> 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.