> I'd like to clarify what I'm arguing here. I'm not arguing that only religion can provide a moral code.

I am sorry if I misunderstoo your position or possibly mixed it up with what al_mandi said. He was the one who stated it is only religion that can give us morals and without it we'd be a barbaric society and living like animals.

  > - Science is not in and of itself a moral code. NB: science is not the same thing as rationality!

I would agree with this. Science uses rational thought to build knowledge about reality.

  > - Creating a moral code as comprehensive and useful as those that religions provide, based on nothing more than logic applied to a handful of axioms (first principles), is really hard. Maybe not impossible! But it's definitely harder than it looks, and this can easily lead to bizarre and destructive conclusions, or arguments that sound logical on the surface but which actually contain fallacies.

I would also agree here that building a moral code from axioms is a lot of work and hard. And it has to be because there is a huge amount of situations in life for which the moral code would need to be queried for guidance. But wouldn't it provide an immense value if we did all that work and it turned out to be workable? The problems you listed exist just as well in moral code derived from religious axioms.

  > You are arguing (I think) that the codes provided by religions are totally irrational and should be discarded

No, I would not say that all of the moral code provided by the various religions are completely irrational and should be discarded. There is a lot of guidelines that I would probably agree with. I just reject some of the axioms like the existance of god. I can agree with a conclusion even if I disagree with how they arrived at said conclusion. Note that I do not claim there is no god. I am not an atheist. But I see no proof for it and we just don't know if there is one or not. It is not proven and it seems not falsifiable.

  > If you accept the axioms (e.g. that the word of God/Jesus is axiomatically moral, that the Bible records the word of God/Jesus), then the reasoning from that point on is pretty straightforward.

I don't accept these axioms.

  >  And in particular it's fairly complete because the Bible covers how to treat a lot of common situations. We know this moral code sorta mostly works, because it's been around a long time and we have a lot of experience with it.

Sure, it might sorta mostly work but at that point we could also have just come up with random moral rules and tried them all over a long time and stuck with the set that sorta mostly works. We would not need to justify them with religious axioms. I think you will agree with me here because you also said religion is not the only way that can provide a moral code.

  > We also know what happened to communist societies that deliberately erased religion and replaced it with Marxist morality - hundreds of millions of deaths,

I don't think the soviet era was following the core spirit of science though. It had a lot more in common with religious doctrine. That they pushed to erase religion was rather a play in order to remove any competing power systems that could endanger them.

  > The problem is that this justification fails in the case where one side is overwhelmingly strong. If my side knows about guns and has them, and all you have is spears, then realistically I can kill as many of you as I want without any real risk. Moreover I can then move in and take all your land and women, so at that point it's an evolutionary fit strategy to do so. Yet this shouldn't be considered morally OK merely because the risk of dying in return is very low. Indeed, it's critical to have a moral code that doesn't involve relative risks here to stop exactly that genocidal situation from occurring.

I have actually already addressed this. Your argument overlooks that the two groups belong to a bigger group which again needs to optimize for survival. If one part of a species kills another part of the same species then the species has weakend itself. This goes all the way up to all living things. It is an often held misconception that survival of the fittest means it has to be a contest where the winner is the last man standing. If we killed every living being that might be a threat to us no matter how remote then that would actually harm ourselves because it destroys large parts of a working ecosystem and would create all kinds of unforseeable, possibly fatal problems. Religion might arrive at a similar view by proclaiming god has declared life sacred because it was his creation. To me, this while being a useful thought can create a lot more issues because it is intellectually lazier and when people don't understand or are even allowed to question "why" then they have a higher chance of applying the rule in a destructive way. One has to be concious that no rule in a moral code must be assumed 100% correct in all situations.

  > Correct but I've never claimed 100% consistent or even majority behaviour; it'd be irrelevant to my argument to do so. My point is that if you build a Darwinian moral code then there's nothing really wrong with me fighting and killing you. After all, animals do it sometimes. Sure not all the time, and I wouldn't go around killing people all the time anyway for the risk related reasons you previously highlighted. But so what? If evolution is all there is to it then how could anyone tell me not to kill you for moral reasons? The fact that most of the time, animals don't do it? Not convincing. 

My previous paragraph gave some more explanation on my point of view. To specifically address your example: you killing me for arbitrary reasons poses a risk to you. Society will see your behaviour as destructive to itself and will try to prevent it or punish you for it. This does not mean that killing is always bad. Killing someone that is about to kill other people for no reason would be justified.

Animals don't have the same cognitive capabilities that we have. Nonetheless nature has baked into them traits that are common and result in a lot of behavior that one could reasonably argue that they must have some kind of moral code as well. Human morals are more sophisticated but there are similarities. Now, we are surely not the be-all end-all of evolution which means our cognitive capabilities are also limited. Maybe in a million years our ancestors will look back and pity us for our limited understanding and poor morals :)

At this point I'd like to thank you for a much more intellectually interesting conversation. I was a bit exhausted after the one with al_mandi.

I thank you too for your deeply considered and respectful debate.

I'm not religious and I also don't accept the axioms that the Bible is the word of God, that anything God says is true, etc. We share the goal / ideal of a moral code that is based on simpler, tighter axioms and sound reasoning. Some years ago I thought it would be easy to develop such a code. Nowadays I fear that it's very difficult, perhaps too difficult right now, and we are perhaps to evolved religion what Da Vinci was when he tried to build a mechanical bird i.e. far further away from being able to match the evolved system than he realized, and for many reasons he couldn't have understood.

"I don't think the soviet era was following the core spirit of science though. It had a lot more in common with religious doctrine."

I think this was one of the core criticisms of communism, made both by philosophers in the 19th century and more everyday folk in the 20th. Marx liked to claim that his ideas were scientific, but actually nothing about Marxism is scientific. His critics contended that to be religious, to want to believe in or even to worship something, is a core part of human nature, and that if you simply abolish evolved religions then new pseudo-religions would immediately emerge (but they'd be worse).

We can see that this happened repeatedly in all communist countries: the population was quickly "converted" to new religions which involved worshipping and deifying both the abstract concepts of man, progress and communist ideology, along with also the less abstract leaders. Hence all the "cults of personality" i.e. religions that viewed Lenin, Stalin, Mao etc as quasi-prophets of the coming utopia.

If this claim of a deep need for religion/belief is true, and as I get older I see more and more evidence that maybe it is, then trying to create a moral code based purely on logic derived from a set of sound core axioms might be naive or backfire - sort of like trying to convert the world to speaking Esperanto would. But of course it's very difficult to disentangle cause and effect. Perhaps the apparent "need" for religion is in reality mostly a need for a comprehensive moral code, and as communism didn't provide one, it instead turned into a stunted and disfigured substitute for one.

One obvious way in which an artificial moral code might be lacking is in the story telling aspects. Religions have the advantage (?) that they're easy to teach to children because children ask "why" a lot but can't understand complicated answers. If you had to explain every rule via reference to a long chain of cause/effect logic, it might be difficult to impart the urgency of morality to children and this could lead to problems later. But arguably we have this issue already.

"If we killed every living being that might be a threat to us no matter how remote then that would actually harm ourselves because it destroys large parts of a working ecosystem and would create all kinds of unforseeable, possibly fatal problems"

Yes, so the code we're patching together here is a kind of mix of Darwinian evolution combined with a kind of Gaia style planet/social ecology philosophy. It can work for some things. A concern that arises is that this would appear to be ultimately a form of New Age collectivism - everyone is linked to everyone else. In such a code, do individual rights have any meaning or is everything subservient to the greater whole and if so, how does that not lead in a great circle back to communism?

I find the COVID vaccine mandates to be a good test case for some of these issues. Putting aside for a moment the widely accepted yet pseudo-scientific justification for them (without stopping transmission there is no possible argument in favor), this is ultimately a question of individual rights and risks vs collective outcomes. A "for the betterment of the species" moral code requires some ability to make collective vs individual moral tradeoffs, but in practice such decisions must always be mediated by the state. As we've seen, modern states seem unable to maintain even the most basic levels of rationality about some topics.

  > I'm not religious and I also don't accept the axioms that the Bible is the word of God, that anything God says is true, etc. We share the goal / ideal of a moral code that is based on simpler, tighter axioms and sound reasoning. Some years ago I thought it would be easy to develop such a code. Nowadays I fear that it's very difficult, perhaps too difficult right now, and we are perhaps to evolved religion what Da Vinci was when he tried to build a mechanical bird i.e. far further away from being able to match the evolved system than he realized, and for many reasons he couldn't have understood.

This is an interesting point. Maybe using computer simulations could be a valuable tool to attempt it? Oh boy, now I fear someone will develop a Moral AI :) (I think it would be a bad idea)

  > I think this was one of the core criticisms of communism, made both by philosophers in the 19th century and more everyday folk in the 20th. Marx liked to claim that his ideas were scientific, but actually nothing about Marxism is scientific. His critics contended that to be religious, to want to believe in or even to worship something, is a core part of human nature, and that if you simply abolish evolved religions then new pseudo-religions would immediately emerge (but they'd be worse).
  > We can see that this happened repeatedly in all communist countries: the population was quickly "converted" to new religions which involved worshipping and deifying both the abstract concepts of man, progress and communist ideology, along with also the less abstract leaders. Hence all the "cults of personality" i.e. religions that viewed Lenin, Stalin, Mao etc as quasi-prophets of the coming utopia.

I would agree with this although I am not sure if the rise of replacement belief systems is a given. These absolutist belief systems (be it based on god or on more earthy core) are the ultimate issue as far as I can see. So a society has to come up with a way to prevent these extreme ideologies. The problem is that a society which is not absolute also has to be tolerant to people having other belief systems or otherwise it itself would be an absolute and extreme system. I'm not 100% sure of this.

  > If this claim of a deep need for religion/belief is true, and as I get older I see more and more evidence that maybe it is, then trying to create a moral code based purely on logic derived from a set of sound core axioms might be naive or backfire - sort of like trying to convert the world to speaking Esperanto would. But of course it's very difficult to disentangle cause and effect. Perhaps the apparent "need" for religion is in reality mostly a need for a comprehensive moral code, and as communism didn't provide one, it instead turned into a stunted and disfigured substitute for one.

I am convinced that we humans require a moral code - something that can guide us when making our decisions but I don't see a reason why it has to be from religion. Also humans are lazy. So religious moral code is a very convenient tool in our lives. It is accepted in your group of peers if they share the religion so no need to argue too mcuh, it doesn't need too much thinking because a lot is declared via doctrine and like you said it sorta kinda works. I think this is one of the reasons why religions spread. Accepting it makes life easier in a way.

Religions are undergoing also an evolutionary process in my opinion. They often base themselves upon the previous one and alter it trying to improve it.

  > One obvious way in which an artificial moral code might be lacking is in the story telling aspects. Religions have the advantage (?) that they're easy to teach to children because children ask "why" a lot but can't understand complicated answers. If you had to explain every rule via reference to a long chain of cause/effect logic, it might be difficult to impart the urgency of morality to children and this could lead to problems later. But arguably we have this issue already.

Very good point that I had not thought of. We teach children with story books. We tell them stories. Trying to teach them with dry rational arguments might not work. And children have less capacity to distrust. When they ask "why" it is usually because they are naturally curious and just don't understand something. As they grow older they are more likely to question the teachings if they don't think these make sense. Only when growing older did I come to the realization that I can't take the religious teachings of my childhood as true. I do remember my mother reading me kids stories which had moral insights but had nothing to do with religion so it seems stories are the key but they do not need to be religion based. There could be a simple version of the moral code for kids which can piece by piece be replaced with a more complex one as they grow up.

  > Yes, so the code we're patching together here is a kind of mix of Darwinian evolution combined with a kind of Gaia style planet/social ecology philosophy. It can work for some things. A concern that arises is that this would appear to be ultimately a form of New Age collectivism - everyone is linked to everyone else. In such a code, do individual rights have any meaning or is everything subservient to the greater whole and if so, how does that not lead in a great circle back to communism?

Again good point and question. I think what the core issue here is, is the question of the group or the individuum is more important. Arguably chosing either one can lead to pretty serious issues. If we choose the group then we run danger of looping back to communism indeed. If we choose the individuum then we go in the "the strongest can take it all" direction. This means a balance between the two has to be found. That is what we have in our societies right now in many regards. In law systems we have rights of the public and rights of of private individuals. I'm not sure if this can be derived from Darwinian thinking. Maybe evolution also tries to optimize for an individual to be the best it can as long as the downside for the species is not bigger than the upside of the individual?

Many times a right or freedom for some part of society is a removal of a right or freedom of another part. It always boils down to a balancing act. And yes, a justice system is required to mediate that. Though we should not assume that it will be perfect, as long as it is based on humans which are imperfect it will be imperfect as well but it should be possible to build a really good one. We have a few that I would describe as "not too bad" but there is a lot of room for improvement.