Making altruism the basis of morality seems reasonable to most people. But this concept can be directly traced to Christianity. In fact no world-view not based on Christianity espouses this view. Eastern religions are primarily concerned with what is the optimimal way to live one's life. Their ethics are not based on altruism. Confucianism specifically describes a set of loyalties based on expanding circles of relationships, the very opposite of universal altruism. Pre-christian western religions also weren't very altruistic. Jews consider themselves to be the chosen people and aren't terribly concerned non-Jews. Each city-state of the ancient Greeks had similar views holding their city-state above the others and then Greeks above non-Greeks. This seems to be the natural view of people which makes sense when one considers that people evolved in tribes and the tribes that were most likely to survive were those whose members were loyal to that tribe.
Modern universal altruism was invented by Paul. Christ's main concern was to save Jews from the corruption that he saw around him. Christ did not concern himself with non-Jews. It was Paul, the greatest salesman in history, who twisted Christ's teachings around to create a universal religion. Paul created modern Christianity whose goal was to save everyone's soul. Of course universal altruism requires absolute morality because without absolute morality, how can you really know if you are helping someone or hurting them? In fact, Christianity was a natural outcome of combining the intolerant jewish god with the socratic concept of absolute truth. Absolute truth is so deaply embedded in western thought that most westerners can't even imagine a world view without it. But world views not derived from Socrates are generally not based on absolute truth (which is why westerners find them incomprehensible). By combining socratic absolute truth with jewish religious intolera! nc! e, you get christian absolute intolerance. And this is the basis universal altruism which basically says there is an absolute morality that will be shoved down everyone's throat for their benefit.
Modern liberals don't think of themselves as Christians, but that is exaclty what they are. The fact that they have thrown off Christian mythology does not make them non-Christians. Christianity is world view of which the religion is just one component. The other components, the ethics and the metaphysics, have been completely retained by liberal atheists.
All this talk about altruism requires that we try to define it. A simple definition is "being helpful to others". But how does one know what is helpful to others? Suppose someone is trying to kill himself. Is it helpful to help him kill himself or is it helpful to stop him from killing himself? Christians tried to save the souls of others by burning witches and oppressing non-christian cultures. Was this altruistic? I suppose the response of modern liberal is that the christians weren't altruistic because they weren't being helpful (by the liberal's definition of helpful), but the liberal altruist would really be helpful because the liberal knows what is good. Same though pattern, different details.
I am relativist, so I am not going to push my morality on you. But I will explain it. I view morality as another sense just like the sense of taste. Just as I can taste food and tell you whether the food tastes good, I can consider an ethical question and tell you what feels moral to me. I enjoy developing my sense of morality just as I enjoy developing my sense of taste. To develop my sense of morality, I consider theoretical ethical questions and try to apply my morality where possible in my life. My morality is quite similar to most non-Christian based systems and is particularly focused on people and events that are directly tied to my personal life.
Back to the correct explanation of Altruism.
Back Home to Price of Liberty