Dr Grump
Platinum Member
Interestingly enough, every single early society has ascribed its social conscience to a source outside of itself, usually gods or something supernatural. And, in truth, you would be hard-pressed to find a record of any of those early societies having a little sit-down in which they hammered out the specifics of good and evil, right and wrong. What you find are their clergy, in whatever form, saying, "This is what the gods want everyone to do."
So it doesn't really much matter if YOU think it's stupid to look to a higher power outside of humanity to set an objective moral standard. What matters is that that's what actually happened.
Of course they ascribed social conscience outside itself. They believed when they heard thunder the "gods were angry. When volcano erupted the "god were angry". They had no idea that thunder was two clouds colliding or that volcanos were erupting due to lava coming to the surface of the Earth. .
Why would societies "sit down" and ascribe good or evil? Most societies had no idea what caused bad thing to happen to it.
Just because you THINK a higher power outside of humanity set an objective moral standard doesn't mean it happened. The only "proof" you have (and i use the term lightly) that a power outside of humanity set such a standard is from other humans who cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt (hell, can't even prove period) that such a thing happened at all...
In other words, you have nothing...shrug