism, and science as individualist truth seeking. Individualist societies develop republican political institutions and institutions of scientific inquiry that assume that groups are maximally permeable and highly subject to defection when individual needs are not met. 
Recent research by evolutionary economists provides fascinating insight on the differences between individualistic cultures versus collectivist cultures. An important aspect of this research is to model the evolution of cooperation among individualistic peoples. Fehr and Gächter (2002) found that people will altruistically punish defectors in a 'one-shot' game -- a game in which participants only interact once and are thus not influenced by the reputations of the people with whom they are interacting. This situation therefore models an individualistic culture because participants are strangers with no kinship ties. The surprising finding was that subjects who made high levels of public goods donations tended to punish people who did not even though they did not receive any benefit from doing so. Moreover, the punished individuals changed their ways and donated more in future games even though they knew that the participants in later rounds were not the same as in previous rounds. and Gächter suggest that people from individualistic cultures have an evolved negative emotional reaction to free riding that results in their punishing such people even at a cost to themselves -- hence the term 'altruistic punishment.' 
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Europeans are thus exactly the sort of groups modeled by Fehr and Gächter and Henrich et al: They are groups with high levels of cooperation with strangers rather than with extended family members, and they are prone to market relations and individualism. On the other hand, Jewish culture derives from the Middle Old World culture area characterized by extended kinship networks and the extended family. Such cultures are prone to ingroup-outgroup relationships in which cooperation involves repeated interactions with ingroup members and the ingroup is composed of extended family members. 
This suggests the fascinating possibility that the key for a group intending to turn Europeans against themselves is to trigger their strong tendency toward altruistic punishment by convincing them of the evil of their own people. Because Europeans are individualists at heart, they readily rise up in moral anger against their own people once they are seen as free riders and therefore morally blameworthy -- a manifestation of their much stronger tendency toward altruistic punishment deriving from their evolutionary past as hunter gatherers. In making judgments of altruistic punishment, relative genetic distance is irrelevant. Free-riders are seen as strangers in a market situation; i.e., they have no familial or tribal connection with the altruistic punisher. 
Thus the current altruistic punishment so characteristic of contemporary Western civilization: Once Europeans were convinced that their own people were morally bankrupt, any and all means of punishment should be used against their own people. Rather than see other Europeans as part of an encompassing ethnic and tribal community, fellow Europeans were seen as morally blameworthy and the appropriate target of altruistic punishment. For Westerners, morality is individualistic -- violations of communal norms by free-riders are punished by altruistic aggression. 
On the other hand, group strategies deriving from collectivist cultures, such as the Jews, are immune to such a maneuver because kinship and group ties come first. Morality is particularistic -- whatever is good for the group. There is no tradition of altruistic punishment because the evolutionary history of these groups centers around cooperation of close kin, not strangers (see below).  

Miksi Skepsis ry ei vastusta uskonnonharjoitusta yliopistoissa?

Facebookista:

Mikko Ellilä

11.5.2017

Miksi Skepsis ry ei ole koskaan ottanut mitään kantaa sitä vastaan, että suomalaisissa yliopistoissa harjoitetaan uskontoa?

Miksi yliopistoissa, joissa pitäisi harrastaa tiedettä eli faktoja, harrastetaan jumalanpalvontamenoja eli taikauskoa?

Commentaires

Matti Vähätalo Harrastetaanko ja millä tavalla?

Mikko Ellilä Trollaatko tahallasi, vai oletko ihan oikeasti noin tietämätön? Etkö ole koskaan kuullut, että suomalaisissa yliopistoissa on teologisia "tiedekuntia"? Etkö ole myöskään koskaan kuullut, että suomalaisissa yliopistoissa on jumalanpalveluksia?

Jari Laittila Mikko Ellilä, juuri meinasin kysyä oliko aloituksesi trollaus vai oletko todella noin tietämätön käsitteistä. Teologia ei ole uskonnon harjoittamista, vaan uskontoja ja uskomuksia tutkiva tieteenhaara. Se on sitten jokaisen opiskelijan oma asia, mitä sitten vapaa-ajalla harjoittaa.

Matti Vähätalo Uskonnon tutkiminen on uskonnon harjoittamiselle sama kuin murhatutkimus murhaamiselle.

Mikko Ellilä "Teologia ei ole uskonnon harjoittamista, vaan uskontoja ja uskomuksia tutkiva tieteenhaara."

Et siis ollenkaan tiedä, mitä tarkoittaa sellainen käsite kuin teologia.

Jari Laittila " tieteenalana teologia ei ole uskonnon harjoittamista, vaan uskontoa, erityisesti kristinuskoa, uskomuksia ja uskonnollisuutta tutkiva oppiala." kertoo Wikipedia. Tarvitsetko vielä jonkun muun lähteen?

Jari Laittila Ja nyt on kyse yliopistossa käsiteltävästä teologiasta

Panu Luoma Niin. Eikös teologia ole jumaluusoppi?

Käsittääkseni se ei sisällä mitään palvontaa. Vain asian objektiivista tutkimista.

En tiedä, mitä pahaa siinä on.

Kimmo Aalto Teologia ainakin auttaa ymmärtämään sitä sotkua, minkä uskonnot maailmaan ovat aiheuttaneet. Tunnustuksellista uskonnonopetusta ei siellä liene.

Mikko Ellilä Miten kukaan voi olla tietämätön siitä tosiasiasta, että teologia on aivan eri asia kuin uskontotiede??

Valtteri Ahonen Suomen yliopistoissa kyseessä on nimenomaan uskontotiede. Vai todennatko toisin? Vaikka luentojen sisällöistä kuvakaappauksia tms, tämä on nyt tällainen tyhjä vaski -aloitus toistaiseksi

Jari Laittila Helsingin yliopistossa uskontotiede on oppiaineena sekä humanistissa että teologissa tiedekunnassa.

Antti Kaunisto Kertoisiko joku millä teologisen tdk:n kurssilla harjoitetaan uskontoa?

Janne Jylhä Yksi tietämätön lisää ilmoittautuu. Mitä tunnustuksellista opetusta yliopistoissa on?

Toni Ojala Teologia tieteenä selittää ilmiöitä, jotka liittyvät ihmisten uskonnolliseen ajatteluun ja toimintaan sekä maailmankatsomukseen. Teologinen tutkimus käyttää humanistisia ja yhteiskuntatieteellisiä tutkimusmenetelmiä.

Teologinen tutkimus ja koulutus tuottavat laajaa uskonnon asiantuntijuutta, jota tarvitaan erilaisissa työtehtävissä.

Mikko Ellilä Teologia ei ole tiedettä.

Mikko Ellilä Teologia on uskonnollista dogmattiikkaa.

Mikko Ellilä Uskontotiede on erikseen.

Mikko Ellilä On hyvin ikävää, että sinä et ole tuohon ikään mennessä tajunnut tätä.

Toni Ojala Oli ihan suora lainaus linkittämältäni sivulta (opinpolku.fi). Surullista että sinulla on noin kova angsti. ♥️

Toni Ojala 1.2. "Mitä teologia on?" - esimerkki teologisesta argumentaatiosta
"Teologia on uskontoja, erityisesti kristinuskoa tutkiva tiede."
-Helsingin yliopiston teologisen tiedekunnan esittely

http://www.helsinki.fi/.../syste/01_mita_teologia.shtml

Yleinen teologia : systemaattinen teologia

Sanaa 'teologia' on käytetty tämän ja edeltävien…

HELSINKI.FI

Wikipediasta:

Theology and religious studies
In some contemporary contexts, a distinction is made between theology, which is seen as involving some level of commitment to the claims of the religious tradition being studied, and religious studies, which by contrast is normally seen as requiring that the question of the truth or falsehood of the religious traditions studied be kept outside its field. Religious studies involves the study of historical or contemporary practices or of those traditions' ideas using intellectual tools and frameworks that are not themselves specifically tied to any religious tradition and that are normally understood to be neutral or secular.[63] In contexts where 'religious studies' in this sense is the focus, the primary forms of study are likely to include:
Anthropology of religionComparative religionHistory of religionsPhilosophy of religionPsychology of religionSociology of religion

Sometimes, theology and religious studies are seen as being in tension,[64] and at other times, they are held to coexist without serious tension.[65] Occasionally it is denied that there is as clear a boundary between them.[66]

Criticism
See also: Criticism of religion
There is an ancient tradition of skepticism about theology, followed by a more modern rise in secularist and atheist criticism.

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Thomas Paine the American revolutionary, wrote in his two part work The Age of Reason, "The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. Not anything can be studied as a science, without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing."[69]
Ludwig Feuerbach, the atheist philosopher sought to dissolve theology in his work Principles of the Philosophy of the Future: "The task of the modern era was the realization and humanization of God – the transformation and dissolution of theology into anthropology."[70] This mirrored his earlier work The Essence of Christianity (pub. 1841), for which he was banned from teaching in Germany, in which he had said that theology was a "web of contradictions and delusions".[71]
A.J. Ayer the former logical-positivist, sought to show in his essay "Critique of Ethics and Theology" that all statements about the divine are nonsensical and any divine-attribute is unprovable. He wrote: "It is now generally admitted, at any rate by philosophers, that the existence of a being having the attributes which define the god of any non-animistic religion cannot be demonstratively proved... [A]ll utterances about the nature of God are nonsensical."[72]

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Critics of theology as an academic discipline
Critics dating back to the 18th century have questioned the suitability of theology as an academic discipline and in the 21st century criticism continues.[74]

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Robert G. Ingersoll stated that when theologians had power the majority of people lived in hovels while a privileged few had palaces and cathedrals. In Ingersoll's opinion science rather than theology improved people's lives. Ingersoll maintained further that trained theologians reason no better than a person who assumes the devil must exist because pictures resemble the devil so exactly.[77]
Mark Twain stated that several mutually incompatible religions claimed to be the true religion and that people cut the throats of others for following a different theology.[78]
Prominent atheist Richard Dawkins has criticized the validity of theology as a subject, saying: “The achievements of theologians don’t do anything, don’t affect anything, don’t mean anything. What makes anyone think that ‘theology’ is a subject at all?”[79]

Richard Dawkinsin ko. kirjoitus:

The Emptiness of Theology - Richard Dawkins A dismally unctuous editorial in the British newspaper the Independent recently asked for a reconciliation between science and "theology." It remarked that "People want to know as much as possible about their origins." I certainly hope they do, but what on earth makes one think that theology has anything useful to say on the subject? Science is responsible for the following knowledge about our origins. We know approximately when the universe began and why it is largely hydrogen. We know why stars form and what happens in their interiors to convert hydrogen to the other elements and hence give birth to chemistry in a world of physics. We know the fundamental principles of how a world of chemistry can become biology through the arising of self-replicating molecules. We know how the principle of self-replication gives rise, through Darwinian selection, to all life, including humans. It is science and science alone that has given us this knowledge and given it, moreover, in fascinating, over-whelming, mutually confirming detail. On every one of these questions theology has held a view that has been conclusively proved wrong. Science has eradicated smallpox, can immunize against most previously deadly viruses, can kill most previously deadly bacteria. Theology has done nothing but talk of pestilence as the wages of sin. Science can predict when a particular comet will reappear and, to the second, when the next eclipse will appear. Science has put men on the moon and hurtled reconnaissance rockets around Saturn and Jupiter. Science can tell you the age of a particular fossil and that the Turin Shroud is a medieval fake. Science knows the precise DNA instructions of several viruses and will, in the lifetime of many present readers, do the same for the human genome. What has theology ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody? When has theology ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? I have listened to theologians, read them, debated against them. I have never heard any of them ever say anything of the smallest use, anything that was not either platitudinously obvious or downright false. If all the achievements of scientists were wiped out tomorrow, there would be no doctors but witch doctors, no transport faster than horses, no computers, no printed books, no agriculture beyond subsistence peasant farming. If all the achievements of theologians were wiped out tomorrow, would anyone notice the smallest difference? Even the bad achievements of scientists, the bombs, and sonar-guided whaling vessels work! The achievements of theologians don't do anything, don't affect anything, don't mean anything. What makes anyone think that "theology" is a subject at all?

Yhdyn Dawkinsin kantaan ja olen siis päinvastaista mieltä kuin edellä siteeratut Facebook-kirjoittajat.