I agree with you. I meant that it explains things to the faithful. Of course it doesn’t increase understanding. When people believed that the gods were responsible for the weather, it was an explanation, even though it had nothing to do with why it rains. IMO, as science has come up with explanations for things formerly in the realm of the gods, we’ve just modified what we believe about the gods or just flat out denied science.
I was responding to Uccisore, with whom I shared some explanations on another thread, but I can take it further. There appear to be universal moral norms, including social responsibility, obedience to authority, solidarity and reciprocity, all arising from our grouping behavior and social strucures. Some of the reasons for certain behaviors are hierarchical/peer relationships or reward/punishment or gaining resources or fostering fitness-enhancing relationships (increasing the chances of surviving, reproducing and propagating one’s genes). With a few notable exceptions, humans somehow collectively renounce their chaotic impulses in order to coexist. We collectively make rules to enhance cooperation and further stability; we penalize members of the group who violate the rules. We indoctrinate our children with these rules and introduce to them a reward/punishment model similar to that of society. “Moral” behavior such as mutual trust allows us to function and get resources, there arise conventions that regulate our dealings with each other and we depend upon each other to abide by them.
Evolutionary theorists offer up that ‘survival of the fittest’ doesn’t always explain certain altruistic behaviors, such as risking oneself to save another from danger. Our brains are shaped by environmental experience so biology could very well set us up to be moral in fundamental ways. Like the way we protect our young. Altruistic behaviors have been observed in animals, not just humans. It may be that there is a biological basis for such ‘morality’ as taking a risk to save somebody, if it’s perceived that there’s a benefit (and even if an animal doesn’t know that) in that the savior is preserving the chances that his saving behavior will be reciprocated at some point in the future. Humans have developed social learning mechanisms that are adaptions which allow us to infer the reactions of others to our behaviors. Darwin offered the “love of praise and dread of blame” as a basis for the evolution of morality. As well, there’s the theory that the ability to make and share moral judgments induces other to behave in ways that foster our own interests.
Dawkins posits that “memes” (ideas and groups of related ideas) behave like genes, replicating across human brains the way genes do across bodies. Perhaps cultural or behavioral memes satisfy human needs, such as the need to value life, without a biologically pre-determined basis.