Morality without religion or god(s)

[Retro Rob]

Who says they were "violent and cruel"? The word used is "wickedness", which could mean anything.

In fact, in the context of the OT, it could well be that their "wickedness" was less than the examples I already provided of God doing. So who says his decision to destroy Nineveh was justified in the first place?

They were known for their brutality and shedding of blood. I would say they were indeed "violent and cruel".

But I won't play word games with you today.

 

[sandorski]

It means God delivers both justice and mercy, making him balance. He's not all justice, not all mercy. He has both.


God created man. Simple.



Is it ok if I compare your mental capacity to that of a 3 year old? Sorry for the inconvenience, I will compare whatever is comparable.

1) How do you Judge this "balance"?
2) Evidence of alleged Creation?
3) Give it a shot

 

[Charles Kozierok]

They were known for their brutality and shedding of blood.

But I won't play word games with you today.

You've been playing word games since you entered this thread.

Please provide a biblical quote that says Nineveh was "known for their brutality and shedding of blood". Because I think you just made that up.

Now, God and the Israelites, well, their brutality and shedding of blood is everywhere in the bible.

 

[sandorski]

They were known for their brutality and shedding of blood. I would say they were indeed "violent and cruel".

But I won't play word games with you today.

Just like the people of Israel under command of their "god".

 

[Moonbeam]

Quite frankly, those accounts are not about morality, as they are about justice.

Death row inmmates picture this perfectly. It's justice being metted out, because in my eyes, unjustified death is immoral.

If God feel it's justified, then that's a decision He makes. Oh, and please don't forget the accounts where He showed mercy to people as well, even those who killed others (Manesseh and David comes to mind, both in the OT as well) and deserved death.

Don't forget to cherry pick those as well.

What you fail to understand, I think, is that morality is absolute. Slaughtering male children and women who have had sex and keeping virgins for yourself is absolutely immoral and God can't change that fact. Any such god is a projection of lustful men who are looking to have sex. No such real God exists. Anybody who could justify such actions on the basis of the command to obey is a monster. Your god is a monster, but the real God is not. The real God loves us all the same.

 

[WHAMPOM]

This shows your ignorance. You can't form a better argument than comparing (falsely, btw) man with God? I know you can't come up with anything better, but this is just silly.

Doesn't require a response.

So the most heinous acts can be excused if GOD commands them? How very double standard of you. Think a woman should be very grateful to have a very loving husband when he is not beating on her?

 

[IronWing]

Because you don't read anything other than the parts that fit your opinion.(1) For the many so-called immoral acts, there are plenty in which people and whole nations were spared (the Ninevites in the book of Jonah comes to mind -- God spared a violent and cruel people becasue they were repentant). (2)

This makes him a balanced God. He shows mercy where it's due, delivers justice where its due. (3)

Your point has no merit.

1) Attack without foundation, content, context, nor merit. You can do better.

2) How does this excuse the immoral conduct attributed to the god of the bible?

3) The god portrayed in the bible has a knack for collective punishment. Adam disobeys the god and therefore is condemned to die. The punishment seems excessive but we'll go with it. The god portrayed in the bible then goes a step further condemning the entire human race to death for the disobedience of one man. That, by my moral code, is an act of pure evil. Using the behavior ascribed to the god of the bible as a model, when someone cuts me off in traffic the just thing to do would be to kill the offending driver and then to exterminate every driver who ever lived and all future drivers to boot.

 

[Juddog]

1) Attack without foundation, content, context, nor merit. You can do better.

2) How does this excuse the immoral conduct attributed to the god of the bible?

3) The god portrayed in the bible has a knack for collective punishment. Adam disobeys the god and therefore is condemned to die. The punishment seems excessive but we'll go with it. The god portrayed in the bible then goes a step further condemning the entire human race to death for the disobedience of one man. That, by my moral code, is an act of pure evil. Using the behavior ascribed to the god of the bible as a model, when someone cuts me off in traffic the just thing to do would be to kill the offending driver and then to exterminate every driver who ever lived and all future drivers to boot.

^^ Exactly - if you compare the atrocities committed by the God from the Bible, compared with the Devil from the Bible, it's pretty clear that the God from the Bible looks like an amoral monster in comparison. Why anybody would want to worship such a terrible entity is beyond me.

 

[Moonbeam]

Charles,

Okay, let's start from the beginning shall we? .............................

QUOTE]

A deeper analysis like in the Harris speech shows that values are based in the brain on an assessment and comparison of mental states, those that are peek preferred over those that are not. This will move toward preservation because they are based on quality of feeling and folk like to preserve that feeling. Your explanation, I think, is shallow because it doesn't really say anything. The church may strive for control of others based on doctrine and such societies may remain static for centuries, but the desire for the freedom to think will eventually overthrow such bonds and destroy such control. Many people value thinking for themselves over being told what to do, especially people who can think, and they will destroy their whole civilization for freedom if that's what it takes. Of course you can say they want to preserve their right to think but what they really want is to feel it. A free state is better than a dictatorship because it feels better to live in one. So morality requires knowledge about what the healthy human being feels in a healthy state. That can be know only by those who know it. That state is called the Oneness of Love and many other things. This is why, no matter what we do, we can't get rid of the mystic.

 

[Ausm]

God created man. Simple.



.

What created your God?

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

OK. Correct, but there is a consensus which makes for how an individual is accepted by culture. That in turn modifies the individuals perspective and his sense of what is moral and what is not. People are taught what is right and what is wrong. I know of no culture which hasn't enforced a collective view of morality which in turn influences the individual.

"People are taught what is right and what is wrong according to the general consensus," or "...according to Mom and Dad." I admit I'm being real nit-picky, but I think pointing things like this out at every opportunity helps make the overall point clearer. In fact, the way you phrased it is more accurately what people are taught, even while it does not accurately describe reality. By that, I mean children are led to believe that moral positions are facts of the world instead of subjective beliefs.

You can call a teapot a hat because you can put it on your head, but that does not mean you have any valid basis for it.

And yet just moments ago you didn't have any problem accepting that all moral values are equally valid.

What, in your opinion, would be a valid basis?

One can hold people accountable for being black, or gay, or whatever. You can hold the color red accountable for having only three letters in english, you can say the number 5 is married. Because you can do a thing does not make you privileged to judge.

I don't know about privilege, but I can certainly judge. So can everyone else.

You have no special knowledge, no inherently superior wisdom that makes them right or wrong other than to just say it.

Do I need "special knowlege" or "inherently superior wisdom"? If so, why?

Which isn't saying anything more than I did earlier. We are a social species and interact with each other, which provides a survival bonus. The value of which is effectively decided by the aggregate.

The value of each thing is decided by each valuer.

Sure you can hold an opinion, but holding accountable in a real sense? That's what authority does, and that comes from power, which comes from the consensus.

Ok, but you're not talking about right and wrong anymore, then. Might does not make right. Might simply makes facts.

You can always find someone with a maladaptive behavior based on what he or she believes acceptable but Ted Bundy didn't just walk. Also "with values" begs the question since values equate to morality.

I'm arguing by definition. That isn't begging the question.

 

[piasabird]

Adam fell that man might be? Without the fall there would have been no children. Without Death no life was created. It is a lesson that there is good and evil and there must be opposition in all things.

Here is a Mormon Take on the Fall of Adam:

http://www.lds.org/topics/fall-of-adam?lang=eng

 

[Onceler]

WTF is plan B?
If you mean abortion it should be mandatory to abort that little bastard.

 

[HumblePie]

A deeper analysis like in the Harris speech shows that values are based in the brain on an assessment and comparison of mental states, those that are peek preferred over those that are not. This will move toward preservation because they are based on quality of feeling and folk like to preserve that feeling. Your explanation, I think, is shallow because it doesn't really say anything. The church may strive for control of others based on doctrine and such societies may remain static for centuries, but the desire for the freedom to think will eventually overthrow such bonds and destroy such control. Many people value thinking for themselves over being told what to do, especially people who can think, and they will destroy their whole civilization for freedom if that's what it takes. Of course you can say they want to preserve their right to think but what they really want is to feel it. A free state is better than a dictatorship because it feels better to live in one. So morality requires knowledge about what the healthy human being feels in a healthy state. That can be know only by those who know it. That state is called the Oneness of Love and many other things. This is why, no matter what we do, we can't get rid of the mystic.

Ugh, I'm just explaining what morality is at it's most basic premise and WHY. I am not going to every inroad of every moral codification of every behavior given by every segment of a given population such as Christianity and their whys for what they do. Personally I don't not care about every individual or societal segmented moral code.

Nor am I going to debate the moral weight or evidence ascribed by any or every group of people. That is not what the original OP was about. If you notice the title, it was can there be morality without religion?

I was pointing out that morality has no specific ties to religion at all. Morality is a categorical classification of behaviors that an individual or set of individuals ascribe to various behaviors/actions. And that ultimately, no matter how they are eventually ascribed, it all boils down to the root of self preservation.

Now all the tangents about why certain things are ascribed as moral, or immoral is fine and dandy. You guys can have at it because personally I don't care so long as someone else isn't trying to push down their codified version of a moral code down my throat.

 

[ch33zw1z]

WTF is plan B?
If you mean abortion it should be mandatory to abort that little bastard.

Plan B is the "morning after pill". For when you arenn't certain you BC/condom worked, or you were raped ("struggle snuggled")

 

[lotus503]

(was this originally in debate club? I'm seeing it in P&N. Nonetheless, I'll give it a polite response.)

Morality. Some say you need religion to have morality.

Stoning adulterers, punishing people for working on the Sabbath, forcing women to wear veils, killing women because they had been raped, forbidding women from being educated, forbidding women to be leaders within the church, condemning people for the genetics they've been born with (homosexuality)... The list goes on and on of things that religions find, or have found in the past to be morally right.

I'd prefer to think of right and wrong as things that are reasoned out. Is it okay to kill my neighbor? I don't need a God or some scripture to tell me that's wrong.

In fact, I'd be willing to submit that an atheistic morality - one that uses reason - is more "moral" than a religiously based morality.

I tend to agree with this based on the premise that as an atheist or agnostic in a lot of sense you are deriving your own morality based on social influence vs, having it dictated to you by doctrine.

I think as a species we are truer to that which we learn and discover ourselves vs. what we are told to think and believe.

 

[Moonbeam]

I tend to agree with this based on the premise that as an atheist or agnostic in a lot of sense you are deriving your own morality based on social influence vs, having it dictated to you by doctrine.

I think as a species we are truer to that which we learn and discover ourselves vs. what we are told to think and believe.

Except that a good deal of what we learn and discover for ourselves is confirmation of hidden bias. We see what we believe and not the other way round.

 

[Moonbeam]

I tend to agree with this based on the premise that as an atheist or agnostic in a lot of sense you are deriving your own morality based on social influence vs, having it dictated to you by doctrine.

I think as a species we are truer to that which we learn and discover ourselves vs. what we are told to think and believe.

Except that a good deal of what we learn and discover for ourselves is confirmation of hidden bias. We see what we believe and not the other way round. HumblePie, for example sees preservation as the root of morality and anybody who doesn't agree has something wrong with them. In the case of the Ted speech, Harris argues that the root of morality is an internal valuation of brain states. The latter approach opens the door to an understanding that morality is absolute and beyond egotistical self interest or group interest. In the latter instance morality may be something that goes against a person's selfish interest in preservation, that we might say that the real root of morality and values is Love. And the degree to which real love is felt by individuals vary right up to the point when love becomes universal, in which case all those who can love like that share identical morality or absolute morality. But in all of this self knowledge will be required and self knowledge can be had in part from the sciences of psychology and neuroscience. This is an important task because irrational moralities threaten to combine with technologies that can destroy human civilization.

 

[ZaneNBK]

What created your God?

Just to play the devil's advocate here, what created your universe?

Asking theists what created their god is a dead-end. Their god has always existed and always will. Their god created the physical universe along with it's physical laws and causality, therefore it's existence, without explicit creation, is entirely logically consistent to the believer.

I find the question of what created the universe (the matter/energy prior to the big bang) to be a much harder one to answer.

 

[sandorski]

Just to play the devil's advocate here, what created your universe?

Asking theists what created their god is a dead-end. Their god has always existed and always will. Their god created the physical universe along with it's physical laws and causality, therefore it's existence, without explicit creation, is entirely logically consistent to the believer.

I find the question of what created the universe (the matter/energy prior to the big bang) to be a much harder one to answer.

The answer is actually very simple: We don't know.

 

[ZaneNBK]

The answer is actually very simple: We don't know.

That's not an answer, it's admitting that you don't know the answer.

Anyway, the point was that from a believer's standpoint, god wasn't created, he has just always existed. This isn't logically inconsistent for them or their argument (the existence of god), so bringing it up is a dead end that will weaken your argument against any decent defender of god and/or creationism. After they've explained their logic their comeback of course will be the "Where did the big bang come from?" rebuttal.

Of course that doesn't mean god created the universe and hopefully some day science will have a better understanding of that process. Either way you look at it though, it appears that something (be it god or the universe) has always existed or sprang into existence from nothing.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

religion has nothing to do with morality. ive noticed that some of the nastiest, most "immoral" and unethical people i know compulsively attend church. its almost like they think their behavior doesnt matter because their "faith" means theyre going to heaven anyway. on the other hand some of the straightest, most ethical people i know have nothing to do with religion, and so are obviously that way for nonreligious reasons. i think it all just comes down to personality. some people are immoral, some people arent, and whether they believe in religion, whether they are educated, whether they have dark or light hair, whether they drive a ferrari or a ford, etc... just has nothing to do with it.

 

[ch33zw1z]

That's not an answer, it's admitting that you don't know the answer.

That's really not true. Admitting that we, as humans, really don't know where everything came from yet is definitely an answer. In fact, it's a better answer that just making something up that can't be proven, ever.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

And Charles, you have not flung any example my way that can not be explained to have a root going back to self preservation of either an individual or group of individuals.

I think the disconnect here is that when I read "self-preservation", I'm thinking of individuals. You seem to be using it to refer to the preservation of individuals, groups and even the species as a whole.

I can agree that morals usually are based on one of these. The problem is that these different types of "preservation" are not only sometimes in conflict, they usually are.

When the RCC tells poor Catholics that it's immoral to use birth control, they are looking out for their own interests, not those of the poor Catholics. And that is very often the case.

But even leaving this aside, there are "morals" that are wholly irrational and do not serve to preserve anything other than habit and prejudice.

 

[HumblePie]

I think the disconnect here is that when I read "self-preservation", I'm thinking of individuals. You seem to be using it to refer to the preservation of individuals, groups and even the species as a whole.

I can agree that morals usually are based on one of these. The problem is that these different types of "preservation" are not only sometimes in conflict, they usually are.

When the RCC tells poor Catholics that it's immoral to use birth control, they are looking out for their own interests, not those of the poor Catholics. And that is very often the case.

But even leaving this aside, there are "morals" that are wholly irrational and do not serve to preserve anything other than habit and prejudice.

I never made the distinction that self preservation was only for an individual at all. I stated that every behavior deemed "moral" is done so because somewhere, somehow, someone thought the action was prosperous to life as they know it.

From the beginning I stated that most life forms have found that preservation is easier working together than apart. But the working together is what makes organisms have to redefine moral codes from an individual to work for a group.


I also agree that many behaviors deemed as moral or immoral came from a mistaken case of thinking they were good or bad for preservation. And that even after learning the truth, the continued placement of the behavior into the wrong category happens because of tradition. Speaking of which, tradition has it's roots in preservation because it's better to not try to fix what isn't broken. And keeping things simple is also easier.

My whole line of posts was to address the OP about what is morality. That it has no real relational bearing on any religion what so ever. That actions labeled moral, immoral, or amoral are done so based on an individual or groups views of what works best for preservation of life. Nothing more and nothing less.