[ExI] Natural law was Religions and violence.

[Keith Henson]

On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 11:29 PM,  <samantha <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:

> To be more precise, naturals come from the actual nature of the beings
> involved.  In other words they are based in reality.  I don't think
> reality requires God.   If in reality human beings have certain critical
> characteristics dictating that they best interact with one another (the
> only domain of rights) in certain ways and not others then these are
> rights inherent to their nature.  It will be difficult to claim that
> human beings have no particular nature in reality that is relevant to
> the proper way for them to act towards one another.

Humans certainly have species wide "human nature" and the only way I
know of that they could have obtained the collective characteristics
that make up human nature is natural selection.  (If you think
otherwise, you probably should not be reading this list.)

So you can predict that the elements of human nature were (over
evolutionary time in the EEA) good for gene survival.  The same
follows for derived matters such as "natural law."

Now in looking into these you need to keep in mind that most of our
EEA was hunter gatherer bands with the relation spectrum that implies.
 (Though see Gregory Clark for arguments about recent intense family
based selection in stable agrarian societies.)   And you need to keep
in mind that what's good for genes varies with the conditions.  A well
fed tribe might adopt a stranger, one on the edge of starvation may
kill them out of hand.

Keith